Representations Of The Poor In PMN And EP Fisher Thesis

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REPRESENTATIONS OF THE POOR IN THE POOR MAN OF NIPPUR
AND THE ELOQUENT PEASANT
By

Daniel Shalom Fisher

Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Vanderbilt University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
in
Religion
August, 2008
Nashville, Tennessee
Approved:
Professor Jack M. Sasson
Professor Annalisa Azzoni

ABBREVIATIONS
ÄAT

Ägypten und Altes Testament

ABD

Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D.N. Freedman. 6 vols. New
York, 1992.

AnSt

Anatolian Studies

Akkadica Suppl.

Akkadica Supplement Series

CAD

The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago. Edited by A.L. Oppenheim, et al. 21 vols. Chicago:
Oriental Institute, 1956-.

CdÉ

Chronique d'Égypte

CANE

Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by J. Sasson. 4 vols.
New York, 1995.

CHANE

Culture and History of the Ancient Near East

Encyclopaedia Judaica

Göttinger Miszellen

JAF

Journal of American Folklore

JAMA

Journal of the American Medical Association

JEA

Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

JESHO

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

JCS

Journal of Cuneiform Studies

JNES

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

JSP

Journal of Social Policy

LÄ

Lexikon der Ägyptologie. Edited by W. Helck and E. Otto. 7 vols.
Wiesbaden, 1986.

LingAeg

Lingua Aegyptia

NJPS

New Jewish Publication Society Tanakh (1985)

OEAE

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Edited by D. Redford.
3 vols. New York, 2001.
ii

PAPS

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

Rhetorica

Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric

SAAB

State Archives of Assyria Bulletin

SBLDS

Society for Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

SBLWAW

Society for Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABBREVIATIONS …...………………………………………………………………… ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………………………. iv
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION…...………………………………………………………………… 1
1.1 PMN, EP, and the Poor in Ancient Near Eastern Texts ..…………….……… 4
1.2 Comparing PMN and EP .…………………………………………………… 6
II. ASPECTS OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND THE FUNCTIONS OF
FOLKLORE …………...………………………………………………………………… 9
2.1 Social Stratification ….………………………………….…………………… 9
2.1.1 ‘Poverty’ and ‘Wealth’ ……………………….…………………….. 9
2.1.2 ‘Class’ and ‘Social Stratification’ ..……………………………..… 10
2.2 Functions of Folklore ………………………………………………….…… 11
2.3 Social Stratification and the Functions of PMN and EP ...………………… 12
III. POVERTY AND EXPLOITATION IN PMN AND EP ..………………………… 15
3.1 Poverty in PMN and EP: Absolutely Relative ...…………………………… 15
3.2 Poverty and Crisis in PMN and EP ………………………………………… 20
3.2.1 Poverty and Crisis in PMN ….…………………………………… 21
3.2.1.1 “A Good and Fair Greeting”: Gimil-Ninurta’s Crisis of
Honor…...………………………………………………………. 23
3.2.1.2 Gimil-Ninurta’s Vow and the Threat of Resolution …… 26
3.2.2 Poverty and Crisis in EP ...……..………………………………… 28
3.2.2.1 Crisis I: Livelihood Lost ..……………………………… 29
3.2.2.2 Resolution I/Crisis II: Justice Postponed ….…………… 32
3.2.2.3 Crisis II and Genesis 42-45………….…………..……… 36
3.2.3 The Exploitation of Poverty .………………….………..………… 37
3.3 Resolutions and the Justification of Retribution …………………………… 38
3.3.1 PMN: Drastic Times—Drastic Measures ...……………………… 39
3.3.1.1 PMN and Bakhtin’s Carnival …...……………………… 44
3.3.2 EP: Drastic Times—Measured Response …...…………………… 46
3.3.2.1 Resolution II: An Eloquent Peasant? ……………………47
3.3.2.2 Some Functions of EP……………………...…………… 51
IV. CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………… 54
REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………… 59

