Tales from Ancient Egypt

Loren R. Fisher was Professor Hebrew Bible at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Semitic Languages and Literature at the Claremont Graduate University. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of Montana. He is the author of Genesis, A Royal Epic and the editor of The Claremont Ras Shamra Texts.

The Egyptian tales witness to some of the great moments in the history of Egyptian literature and represent the earliest beginnings in world literature. Many literary critics do not seem to know the importance of Egyptian prose tales told for entertainment (including C. S. Lewis, who does not know that the ""marvelous that knows itself as myth"" was alive and well by 1800 BCE). Unlike some other ancient states, both Israel and Egypt wrote epic tales in prose. And these great prose stories are important for the study of the Hebrew Bible. Some of the most exciting narrative prose parallels to the Hebrew Bible are found in the stories from Egypt. The details may vary, but in the setting, the purpose, the vocabulary, and the genre of the stories, one can find many similarities.Contents1 The Story of Sinuhe: A Wanderer on the Earth2 The Enchanted Prince3 The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor4 The Journey of Wen-Amon5 A Dialogue between a Man and His Ba