After one last speech, the discouraged peasant leaves, but Rensi sends for him. Believing he is being ignored, Khun-Anup insults Rensi and is punished with a beating. After nine days of speeches, Khun-Anup threatens suicide. The pharaoh orders Rensi to feed the peasant and his family while the peasant continues to plead his case, further instructing Rensi not to let the peasant know he is providing the food.įor nine days Khun-Anup complimented the high steward Rensi and begged for justice. Intrigued by the report of a peasant who speaks so eloquently, the pharaoh instructs Rensi to not respond to the peasant’s pleas, so that the peasant would continue to make his elegant speeches and they could be written down for the pharaoh. Rensi brings the story of the wronged peasant before the pharaoh, Nebkaure, telling him how elegantly the peasant speaks.
Rensi brings the peasant’s case to the magistrates, who dismiss the case as merely being a matter of a peasant at odds with a landowner, but Rensi does not relay this information to the peasant. Khun-Anup cries out for justice, and Nemtynakht threatens the peasant with death if he dares to complain. Khun-Anup does not accept this injustice and continues to appeal to Nemtynakht for ten days.įailing to receive justice from Nemtynakht, Khun-Anup seeks out the high steward, the noble Rensi son of Meru, and presents his case. When Khun-Anup complains this punishment is unfair, Nemtynakht beats him. As Khun-Anup is appealing to Nemtynakht’s sense of reason in blocking his path with the cloth, one of Khun-Anup’s donkeys eats a bite of barley, and Nemtynakht uses this as a justification to take Khun-Anup’s donkeys and goods. His placing of the cloth on the path forces the peasant to either trample the cloth, step into the water, or take his donkeys over Nemtynakht’s fields to continue his journey. Nemtynakht tricks the peasant by placing a cloth on the narrow public path, where one side is bordered by the river and the other side by the private fields of Nemtynakht. British Museum.Ī poor peasant, Khun-Anup, is traveling to market with his donkeys heavily laden with goods to exchange for supplies for his family when Nemtynakht, a vassal of the high steward Rensi, notices the peasant approaching his lands and devises a scheme to steal Khun-Anup’s donkeys and supplies. Wall painting from the Tomb of Nebamun, c. The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant (Egyptian Middle Kingdom 2000 BCE)