CHAPTER I:
INTRODUCTION
The Mesopotamian satire The Poor Man of Nippur (PMN) tells the story of
Gimil-Ninurta, a pauper from Nippur, who tries unsuccessfully to share his only
possession, a goat procured using proceeds from the sale of his last garment, with the
mayor. When the mayor instead steals the goat and beats the Poor Man, dismissing him
from the compound with only gristle and third-rate beer, Gimil-Ninurta vows to visit
threefold revenge upon his abuser. The majority of the tale details Gimil-Ninurta’s
cleverly planned revenge against the mayor, which involved three comic and severe
beatings, in fulfillment of his vow.1 Throughout the tale, Gimil-Ninurta’s extreme
poverty functions as a carefully articulated aspect of character that underlies his
sometimes curious behavior and leaves him vulnerable to the abuse of members of the
upper stratum at the same time as it empowers his dramatic response.
When PMN was first edited by O.R. Gurney in 1956 it was heralded as the sole
extant work of humor from Mesopotamia, a region hitherto assumed to have been
inhabited by a “humourless people.”2 PMN, Gurney explains, is “nothing less than a
humorous tale”3 that, E.A. Speiser predicted, “is bound to stand out, primarily because it
portrays the ancient Mesopotamians—as Gurney has stressed—in a lighthearted mood
that is certainly rare if not altogether unexpected.”4 Not long after its publication, the tale
came to be recognized also as a work of implied social criticism and for the welcome and
unique light that it was believed to shed on lower strata Mesopotamians.5 A.L.
Oppenheim observes that “The story is told with great freshness and gives us much
precious information about everyday speech, the mores of citizens of Nippur, and a

O.R. Gurney. “The Poor Man of Nippur,” AnSt 6(1956): 145-164; O.R. Gurney and J.J.
Finkelstein. Sultantepe Tablets I (London: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1957); J.S. Cooper.
“Structure, Humor, and Satire in the Poor Man of Nippur,” JCS 27.3(1975): 163-174.
2
G. Contenau. Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria (London: E. Arnold, 1954), p. 302.
3
Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur,” 145
4
E.A. Speiser. “Sultantepe Tablet 38 73 and Enuma Eli! Iii 69," JCS 11.2(1957): 43.
5
A. L. Oppenheim. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (ed. E. Reiner;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 274.

number of facts about workaday life not to be found in the usual types of
documentation.”6
The most complete text of PMN is dated to 701 BCE and was found in Hurzina
(modern Sultantepe, Turkey).7 Like many works of Mesopotamian literature that
survived the ages, the text was probably copied as part of the rigorous scribal curriculum.
Based on its archaic linguistic features, it has been concluded that the folktale was a part
of the traditional Babylonian literary canon.8 Alongside the complete Sultantepe edition
another 8th century fragment was found, containing parts of lines 72-82 from the upper
right-hand corner of a tablet that probably contained only a small selection of the tale.
Another partial edition of the text was found in Nineveh in the collection of
Assurbanipal, containing parts of lines 1-18.9
In 1975, J.S. Cooper observed that “Because it [PMN] is unique, having little in
common with other genres of Akkadian literature, the text can be examined and
explicated on its own terms, with minimal external referents.”10 At the same time, in
addition to the synchronic study of the tale, Cooper notes that “Subsequent studies may…
perhaps utilize evidence from similar literature in other cultures to improve our
understanding of the Poor Man of Nippur.”11
Following Cooper’s suggestion, I note that PMN finds a most interesting parallel
in the Middle Egyptian folktale The Eloquent Peasant (EP), which recounts the
courtroom exploits of Khunanup, a peasant who appeals the unjust confiscation of his
valuable cargo by an official named Nemtinakht.12 The majority of EP retells
Khunanup’s petitions to Nemtinakht’s lord Rensi, who is so taken by the peasant’s
6

Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 274.
Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur.”
8
Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur;” Speiser, “Sultantepe Tablet 38 73 and Enuma Eli! Iii 69.”
9
Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur,” 148; M. deJ. Ellis. “A New Fragment of the Tale of the Poor
Man of Nippur” JCS 26.2(1974): 88-89.
10
Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire,” 163.
11
Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire,” 163. See also E. Reiner. “Why Do You Cuss Me?”
PAPS 130.1 (1986).
12
A.H. Gardiner. “The Eloquent Peasant” JEA 9.1/2 (1923): 5-25; M. Lichtheim. “The Eloquent
Peasant,” Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 169-184; R.B. Parkinson The Eloquent Peasant
(Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1991); idem. “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” The Tale of Sinuhe and Other
Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-640 BC (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 54-88; V.A. Tobin.
“The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” Literature of Ancient Egypt, 3rd Ed. (ed. W.K. Simpson; New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2003), p. 25-44.
7

