The Westcar Papyrus and Stories From Ancient Egypt

While official inscriptions carved into the granite temple walls convey the image of solemn piety and unyielding state authority, the true imagination of Ancient Egypt is hidden in its literary papyri. Among these precious manuscripts, the Westcar Papyrus holds a special place. Dated palaeographically to the era of the Hyksos period of the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1650-1550 BCE), but set in the distant age of the Old Kingdom Fourth Dynasty, this story narrates a magnificent saga of royal court intrigues, folk sorcery, and wonder-working.

Consisting of twelve columns of running Hieratic text, the Westcar Papyrus unveils a nested narrative storytelling, in which great Khufu (Cheops) listens to the fancies of his sons that narrate about the magical powers of lecter priests. Modern historians could glimpse the world of the New and Middle Kingdoms through the lens of the Old Kingdom by analyzing the literary motifs of this papyrus scroll, namely, the ways the Egyptians viewed magic and the divine origin of their dynasties.

1. Discovery, Physical State, and Preservation

For the modern reader, the history of the Westcar Papyrus starts from the early nineteenth century, when collecting Egyptomania was at its peak.

A. Acquisition and the Westcar Name

The manuscript is named after Henry Westcar, an English traveler who purchased the papyrus around 1823 while exploring the Nile. The place of the treasure discovery is unknown, but the good state of the papyrus suggests that it was found in a dry desert tomb in Middle or Upper Egypt. The papyrus was donated to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (Bodemuseum) by the famous German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius in 1838, where it has been at the highlight of the museum’s papyrus collection ever since.

B. Physical Condition and Script

The Westcar Papyrus was written on high-quality papyrus using a bold and clear Hieratic script typical for the late Middle Kingdom and early Second Intermediate Period. Remarkably, a roll of this size does not possess both the beginning and the end – the beginning of the story is lost, and the narrative closes in the middle of the first tale and is to continue after the fifth tale. Despite the missing parts of the story, the five wonder tales presented in the Westcar Papyrus offer modern scholars an insight into the marvels ancient Egyptians attributed to magic.

2. Narrative Framework: The Court of King Khufu

The Westcar Papyrus possesses a framing narrative set in the royal court of Memphis within the reign of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2589-2566 BCE).

A. The Princes’ Storytelling Competition

Seeking entertainment, the king asked his sons – Princes Khafre, Baufra, Hardedef, and the unnamed prince (story part lost) – to narrate to him tales about the famous magicians (lecter priests) of their predecessors’ courts that performed various wonders. The story closely follows the classic narrative framework used in the later world literature, for instance, in The Thousand and One Nights or Boccaccio’s Decameron .

B. A Progression Through Time

The stories narrated by the princes keep the chronological order:

First Tale (Fragmentary): Set in the reign of King Djoser of the Third Dynasty – the magician’s chief lector priest performed a wonder working.

Second Tale: Set also in the Third Dynasty, but under the rule of King Nebka – Webaoner, the magician, performed his crocodile trick.

Third Tale: Set in the reign of the Fourth Dynasty King Sneferu (Khufu’s father) – the magician Djadjaemankh parted the waters of a lake.

Fourth Tale: Set in the present reign of King Khufu – the living magician Dedi could perform a decapitation ritual and prophesize the future.

Fifth Tale: From the court tales, it turns to the miraculous birth of the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty.

3. The Five Tales of Wonder and Magic

Each tale in the Westcar Papyrus reveals a distinct theme of Egyptian folklore, court life, and the divine nature of magic (heka) .

A. Webaoner and the Wax Crocodile

Narrated by Prince Khafre, the second tale is a domestic drama about the magician Webaoner, the chief lector priest serving under the King Nebka. Suspecting that his wife has been unfaithful to him, Webaoner sculpts a tiny crocodile out of wax and bewitches it. When the unfaithful lover goes for a swim in the garden pool, the magician throws the wax figure into the water, where it turns into a seven-cubit-long real crocodile that drags the lover to the lake’s bottom. When the king arrives, the magician takes the crocodile from the lake, and it turns back to wax under his spell. Hearing of the unfaithfulness, King Nebka orders that the woman’s lover should be fed to the crocodile and the wife burned and thrown into the river.

