A Bestseller from Ancient Egypt

If the number of copies of a literary work is any indication of its popularity, then the Tale of Sinuhe must have been the prose classic for ancient Egyptian readers. Barring religious texts and formulaic inscriptions, no other work was copied as frequently.

Numerous papyrus fragments and ostraca contain portions of the tale. Two papyri in Berlin’s Staatliche Museen preserve almost the entire text. Dating to the 12th Dynasty (1985–1795 B.C.), the so-called “B manuscript” (shown above) contains 311 lines of elegant hieratic script; the beginning of the story, however, is missing. The “R manuscript,” which dates to the end of the Middle Kingdom (c. 1650), contains 203 lines of the tale, including the beginning. Most modern translations draw predominantly from these two manuscripts while incorporating textual variants from other papyri and ostraca.