Welcome back to another episode of Vintage Egyptologist. Today
I'm going to be talking about historical fiction. Now this was one of my favorite genres of fiction
when I was growing up, and I still love a good historical fiction novel,
but what's really remarkable - I mean this is just amazing, even though I've written a
book about the topic and I know this so well the ancient Egyptians had historical fiction.
The year is 1560 BCE. This is what Egyptologists call part of the Second Intermediate Period,
which is roughly 1650-1550. This is the time between the Middle Kingdom where you have a
powerful centralized kingship and the New Kingdom where again Upper and Lower Egypt are unified
under a single pharaoh however in 1560 there is a dynasty ruling in the south this is the
17th Theben dynasty so its capital is ancient Waset in the north you have the 15th dynasty
who were a series of Hyksos kings now Hyksos is a Greek term that comes from ancient Egyptian
heka khasut that means "ruler of the foreign lands," so the 15th dynasty are kings that are not
Egyptian and for any ancient Egyptian to have part of the Nile Valley ruled by a foreign king
is anathema. So the story that is set in this time period so it was written around 1250 BCE,
but set in 1560 BCE and the modern title that we give it is the Quarrels of Apepi
and Sequenere. Apepi is a Hyksos king often spelled out Apophis in modern histories
but this is really misleading because Apophis is also the Greek term that we tend to use
for the chaos serpent Apep; so Apepi the Hyksos king and Apep the chaos serpent sound really
similar to us but it's actually spelled with two different signs at the beginning
in ancient Egyptian so it doesn't seem like that's a comparison that they're making
now king Seqenenre is a king of the 17th dynasty and the way this story begins is that
Seqenenre and Apepi are having a quarrel not in terms of a fully fledged military conflict
that is yet to come between the 17th and 15th dynasties but instead they're having a battle
by letter. So I'm going to read here from the translation that I published in 2013 in my book
imagining the past historical fiction in new kingdom Egypt and this is how the story starts:
Then it happened that the land of Egypt was in a state of pestilence with no legitimate lord living
prosperous and healthy as king at that time. At the same time, it happened that as for King
Seqenenre, he was the sovereign of the southern city. So that's the reference to ancient Waset,
Greek Thebes, modern Luxor. Pestilence was in the city of Re, (That's a reference to Heliopolis)
because of them (referencing here the Hyksos), while the ruler Apepi was in Hut-waret
(and that was the capital of the 15th Hyksos dynasty), and the entire land was controlled
for him for Apepi bearing their taxes - the north as well bearing all the good produce
of the Delta. So what this is telling us is that Apepi, the Hyksos king, is essentially in
economic control of Egypt even though Seqenenre is king in the south. Then king Apepi made Seth
as lord. This is Seth the god of chaos, the god who fights with Horus to be king of Egypt. And
he (meaning Apepi) did not work for any other god who was in this entire land except Seth;
and he built a temple of fine workmanship for eternity beside the domain of king Apepi; and
he appeared each day in order to make sacrifices, doing it daily for set while the officials carried
wreaths. So what this is essentially saying is that king Apepi is not only not a legitimate king
of Egypt, but he's committing a religious sin by offering only to the god Seth and doing so
as is done in the temple of Re-Horakhty at Heliopolis. So he's only worshipping Seth
and he's not worshipping him properly. Meanwhile- and this is where the action really starts - Apepi
desired to send an offensive message to the king Seqenenre, the sovereign of the southern city. Now
after many days following this - and unfortunately the text really breaks up here so the next part of
the story is that Apepi's message reaches Luxor and it says that his messenger was taken into the
presence of the sovereign of the southern city so that's Seqnenere; then One (king Seqenenre)
said to Apepi's messenger quote "Why have you been sent to the southern city? Why have you reached me
with these journeys?" Then the messenger said to him, "It is king Apepi who sends to you saying
quote 'Expel the hippopotami from the swamp that is on the eastern waters of the city, because they
(talking about the hippopotami) do not allow that sleep come to me day or night because their noise
is in my ear!'" Then the sovereign of the southern city was surprised for a long moment being unable
to respond to the messenger of king Apepi. And I think we're a little surprised too right. 500
miles separates Luxor from Avaris, Waset from Hutwaret, so how are hippopotami 500 miles away
keeping Apepi awake? And this is really the crux of the story. So we know that Apepi worshipped
Seth to the exclusion of all of the gods and we know that he is in conflict with Seqenenre,
but he sends this message complaining of the noisiness of the hippopotami and what I think
is going on here - because the hippopotamus can be a representation,an animal manifestation,
of the god Seth is that even though Apepi, the foreign king, worships Seth, and even though he
thinks Seth is on his side, Seth with these noisy hippopotami is actually getting back
at the foreign king. Unfortunately, the one papyrus copy we have of this story papyrus
Sallier I, which is in the British Museum, which was copied in year 10 of the reign of Merneptah
by a scribe named Pentaweret, seems to have had other things on his mind by the time he gets to
the end of the story. So it's rather broken up and then it says that: The sovereign of the southern
city (so this is king Seqenenre again) has his officials summoned as well as every commander
and he repeated to them every communication about which king Apepi sent to him. And they were all
together quiet for a long time, not knowing how to respond to him good or bad. Then king Apepi sent.
And that's it - the text breaks off, but the papyrus is not actually broken. Instead what seems
to happen is that Pentaweret has copied enough of the story that now he moves on to an instruction
of letter writing. So i think what Pentawaret is doing is he's promoting scribes. He's saying
that there are these two kings who are quarreling but what's most important are the scribes that
are writing the letters back and forth the next part of the British Museum papyrus is a
rather boring manual of letter writing, so I think Pentawaret copied this fascinating story the
Quarrel of Apepi and Seqenenre to get his scribal students interested in what's going to come next.
So because we only have one copy of the story, and it doesn't preserve the ending we don't know what
happens. We do not know whether in the story Apepi and Seqenenre actually have a pitched military
conflict or who gains the upper hand however we do know historically what actually happened a
pepe continued to be king of the Hyksos until the reign of Kamose, another seventeenth dynasty king.
King Seqenenre of Thebes met a very different fate. We know from his mummy that was discovered
in the Deir el-Bahri cachette of royal mummies that he died in battle. And we know that because
there's a Hyksos battle axe shaped hole in his skull as well as a number of other injuries
so in the end he died fighting the Hyksso almost certainly king Apepi, but through the medium of
historical fiction the Egyptians were able to recast this complex time in their history
as a narrative of victory and triumph and ultimately the centrality of scribes and
literacy in ancient Egypt. And if the readers of the story did not know a little bit about history,
it simply wouldn't have been fun to read just like historical fiction today
so now you've heard all that we have of the story of the Quarrels of Apepi and Seqenenre, one
of the most important works of ancient Egyptian historical fiction. In future episodes, I'm going
to introduce you to three additional stories next up is the Capture of Joppa and ancient Egyptian
soldiers hiding in baskets to capture the city. Thank you for tuning in - please don't forget
to subscribe and there are lots of notes below if you want to learn more about these stories.