night two splendid “Persea” trees, which renew the accusation in a loud voice.  The queen has them cut down, but a chip from one of them flies into her mouth, and ere long she gives birth to a child who is none other than a reincarnation of Bitiu.  When the child succeeds to the Pharaoh, he assembles his council, reveals himself to them, and punishes with death her who was first his wife and subsequently his mother.  The hero moves throughout the tale without exhibiting any surprise at the strange incidents in which he takes part, and, as a matter of fact, they did not seriously outrage the probabilities of contemporary life.  In every town sorcerers could be found who knew how to transform themselves into animals or raise the dead to life:  we have seen how the accomplices of Pentauirit had recourse to spells in order to gain admission to the royal palace when they desired to rid themselves of Ramses III.  The most extravagant romances differed from real life merely in collecting within a dozen pages more miracles than were customarily supposed to take place in the same number of years; it was merely the multiplicity of events, and not the events themselves, that gave to the narrative its romantic and improbable character.  The rank of the heroes alone raised the tale out of the region of ordinary life; they are always the sons of kings, Syrian princes, or Pharaohs; sometimes we come across a vague and undefined Pharaoh, who figures under the title of Piruiaui or Pruiti, but more often it is a well-known and illustrious Pharaoh who is mentioned by name.  It is related how, one day, Kheops, suffering from ennui within his palace, assembled his sons in the hope of learning from them something which he did not already know.  They described to him one after another the prodigies performed by celebrated magicians under Kanibri and Snofrui; and at length Mykerinos assured him that there was a certain Didi, living then not far from Meidum, who was capable of repeating all the marvels done by former wizards.  Most of the Egyptian sovereigns were, in the same way, subjects of more or less wonderful legends—­Sesostris, Amenothes III., Thufcmosis III., Amenemhait I., Khiti, Sahuri, Usirkaf, and Kakiu.  These stories were put into literary shape by the learned, recited by public story-tellers, and received by the people as authentic history; they finally filtered into the writings of the chroniclers, who, in introducing them into the annals, filled up with their extraordinary details the lacunae of authentic tradition.  Sometimes the narrative assumed a briefer form, and became an apologue.  In one of them the members of the body were supposed to have combined against the head, and disputed its supremacy before a jury; the parties all pleaded their cause in turn, and judgment was given in due form.*

     * This version of the Fable of the Members and the Stomach
     was discovered upon a schoolboy’s tablet at Turin.

Animals also had their place in this universal comedy.  The passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral.  La Fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the Nile of whose existence he little dreamed.