1 The Tale of Sinuhe History of a literary text * JEAN WINAND – UNIVERSITÉ DE LIÈGE To some extent the appearance of arbitrariness is well founded, since the study of interpolation, like textual criticism in general, proceeds not by the application of rules but by the exercise of individual judgment. When carried out with knowledge and tact it can resemble connoisseurship (…) without those qualifications it amounts to little more than imposing the critic's prejudices on the unresisting text. Tarrant (1987:182) This is a significantly revised version of the paper I presented in Leiden. For the conference, I discussed some issues directly related to the production of a stemma. Since then, I have taken a deep interest in textual transmission set in a socio-cultural context, which has prompted me to reconsider the relation of an author with his poem, and of the poem with the audience. In the introduction (1), I briefly consider the place of Sinuhe in ancient and modern times. I then examine the relevance of the text to Egyptian culture from a particular angle: the impact or influence it exerted on other texts (citation and intertextuality). In section 2, I discuss some basic questions about authorial activity in ancient Egypt and its relation to the dissemination of the poems before they entered a classical type of transmission. Section 3 is devoted to the presentation of the manuscript tradition from Maspero down to Kahl. In section 4, I address some problems both theoretical in textual transmission and practical for the history of the text of Sinuhe. In section 5.1, I present the stemma that was at the core of my Leiden paper, which chiefly addressed the relations of H BA and S vis-à-vis R and B. In 5.2, I suggest that the variants found in B and R show that (at least) two lines of tradition co-existed from very early on. In 5.3, I turn to AOS showing that there is no ground for positing a third and independent line of transmission as advocated by Barns and Kahl. In section 6, I argue that the text of Sinuhe underwent a philological recension, probably to be set somewhere in the 18 th dynasty. In the next section (7), I come back to the process of literary creation. I am here interested in discussing how literary pieces were made known and accessible to the public, and how textual transmission could actually take place. As a conclusion, I present a revised version of my stemma. My main point here is the distinction I introduce between two kinds of textual transmission: the tradition of the MK, that can be labelled a productive one, and the tradition of the NK, that appears to be merely reproductive. I conclude (8) with some considerations on the relations between Sinuhe and the Teaching of Amenemhet, suggesting that both poems should be viewed as protagonists of a complex literary discourse. * It is my pleasure to thank R. Parkinson for his comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this paper. Many thanks also to Andrea Gnirs for sharing her ideas with me on this fascinating topic, and to my usual accomplices Stéphane Polis, Gaëlle Chantrain and Todd Gillen for their help.
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The Tale of Sinuhe History of a literary text*
JEAN WINAND – UNIVERSITÉ DE LIÈGE
To some extent the appearance of arbitrariness is well founded, since the study of interpolation, like textual criticism in general, proceeds not by the application of rules but by the exercise of individual judgment. When carried out with knowledge and tact it can resemble connoisseurship (…) without those qualifications it amounts to little more than imposing the critic's prejudices on the unresisting text.
Tarrant (1987:182)
This is a significantly revised version of the paper I presented in Leiden. For the conference, I discussed some issues directly related to the production of a stemma. Since then, I have taken a deep interest in textual transmission set in a socio-cultural context, which has prompted me to reconsider the relation of an author with his poem, and of the poem with the audience.
In the introduction (1), I briefly consider the place of Sinuhe in ancient and modern times. I then examine the relevance of the text to Egyptian culture from a particular angle: the impact or influence it exerted on other texts (citation and intertextuality). In section 2, I discuss some basic questions about authorial activity in ancient Egypt and its relation to the dissemination of the poems before they entered a classical type of transmission. Section 3 is devoted to the presentation of the manuscript tradition from Maspero down to Kahl. In section 4, I address some problems both theoretical in textual transmission and practical for the history of the text of Sinuhe. In section 5.1, I present the stemma that was at the core of my Leiden paper, which chiefly addressed the relations of H BA and S vis-à-vis R and B. In 5.2, I suggest that the variants found in B and R show that (at least) two lines of tradition co-existed from very early on. In 5.3, I turn to AOS showing that there is no ground for positing a third and independent line of transmission as advocated by Barns and Kahl. In section 6, I argue that the text of Sinuhe underwent a philological recension, probably to be set somewhere in the 18th dynasty. In the next section (7), I come back to the process of literary creation. I am here interested in discussing how literary pieces were made known and accessible to the public, and how textual transmission could actually take place. As a conclusion, I present a revised version of my stemma. My main point here is the distinction I introduce between two kinds of textual transmission: the tradition of the MK, that can be labelled a productive one, and the tradition of the NK, that appears to be merely reproductive. I conclude (8) with some considerations on the relations between Sinuhe and the Teaching of Amenemhet, suggesting that both poems should be viewed as protagonists of a complex literary discourse.
* It is my pleasure to thank R. Parkinson for his comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this paper. Many thanks also to Andrea Gnirs for sharing her ideas with me on this fascinating topic, and to my usual accomplices Stéphane Polis, Gaëlle Chantrain and Todd Gillen for their help.
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1. Introduction
The Tale or the Story of Sinuhe, as the text is known in English1, was undoubtedly well received in Ancient Egypt. One probably does not venture too far in suggesting that the poem was held in high esteem by the cultural elite.2 But it remains unclear if Sinuhe was, as it is now for us, the classic of the classics3. To the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, at least in the New Kingdom, it was the wisdom texts, sensu lato, that enjoyed the highest possible status.4 In a much celebrated passage, the P. Chester Beatty IV (20th dyn.) has preserved a list of eight authors having achieved literary fame and belonging to what was already in the New Kingdom considered a distant past. Under the names of Kaires, Ptahhotep, Hordjedef, Khakheperreseneb, Khety, or Neferty have come down to us some of the most beautiful pieces of ancient Egyptian literature.5 None of them have a narrative fictional character.6 The Teaching of Khety or the Book of Kemit significantly surpass Sinuhe in the number of ostraca coming from Deir el-Medineh.7 This bears clear testimony to what constituted the core of the scribes’ education in the New Kingdom. This impression is also supported by archaeological evidence. In addition to fragment Daressy, coming from a 19th dyn. tomb-chapel in Saqqarah8, fifteen large graffiti with excerpts of literary works have recently been noted in a provincial tomb of Asyut: these graffiti can be assigned to the New Kingdom from palaeographical evidence; without exception, the ones that have been identified so far belong to the didactic literature.9 Of course, Sinuhe was probably very far from being an unknown figure in the literary circles and in the educational landscape. No less than 7 papyri and 25 ostraca have been preserved. If the number of ostraca of Sinuhe is easily exceeded by that of many wisdom texts,10 the number of papyri is worth considering. Except for a Golenischeff papyrus now in the MFA in Moscow and a still unpublished papyrus in Turin11, all the preserved papyri date from the second half of the 12th dynasty or the 13th dynasty.
1 On the lack of titles in ancient Egyptian literature, see Parkinson (2002:109-112). 2 On the reception of the poem, see most recently Parkinson (2009). 3 See Baines (1984:32-33). 4 Cf. Fischer-Elfert (2003:119-137). As was pointed out to me by Andrea Gnirs (p.c.), I here use the expression ‘didactic literature’ as a cover term with a scope larger than wisdom literature, stricto sensu. 5 On this much commented text, see Moers (2002, 2008), Shupak (2001), and recently Gnirs (forthcoming:26-28, with the relevant bibliography). Cf. also P. Athens 1826 depicting some famous scribes of the past (see Fischer-Elfert 2003:124) ; see also Dorn (2009). 6 Of course, some of them can be set in a fictional frame. 7 Cf. Parkinson (2002:53-54). 8 Cf. Parkinson (2002:31-32, with bibliography). 9 There are two passages from the Loyalistic Teaching and from the Teaching of Amenemhat, and a passage from the Hymn to the Nile, the Teaching of Kheti, the Teaching of a Man to His Son and the Prophecy of Neferti. The passages that were copied are almost always the introductory stanzas of the text. The choice of these literary pieces is largely coherent with the list found in the P. Chester Beatty IV. See U. Verhoeven, Literarische Graffiti in Grab N13.1 in Assiut/Mittelägypten, in Proceedings of the ICE Rhodos 2008. A new presentation was given by the same author in the conference held in Göttingen in June 2010 (On Dating Egyptian Literary Texts). 10 According to F. Adrom (2006:XVIII), the number of ostraca for the Teaching of Amenemhat exceeds 240 pieces. Since then, the number of copies has still increased: see Gnirs (forthcoming:30). 11 P. Turin CGT 54015 (= Sin. B 138-161), cited by Koch (1990:VI) in his introduction.
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If Sinuhe was probably not the most revered poem in Antiquity, its situation has dramatically improved in modern times. The popularity the text enjoys nowadays can be variously explained:12
§ first of all, the text is complete, and we have access to a satisfying, readable text, which is not exactly the case for other major pieces of the Egyptian literature,
§ second, the stylistic perfection of the text quickly made a lasting impression on our culture ; the esthetic qualities we are so happy to find in Sinuhe are precisely the ones we most value in our own classics,
§ the richness of the plot, its psychological depth, which contrasts with the rectilinear, straightforward approach of the Late Egyptian stories (with the notable exception of the Tale of Woe and the Tale of Wenamun), also appeal to a post-modern audience that is accustomed to a certain degree of sophistication,13
§ and lastly, and probably not less significantly, Sinuhe’s status in modern times is also linked to its relevance or supposed relevance to the history of the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, a trait it shares with the Teaching of Amenemhat (cf. infra).
