The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant

This is one of the masterpieces from the golden age of Egyptian

literature in the Middle Kingdom. Although the Tale has been much

studied and quoted, there has never been a full parallel edition of the

manuscripts. This volume fills that gap and provides a standard text to

serve as a basis for future research. For the edition of the Egyptian

text, Richard Parkinson has collated the transcriptions with the

original papyri in Berlin and London, and proposes a number of new and

improved readings. The textual notes supply facsimiles of problematic

passages, offer restorations for damaged sections, and record the

variant readings of previous scholars. The introduction describes the

four manuscripts and discusses their date and provenance. Richard

Parkinson constructs the first stemma for the textual tradition of the

Tale, as well as presenting a history and bibliography of previous

studies.