rhetorical skill that he postpones the peasant justice at the request of the King in order to
continue hearing his oratories, a duplicity that parallels Joseph’s detention of his brothers
in Genesis 42-45. Both tales describe the detention of others with ulterior motives. In
order to avoid spoiling the authenticity and delightful urgency of the peasant’s petitions,
Rensi is careful to keep Khunanup from knowing his sympathy for his case. Rensi
maintains the perception of partiality to Nemtinakht throughout the petitions, even as he
supplies Khunanup and his family with stipends through intermediaries, ensuring that no
real harm befalls them.
After nine artfully crafted and deliciously ironic petitions that discuss the nature
of Ma’at (Justice), Khunanup surrenders in frustration and leaves Rensi’s court. To
Khunanup’s surprise, he is rewarded with the position, person, and possessions of
Nemtinakht, a conclusion that seems foregone to the audience, which knows from the
beginning why the proceedings were prolonged. Because of Khunanup’s patience with
the official mechanisms for airing grievances, EP functions to reinforce the importance of
following procedure and the significance of rhetoric even as it serves to warn of the
dangers of misuse of power. As we see in PMN, Khunanup’s poverty relative to
Nemtinakht and Rensi functions to help guide the peasant’s decisions throughout the tale,
leading him to follow procedure even when it brings disaster upon him. Unlike GimilNinurta, Khunanup had much to lose by discarding procedure.
EP is partially extant in three Middle Kingdom Egyptian manuscripts, which
when collated contain what is assumed to be the complete text.13 The earliest two
editions of the text, P. Berlin 3023 (B1) and 3025 (B2), date to the 12th Dynasty and
contain slight textual variations, and it is also extant in P. Berlin 10499 (R) from 13th
Dynasty Thebes.14 A Middle Kingdom date for the tale is supported by the political
circumstances that W.K. Simpson observes are reflected in “anti-administration
elements” underlying the text that are emblematic of the political and social upheaval at
the end of Dynasty 12 (1990-1785).15

Lichtheim, AEL, 169.
Parkinson, The Eloquent Peasant.
15
W.K. Simpson. “The Political Background of the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” GM 120(1990):
14

95-99.

1.1 PMN, EP, and the Poor in Ancient Near Eastern Texts
Although, as we shall see, Oppenheim may have overstated the value of PMN as
an accurate record of everyday life in Mesopotamia, his reading clearly reflects the
paucity of data on the poor in the ancient Near East. Archeological evidence of the poor
is indeed limited; materially, the poor had fewer—and lower quality—goods than
members of the upper strata of society, and in any event no artifact could help explain the
everyday speech or mores of Nippur’s lower social strata. Because the poor had few
possessions, they engaged less in commercial activity and appear occasionally as agents
in economic documents, and slaves—a lower stratum group—are sometimes bought and
sold, as discussed in G. Galil’s recent study of lower strata families in Neo-Assyria.16
Biographical, wisdom, and legal literature from the ancient Near East often point
to the imperative of protecting the rights society’s weaker members, especially widows,
orphans, strangers, and the poor.17 From Mesopotamia, the prologue to the Sumerian
Laws of Ur-Nammu (ca. 2100 BCE) is illustrative. Ur-Nammu boasts that:
I did not deliver the orphan to the rich. I did not deliver the widow to the mighty.
I did not deliver the man with one shekel to the man with one mina (i.e., 60
shekels). I did not deliver the man with but one sheep to the man with one ox (A
iv 162-168, C ii 30-39).18
Similarly, in the Middle Egyptian Instruction of Merikare, a pseudepigraphic text
attributed to Herakleopolitan King Merikare’s father Kheti that Lichtheim holds was
written during the reign of Merikare “to announce the direction of his policy and
containing valid, rather than fictitious, historical information,”19 Merikare is instructed:
“Do justice, then you will endure on earth; Calm the weeper, don’t oppress the widow
…”20 (46-47) Also, in EP, Khunanup compliments Rensi, proclaiming that he is “the
father of the orphan and the husband of the widow” (B1.93-94). The moral imperative is

2007)

G. Galil. The Lower Stratum Families in the Neo-Assyrian Period (CHANE 27; Boston: Brill,

F. Charles Fensham. “Widow, Orphan, and the Poor in Ancient Near Eastern Legal and Wisdom
Literature” JNES 21.2(1962): 129-139.
18
M.T. Roth. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta,
Scholars Press, 1995), p. 16.
19
Lichtheim, AEL, 97.
20
Lichtheim, AEL, 100.