The relevance of Sinuhe to Egyptian culture can also be appreciated by the echoes it left in other texts. A well known example is the citation of the description of Amenemhet I’s death in the opening lines of the poem in the autobiography of Amenemheb from the 18th dynasty. The autobiographical text closely follows R (7-8) and G by adopting the reading sHr.f instead of sar.f, which seems a later corruption probably triggered by the presence of the verb ar in the preceding verse.14
1 : Urk. IV, 896 sHr.f r p.t Xnm m itn R [Am] G sHr.f r p.t Xnm m itn S [ ] p.t Xnm m itn C sar.f p.t Xnm m itn AOS B3 sar m p.t Xnm m itn Bdt [ ]
Urk. IV, 896 Ha.w nTr Abx m ir sw R Ha nTr Abx m ir sw
S is Haw nTr Abx m ir sw AOS G C Bdt Haw nTr Abx m ir sw B3 [ ]
12 As noted by Parkinson (2009), the reception of Sinuhe in the beginning of Egyptology was more largely based on its reminiscence to a Biblical paradigm (Exodus) and its pseudo-historical aspects (the latter is still the most important to a large number of Egyptologists today: see my last point). 13 Cf. Baines (1984:35), who states “In richness and diversity of style the result is a ‘masterpiece’ which both incorporates and probably transcends the smaller forms used as points of departure”.
14 The spelling of sHr in the autobiography is much closer to G ( ) than to R ( ). Except for the spelling of Haw, which has no parallel in the tradition, the text of the autobiography once again closely follows R. On this passage, see also Parkinson (2009:177-178).
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Intertextuality15 can sometimes take a very allusive form as is probably the case in two texts, again from the 18th dynasty. When the Bedouin sheikh tries to understand the reasons for Sinuhe’s flight (B 34-35 = R 58), he uses a rare combination of two interrogative nouns (zy and iSs.t). The sentence has been differently transmitted by tradition:
2 : pH.n.k nn Hr m, iSs.t pw
“why and for which reason did you reach this ? what is the matter ?” (B)
3 : pH.n.k nn Hr zy iSs.t
“why (how) did you reach this ?” (R B3 B1 Cl AOS)16
The last version is reproduced verbatim in the Punt narrative of Hatshepsut (Urk. IV, 324). 4: Dd.xr.sn dbH.sn Htp.w :
pH.n.Tn nn Hr zy iSs.t r xAs.t tn xmt.n rmT
As already noted by Gardiner17, the scribe re-used the verse from Sinuhe as the first part of a larger sentence. In doing so, he did not realize that he created a mismatch between the direct object nn, present in Sinuhe, and the complement of direction he added at the end.18 The same expression nn Hr zy iSs.t is also found on a stela of Tetisheri, where it is part of a triple sentence paragraph that makes use of three different kinds of interrogative nouns:
5 : sxA.tw nn Hr zy iSs.t sDd.tw md.t tn Hr ix ptr spr r HAty.k
“why and for which reason does one remind this? why does one tell this story? what has reached your heart?” (Urk. IV, 27,10-12)
This is undoubtedly the mark of a higher style which seems to be emblematic of the 18th dynasty and the Ramesside times. It can be compared with two other pieces not devoid of some rhetoric pretention where a triple interrogation using three different interrogative words is found:19
6 : ix <n/m> tA iw bw rx.k sw m nim arq.f mi-qd.k iT s.t iw bw mA.k sy
15 On intertextuality, see A. Loprieno (2006:51-52). On a more general level, see Barthes (1975) : « Le texte redistribue la langue (il est le champ de cette redistribution). L’une des voies de cette déconstruction-reconstruction est de permuter des textes, des lambeaux de textes qui ont existé ou existent autour du texte considéré, et finalement en lui : tout texte est un intertexte ; d’autres textes sont présents en lui, à des niveaux variables, sous des formes plus ou moins reconnaissables : les textes de la culture antérieure et ceux de la culture environnante ; tout texte est un tissu nouveau de citations révolues. Passent dans le texte, redistribués en lui, des morceaux de codes, des formules, des modèles rythmiques, des fragments de langages sociaux, etc., car il y a toujours du langage avant le texte et autour de lui. L’intertextualité, condition de tout texte, quel qu’il soit, ne se réduit évidemment pas à un problème de sources ou d'influences ; l'intertexte est un champ général de formules anonymes, dont l’origine est rarement repérable, de citations inconscientes ou automatiques, données sans guillemets. » Cf. also Gignoux (2006). 16 AOS wrongly reads pH.n.i at the beginning of the verse. 17 See Gardiner (1916:24). For Sir Alan, B’s version looks pedestrian. He suggested, with some plausibility, that the end of the passage (iSs.t pw) could have been re-interpreted as a gloss. For the presence of glosses in the text, see infra, § 7. 18 This also reflects the change in the argumental structure of pH (from transitive to intransitive). On this, see Winand (1999). 19 On the use of the Semitic loanword iT, cf. J. Winand (forthcoming).
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« what is a land that you do not know ?, who will have understanding like you ?, what is a place that you did not (or you cannot) see ? » (Kuban, 15-16 = KRI II, 355,16)
7 : m nim gm a.w m iT sfxy gm a.w ix m rmT m-sA.w
« who is it that found their trace ? which guard found their trace ?, which people are behind them ? » (P. An. V, 20,4)
Of course, intertextuality can sometimes be a tricky business. Stylistic similarities have for a long time been recognized between Sinuhe and the Shipwrecked Sailor.20 But identifying the source and the target too often remains problematic. In B 252-253, the text of Sinuhe reads:
B wn.kwi rf dwn.kwi Hr X.t.i xm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
BA wn.kwi r.i dmA.[kwi Hr X.t].i xm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
AOS wn.in.f Hr dmi [sAtw Hr] X.t.i xAm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
P2 [ ] xAm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
Unfortunately, R at this point is lost. The first verse is clearly reminiscent of a verse found in the Shipwrecked Sailor (136-137):
wn.kwi rf dmA.kwi Hr X.t.i
The text of the Shipwrecked Sailor clearly follows the version of BA, with a minor variation. In Sinuhe, B opted for the verb dwn, which is also present in the Shipwrecked Sailor (46-47), but in a different context. AOS reads wn.in.f Hr dmi sAtw, a reading that finds a direct echo in the verse immediately following the verse now under consideration in the Shipwrecked Sailor (138):
wn.kwi rf dmA.kwi Hr X.t.i dmi.n.i sAtw m-bAH.f
To be on one’s belly before a god or a king in a sign of respect might seem quite normal. What is less common is the proleptic use of wnn in the pseudo-participle followed by another pseudo-participle, a construction that is so far unparalleled. This alone is sufficient to postulate a direct relation between the two poems. For the second verse of Sinuhe (B 253), the tradition once again splits : xm.n.i wi vs xAm.n.i wi « I became ignorant of myself » vs « I bent myself ». Both expressions have a parallel in the Shipwrecked Sailor:
74-76: nn wi Hr sDm st iw.i m-bAH.k, xm.n.(i) wi
86-87: a.wy.i xAm m-bAH.f
161: aHa.n rdi.n(.i) wi Hr X.t.i a.wy.i xAm m-bAH.f
Verse 161 offers the same logical link as the version of AOS: the hero is on his belly, his arms bent down before the god. But this is probably not sufficient to reject the version of B and BA of Sinuhe, since both Sinuhe and the Shipwrecked Sailor (74-76) share the powerful image of somebody completely overtaken by his emotions, and nearly fainting before the king or the god. What kinds of conclusions can possibly be drawn from this? Although the final proof will of course never be found, I can identify at least four hypotheses:
20 E.g. Gardiner (1916:96); Grapow (1952:92-93).
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§ The text of the Shipwrecked Sailor influenced the author of Sinuhe,
§ The text of Sinuhe influenced the author of the Shipwrecked Sailor, § Sinuhe and Shipwrecked Sailor have the same author,
§ The text of Sinuhe influenced the author of the Shipwrecked Sailor, and the Shipwrecked Sailor in turn exerted an influence on the Ramesside manuscripts of Sinuhe by way of intertextuality.21
The last solution definitely has my preference, probably (but not only) because of its aesthetic and cultural implications.22 According to this hypothesis, the phrase Hr X.t.i triggered in the scribe of AOS (or of its archetype) the reminiscence of v. 161 of the Shipwrecked Sailor, which resulted in a conflation of the two texts. Of course, one can also contend that both reflect a set phraseology. Although possible, this explanation downplays the high number of criss-cross references and it does not do justice to the exceptional construction wn.kwi + pseudo-participle, which is found in these two texts only.
2. A stemma, but for what?
This paper deals with the manuscript tradition of Sinuhe, the most recent to date in an already long chain of scholarly studies (see infra). As it seems, the touchstone of any study in textual transmission has always been the production of a stemma. In this respect, the present paper will not fail the tradition. This in turn raises an interesting and legitimate question on the supposed need of a stemma. If one believes that a stemma can lead us straight on to the original text written (or intended) by the author, then one has better to be ready for some disillusionment. Classical and medieval philologies have both been working for centuries with the idea that it was possible to attain the original by comparing the surviving manuscripts. The methodology, that is sometimes called the Lachmann method23, mainly consists in grouping the manuscripts after the model of a family tree by making a history of the errors made by the copyists.24 This always results in neat binary and elegant trees proceeding from a single ancestor.25 This theoretical framework, however, which still has many adepts, relies on two debatable assumptions.
The first one is that errors in manuscripts are always to be attributed to the copyists. Of course, copyists made mistakes, but what is implied with the traditional methodology is that the ‘original’ seems by nature to be free of mistakes, which is, to start with, impossible to
21 This could be an indication that the ShS was still known in the NK. The reception of the ShS after the MK is difficult to assert properly. To start with, the ShS is known by only one manuscript, which can be safely attributed to the 12th dyn. There are sometimes citations of the text (the best example is the ostracon of Menna, OIC 12074, r° 1), but this is insufficient to prove that the ShS was still known as a text properly. 22 One can also imagine that Sinuhe and Shipwrecked Sailor have been influenced by a source, which is now lost. Although not theoretically impossible, this seens very unlikely, and uselessly complicated. 23 After the name of Karl Lachmann (1793-1857), a latinist and a medievist, who set in his practice the principles of stemmatics. 24 Lachmann never published a theory on ecdotics or textual criticism. His ideas have been theorized by Paul Maas in 1927 (reference will here be made to the English edition of 1958, based on the second German edition). 25 The possibility of having a three- (or more-) branched type has been advanced by Bédier as early as 1928. This was rejected by Maas (1958:47-48).
