The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre
The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre is an Egyptian story, fragmentarily attested in a thirteenth-century BC papyrus. The main characters are the Pharaoh Apophis and Seqenenre Tao, though the text is not historically accurate. In it, 'the Hyksos king Apophis challenges Seqenre, the local ruler of Thbes, with an adynaton [puzzle] (the hippopotami of Thebes disturb with their cries the sleep of Apophis, who resides at Avaris on the Nile Delta, hundreds of miles away). The end of the tale has been lost, but Seqenenre presumably found a solution, perhaps with the help of a wise counsellor.' It is part of a wider corpus of ancient Egyptian tales of wisdom-contests: it has some similarities, for example, to the much later Tale of Setne Khamwas and Si-Osire, attested on papyrus in the Roman period.[1]
Translations
- Goedicke, Hans, The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre, San Antonio, 1986
Studies
- Camilla Di Biase-Dyson, 'Characterisation in The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre and The Taking of Joppa ', in Foreigners and Egyptians in the Late Egyptian Stories, Probleme der Ägyptologie, 32 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 193-255. DOI: 10.1163/9789004251304_005. E-ISBN: 9789004251304
References
- ^ Ioannis M. Konstantakos, 'Trial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias', Classica et Mediaevalia, 55 (2004), 85-137 (pp. 89-90).