articulated in the Hebrew Bible as well; Deuteronomy 24:17, reflecting a common
biblical sentiment, decrees: “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the
fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn.”21
Abundant though these references may be, they do not describe the everyday
condition of lower stratum groups, and in any case they tend to tell analysts more about
the people who wrote about these groups than about the people who their authors claim to
have protected. Wisdom literature sometimes judges poverty as divine punishment and
other times views it as the product of socioeconomic, rather than supernatural, forces.22
The book of Job reflects this tension in the discourse between the innocent sufferer Job,
who questions the meaning of his agony, and his friends, who represent the retributive
orthodoxy, but again this tells us little about the condition of the poor. Accordingly, the
value of these texts is in primarily for the study of upper stratum ethical standards rather
than the conditions of lower social strata, although they do indeed point to the existence
of a social structure in which the lower strata were vulnerable and in need of protection.
Perhaps capitalizing on the ethical imperative of protecting the poor, petitioners—
and Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup may be literary examples here—tend to present
themselves as being poor, describing themselves using diminutive terms and overstating
their poverty in an effort to win favor. One particular petitioner, the spurned exorcist
Urad-Gula may have actually drawn subtle parallels between his circumstances and the
poverty of Gimil-Ninurta in an effort to win the favor of Assurbanipal, a move that
underscores PMN’s popularity.23 Interestingly, petitions such as these followed the same
pattern as prayers, reminding us of the idea that poverty was often understood as divine
punishment: gods made people poor and the king could intercede on their behalf, a
nuance that will be important to remember in reading PMN and EP.24

See also, for example, Exodus 22:21-24 and Psalm 82. All Bible translations follow the NJPS.
H.C. Washington. Wealth and Poverty in the Instruction of Amenemope and the Hebrew
Proverbs (SBLDS 142; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).
23
S. Parpola. “The Forlorn Scholar,” in Language, Literature, and History: Philological and
Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner (ed. F. Rochberg; New Haven: AOS, 1987), p. 257-278.
24
Parpola 1987 and B. Lion. “La conception de la pauvreté dans les textes littéraires akkadiens,”
in Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East. Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre assyriologique
internationale, Prague, July 1-5, 1996 - Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Oriental Institute (ed.
J. Prosecky; Prague: Oriental Institute, 1998), p. 199-214.
22

Considered in this light, Oppenheim’s assessment of the value of PMN—and by
extension, EP—rings true: there are precious few resources for the study of the poor in
the ancient Near East, and in this regard PMN and EP are exceedingly important, even if
its descriptions, as we shall see, lean toward the fantastic or literary. Neither tale purports
to tell the historically true story of their lower stratum protagonists and to read them in
that way would distort the great value of PMN and EP: two nuanced portrayals of
exceptional lower strata protagonists who react very differently to roughly comparable
situations. It is the aim of the present project to explore the literary representations of the
poor in PMN and EP, with a view toward circumscribing the contribution that such
depictions have to our understanding of the poor in the ancient Near East and to highlight
the role of poverty in the two tales.
1.2 Comparing PMN and EP
Despite their histories of contemporary scholarship and the apparent similarities
of the texts, PMN has yet to be systematically compared to EP. Oppenheim notes briefly
in Ancient Mesopotamia that in PMN, “the King is addressed ceremoniously and with
recondite phrases, a situation which reminds of the Egyptian story of ‘The Tale of the
Eloquent Peasant.’” And, in H. Jason’s analysis of PMN as ethnopoetry, she notes
differences in the ways that Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup respond to adversity, the latter
being substantially more conventional than the former. Although Jason is confident that
both emerged as oral tales, she explains “that the ‘Peasant’ is a courtly reworking of an
oral story, more literary and refined, and much farther removed from its source than the
‘Poor Man.’”25
The topical similarity of PMN and EP is fairly straightforward: both feature
protagonists that face similar adversity at the hands of their social betters. To be ‘poor’ is
to live in a condition of lacking material and cultural possessions that can be understood
as deprivation relative to the others’ privilege (see 2.1.1). Although Khunanup was
somewhat more privileged than Gimil-Ninurta, both characters were poorer than their
antagonists.
25