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prove, and which turns out, to be fair, very unlikely in most cases.26 This in turn raises questions about the nature of the supposed errors. If we put aside the most obvious mistakes (nonsensical words, blatant errors in morphology and syntax), there remain a lot of dubious cases. Most often, philologists choose (or emend into) what they think is the correct reading according to their own perception of the author’s language and style. A topic example of this is the variation between iw.f mdw.f and iw.f Hr md.t in B1-2 (= R 25, see infra). The choice can also very quickly become a matter of personal taste when it comes to stylistic considerations. For instance, a repetition of a verse can be considered by some as stylistically weak, while others will prefer to see in it a means for maintaining cohesion or a powerful rhetorical device.27 The second issue has to do with one’s conception of authorial activity. In the traditional model, one assumes a strict identity between the archetype and the original written by the author.28 This once again raises interesting questions about how an ancient Egyptian author created his pieces, and about how they were circulated before entering, at least for some of them, a process of canonisation as was undoubtedly the case for Sinuhe in the XVIIIth dyn. (see infra). We only have meagre information about literary creation in the Middle Kingdom. The Tale of Neferti and the Eloquent Peasant offer examples of living creations that were recorded on the spot. Before Neferti began his speech, the tale shows the king taking his material to write down the priest lector’s words.29 In the Eloquent Peasant, there is at the end of the story an oral performance of the discourses made by the hero that were recorded by a scribe behind the scene while the peasant was speaking.30 How far this is informative of the process of literary creation is difficult to say. It can be safely assumed that oral performances were the normal way literature was disseminated and circulated in public. We have no hint suggesting that reading in private was common, or existed at all, even if this is probable.31 The crucial question is how a new literary piece became to be known to the public. If one retains the idea of a public performance, was it made by the author himself or by a professional performer? In either case, was it done from memory
26 In this respect, the observations made by Kastan (2001:120-121) on a correction proposed by Taylor (1984:301) are right to the point: “Though the emendation is graphically plausible, presupposing only a compositorial confusion of “a” and “i”, it is clearly determined by critical rather than bibliographic considerations: the commitment not to allow Shakespeare to be guilty (my italics) of “a major artistic flaw” (…) and the conviction that Shakespeare intended in the speech to achieve “exactly the right balance” between Henry’s awareness of his imperfections and an audience’s reluctance to see them. (…) It is only to show that interpretation is unmistakably as much productive of texts as it is responsive to them”. 27 A good example of this is the verse only present in R 13: ti sw hAb r Hw.t xAs.wt r sqr imy.w THn.w (see infra). 28 This idea was already rejected by dom Quentin (1926), who famously made some harsh criticism against the Lachmann method, replacing the idea of errors by that of variants. 29 P. Petersburg 1116B, 15-17: aHa.n dwn.n.f Dr.t.f r hn n(j) Xr.t-a, aHa.n Sd.n.f n.f Sfd Hna gstj, wn.in.f Hr ir.t m sSw Dd.t.n Xr(j)-Hb.t nfrtj. 30 B2, 128-129: rd.in.f Sd.t(w) Hr ar.t mAw.t, spr.t nb.t r Xr.t.s “and he caused a recitation to be made from a fresh roll, every petition being according to its content”. The word order forces us to analyse the passage in two propositions. 31 However, there is crucially no specialized word for reading in Egyptian, at least in the MK (aS and Sdi are first and foremost conceived of as oral activities). For instance, one can note that a letter is never read, but listened to (sDm). The fact that the copies of literary pieces whose owner can be traced back are private copies does not tell much about the use they were made of. See Eyre (2000), Parkinson (2004:56-57).
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or with the help of a written text? Depending on the answer one chooses to give to these questions, some room for variation might or not open up. We will return to these questions at the end of this paper. But it should be clear from the outset that from a methodological viewpoint one should keep apart at least three distinct levels: the author’s intention, the version(s), orally performed or written, directly linked to the author’s intention, and the archetype(s) from which the surviving manuscripts can be ultimately derived.32 Now, to return to our first question, do we really need a stemma? The answer is probably, yes we do, not of course for retrieving some mysterious and volatile original (like the quest for the Grail), but as a useful tool for understanding the story of a text and its place in ancient Egyptian culture.33 Taking this for granted, the next question concerns the feasibility of building a stemma. If we allow for some authorial variation that could license more than one archetype,34 if we accept the possibility that the archetype(s) is (are) not necessarily better in every respect than the surviving manuscripts, there is a clear danger of producing something that will never be proved right or wrong. As a reaction to this, some scholars lost faith in stemmas, opting instead for editions based on the best manuscript.35 In this respect, Egyptologists are even less confident in their ability to produce an edition. They remain cautious to the extreme, always editing a synopsis of the available manuscripts, reserving for the commentary their appreciation on the conflicting readings.36 It is self-evident that, to a certain extant, building a stemma largely rests upon what we know (or what we believe we know) about the grammatical system of Classical Egyptian (we made some progress) and the stylistics of the Middle Kingdom literature (we are still in the infancy). This leaves in the dark our relative ignorance about the organization of the lexicon and about spelling habits, which could prove crucial when one has to decide between competing readings.
3. The manuscript tradition
Today the textual tradition of Sinuhe rests on 31 documents (7 papyri and 24 ostraca) from the Middle Kingdom to the beginning of the 21st dyn.
32 As noted by Tanselle (1996:6): “An authorially intended text is a text that once existed, though it may not have existed in physical form”. 33 Cf. Parkinson (2004:58), who speaks about “many philologists’s search for the master copy, the uncorrupted ‘Urtext’, as imagined by scholars such as J.W.B. Barns, B. Gunn and (to some extent) by A. Gardiner. Such an Urtext is arguably unrecoverable given the nature of our sources, and the nature of the text in the Middle Kigdom”. 34 Cf. Kastan (2001:122): “I am not suggesting that authorial intentions are unimportant, only that in Shakespeare’s case they are unavailable (…) But I do believe they matter. Authors have intentions (…) but no book ever appears that fully and only expresses these. An author’s intentions are realizable only as they interact with the intentions of other agents”. 35 The precursor of this method is Bédier who states (1929:17): “[L]e texte qui se lit en cette édition est celui d’un bon manuscrit, le manuscrit A, imprimé presque sans retouches et accompagné de notes qui marquent un retour vers la technique des anciens humanistes.” 36 See the comments of Quack on the tradition of the Wisdom of Ani (1994:13-23), and on the possibility to apply the Lachmann method to Egyptian texts: “Bei dem oben entwickelten Modell ist der methodische Beistand der Altphilologie relative gering” (Qauck 1994:18). On the opposition between open vs. closed tradition (also called productive vs. reproductive tradition), see infra, § 7.
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P Amherst Am-q
Middle Kingdom (incl. 13th dyn.)
P Berlin P 3022 B P Londres UC 32773 H P Londres UC 32106 UCL P Buenos Aires BA P Berlin 10499 R O Berlin P 12341 OB1 18th dyn. O Senmut 149 S P Moscou MFA 4657 G
Beg. of the 19th dyn. O BM 5629 L O Berlin P 12379 OB2 O Ashmolean Mus. 1945.40 AOS
Ramesside
O Borchardt Bdt O Berlin P 12623 OB3 O Berlin P 12624 OB4 O Caire CGC 25216 C O DeM 1011 ODM 1 O DeM 1045 ODM 2 O DeM 1174 ODM 3 O DeM 1437 ODM 4 O DeM 1438 ODM 5 O DeM 1439 ODM 6 O DeM 1440 ODM 7 O DeM 1609 ODM 8 O Petrie 58 OP1 O Petrie 12 OP2 O Petrie 59 OP3 O BM 5632 L2 O Clère OCl O Černý OCy O Varille OV
Fig. 1. The manuscripts of Sinuhe arranged in chronological order
The following schema (adapted from Kahl 1998:384-385) gives an overview of the distribution of the manuscripts over the text. The text has been arbitrarily divided in 33 sections, which more or less mirror the layout found in B, which has 311 columns, to which one has to add several more for those that are missing at the beginning of B. Lacunae, which can sometimes be important as in R, have not been noted in the graph.
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Fig. 2. Distribution of the manuscripts over the text
The text of Sinuhe has been known since nearly the beginning of Egyptology. One of the first translations was that of François Chabas in 1863, quickly followed by Goodwin’s in 1865. From very early on, scholars were tempted to organize the manuscript tradition. Maspero seems to be the first to do so in 1908,37 quickly followed by Gardiner in 1916.38 For the French scholar, the history of the text was marked by two recensions, the first one, in the MK, he called « la recension thébaine », and the second one, in the beginning of the 18th dyn., he dubbed « la recension ahmoside ». In Maspero’s opinion, B, because it was the oldest surviving manuscript, was to be preferred over R, whenever they offered conflicting readings.39 For sir Alan, the very idea of an Ahmoside recension seemed odd. The more so, since R had been redated to the 13th dyn. Nor did Gardiner follow Maspero in his appreciation of the respective value of B and R. For him, R was undoubtedly the best manuscript. In 1952, Barns published the famous Ashmolean ostracon of Sinuhe, the last major manuscript that has surfaced since the publication of B and R.40 Barns was convinced that AOS sometimes preserved the genuine reading against B and R. Sinuhe’s scholarship now rests on a stemma built by J. Kahl in 1998, which takes into account a larger part of the later tradition.41 His stemma basically elaborates upon the idea advanced by Barns in his edition of the great Ashmolean ostracon. Under α, which symbolizes the Urtext, Kahl suggests a tri-partite organisation: the B-line, the R-line, and the line of the later witnesses (the β–line), that I here call the AOS-line. According to both scholars, AOS alone sometimes kept the original reading against the B-line and the R-line. Hence it follows that
37 Maspero (1908). 38 Gardiner (1916). 39 On the archaeological evidence surrounding the discovery of these two main manuscripts, see Parkinson (2009: ch. 5 and 6). 40 Barns (1952). 41 Kahl (1998).
