Egyptian Tales, Translated from the Papyri eBook

the hands of the Foe in Joppa, and put on his feet the fetters with four rings.  And he made them bring the two hundred sacks which he had cleaned, and made to enter into them two hundred soldiers, and filled the hollows with cords and fetters of wood, he sealed them with a seal, and added to them their rope-nets and the poles to bear them.  And he put every strong footman to bear them, in all six hundred men, and said to them, “When you come into the town you shall open your burdens, you shall seize on all the inhabitants of the town, and you shall quickly put fetters upon them,”

Then one went out and said unto the charioteer of the Foe in Joppa, “Thy master is fallen; go, say to thy mistress, ’A pleasant message!  For Sutekh has given Tahutia to us, with his wife and his children; behold the beginning of their tribute,’ that she may comprehend the two hundred sacks, which are full of men and cords and fetters.”  So he went before them to please the heart of his mistress, saying, “We have laid hands on Tahutia.”  Then the gates of the city were opened before the footmen:  they entered the city, they opened their burdens, they laid hands on them of the city, both small and great, they put on them the cords and fetters quickly; the power of Pharaoh seized upon that city.  After he had rested Tahutia sent a message to Egypt to the King Men-kheper-ra his lord, saying, “Be pleased, for Amen thy good father has given to thee the Foe in Joppa, together with all his people, likewise also his city.  Send, therefore, people to take them as captives that thou mayest fill the house of thy father Amen Ra, king of the gods, with men-servants and maid-servants, and that they may be overthrown beneath thy feet for ever and ever.”

REMARKS

This tale of the taking of Joppa appears to be probably on an historical basis.  Tahutia was a well-known officer of Tahutmes III.; and the splendid embossed dish of weighty gold which the king presented to him is one of the principal treasures of the Louvre museum.  It is ornamented with groups of fish in the flat bottom, and a long inscription around the side.

Unfortunately the earlier part of this tale has been lost; but in order to render it intelligible I have restored an opening to it, without introducing any details but what are alluded to, or necessitated, by the existing story.  The original text begins at the star.

It is evident that the basis of the tale is the stratagem of the Egyptian general, offering to make friends with the rebel of Joppa, while he sought to trap him.  To a Western soldier such an unblushing offer of being treacherous to his master the king would be enough to make the good faith of his proposals to the enemy very doubtful.  But in the East offers of wholesale desertion are not rare.  In Greek history it was quite an open question whether Athens or Persia would retain a general’s service; in Byzantine history a commander might be in favour with the Khalif one year and with the Autokrator the next; and in the present century the entire transfer of the Turkish fleet to Mohammed Ali in 1840 is a grand instance of such a case.