The Tale of Sinuhe

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2014

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tale of Sinuhe, one of the most celebrated works of ancient Egyptian literature. Written around four thousand years ago, the poem narrates the story of an Egyptian official who is exiled to Syria before returning to his homeland some years later. The number of versions of the poem, which is known from several surviving papyri and inscriptions, suggests that it was seen as an important literary work; although the story is set against a backdrop of real historical events, most scholars believe that the poem is a work of fiction.

With:

Richard Parkinson Professor of Egyptology and Fellow of Queen's College at the University of Oxford

Roland Enmarch Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool.

Aidan Dodson Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:44.0	Hello in 1895 the archaeologist Flinders Petrie was excavating a burial site in the ancient
0:51.1	Egyptian city of Thebes. He discovered the tomb of a
0:54.2	priest who died around the middle of the 17th century BC and had been buried with a
0:58.6	chest containing a bundle of pens and several rolls of papyrus. This hall of Egyptian text is one of the most
1:04.9	important ever found and contains a fragment of a work now seen as the masterpiece of
1:10.1	ancient Egyptian literature. The tale of Sinuja
1:13.4	tells the story of a court official who flees Egypt after the death of the
1:17.4	Pharaoh and spends many years abroad before finally returning home.
1:21.4	He deals with events which are now to have
	...

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