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AOS and the bulk of the Ramesside manuscripts must be considered as an independent line. This opinion has nowadays won general acceptance.42
Fig. 3. The stemma of Sinuhe (Kahl 1998)
4. Discussion
Although Kahl’s stemma certainly is a major improvement in our studies, some important issues have not been properly addressed so far. Some points of discussion remain, like:
§ the very notion of archetype; for instance, what does α actually stand for in Kahl’s stemma?
§ the relationship between R and B, § the articulation of the NK tradition with R and B.
When dealing with the manuscript tradition, one quickly becomes aware that different criteria are very often mixed up, being given the same weight when it comes to pondering the values of the manuscripts43. Actually these criteria contribute to the history of the text on very distinct levels. It should also be stressed that readings in the manuscripts are sometimes picked up as the result of one’s personal preference without any clear justification.44 In what follows, I briefly consider how different types of variants should be appreciated.
42 Cf. e.g. Goedicke (1957:83) à propos B8 (= R32), or Feder (2004) whose thesis on the use of the narrative infinitive is strongly dependent on this hypothesis. 43 For instance, the reasons given by Kahl (1998:390) to support a major tripartite division of the stemma are rather weak; they are also very diverse: misspellings, lack of verses, morphological variants. 44 A topic example of this is the comment made by Barns (1952:28) to AOS, v° 45: “Against the excellent parallel to the latter reading in Shipwrecked Sailor 75 we must set, in favour of that of Ashm OP2, Urk. IV,
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a) Generally speaking, older manuscripts are given precedence over younger ones. This is of course a sound principle if two manuscripts belong to the same branch of the stemma, but this argument loses ground if the manuscripts represent two different lines of the tradition.
b) Similarity of spelling does not necessarily imply that the manuscripts belong to the same branch of the tradition. But it is rather indicative that the manuscripts have been written in the same cultural environment (place and time). For instance, in B 5, the tradition splits for the spelling of wA.t “road”: B and R wrote whereas AOS G and C preferred . This only reflects the writing practices of the MK and of the Ramesside period respectively. It does not say anything about the relationship of B and R, nor of AOS G and C.
c) If not completely off the mark, a morphological variant is judged against the (impressionistic?) idea one has about the linguistic stage at the time of the original and at the time of the copy. For instance, in B 104, the tradition splits between B and AOS (R and H being unfortunately in lacuna): nHm(.w) wnm.t.sn (B) against nHm.n.i wnmt.sn (AOS). In the TLA, Feder corrected B to read nHm.n.i, thus harmonizing the whole passage with sDm.n.fs. But a passive sDm.w NP is not excluded; actually, as the choice is here restricted to B and AOS, the odds that AOS did not understand the passive form seem to me higher than having B shifting motu proprio from a trivial active sDm.n.f to a passive. In B1-2 (= R 25), the tradition again splits along a morphological variation: sDm.n.i xrw.f iw.f Hr md.t (B) sDm.n.i xrw.f iw.f mdw.f (R AOS C G). This passage has been much discussed. There seems to be a consensus for considering that B has a more elaborate version because it uses a progressive aspect: in this version, Sinuhe “caught every word uttered by the king’s son when speaking”.45 But another explanation is possible: the inaccompli general iw.f mdw.f simply indicates a correlation between the act of hearing and speaking (“as he spoke”).46 From Sinuhe’s viewpoint, it certainly also makes sense to insist that he was not eavesdropping / spying on every word, but that he heard only by chance bits of the conversation. If we accept this, the reading of B could be reinterpreted as an early manifestation of the neutralisation of the iw.f Hr sDm pattern as regards the opposition between the inaccompli general and the inaccompli progressive.47 One can also decide against choosing between the two variants, accepting both as two genuine readings licensed by the poet (see infra).
d) The understanding of what is intended by the adage lectio difficilior melior is notoriously open to discussion, especially when syntax is concerned. The following example (B 35-38) deserves some attention in this respect. To the question of the sheikh “Has anything happened in the Residence?”, Sinuhe replies:
B nswt bity S. wdAw r Ax.t n rx.n.tw xpr.t Hr.s R aHa.n Dd.n.i n.f S. [pw] wDA r Ax.t n r[x].n.tw xpr.t Hr.s AOS aHa.n Dd.n.f n.i S. pw wDA r Ax.t n rx.n.tw xpr.t nn Hr.s B3 aHa.n rf Dd S. mAa-xrw pw wDA r [Ax.t] [ H]r.s
158,16 . But I prefer that of B PBA”. But this is of course not isolated; e.g. Feder (TLA) notes à propos B 135-136 : “<m> xa.w als Fehler für m-hAw anzunehmen, scheint mir naheliegend, weil es viel besser in den Kontext paßt ». Cf. supra, n. 26, Kastan’s remarks on Shakespeare’s edition of Henry V by Taylor. In Egyptology, see also Quack’s remarks (1994:17): “Eine Entscheidung über den ursprünglichen Text ist allenfalls mit Hilfe sehr subjektiver Stillkriterien möglich.” 45 Vernus (1990:182-183). 46 Vernus (ibidem). For the values of the inaccompli général, see Winand (2006:271-281). 47 Cf. Winand (2006:280,311, ex. 662).
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B1 aHa.n{n}.f Dd [ ] S. mAa-xrw wAD (end) Cl [ ] [ ] Ax.t nn rx.tw xpr.t nn H[r.s] V [ ] n.i n.f S. pn wDA r Ax.ty (end)
B Dd.n.i swt m iw-ms [i]y.n.i m mSa tA tmH.w R Dd.n.i swt [m] iw-ms i[w.i] m mSa n tA tmH.w AOS Dd.n.i swt m iw-ms [i]y.n.i <m> mSa r tA tmH.w B3 [ ] sw m iw-ms [i]y.n.i m mSa r tA tmH.w Cl [ ]
B and R have a different understanding of the text. To start with, the introductory words to Sinuhe’s discourse are missing in B. One can of course consider that they are not necessary; one can even suggest that their non presence is “a conscious stylistic device in order to suggest rapid response in conversation”.48 The truth is that one will never know; once again, the danger of projecting one’s own aesthetic feelings onto an ancient literary piece cannot be overemphasized. In the following sentence, B and R once more split apart. B opted for a pseudo-verbal sentence with an old perfective predicate (“S. has gone to his horizon”), whereas R, more or less followed by the later tradition has a A pw sentence extended by an old perfective, a construction that is strongly reminiscent of the glosses found in scientific treatises and religious texts (“the fact is that S. has gone to his horizont”). Another variant is the last sentence in my example: B, which in this case has been followed by the Ramesside tradition has an emphatic sentence, but R probably read iw.i m mSa, that is a circumstancial sentence. From a purely syntactic point of view, it seems clear to me that R has the lectio difficilior. I understand the phrase Dd.n.i swt m iw-ms as a parenthesis; the last sentence iw.i m mSa is a circumstancial sentence linked to the thetic sentence S. pw wDA r Ax.t. I translate thus as follows “you have to know (pw) that Sehetepibre has gone to his horizon, one does not know how it happened – I was speaking in as-if – for I was in the expedition to the Libyan land”. AOS’ reading is worth considering. Its analysis of Dd.n.i swt m iw-ms was probably pivotal in its understanding of the whole passage; it undoubtedly analysed it as the introductory formula to the next sentence; considering that Sinuhe began his speech with Dd.n.i swt m iw-ms, it then accordingly reinterpreted aHa.n Dd.n.i n.f, found in R, as aHa.n Dd.n.f n.i. In my opinion, this nicely shows, as will be made clear below, how AOS or rather the 18th dynasty recension that constitutes its archetype (see § 6) handled the conflicting readings of the R-line and the B-line. e) The fact that a manuscript has an inferior reading as regards inflexions does not necessarily entail that this manuscript is inferior in every respect. For instance, it is well known that AOS more than once modernized the verbal inflexions, but it also sometimes preserved words missing in the other part of the tradition that are probably genuine. For instance, in B 91, the tradition splits between B and AOS (R is missing):
B iw ir.t(w) n.i aSA (...) ir.n.i rnpw.t aSA.t
AOS iw ir.n.i bnr aSA (...) ir.n.i rnpw.t aSA im
AOS, as is evident in many cases, changed the passive ir.t(w), attested in B, into an active form (ir.n.i). This was of course facilitated in this case by the presence of ir.n.i in the second
48 Parkinson (2009:165).
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part of the verse. But AOS, against B whose reading does not make good sense49, preserved bnr, which is probably genuine.50 f) The choice between lexical variants is usually made in favour of the one that is considered the less trivial (lectio difficilior, melior). But it is also true that a rare word, even a hapax, is not always the indication of a better reading.51 Now, the fact that a manuscript has a bad (or not so good) reading does not imply that it is inferior in every respect. For instance, in B 99, the tradition splits between B and AOS (R is missing):
B di.f iry.i rnp.wt aSA m Tz n mSa.f
AOS di.f iry.i wpw.t.f aSA.t iw.i m Tzw n mSa.f
From a certain perspective, the reading rnp.wt aSA of B seems inferior to AOS’, being probably influenced by v. 91-92 cited above.52 This notwithstanding, the reading m Tz n mSa.f (B) in the same verse seems more in accordance with what we know about literary classical Egyptian than iw.i m Tzw n mSa.f (AOS), which looks like a grammatical adaptation that better fits in a post-classical period.