H. Jason “The Poor Man of Nippur: An Ethnopoetic Analysis,” JCS 31.4(1979); 194.

As Jason has noted, both protagonists respond differently to adversity, conveying
distinct messages in the context of roughly comparable problems. Whereas Khunanup
responds to his unfair treatment by making excellent use of accepted channels of
appeal—EP often seems at pains to show that Rensi causes no real harm to befall
Khunanup or his wife—Gimil-Ninurta, who is also the victim of injustice, responds in a
way that is by all accounts unorthodox although not necessarily morally wrong. By
taking the mayor of Nippur outside the city gates and beating him comically, GimilNinurta chooses to honor the value of reciprocity over the respect of social structures. In
doing so, PMN departs from accepted values and lampoons them, even in the
carnivalesque world constructed by the folktale out of opposites and improbabilities.
Ironically, Khunanup’s measured and finely rendered response motivated Rensi to
postpone justice, bringing upon a second crisis that has no parallel in PMN. Although
vastly different, both reactions to adversity are made possible by the social location of the
reactors; Khunanup had much to lose by responding with the abandon displayed by
Gimil-Ninurta.
As folktales, it should be remembered that PMN and EP most likely achieved
popularity and survival because they ultimately served the important role of inculcating
accepted societal norms in young people. W.R. Bascom reminds us that:
folklore is an important mechanism for maintaining the stability of culture. It is
used to inculcate the customs and ethical standards in the young, and as an adult
to reward him with praise when he conforms, to punish him with ridicule or
criticism when he deviates, to provide him with rationalizations when the
institutions and conventions are challenged or questioned, to suggest that he be
content with things as they are, and to provide him with a compensatory escape
from ‘the hardships, the inequalities, the injustice’ of everyday life.26
Viewed in this light, the reactions of Khunanup and Gimil-Ninurta to their respective
injustices represent an important aspect of Egyptian and Mesopotamian society: the
conservative impulse of community preservation and a reminder of the unacceptability of
the stability-impairing abuse of power. Gimil-Ninurta’s unconventional response may be
understood as an escape that need not reflect the actual historical situation or actual
options of the poor. PMN does not necessarily give any record of the historical situation
26

W.R. Bascom. “Four Functions of Folklore,” JAF 67(1954): 349.

of the poor in ancient Nippur, although it is certainly appears to reinforce conformity
with accepted means for redress of injustice while at the same time warning of the
dangers of the misuse of power. The way in which both tales may fit into Bascom’s
proposal concerning the social function of folklore will be explored in the coming pages,
as a complement to the discussion of their respective stories.
In comparing the characterizations of the poor in PMN and EP, I hope to more
fully illuminate the ways in which poverty functions in the plot of the tales. In particular,
I am interested in the ways that Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup are similar and different, as
well as the ways that the authors of the texts conveyed unique messages by means of
similar protagonists facing the common denominator of adversity due to the abuse of
power. In order to compare these tales, it will also be helpful to appreciate the social
dynamics embodied in PMN and EP and the ways that folk literature is capable of
playing games with social stratification. Accordingly, as a preface to our discussion of
PMN and EP, I consider aspects of social class and the social functions that folktales may
be seen to serve.

CHAPTER II:
ASPECTS OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND THE FUNCTIONS OF FOLKLORE
2.1 Social Stratification
2.1.1 ‘Poverty’ and ‘Wealth’
‘Poverty’ and ‘wealth’ are conditions resulting from different accumulations of
resources, including ownership of and access to the necessities of life. P. Townsend
explains that individuals can be said to be impoverished when they:
lack or are denied the income and other resources, including the use of assets and
receipt of goods in kind equivalent to income, to obtain the conditions of life—
that is, diets, material goods, amenities, standards and services—to enable them to
play the roles, participate in the relationships and follow the customary behaviour
that is expected of them by virtue of their membership of society…27
Poverty is frequently defined in absolute terms, a practice that often leads to its conflation
with subsistence; doing so, J. Scott cautions, “tends to equate ‘poverty’ with the very
different idea of ‘starvation,’” and, moreover, ignores human physiological needs beyond
mere survival. 28 While survival might provide an objective point of reference for
discussions of poverty, human beings tend to aspire to more than that, and in any event,
not all needs can be objectively assessed in those terms; as Scott observes, “the number
and type of underclothes [that]… a person needs cannot be assessed with the same
precision as the amount of carbohydrate that is required of a basic diet.”29 Even caloric
intake, however, cannot be measured absolutely across social and cultural boundaries.
Senior citizens, for example, require different caloric intakes and non-physiological
needs—clothing, for example—than professional athletes.30 Bearing these considerations
in mind, many analysts, including Scott, follow Townsend in understanding poverty as

