II. TWO MORPHOLOGICAL PARALLELS TO THE JONAH STORY
2.3.2 Summary of the Tale
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2.3.2 Summary of the Tale157
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This terrifying sight causes the sailor to be speechless and forget everything. The snake takes him back to its lair, unharmed in its mouth, and queries him again with the same words. Having regained his composure, the stranded sailor is able to tell the snake about his troubles. Seeing that the man is no threat, the snake exhorts him to not be fearful:
"It is god who has let you live and brought you to this island of the ka158...You shall pass month upon month until you have completed four months in this island. Then a ship will come from home with sailors in it whom you know. You shall go home with them. you shall die in your town."159
The snake‘s appearance and behavior indicates that he is divine, and this is a vital point in consideration of the ensuing tragic story about the unyielding power of fate told by the snake. He tells of how a "star fell" on this island once, killing his brothers, their children, and his "little daughter,160 thus leaving the snake to find their corpses and wishing for his own death. Though devastated by his family's destruction and his loneliness, the snake kept living and learned to cope with his circumstances. That story ends with a moral which ties together all three narrative layers of TSS: "If you are brave and control your
158 It is unclear if this is a geographic description, a metaphor, or something else. Lichtheim notes that it has been previously rendered as "phantom island"; Antonio Loprieno is literal when he refers to it as the
"island of the spirit," "Travel and Fiction in Egyptian Literature" in Mysterious Lands (ed. David O'Connor and Stephen Quirke; London: UCL Press, 2003), 31-51; Adolf Erman provides for an alternative
interpretation by reading "island of the kaû" ("island of provisions"). See Erman, "die Geschichte des Schiffbrüchigen" ZÄS 43 (1906): 1-26.
159 Vladimir Golénischeff, the Russian Egyptologist who offered a French edition of the text and commentated on the narrative, infers from this passage that the snake is telling the man to wait for a regularly scheduled commercial ship to arrive, thus Egypt had ongoing trade relations with the land of Punt. "Le Papyrus hiératique de Saint Pétersbourg," Recueil de Travaux 28 (1906): 73-112; This seems to me an overanalysis. What is most important is that the snake reveals the man's fate to him, much like Anzud does for Lugalbanda.
160 Previous commentators, including Golénischeff and Kurt Sethe, find in this brief story a shortened form of what was originally a separate tale in which the ―little daughter‖ had a principal part; Gaston Maspero, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (ed. Hasan el-Shamy; Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC Clio, 2002), 81-88, n.14. This is entirely plausible given that many such tales involve the reorganization and integration of originally separate elements.
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heart, you shall embrace your children, you shall kiss your wife, you shall see your home.
It is better than everything else."
Prostrate before the snake, the impressed sailor vows to tell his king, the king of Egypt, of the snake-king‘s power. He further promises to send precious oils, incense, spices, laudanum, sacrifices and more "as is done for a god who befriends people in a distant land not known to the people," but the snake only laughs at him:
You are not rich in myrrh and all kinds if incense, and myrrh is my very own. That hknw-oil you spoke of sending, it abounds on this island.
Moreover, when you have left this place, you will not see this island again; it will have become water."
The ship arrives (presumably after four months have elapsed) and the sailor hails the ship from a tall tree. He recognizes those aboard the vessel from that distance and returns to report these events to the snake-king. The ruler of the island encourages him to go and tells him to ―Make me a good name in your town!‖161 He gives the sailor spices, animals and many other exotic goods prior to sending him away. The man bids final farewell to his host: "Then I put myself on my belly to thank him and he said to me: 'You will reach home in two months. You will embrace your children. You will flourish at home. You will be buried.'"
III. Return and the closing of the central and outer narratives (post-liminal)
The sailor goes down to the shoreline and calls to the sailors on the ship. While still on the shore the sailor gives final praise to the snake-king. He boards the vessel and he and his new shipmates sail for Egypt and arrive after two months. The sailor visits the royal residence and presents his king with all of the precious goods he had acquired on
161 Cf. Anzud's instructions to Lugalbanda to keep the encounter between the two of them a secret.
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the mysterious island. Upon seeing the worthiness of this sailor the king praises him before god and all the counselors of the land. The king makes him an attendant of the court and endows the sailor with servants of his own.