g) The composition of a stemma can be conditioned by a theoretical premise. To take one example already alluded to above, some theorists do not accept the idea of a stemma that is not basically organized in a binary fashion.53 To sump up, six different criteria should come under consideration for understanding the history of textual transmission; they are here listed in what might be considered a decreasing order of importance:
§ Addition/omission of a verse § Total change of meaning in a verse
§ Addition/omission of a word in a verse § Change in the lexicon
§ Change/adaptation in morphology/syntax § Variation of spelling
49 Parkinson (2009:285) translates: “Many were made for me”, but aSA seems always to be used adjectively. 50 Actually, the scribe of B left a blank after ir.t(w) n.i, which could suggest that his model was unreadible or damaged at this place. AOS’ model, however, maybe dependent on the R-line (see infra) was not apparently in trouble. 51 B 135-6 (m-xt spr.n.i xa.w.f) is a case in point. Parkinson’s translation (2009:286): “after I had escaped his weapons” does not do justice to the causative spri. Feder, for the TLA, prefers to emend the text: “denn nachdem ich <in> seine Nähe gelangt war”. The verb spri is admittedly rare; it seems to have the expected meaning of “let go out”. What could be the meaning of this? Should we consider Sinuhe wanted to cast himself in a chivalry attitude, giving time to his opponent to make his attack first before replying? 52 According to Andrea Gnirs (p.c.), “rnp.wt aSA.t strongly alludes to the autobiographical genre. It may have been used as a marker of the poem’s strong relationship with this literary sphere, deliberately chosen in the later versions of the text. From a more fictional prospective, the term rnpw.t ranges on a higher scale, as ‘passing years’ rather point to the sphere of fictional literary narratives”. 53 In Egyptology, see Schenkel (1978), Jürgens (1995).
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5. Building up a stemma
Before considering the relation of H BA and S vis-à-vis the two major manuscripts B and R, I now give the stemma of Sinuhe I presented at the Leiden conference:
Fig. 1. The stemma of Sinuhe (Leiden presentation)
In this, I wanted to stress three main points: the existence of two main lines in the MK tradition, the recension that took place in the NK (δ), probably in the XVIIIth dyn., and the dependence of the later tradition on δ. In the next sections, I would like to discuss three important issues:
• the place of H, BA and S in the stemma,
• the mutual connections between B and R,
α
BA B
R H
S
B3
C
G
B4
εε
Cl
B1
ζζ
AOS DM6
κκ
ζ
ε
ι
κ
DM1
Middle Kingdom
XVIIIth dynasty
Ramesside
δ
β γ
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• the role of the Ramesside tradition, with a particular emphasis on the relationship of AOS with respect to B and R.
5.1. On H, BA and S With some caution, I here suggest that pHarageh (= B 103-110), pBuenos Aires (= B 252-257) and pBerlin R belong to the same line of the tradition.54 Unfortunately, this can be shown only indirectly, for R is almost always missing when H or BA are present.55
5.1.1. Papyrus Harageh
When compared to B, H offers two morphologically relevant variants and one lexical variant. In B 107, H and B have a different understanding of a verbal form:
B rx.n.f qn.n.i
H rx.n.f qnn.i
AOS rx.n.f qnn.n.i
R in lacuna
The two readings obviously make sense, but they view the process from a different aspectual perspective: in B, the prince got to know that the hero had shown his courage (accompli) while in H, he became aware that the hero many times had the opportunity to show his courage (inaccompli).56 AOS’ reading could possibly indicate that it (or rather its model, see infra) was aware of the two branches of the tradition, and that it conflated them in an impossible qnn.n.i.57
Another difference in morphology appears in B 107-108: B rdi.t.f wi m-HA.t Xrd.w.f
H rdi.n.f wi m-HA.t Xrw[.w.f］
R [ ] m-HA.t Xrd.w.f
DM1 [ ] wHy.t.f
AOS rdi.n.f n.i r-HA.t wHy.t.f
While B retained a narrative infinitive, H opted for a sDm.n.f.58 Both readings are acceptable.59 However, H stands with B and R against the rest of the tradition as regards the last part of the
54 Parkinson (2009:123-4) seems, however, more inclined to group H with B. 55 On the internal relations of R BA and H, see infra, § 7. 56 In both cases, the sDm.n.f of rx has been retained, rather than a pseudo-participle, which was also an option. The difference, once again, lies in the aspectual perspective: the sDm.n.f puts some focus on the process that lead to the state of knowing, while the pseudo-participle merely assesses the state of knowing (Winand 2006:242). In this passage, the first option obviously makes better sense as the prince realized step by step how well Sinuhe could behave for his own benefit. 57 Taking for granted that the NK recension primarily relies on R, cannot we imagine that the model of AOS, being confronted with qnn, did not properly understand it so that it changed it into an accompli sDm.n.f, while retaining the spelling qnn found in the model? 58 It seems that AOS, which is here dependent on the B-line (witness imA instead of afAy) understood mTA.f of B as a subjunctive and reinterpreted it as a final clause. 59 The use of a narrative infinitive in Sinuhe has sometimes been put into question (e.g., see Feder 2004, and his commentary for Sinuhe’s edition in the TLA), but unconvincingly in my opinion (see recently Köhler 2009).
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verse (Xrd.w.f vs. wHy.t.f). It is unfortunately impossible to decide if R, which is missing for the first half of the verse, had rdi.t.f or rdi.n.f. A lexical variation between B and H appears in B 109-110:
B mTA.f wi m imA.i
H mTA.n.f wi m af[Aj.i]
R in lacuna
AOS (DM1) r mTA m imw.i
Except for the variation of morphology (mTA.f vs. mTA.n.f), B wrote m imw.i while H preferred m afAj.i. Although afAj, which is generally understood to mean “camp”, is obviously rarer than imw, it is not exceptional in Sinuhe, being attested elsewhere in B (115, 146, 201), and in R (140 = B 115). In B 145-146, imA and afAj are used side by side:60
B iT.n.i ntt m imA.f, kfi.n.i afAj.f
In B 109-110, both are of course acceptable, even if B’s reading, from a narrative perspective, offers a better climax than H’s, showing the champion of Retenu insulting Sinuhe in his own tent. This probably was also the conclusion of the AOS’ scribe (or of his model’s) for adopting this reading.61 When B and H are in agreement against AOS62, AOS’ readings never seem to be preferred. As we will see in more details in the conclusion, when AOS’ readings are acceptable, either B or H (or R) is missing.
5.1.2. Papyrus Buenos Aires
BA and B have a different reading in a passage already discussed as regards the possible connections between Sinuhe and the Shipwrecked Sailor (= B 252-253, cf. supra 2.1):
B wn.kwi rf dwn.kwi Hr X.t.i xm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
BA wn.kwi r.i dmA.[kwi Hr X.t].i xm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
AOS wn.in.f Hr dmi [sAtw Hr] X.t.i xAm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
P2 [ ] xAm.n(.i) wi m-bAH.f
It seems that AOS (or its model) adapted dmA.kwi (Hr X.t.i), which is an exceptional word, only attested in Sinuhe and the Shipwrecked Sailor, into the commoner dmi sAtw Hr X.t.i.63 The scribe was also puzzled by the construction wn.kwi + pseudo-participle, which was changed into a safer wn.in.f Hr sDm.
In B 255-256, the tradition is difficult to follow: B rx.i anx r mwt
60 The rest of the tradition is unfortunately missing or partly missing here. It seems that AOS probably had the same elements as B in the same order. As for R, six lines are missing just after iT.n.i ntt m. 61 Of course, one can also assume that afAy was no longer understandable in the NK. 62 E.g. B 103 (BH mnmn.t.s vs. AOS mnmn.t.s nb.t), B 103 (B H Xrw.s vs. AOS Xrw.sn nb.t), B 105-106 (BH m xpS.i m pD.t.i vs. AOS m wa.t(y) m xpS.i), B 107-108 (B R H Xrd.w.f vs. AOS DM1 wHy.t.f). 63 Although dwn in B is not properly speaking a rare word, it should be noted that the expression dwn Hr X.t.f is far from being widespread; one can cite a related expression in pBerlin 3055, 11,9-10: r(A) n rdi.t X.t n dwn “formula for setting outstretched on the belly”.
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BA [n rx.i wi r] mw.t, n rx.i wi r anx [ ] iy.t
AOS n rx.i mwt r anx
I here suppose that BA preserved the genuine tradition. The expression “not knowing himself from something” is of course not a trivial one, being otherwise unattested. It was not properly understood by B, which adapted it to conform to the well known expression “not distinguishing between life and death”, omitting by the way the negation n. The wording of BA was probably also obscure for those who were responsible for the NK recension (see infra). The word order retained by AOS, mwt – anx (instead of anx – mwt in B), suggests that they probably decided to follow the R-line, to which, in my model, BA belongs.