B. Djadjaemankh and the Parted Waters

The third story narrated by Prince Baufra is a lighter tale about the magician Djadjaemankh that sneaks into the palace lake with twenty young beautiful maidens dressed in net garments as rowers. One of the maidens loses her beloved turquoise fish amulet in the water, and the boat stops. Refusing to accept a replacement, the maiden insists on retrieving the amulet from the deep water. With the help of his magic, Djadjaemankh folds one half of the lake’s water over the other, creating a twelve-cubit-deep water on top of itself, retrieves the amulet from the dry lakebed, and returns the water to its place.

C. Dedi of Meget-Sneferu and the Prophesied Dynasty

The fourth tale, introduced by the Prince Hardedef, features the magic of the local magician Dedi, who has the power to reattach severed animal heads. Hardedef told his father Khufu that instead of listening to the tales of ancient magicians, he could bring the 110-year-old wizard Dedi , who could eat five hundred loaves of bread and a shoulder of beef per day, to the palace. Dedi could also unveil the secret number of the hidden chambers (ipwt) of the sanctuary of Thoth, which Khufu desperately needed for his pyramid construction.

Khufu invited the magician on a royal ship. To test his magical powers, the king suggested decapitating a human prisoner, but the magician refused, saying that such magic should not be performed on “the noble cattle of God.” Magically reattaching the heads of a duck, a waterfowl, and an ox, Dedi assured the puzzled Khufu that he could not reveal the secrets of Thoth himself, but would bring them with the help of the eldest of three divine children that soon would be born to Reddedet, the wife of the priest of Ra. Consoled by the words of Dedi, Khufu promised to pass the new dynasty’s power to his son and grandson upon their death.

D. The Birth of the Solar Kings

The last, fifth tale, narrates about the miraculous birth of the three royal infants: Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare Kakai – the first three Pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty. Ordered by the sun god Ra of Heliopolis, the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, and Heket, together with the god Khnum, disguise as traveling musicians/midwives and assist Reddedet during the childbirth. Delivering three children with golden legs and the headbands of true lapis lazuli, the goddesses make royal crowns ring out divine music hidden inside the grain sack.

4. Literary Themes, Political Propaganda, and Theology

The Westcar Papyrus is not only a collection of wonder tales but a literary piece of political propaganda aimed to legitimize the transition from the Old Kingdom to the Fifth Dynasty.

A. The Transformation of Khufu’s Character

Interestingly, the Westcar Papyrus portrays the historical Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, in a significantly negative light. Being overly inquisitive and eager to decapitate a prisoner for sport, the magician Khufu is not the beloved character the later classical Greeks remembered in their legends recorded by the historian Herodotus . In fact, Khufu is more similar to the later tyrants known from the Hellenistic world.

B. Legitimizing the Cult of Ra

Meanwhile, the fifth dynasty witnessed the dramatic change in the religious beliefs in Ancient Egypt. As the sun god Ra became the supreme deity of the state pantheon, the pharaohs started to adopt the public title “Son of Ra” (Sa-Ra). The tale hidden in the Westcar Papyrus legitimizes this turn of events by claiming that the Fifth Dynasty kings were not ordinary mortals but the sons of the sun god Ra himself, born with the power of their creator.

Conclusion

The Westcar Papyrus is indeed a masterpiece of the ancient Egyptian narrative art that combined the themes of court intrigues, folk sorcery, and wonder-working. The anonymous scribes narrating the story of three wonder tales managed to capture the attention of both their contemporary readers and modern historians with its rich content. The tales unveil the peculiar worldview of the ancient Egyptians in their understanding of the divine origin of their dynasty and the ways the magic (heka) could assist mortals in their path on earth. With its vivid depictions of the royal court and the magic performed by the lecter priests, the Westcar Papyrus has ensured the eternal youth of the ancient Egyptian culture and continues to captivate the minds of the people thousands of years after it was first unveiled in the desert tomb.