From A Treasury of Kemet (NRM 749)
... The
Tales of the Nubian, sometimes known as the
Tales of the Animal Farm, dates from the early part of the First Transitional Period. The author, Hapuseneb, is believed to have been a scribe at the royal court at Henen-nesut, seat of the most powerful of the several dynasties competing for supremacy in Kemet at the time. His work is remarkable not only for being the earliest example of Kemetic narrative literature that has come down to us (although many later papyri are likely transcriptions of still older stories) but also for being one of the earliest known examples of political satire.
The work takes the form of several interconnected short stories; there were at least seven in the original papyrus, but only four complete stories and fragments of a fifth have survived. The setting is a farm in Upper Egypt, and the characters are the Nubian farmer (never named, and referred to only as "the Farmer" or "the Nubian") and his livestock.
In the first story, the Nubian commands his animals to dig agricultural canals. Rather than digging the ditches where they are told, each animal is convinced that he has a better place to dig them, and each starts work in his preferred location, claiming loudly that his plan and no other will bring the most water to the fields. When it becomes clear that none of the animals is listening to any other, they begin to fill in each other's trenches, each intent on forcing the others to see the justice of his plan. In the end, the fields are not irrigated and the crops wither in the harsh sun.
The second story begins on the morning of the following day, when the animals argue over which one of them the Nubian will sacrifice to propitiate the gods (or, as they put it, which one will plead the farm's case in "the
kenbet of heaven"). The pig, the cow and the goat each contend that their life is the most valuable, boasting of their achievements in past seasons, the greatness they have brought to the fields and the charitable works they have done for lesser animals. Hours pass and none of them withdraw, at which point the Nubian suggests that the animals' council put the issue to a vote. The pig has the most supporters and, although the cow and goat warn that he is unclean, he is chosen as the sacrifice. The gods, offended by the sacrilegious offering, send a plague to ravage the farm.
The third story sees the animals trying to rebuild from starvation and disease, and quarreling over who will perform the necessary tasks. The donkey, speaking in the animals' council, declares that he has had enough of carrying heavy loads from place to place; from now on, he will swim in the duck-pond and the ducks will fetch the stones to build a new boundary wall. The ducks go to the quarry and, of course, are unable to lift even the smallest stone. The donkey shouts at them to work together, and calls for the rabbits and fish to help them, but the stones cannot be moved. Ultimately, the donkey allows the load to be put on his back, saying "must I really show you fools how this is done?"
Two fragmentary tales follow; one appears to involve an attempt to hitch the farmer to a plow, although not enough of either survives to be certain. The end of the cycle, though, is known: the Nubian and his livestock flee the destruction of the farm and invade a neighbor's land, intent on securing a new home for themselves. Seeing another farmer and his family at work in their fields, they attack without mercy, but Horus descends to vanquish the invaders, save the neighbors' lives and property, and reclaim the Nubians' farm for productive work.
Nearly all scholars agree that the
Tales of the Nubian is an allegory of the republican government that arose in Akhmim just a few years before the papyrus was composed. The Nubian farmer is both a stand-in for the god Min, whose cult was centered at Akhmim and who is depicted as a black man, and a pun on the leader of the Akhmim
kenbet, whose name - Nehesy - meant "Nubian." The caricatured debates, arguments over precedence, and topsy-turvy social roles are recognizable, and sometimes quite nuanced, references to the internal struggles that were taking place within the provincial republic at the time, pitting craftsmen against scribes and rural landholders, those who favored a single executive against those who preferred collective rule, and those who viewed the
kenbet as a forum for policy debate against those who believed its only non-judicial role should be to elect an absolute leader. The recent discoveries at Akhmim and Edfu, which chronicle the formative years of the republics, definitively refute the earlier view that the Hapuseneb papyrus is simply a general lament against the chaos and privation of the First Transitional.
Opinion remains divided, however, as to whether the papyrus is a light-hearted lampoon of the republic or a work of propaganda against it. While the use of animals and some colloquialisms speaks in favor of the former interpretation, the weight of the evidence appears to support the latter. The characters are not drawn in a way that is calculated to make them appear funny or endearing. Instead, they commit multiple acts of sacrilege, profanation of ritual and destruction of irrigation works - which, in the parched environment of the First Transitional, was viewed as very close to the ultimate crime. Moreover, the appearance of Horus - representing both the physical king and the concept of kingship - to save the neighboring farm from the animal invasion is a clear indication that the Nubian's farm is an evil to be vanquished.
It is plain that Hapuseneb saw the Akhmim republic, and meant his readers to see it, with horror rather than amusement. To him, a country without a divine king - in other words, one in which the ruler is not the natural superior of the ruled, and in which the people see themselves as no better than he is - must necessarily be one in which the people accept no direction and spend their energies in futile competition. As such, projects like irrigation-works and religious rituals, which require many people to work together to effectuate a single plan, cannot be accomplished, and the only possible result is starvation and ruin. Moreover, the ruler himself must lose direction and vision when forced to contend against the people, as evidenced by the fact that the story's farmer is not given a name, which symbolizes his loss of humanity and descent to fellow-beasthood.
This interpretation also explains the final story, in which the Nubian and his animals appear as invaders. Unlike the other vignettes, this is not an allegory of Akhmim's politics, given that all the wars it fought during the first two decades of its existence were defensive. It only fits into the rest of the cycle if it is assumed - as Hapuseneb no doubt did - that republican government is itself an invasive organism which will destroy a well-ordered kingdom if not defeated. This view may well have been reinforced by the emergence of a second provincial republic at Edfu, where the city's
kenbets overthrew a particularly oppressive overlord three years after Nehesy assumed Akhmim's mayoralty. The fact that the Edfu republic arose from a revolt, rather than simply the filling of a power vacuum, must have made republican ideology seem all the more dangerous. Certainly, this view was shared by many others at the time, with some kings and provincial rulers going so far as to excise the names of the rebellious provinces from monuments and public records.
But one cannot escape the feeling that Hapuseneb was reactionary even for his time. At several points in the story, he caricatures the idea of social justice - the notion that a ruler must justify himself with reference to good works - but this idea was already taking hold among kings and princes as well as mayors and members of
kenbets. The very king that Hapuseneb served bragged in his tomb inscriptions of feeding the hungry and healing the sick, and the same boast was being made in the tombs of many other nobles. The concept of rulership was changing in response to the harsh conditions of the First Transitional, and the idea of the ruler as being divine simply because he was ruler was fading - something that, no doubt, made the republican concept even more frightening to those already in mourning for the old times...