5.1.3. Ostracon Senmut
The case of S is a bit different. This interesting, but unfortunately very damaged, ostracon belongs to the few documents dating from the 18th dynasty. Leaving aside the “orthographica” and some minor variations, S can be grouped with R against the Ramesside tradition in two very clear cases, when the later tradition added titles and epithets. But in two critical circumstances, S follows the same tradition as G AOS Bdt C against R. The first case, the ascending of the dead king to his horizon, is very well known (R 6-7):
R ar nTr r Ax.t.f nswt bity sHtp-ib-ra sHr.f r p.t Xnm m itn
Am [ ] sHtp-ib[-ra] sHr[ ]
S aq nTr r Ax.t[f p.t Xnm m itn
AOS aq.n nTr r Ax.t.f nswt bity sHtp-ib-ra mAa-xrw sar m p.t Xnm <m> itn
G aq nTr r [Ax.t.f mAa-xrw sHr.f r p.t Xnm m itn
C aq nTr r Ax.ty.f nswt bity sHtp-ib-ra sarw.f <r> p.t Xnm m itn
As always the lacunae are particularly misplaced: R has ar against the rest of the tradition, which has aq, but Am (= B), is missing. Two verses later, R reads sHr.f together with G and, very likely, Am, but this time it is S that is lost in lacuna. The Ramesside tradition has sar, with different spellings and some fluctuation in the grammatical understanding. It is thus impossible to decide whether S, in this case, represents a different tradition from R and Am (= B), or if it can be grouped with Am. My impression in this case is that S and G follow the same model, which cannot be reconciled with R, but could well fit what remains of Am. In the second case (R 3), which is not free of some palaeographical difficulties, S probably read ns.t nswt, with the rest of the tradition, against ip.t nswt, which is the reading of R. Lastly (R 7), S alone introduced the particle is before Ha ntr Abx m ir sw against the rest of the tradition (R AOS G C Bdt), but the Amherst fragments are unfortunately in lacuna here. The conclusion is that S cannot belong to the same branch as R. Now, it could be a more or less direct descendant of the tradition whose B is a witness, or it could also be one of the first witnesses of the recension that probably took place in the 18th dynasty (see below). In this case, the reading in R 7 (is Ha ntr Abx m ir sw), if not supported by the Amherst fragments (but one will never know), is an idiosyncracy of S.
5.2. On B and R Maspero and Gardiner had opposite views on the respective values of B and R. Although sir Alan’s position, which strongly favoured R over B, has usually been followed by modern scholarship, B recently received the support of a fine connoisseur of the poem in the person of R. Parkinson. For Parkinson
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The collection shows that the Sinuhe-scribe was not a uniquely careless or hurried individual; nor was he uniquely attentive to correcting himself. This man was writing hastily, but not unthinkingly, and in his constant self-correcting he was anxious to produce an accurate copy of the poem that could be read. (Parkinson 2009:111)
Of course, the fact that the B-scribe intended to produce the best possible copy does not necessarily imply that the model of B was a perfect and fautless copy. Despite a long tradition of scholarly work, it is difficult to objectively assess the respective values of both manuscripts. If we disregard minor mistakes easily explainable by the copying process itself, B and R stand in opposition in several cases, with different kinds of variants (presence or absence of a verse, lexical or morphological variations, spellings).
The text of R unfortunately breaks up well before the end. The roll would have probably contained 50 pages. Only parts of the 27 of the first 31 pages survive, that is, a bit more than half.64 So it remains problematic to assess how distant B and R are from each other. For my purpose, it suffices here to note that by the end of the Middle Kingdom, there were two lines in the tradition, and that these traditions apparently coexisted in the same place. The fact that the Harageh papyrus supports the tradition of R strongly suggests that the origin of the two lines has nothing to do with a geographical division between north and south.65
5.3. On AOS
As was immediately recognized by its first editor, the Ashmolean Ostracon has sometimes readings of its own that are worth considering. For Barns, this was sufficient to postulate that AOS had inherited genuine readings from a line distinct from that of B and R.66 From a methodological point of view, when dealing with the variants of AOS, one must strongly keep in mind an important distinction. When AOS has an isolated reading, one has to distinguish carefully between two cases: either AOS stands alone against B and R, or one has to deal with a one-to-one opposition: AOS stands against B or R, with the third party missing. The position of AOS vis-à-vis B and R is presented in the following chart:
I [B] R AOS
II B R AOS
III B [R] AOS H (= B 103-110)
IV B - AOS BA (= B 251-257)
V B - -
Fig. 2. Distribution of B R and AOS in Sinuhe
As is evident, the proper value of AOS against B and R can be properly assessed only in section II. In the other sections, either B or R is missing, and in the last section, B stands alone. When AOS stands against one and only one manuscript, it will always remain
64 Parkinson (2009:161). 65 Cf. Parkinson (2002:67). 66 Barns (1952): “Ashmolean and its nearest relatives (…) are not degenerate descendants of a munscript closely resembling B,R, or (…) PBA, but of a very different text, of independent authority”. This idea has been integrated in Kahl’s stemma (1998).
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impossible to decide if AOS represents a third and independent line or if it has inherited from a reading present in the line (B or R) that is missing at this place. When AOS stands in opposition to both B and R, it never seems to have a better reading. In some cases, AOS readings can be safely ignored.67 For the rest, they are demonstrably inferior, which of course does not mean that they are nonsensical.68 The point here is that it is possible to show how those readings surfaced through well known processes in textual transmission. When AOS has a reading that should be preferred over the rest of the tradition, either B or R is missing, which prevents us from considering AOS as the heir of a line independent from B and R. In the first example (B 146-147), AOS stands alone (with P4) against B (R is missing).
B wsx.n(.i) m aHa.w.i
AOS P4 wsx pr.i m Hr.i
There is every reason to think that the model of AOS or AOS itself had some difficulty understanding the sDm.n.f of a verb a quality (wsx.n.i); the easiest solution, which is largely supported elsewhere in Sinuhe, was to change it into an adjectival predicate (wsx pr.i), which is not completely awkward, but largely misses the point by introducing a predication that is essentially static, instead of a dynamic predication that is required by the narrative flow.69
In the following example, already cited (B 99), AOS’ reading, wpw.t.f, should be preferred over B’s rnp.wt:
B di.f iry.i rnp.wt aSA m Tz n mSa.f
AOS di.f iry.i wpw.t.f aSA.t iw.i m Tzw n mSa.f
As already stated, when AOS stands in opposition to both B and R, it never seems to have a better reading. This is of course the most important point. The following figure shows how many times AOS stands against B and R according to the type of variation:
67 This of course the case in the numerous cases where AOS changed the text under the influence of the spoken language of its time, i.e. Late Egyptian: e.g. m stp.w n wn.t Hna.f (B 80) changed in m stp.w n wn m-a.f (AOS). 68 In some cases, the readings of AOS are unintelligible: e.g. the reading n xm.i xpr(.i?) m HAay.t instead of the correct xmt.n.i xpr HAay.t offered by B and R (B 7). 69 To this, one should also add that the adjectival construction in Classical Egyptian predicates a quality that is conceived of as inherent and consubstantial to the subject, which does not make sense here.
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Addition/Omission of a verse70 4
Addition/Omission of a word71 6
Variation in the lexicon72 8
Variation in the morphology73 12
Text of a verse different74 1
When B and R stand in opposition, AOS can side with either of them, with an inclination towards R as shown in the following figure.75
AOS agrees with R against B B against R
Addition/Omission of a verse 9 6
Addition/Omission of a word 6 8
Variation in the lexicon 6 3
Variation in the morphology 3 1
Text of a verse different 1 -
Total 25 18
Fig. 3. The position of AOS vis-à-vis R and B in Sinuhe
6. The XVIIIth dynasty recension
The conclusion is that there is no solid argument for defending the existence of a third independent line in the tradition of Sinuhe. The available evidence suggests that the text of Sinuhe underwent a recension, probably during the 18th dynasty. Those who did it had access to the two branches of the tradition: let’s call them after the names of the two main witnesses, the B-line and the R-line. For unknown reasons, the R-line was chosen as the default model.
70 E.g. the verse in B 75-76 (xr Hm km.t nfr.t(j) ntt s(j) rx.t(j) rwD.f) is missing in AOS (badly and probably somewhat corruptly present in R, which could explain that it was skipped in the NK recension). On the other hand, in B 81, AOS added nn wn mitt.f m tA, a very common phraseology, which is absent in B and R. In B 143, AOS has rdi.n.f wi m qni.f, wn.in.f Hr sn.i Hr Hpt.i, where B and R have only rdi.n.f wi m Hpt.f. The second part, present only in AOS, is probably an addition (the presence of the construction wn.in.f Hr sDm is unjustified from a narrative viewpoint). Now, the sequence qni – sn is attested in the Shipwrecked Sailor (133-134: mH.k qni.k Xrd.w.k, sn.k Hm.t.k). 71 E.g. addition: in B 1: n wa im (B R G) vs. n wa im.sn (AOS C); omission: in B 25-26: siA.n wi mTn im (B R) vs. siA.n wi mtn (AOS C B4 P1). 72 E.g. in B 3-4: nfa (B R) vs. ntf (AOS); B 7: xmt.n.i (R B) vs. n xm.i (G AOS); B 16-17: inb.w HqA (B R) vs. inb.w it.i (AOS); B 60: wd-Hr (B R) vs. sxm-ib (G AOS). 73 E.g. in B 4-5: rdi.t.i (B R) vs. rdi.n.i (AOS); B 31: Dd.f n.i (B R) vs aHa.n Dd.n.f n.i (AOS); B 61: n wHm.n.f (B R) vs. nn wHm.tw (AOS DM2); 74 B 114-115: n ink tr smA.f wsTn.i m afAy.f (B [R]) vs. in iw ink pA wn smA.i iy-iw m imw.f pw. 75 E.g. in the famous description of the Walls of the Prince (B 18-19), AOS sides with R (tp inb imy hrw.f) against B (tp Hw.t imy hrw.s).
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This can be deduced from the fact that AOS sides with R more often than with B (cf. supra). The reasons why those ancient philologists sometimes decided to shift loyalty to the B-line can only be guessed at. It can of course be a simple matter of individual preference, but the most obvious reason probably is that the model of the R-line was badly preserved in some places. The manuscripts sometimes let us have a glimpse at what probably happened. As already seen, in B 91, B has iw ir.t(w) n.i aSA against iw ir.n.i bnr aSA in AOS, which has undoubtedly preserved the genuine tradition as regards the word bnr, which is missing in B. Actually, B did not exactly miss it; rather, it left a blank space, which suggests that its model had become impossible to read or was damaged.
