Egyptian Tales. First Series

Stories from the papyri of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, translated by the archaeologist who dug the sites they were written on: the tales of the magicians told at the court of Khufu, the eloquent peasant robbed on the road and his nine petitions, and the adventures of Sanehat, the courtier who fled Egypt and came home to die. Petrie published them in 1895 with notes on the objects and customs they take for granted, because the tales are four thousand years old. They are among the oldest fiction in this library, and they are better than they need to be. Fifty-six plates of Nile banks, Karnak, and the Sphinx by painters including Charles Gleyre and George Frederic Watts carry the river and temple world of the tales across four thousand years.