FRAGMENTS OF THE EARLIEST GHOST-STORY[1]
[It is impossible to discover what the leading idea of the story may have been. Several personages appear in it: a Theban high priest of Amon, named Khonsumhabi, three unnamed men, and a ghost who employs very good language to tell the story of his former life. One fragment seems to have preserved a part of the commencement. The high priest, Khonsumhabi, appears to be entirely occupied with finding a suitable site for his tomb.]
He sent one of his subordinates to the place of the tomb of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Rahotpu, l. h. s.,[2] and with him the men under the orders of the high-priest of Amonra, king of the gods, three men, four men in all; he embarked with them, he steered, he led them to the place indicated, near the tomb of the King Rahotpu, l. h. s. They went to it with her, and they went inside; she adored twenty-five ... in the royal ... country, then they came to the river-bank, and they sailed to Khonsumhabi, the high-priest of Amonra, king of the gods, and they found him who sang the praises of the god in the temple of the city of Amon.
He said to them, "Let us rejoice, for I have come, and I have found the place favorable for establishing my dwelling to perpetuity." The three men said to him with one mouth, "It is found, the place favorable for establishing thy dwelling to perpetuity," and they seated themselves before her, and she passed a happy day, and her heart was given to joy.
- ↑ From Sir Gaston Maspero's translation.
- ↑ The name of Rahotpu was borne by an obscure king of the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Dynasty, whose tomb was apparently situated at Thebes, in the same quarter of the necropolis as the pyramids of the sovereigns of the Eleventh, Thirteenth and Fourteenth and following dynasties, toward Drah-Abu'l-Neggah. He is probably the Rahotpu of this text, though the name has also been read Rahapamh, and identified as a king of the Fourteenth Dynasty.