It is a fact that the acceptable readings that AOS has in some places always show up when one of the two main manuscripts, B or R, is missing. It most often happens when R is missing, which is consistent with the claim I am here making that those who did the NK recension mainly followed the R-line. In those cases, it makes better sense to consider that AOS simply reflects the missing line instead of postulating a third and, in my opinion, totally impossible to prove independent line.
In some rare places, it is possible to see how the scribe(s) managed to resolve the puzzle raised by the conflicting traditions of B and R. Let us first consider what happened in B 7:
B n Dd.i anx r-sA.f
R n Dd.i anx r-sA nn
AOS n Dd.n.i anx r-sA pfA nTr pn mnx
C n Dd.(i) anx sA pfA nTr pn mnx
DM3 n Dd.n(.i) [ ]
G [ nTr] pn mnx
Those who made the NK recension decided in favour of B, but the solution they took also shows that they were embarrassed when considering the two traditions (“after him [i.e. the king]” vs. “after that” [i.e. what happened]). To avoid what they considered an ambiguity, they wrote instead of a simple –f, which is the lesson of B, a more fleshy pfA, a pronoun typical of the 18th dynasty76, and added nTr pn mnx, which might have been first intended as a gloss before eventually entering the text.77
In the description of the sorrow afflicting the palace and the court at the king’s death (R 10-11), the two lines of the tradition were arguably known in the New Kingdom as witnessed by C, that kept them all, and B3, that shifted from igr to imw.78
R pa.t m imw
C pa.t Amw igr
AOS pa.t m igr
B3 pa.t m igr ⎡Amw⎤
An S [ ]
76 pfA is known in Ptahhotep and in the Dialogue of a Man with his Ba. But it remains exceptional in the MK. It is not part of the vocabulary of Sinuhe. 77 The presence of the gloss in G shows that this rearrangement of the text took place quite early in the NK. 78 Amw was added in red above the line.
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Another interesting case is offered by B 107, already discussed (cf. supra, p. xxx). The reading of AOS (qnn.n.i) can be interpreted as a way to combine the sDm.n.f form found in the B-line (qn.n.i), that was probably easier to understand, with the mrr.f form of the R-line (qnn.i) that was the default model for those who made the recension. It is of course difficult to precisely determine when the recension took place. Most of the innovations that appear in AOS are already present in the P. Golenischeff, that can be dated to 19th dyn. O. Berlin 12341 (OB1), that has been assigned to the 18th dyn., has preserved only a few lines. It always sides with R, except in one case (B 36), where it seems to connect with B, but the reading of the ostracon is unfortunately corrupt. The ostracon coming from the surroundings of the tomb of Senmut (S) is also attributed to the 18th dyn. It supports the readings of R, but on two important occasions sides with the NK tradition against R.79 B is unfortunately missing, but my guess is that, in these places, it had the readings that were accepted by S and the later tradition. If this hypothesis were correct, it means that S would be the earliest witness of the new recension I am looking for.
7. The history of a poem
The date of the poem’s composition can only be estimated. It obviously took place between the reign of Sesostris I and the date of our most ancient manuscript, that is, somewhere in the second half of the 12th dynasty. If one allows for some time between the historical setting and the literary creation, the second half of the 12th dyn. is a more natural candidate than the first one. Some scholars have also advocated an earlier date, contemporary with the reign of Amenemhat II.80 In this case, B, our most ancient source to preserve a very large portion of the text81, would not be too far from the assumed date of composition. Now if one can argue that R sometimes has better readings than B – or at least variants as acceptable as those of B –, the unavoidable consequence is that meaningful differences, that is differences that are not the mechanical result of the copying process, showed up very early in the history of the text.
This once again raises some important issues like the process of literary creation, its reception and its transmission. The implicit postulate of any stemma codicum is the existence of one – and only one – archetype (Ur-Text). As already seen in the introduction, there is every reason to remain sceptic about this. Although we have some idea of how a literary piece of work was performed in the elite circles, we simply have no idea of how a literary text in the Middle Kingdom was composed. It seems difficult to imagine a piece of work like Sinuhe be the ultimate fruit of an oral tradition or the outcome of a multi-author enterprise.82 Denying the existence of a single (implied) author raises more questions than necessary. A much more interesting discussion is whether the existence of a single author ipso facto implies that of an Ur-Text. At first sight, it seems to be the inescapable conclusion. At least, it is on such an assumption that critical studies of the ancient classics, Greek and Latin, have developed over more than five centuries.
79 Cf. supra, p. 17. 80 Parkinson (2009:26). 81 In this appreciation, the other MK mss, like P. Buenos Aires, P. Hawara or P. UC 32106, have little to show. 82 This of course does not exclude the possibility that the poem was reworked from time to time by copists (Andrea Gnirs, p.c.).
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In contrast to this, I would like to advance the idea of a two-tier tradition. The history of a literary piece like Sinuhe strongly suggests that it had a living tradition probably till the beginning of the New Kingdom once the tradition became frozen or closed. The first stage is probably to be connected with how the literary texts circulated. Texts were probably made accessible to the audience above all by oral performances. If the author performed himself his poem on different occasions, maybe in different places, then variations were only to be expected. Different performances could give birth to different written versions, equally licensed by the author. I am here interested in the written transmission of literary pieces, especially in the very beginning, when a new poem was created and performed for the first time. How would someone interested in having a copy manage to have one? The very simple idea of entering a library to make a copy is of course anachronistic. The process of writing down literature during a performance is documented for the Middle Kingdom in some literary pieces (Neferti, Eloquent Peasant).83 In these cases however, the situation is a bit different as the performance is the creation act of the texts. How this model can be expanded to narrative literature remains of course debatable.84
If one prefers to consider that those interested in having a copy of a literary text used to make a copy from a written model, there of course remains the possibility that different versions, equally licensed by the author, could have circulated. For Greek and Roman literature, a time when literary production and diffusion was more organized, at least from the IVth century onwards, one has some hints suggesting that an author sometimes introduced variants into a text already published.85 For instance, in Aristophanes’ Ranae, the existence of variants introduced by the author is very likely. The explanation offered by Dover is that this piece was represented twice, in 405 and in 404 BC, and that the manuscript tradition conflated the two versions into one.86 According to a celebrated quote made by Tarrant à propos the Roman poet Ovid, “I do not mean to be merely paradoxical when I say that the first reader of the Metamorphoses to introduce a “collaborative” interpolation in it may have been Ovidius himself”.87
In Sinuhe, variations in the general arrangement of the verses or inside a verse can of course be explained along the rules generally advocated in the manuscript transmission (memory slips, etc.), but they could also point to some very early fluctuations of the text. For instance, R is the only manuscript to have the following verse (R 13-14):
R ti sw hAb r Hwi.t xAs.wt r sqr imy.w THn.w
83 Cf. supra, n. 29 and 30. 84 Of course, one has to take into account the autoreferentiality of what is told in Neferti and the Eloquent Peasant. 85 On this see Heyworth & Wilson (1997). This possibility is not unanimously accepted; the position of Jachmann (1941:47) is extreme in his denying it: “Pour ma part […], je ne puis partager cette théorie: au contraire, je ne la considère prouvée en aucune façon; sur bien des points elle a été réfutée et elle est en général dangereuse et pernicieuse. L’expérience montre en effet qu’elle est appliquée à la légère et sans discernement à toutes les variantes textuelles. Elle pousse à tolérer par solution de facilité ce qui ne le mérite pas, elle évite de devoir faire preuve de courage en choisissant entre bon et mauvais, entre vrai et erroné, entre authentique et faux, elle rend superflus la connaissance de la langue, le sens du style et du jugement” (cited and translated from German by Dorandi 2000:157). 86 Cf. Dorandi (2000:159). 87 Tarrant (1987:297).
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Far from being exceptional, the ideas and images that are expressed in this are fairly common in the royal phraseology. Gardiner was first tempted to regard it as original, but because of the agreement of G C and An was forced to admit that the verse was interpolated.88 Actually the proportion is not one to four manuscripts, but rather one to one (R-line versus B–line). The argument advanced – nolens volens – by Gardiner cannot force the decision. More recently Patané and Feder considered that the B-line skipped the verse abused by the repetition of tj sw, or chose to delete it as redundant.89 It will probably always remain impossible to decide whether this verse is an omission of the B-line or an addition of the R-line. Now, the balance of the two sentences introduced by tj sw and the presence of Hm in the second one are arguably a sound indication that the two sentences are closely bound. This seems to be Oréal’s opinion as appears from her comment on this passage (2011:364):
L’introduction de la proposition par tj suivi du sujet sw est ici le seul point commun verbal entre les deux propositions successives mises en relation par Hm. La particule marque cependant la seconde comme une reprise de la première à un niveau énonciatif. Leur contenu étant bien différent, l’opération de reprise est interprétée sur le plan sémantique. L’idée d’un butin à prendre étant impliquée par l’action d’abattre (Hwj.t), son actualisation apparaît comme le développement d’une implication de la proposition précédente. Cette valeur permet ainsi au locuteur d’exprimer l’idée que départ à la guerre et retour victorieux ne forment qu’une seule et même action pour Sésostris, en raison de la divine efficience qui caractérise le futur souverain d’Égypte. Grâce à ce procédé, une cohérence argumentative se superpose au fil linéaire de la succession des événements, enrichissant la narration d’un point de vue énonciatif orienté vers une argumentation sous-jacente.
The stemma below is a modified version of the previous one.