P. Townsend. “Poverty,” Social Science Encyclopaedia (3rd Ed; Ed. A. Kuiper; New York:
Rutledge, 2004), p. 782.
28
J. Scott. Poverty and Wealth: Citizenship, Deprivation, and Privilege (London: Longman,
1994), p. 10.
29
Scott, Poverty and Wealth, 11.
30
P. Townsend. “Poverty as Relative Deprivation: Resources and Style of Living,” in Poverty,
Inequality, and Class Structure (ed. D. Wedderburn; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 1541.

the condition of “relative depravation” of resources.31 Relative definitions of poverty,
“refer to the individual's or group's lack of resources when compared with that of other
members of the society—in other words their relative standard of living.”32
‘Poverty,’ understood relatively, cannot exist without its opposite, ‘wealth’—the
possession of sufficient or excess resources enabling the satisfaction of the conditions of
life or, beyond that, material enjoyment. The assignment of any absolute value to wealth
is necessarily arbitrary and is best avoided. Viewed thus, the ‘wealthy’ are individuals
whose access to resources exceeds the normal expected distribution of their community
and any one person may be said to be wealthier than another based on their access to
material property.
2.1.2 ‘Class’ and ‘Social Stratification’
‘Class’ is a concept used to describe and organize hierarchically perceived social
and economic cleavages that distinguish certain groups from other groups on the basis of
socio-economic power in a stratified population. Upper classes tend to have more power
than lower classes. Although it is often the case that members of distinct social classes
share particular attributes or worldviews and upper and lower classes always exist in nonegalitarian societies, the specific attributes of a given class—their characteristic politics,
habits, and manners—are not universal. Shared perceptions of the attributes of different
classes are socially constructed, partly on the basis of the perceived attributes of different
classes, and partly on the basis of other social dynamics including power, jealousy,
contempt, and the like. Class then is a universal phenomenon; the specific characteristics
of classes in different cultures are socially constructed.
Power in socially stratified societies is, by definition, concentrated at the higher
strata. As such, poverty—the condition of lower strata relative to higher strata—should
be understood not only as resource deprivation but also, in the words of analyst J.C.

See Townsend, “Poverty as Relative Deprivation.”; idem. “Deprivation,” JSP 16.2(1987): 125146; and idem. Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1979).
32
“Poverty,” A Dictionary of Sociology (3rd Ed.; Ed. J. Scott and G. Marshall; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), p. 513.

Kincaid, as “an inability to control the circumstances of one’s life in the face of more
powerful groups in society.”33
2.2 Functions of Folklore
In “Four Functions of Folklore,” W.R. Bascom parses the social function of
folklore, distinguishing four related functions, escape, validation, education, and social
control, which may themselves be grouped together as fulfilling “the single function of
maintaining the stability of culture.”34 In doing so, paradoxically, not all folklore
accurately reflects those social institutions:
There is no difficulty of course in finding instances in folklore where laziness,
complacency or the lack of ambition and initiative are condemned, but are there
any which suggest that the individual destroy or even disregard the institutions
and conventions of his society?35
By ‘function,’ Bascom seems to mean the unintended consequences of the sharing of
folklore; Bascom at no point indicates that individuals who create, modify, and circulate
folklore have these four functions in mind, although he does indicate folklore may
nevertheless be understood in terms of these consequences. Viewed in this light,
Bascom’s approach is characterized by E. Oring as ‘traditional functionalism:’
a particular theoretical orientation which asserts that (1) sociocultural patterns
have consequences which are independent of the conscious intentions of the
actors who perform them, (2) these patterns may be explained or understood in
terms of these consequences, and (3) these consequences are explanatory only if
they contribute and are necessary to the proper integration and functioning of the
individual or society.36
Oring is quick to point out that although this model may succeed in explaining the sociocultural consequences of folklore, it does little to explain the origins of folklore and may

J.C. Kincaid. Poverty and Equality in Britain: a Study of Social Security and Taxation
(Harmandsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 171.
34
Bascom, “Four Functions,” 338.
35
Bascom, “Four Functions,” 349.
36
E. Oring. “Three Functions of Folklore: Traditional Functionalism as Explanation in
Folkloristics,” JAF 89(1976): 70.

