NEMTYNAKHTE THE SORCERER " WANNABE " -- A reflection on the villain of the "Eloquent Peasant" PDF

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NEMTYNAKHTE THE SORCERER “WANNABE” Edmund S. Meltzer In the story of the Eloquent Peasant (R. B. Parkinson, ed., The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant [Oxford: Griffith/Ashmolean 1991]; de Buck RB 88-99; translation and insightful commentary, Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems...

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NEMTYNAKHTE THE SORCERER “WANNABE” Edmund S. Meltzer In the story of the Eloquent Peasant (R. B. Parkinson, ed., The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant [Oxford: Griffith/Ashmolean 1991]; de Buck RB 88-99; translation and insightful commentary, Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems [Oxford: OUP 1997] 54-88), Nemtynakhte is definitely the “bad guy,” who robs and beats the peasant and is totally unresponsive to his pleas, though the situation is compounded by the High Steward Rensi son of Meru, who temporizes and keeps the peasant coming back to make ever more florid complaints (with the direct complicity of the king), thus becoming the main brunt of the peasant’s castigation. It seems to me that one of Nemtynakhte’s faults might well be what some anthropologists and religious studies scholars would call “sorcery,” that is, the destructive, anti-social, “rogue” use of ritual power. (Cf. my introduction to “Old Coptic Texts of Ritual Power,” in Marvin W. Meyer, ed., Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power [HarperSanFrancisco 1994] 11-20; also my article “The Caring God: The Experience and Lexicon of Grace in the Ancient Egyptian Religion,” JSSEA 33 [2006] = Studies Millet 2: 129-138 at 131.) In Nemtynakhte’s case, since he does not actually utilize ritual power, but proceeds to rob the peasant without any apparent help, he is strictly speaking a sorcerer “wannabe.” He soliloquizes (Parkinson Eloquent Peasant 8; de Buck RB 89, 15f), “Would that I had any potent image by means of which I could steal the goods of this peasant!” (or, “. . . that I might steal the goods of this peasant by means of it,” depending on whether awA.i is taken as a prospective relative form or a prospective sDm.f), thus I think showing his lack of alignment with Maat. Moreover, I wonder whether the negative role of Nemtynakhte might be underscored by a word-play between the element nmty, at face value the name of the falcon-god Nemty (e.g. Parkinson Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 76), and the word nmtyw/nmt(y)t (Faulkner CDME 134; Wb. II 271 “ein feindliches Wesen”), found with a decidedly unfavorable meaning in expressions such as xfty nmtyw “intruding(?) enemy.” Thus the name Nemtynakhte might simultaneously be understood as characterizing him as an inimical entity. On Egyptian awA “steal” and awn “be covetous, despoil” and possible Semitic cognates, see A. Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, Pt. 1, A Comparative Lexicon, Section BB (Leiden-NY: Brill 1989) 313, crediting Klaus Baer....