88 Gardiner (1916: 10). 89 Patané (1989:131), Feder (TLA, note to R 13).
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Fig. 4. The stemma of Sinuhe (revised version)
The main difference between the stemma I presented in Leiden and the modified version is the distinction I introduce between the author and the public performances (p, p’, p’’) made by (or under the control of) the author. In this model, the performances are the ultimate sources of the written tradition. There is no Ur-Text anymore, but the possibility of an array of texts, some of which will eventually be fixed in writing. The analysis of the existing manuscripts suggests that the tradition was quickly organized in two poles (β and γ). From β, are derived BA R and H. Their internal organization is of course subject to discussion. Given the available data, the presentation given here is only one possibility.
From what we know – but we know so little –, the copies of literary texts that have survived till our times are never the products of professional scriptoria as was knowingly the case in the Middle Ages for Latin and Greek literatures. In Egypt, copies were made by individuals who took a personal interest in them, probably because they had heard a performance of it before, maybe several times. This is an important difference with the medieval copyists, who often were professional ones. This means that, at least in some cases, they probably discovered the text for the first time when they began to copy it. The individual who made a copy of an Egyptian literary text like Sinuhe most probably knew the text very well or at least large portions of it in advance. This familiarity with the text could of course be the source of interferences between what he knew, probably by heart, and what he saw on his model. His memory could betray him, but there is also the possibility that his memory in some cases preserved a slightly different text. A good way to appreciate this kind of conflict is to consider how a respected author like Plato managed to cite Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which he did abundantly in his work. A close study made by Jules Labarbe, which remains model, has convincingly shown that Plato, as expected, cited Homer out of memory, which was only to
Ramesside mss, including AOS
B
R
β’
H δ
S ε
G
MK
18th dyn.
Ramesside
β γ
Author’s intentionality
p p’’ p’
UCL β’’
BA
27
be expected from any educated Athenian, but that he was also sometimes dependent on different textual traditions that circulated in his time.90 As it seems, the textual tradition of Sinuhe should be approached differently depending on whether one considers the Middle Kingdom or the Ramesside period. The transmission of the text seems to have been quite open in the beginning, but became closed or frozen from the New Kingdom onwards. This is of course reminiscent of the division between productive and reproductive transmission as has been advanced, inter alia, by Assmann for religious texts.91 As regards literary pieces, such a type of transmission has been considered for some Demotic texts, but also for more ancient pieces of Egyptian literature like Ptahhotep.92 This change in the mood of transmission should also be considered from the more general viewpoint of canonization, a process that is well known in Ancient Egypt.93
From this perspective, an important point of interest was to show that the text of Sinuhe underwent a revision in the New Kingdom. The new text is the result of some deliberate choices between the R-line and the B-line, with the occasional insertion of glosses and the re-arrangement of some verses. As already suggested, the available evidence points to a date somewhere in the 18th dyn. Recent studies on the 18th dyn. have emphasized the intense intellectual activity that took place at these times, especially under the Thutmosides.94 This could provide a nice setting for a philological study and a new edition of Sinuhe. Philological practices on classical texts have already been advocated for wisdom texts, like Ptahhotep. For this text, the two successive recensions (18th dyn. (?) and Ramesside times) probably originate in school practices, aiming at producing a more intelligible text.95
If one admits that the NK tradition is the product of a new philological edition made in the 18th dyn., one should be able to demonstrate that the new edition shows some conflicting traces of the two older traditions, namely that of B and R. We have already come across some examples of this before. Another interesting case is found in R 163:
B Ø
R aHa.n ir.n.f A[ ], xmt.n.f Hwtf.i
AOS [ ].f r.i, xmt.n.f Hwtf.i
Kahl, following Gardiner, considers the passage as interpolated.96 The second part of the verse, xmt.n.f Hwtf.i, shows up in B 112, where it is absent in R, but present in AOS. One could reconstruct the following process. For the sake of the argument, let’s posit that the verse originally was where it is now in R. The copyist of B, or rather its model, made an interpolation (B 112), while keeping the verse in its original place. The copyist of B then suppressed the second occurrence of the verse (= R 163). Those who made the NK recension, having access to the B-line and the R-line, merged the two branches of the tradition; the result of this can be seen in AOS, which has the verse under discussion in the two places.
90 See Labarbe (1987). 91 Cf. Assmann (1983:7-14). 92 Cf. Quack (1994:17-23). 93 Cf. the conference “Problems of Canonicity and Identity Formation in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia”, held in Copenhagen in 2010. 94 Cf. Stauder (forthcoming). 95 Cf. Vernus (2001:67-70). 96 Cf. Kahl (1998), Gardiner (1916:54).
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The possibility of dating texts by linguistic means has also most recently been the subject of passionate discussions. Although I firmly believe that reliable results can be reached for non-literary texts,97 I have my doubts when it comes to the literary corpus except for some very general considerations.98 The textual transmission of Sinuhe clearly shows how deeply a text can be linguistically transformed: processes of modernization in morphology and vocabulary have been observed in many places in the text; hyper-corrections sometimes happen, as the introduction of a sDm.xr.f form in B3 (nfr.xr.k)99, which, if no MK manuscript of Sinuhe had survived, would have been a choice criterion for anchoring the text in the 18th dyn.100 This inevitably leads to some scepticism regarding the use of linguistic criteria as the only means for dating literary texts. So in my opinion, however significant the amount of the linguistic features that could be assigned to the 18th dyn. or to the Ramesside time can be in a text, doubt about their interpretative value will always remain. Do these features simply reflect the date of composition or are they merely traces left by a re-working of the text?
8. Conclusion: Sinuhe and the Teaching of Amenemhet
The literary activity that can be observed in the first half of the 18th dyn. particularly makes sense as regards Sinuhe. We already observed that there was then a renewed interest for Sinuhe as witnessed by some manifestations of intertextuality in the textual corpus of the elite. I would like here to add a new piece of evidence by reconsidering the relationship between Sinuhe and the Teaching of Amenemhet. The dating of the Teaching has become a very hot topic in Egyptology. The positions go from an early 12th dyn. dating to the 18th, with a possible place in the second half of the 12th dyn.101 Two lines of argument have been advanced: content and language. Both obviously have their limits. The first argument deals with the history of ideas, a very difficult exercise to practise in every circumstance, but especially if the documentation has been partly preserved, as in Ancient Egypt. Reconstructing the encyclopaedia of the MK and the beginning of the 18th dyn. will probably always remain tentative and speculative. The setting of the Teaching in the 12th dyn. seems the most obvious. Until recently, it was undisputed. Since our first manuscript is not earlier than the 18th dyn., some scholars have tried to reconcile the materiality of the text with the context by showing that a setting in the 18th dyn could also make sense.102 It remains to be seen to which extant the newly discovered graffiti from Asyut, once safely dated, will alter the picture.103 Studying a literary piece like the Teaching from the point of view of the language amounts to finding grammatical facts that are both incompatible with the 12th dyn. and consistent with the literary habits of the 18th dyn.104 The method seems rather sound, but the
97 See Winand (1995). 98 See Quack (2005) about the dating of Ptahhotep. 99 = B 31. B and R read nfr Tw Hna.i; B3 nfr.xr.k Hna.i, and AOS and Cl nfr Tw aA wnn.k Hna.i. 100 The form is not out of place from a semantic point of view : given what comes just before, this contingent tense suits the context very well (Vernus 1989:xxx). The problem rather is that a sDm.xr.f for opening a new statement is not attested in the Middle Kingdom. On the use of the sDm.xr.f form in post-classical middle Egyptian (esp. in the 18th dyn.), as indexical to Middle Egyptian practices, see also Stauder (forthcoming). 101 See most recently Gnirs (forthcoming:25). 102 See Grimal (1995:277-278), Gnirs (forthcoming). 103 According to U. Verhoeven, the graffiti of Amemenhet are the most ancient ones. They should be dated to the beginning of the 18th, but a slightly earlier date can also be considered. 104 See Stauder (forthcoming).
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results largely depend on the assumption that our earliest manuscript is very close to the date of composition. If not, one must face the possibility that the linguistic facts that pass for diagnostic of an 18th dyn. dating were introduced by a late copyist following a process that is so manifest in the tradition of Sinuhe. Curiously enough, there has been no attempt to explain the relationship between the two poems from a purely literary perspective. I would here tentatively suggest that the very question Egyptologists have been asking since the first edition of Sinuhe was also debated by the Egyptians. They also came to speculating on the motives of Sinuhe’s flight. A possible answer was to assume that Amenemhet was murdered. In this perspective, the Teaching of Amenemhet could be viewed as a literary response to some questions deliberately left open in Sinuhe.105 Of course, such a reconstruction is speculative, but it makes sense for the history of poem. In 2003, F. Feder convincingly showed that Sinuhe was recast as a royal son in the later manuscripts.106 In B 16-17, the tradition splits in two groups, the NK manuscripts having a different reading than those of the MK. What was « the walls of the Ruler » (inb.w HqA) became the « walls of my father » (inb.w it.i):
R B dmi.n.i inb.w HqA AOS G C dmi.n.i inb.w it.i
Those who made the NK recension saw it as an opportunity to give a new interpretation to the text. Is it going too far by suggesting that the new role assigned to Sinuhe is a late literary response to the Teaching of Amenemhet? As the scribes of the NK tried to understand the reasons of Sinuhe’s flight – a question that is still haunting some Egyptologists’ nights –, a possible answer was to make Sinuhe a son of the dead king. In my opinion, such a move should be interpreted in the frame of the literary discourse.
Such a reconstruction of course implies that the use of the Teaching for writing the history of the reigns of Amenemhet I and Sesostris I should be definitely abandoned. It does not say much about the date of composition of the Teaching. It can be anywhere between the second half of the 12th dyn. and the beginning of the 18th. If the Teaching can be partially interpreted as a literary response to Sinuhe, its contextualisation in respect to the political situation in Egypt becomes less sensitive.
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