be more valuable as a means of describing, rather than explaining, how some sociocultural institutions were preserved at given points in history.
There is, Oring cautions, no necessary connection between socio-cultural
institutions and folklore.37 A folktale may be shared in circumstances that are different
from those that surrounded its genesis and in those circumstances its function may be
different. The fact that a stone may function as a paperweight does not explain how or
why that stone came to be in geological prehistory. Folktales are no different; consider,
for example, Cinderella’s migration from the oral folktales collected as AT-510A to the
pages of Charles Perrault’s version in 1697 to the 1950 Disney animated film.38 Even
within cultures, which are dynamic and multifaceted, a given folktale may function
differently in different communities of readers. Finally, folktales often outlast the
institutions that they may have once preserved. The existence of folklore that functions
to inculcate values at particular times as an unintended consequence of its sharing does
not, however, mean that it is necessary to the existence of values. All this does not
obviate the necessity of inquiring into the messages of folktales, but it does require one to
be somewhat more cautious in assessing their functions.
2.3 Social Stratification and the Functions of PMN and EP
Bearing these considerations in mind, Bascom’s functional conceptualization
could be profitably restricted to an interest in the socio-cultural consequences that
folklore may have had for different facets of different cultures at different points in
history. The function of folklore, that is, the institution or institutions that it preserves
from change, may well have had a hand in the development and survival of a given
folktale, as Bascom implies, but so too might any number of factors, including
enjoyment, artistry, tradition, etc.
In a socially stratified society, such as Middle Kingdom Egypt or Old Babylonian
Mesopotamia, it would be reasonable to expect, in light of the analyses of Bascom and
37

Oring, “Three Functions.”
Compare Perrault’s “Cendrillon,” in Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités:
Contes de ma mère l'Oye (Bruxelles: B. Le Francq, 1786; repr. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson
Gale, 2003) with Disney. Walt Disney’s Cinderella (1950).
38

Oring, that there may be folklore that reinforce social and economic cleavages between
the wealthy and less wealthy. At the very least, one would expect folktales that touch
upon social stratification to have that effect. While PMN and EP do not focus
exclusively on social stratification, they make it very clear that the abuse of
Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup is made possible by their poverty relative to their
oppressors, and the subject of social stratification is at the very least an important aspect
of the two tales.
Both Egypt and Mesopotamia were fairly rigidly stratified societies, which
divided carefully between classes and allowed for only a limited degree of social
mobility.39 That neither PMN nor EP seems to reflect the archaeologically constructed
reality of their social matrix says only that they are fictional (or fictionalized) literary
representations. Following Bascom, such discrepancies may be understood at least partly
as mechanisms of escape from the everyday hardships faced by those who shared folklore
as a result of social stratification. Accordingly, PMN and EP may be read as artifacts of
the culture that produced them rather than as historical records.
Bearing in mind these general considerations concerning poverty, social
stratification, and the functions of folklore, it will be possible to read PMN and EP with a
sensitivity to the ways in which the authors play with social location in the reality that
they construct in their tales. By engaging these aspects of the world of the folktales, as
39

On Mesopotamia see I.M. Diakonoff. “Socio-economic Classes in Babylonia and the
Babylonian Concept of Social Stratification,” Gesellschaftsklassen im Alten Zweistromland und in den
angrenzenden Gebieten: XVIII. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (ed. E.O. Edzard; München:
Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1972), p. 41-52; G. Galil. Lower Stratum Families;
I.J. Gelb. “From Freedom to Slavery,” Gesellschaftsklassen im Alten Zweistromland und in den
angrenzenden Gebieten: XVIII. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (ed. E.O. Edzard; München:
Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1972), p. 81-92; idem.“Response to I.M.
Diakonoff,” Gesellschaftsklassen im Alten Zweistromland und in den angrenzenden Gebieten: XVIII.
Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (ed. E.O. Edzard; München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1972b), p. 49-51; V.A. Jakobson. “The Social-structure of the Neo-Assyrian Empire,”
Ancient Mesopotamia: Socio-economic History, a Collection of Studies by Soviet Scholars (Moscow:
“Nauka” Pub. House, Central Dept. of Oriental Literature, 1969), p. 277-295; N. Postgate. “The ownership
and exploitation of land in Assyria in the 1st Millennium B.C.,” Reflets des deux fleuves: Volume de
mélanges offerts à André Finet. (Eds. M. Lebeaup and Ph. Talon; Akkadica Suppl. 6; Leuven: Peeters,
1989), p. 141-152.
On Egypt see S.L.D. Katary. "Wealth," OEAE, III:485-487; D. Lorton. “Legal and Social
Institutions of Pharaonic Egypt,” CANE, 345-362; J.E. Richards. “Ancient Egyptian Mortuary Practice and
the Study of Socioeconomic Differentiation,” Anthropology and Egyptology: A Developing Dialogue (ed. J.
Lustig; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 33-42; T.A.H. Wilkinson. “Social Stratification,”
OEAE, III:301-305.

