The Tale of Sinuhe
The story of Sinuhe has spawned a great deal of literature which explores the themes contained in the work from many perspectives … Scholars debate the reason why Sinuhe flees Egypt, with the majority ascribing panic over a perceived threat. The tale is full of symbolic allusions. Sinuhe’s name (“Son of the Sycamore”) is seen as providing an important link in understanding the story. The sycamore is an ancient Egyptian Tree of Life, associated with Hathor, (the Goddess of fertility, rebirth and patroness of foreign countries), who features throughout the work.
Sinuhe comes under the protective orbit of divine powers, in the form of the King, from whom he first tries to run away, and that of the Queen, a manifestation of Hathor. On fleeing Egypt, Sinuhe crosses a waterway associated with the Goddess Maat, the Ancient Egyptian principle of truth, order and justice, in the vicinity of a sycamore tree.
The Ancient Egyptians believed in free-will, implicit in the code of Maat, but this still allowed divine grace to work in and through the individual, and an overarching divine providence is seen in Sinuhe’s flight and return to his homeland. Unable to escape the orbit of God’s power and mercy, Sinuhe exclaims: “Whether I am in the Residence, or whether I am in this place, it is you who cover this horizon.”
(From Wikipedia’s entry on the Story of Sinuhe)
From around 2700 BCE to the beginning of the common era, ancient Egyptian texts spanned a range of styles and genres from biographical inscriptions honoring the dead to hymns for the gods to travel accounts and laments of life and loss, love poems, satirical fables, and fantastic tales. The texts were forgotten for most of the common era, disappearing in the late fourth century along with with the ability to read the hieroglyphs. In the 19th century, European scholars deciphered the forgotten language and recovered some of Egypt’s lost texts.
Some examples of Egyptian script:
The transcript to this cuneiform can be found here.
Map of the Ancient Near East