well as the worlds that are constructed within the folktales themselves, the forthcoming
analysis will illuminate aspects of the characterizations of the protagonists, including the
ways that their responses to adversity are similar and different, as well as the way that the
authors of the texts conveyed different messages by means of similar protagonists.
Moreover, we will also read PMN and EP in light of Bascom’s identification of the
function of folklore as a tool to inculcate values and ensure cultural continuity through
successive generations. Considering the social class hierarchies in the two tales, we will
analyze the representations of the poor protagonists and ask if and how the two folktales,
in the words of Bascom, “preserve the institutions from direct attack and change.”40

Bascom, “Four Functions,” 349.

CHAPTER III:
POVERTY AND EXPLOITATION IN PMN AND EP
At the risk of oversimplifying the drama of PMN and EP, it may be observed that
on a very basic level the two tales have similarly structured plots. Both tales begin with
the unjust confiscation of their protagonist’s property, follow their ultimately successful
quests for redress, and end with the justification of their retribution. Both protagonists
are members of lower social strata than their antagonists, and both would be in serious
trouble were they to lose the property that is confiscated unjustly. Beyond these general
similarities, however, there are a number of significant differences between the tales,
including, among other things, the vastly different approaches employed by
Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup to resolve their respective crises. While Gimil-Ninurta
lashes out violently against the mayor of Nippur, Khunanup’s surprisingly eloquent
response to his abuse brings about a second crisis, the postponement of justice.
Significantly, the plots of both tales emphasize the poverty of their protagonists, which
motivates their different responses to adversity and established the context for the
progression of their plots. In the sections to follow, a comparison of PMN and EP is
undertaken with the goal of illuminating the relativity of poverty in these tales and
contributing to our understanding of how the poor have been represented in ancient Near
Eastern literary texts.
3.1 Poverty in PMN and EP: Absolutely Relative
One of the most obvious differences between PMN and EP is that Gimil-Ninurta,
the Poor Man of Nippur, is a great deal poorer than Khunanup, a farmer-trader whose
crisis is brought about in part by the high value of his cargo. Of all the characters in the
two tales, Gimil-Ninurta comes the closest to living in absolute poverty.41 In fact, the
first ten lines of PMN appear to be at pains to show the abject poverty of Gimil-Ninurta:
41

Poverty, it may be remembered, is a condition resulting from limited access to the necessities of
life. Although poverty must be understood relative to the normative access to resources, it may also be
understood in absolute terms as the inability to survive, that is, to access the conditions of life. All except
the uppermost members of socially stratified populations are relatively poor, including the absolutely poor.

There was a man of Nippur, poor and humble,
Gimil-Ninurta was his name, a miserable man.
In his city Nippur wearily he sat.
He had no silver, the pride of his people,
he possessed no gold, the pride of mankind.
His store-room thirsted for the pure grain.
With craving for bread his liver was oppressed,
with craving for meat and beer his face was disfigured.
Daily for lack of food he used to lie hungry.
He was clad in garments for which he had no change.42 (1-10)
Note that in lines 1-10 no aspect of Gimil-Ninurta is mentioned without making reference
to his poverty, hunger, and low social status relative to his community. The fact that he is
somehow able to survive, however meagerly, is a part of the hyperbolic fantasy of the
tale. Gimil-Ninurta is a caricature of a poor person: he an overblown sort of poor,
deprived of all things in a way that is entirely unrealistic.43 Accordingly it would be fair
to classify Gimil-Ninurta as being absolutely poor, a condition, it is noted, that will
enable him to act with complete abandon as he seeks revenge on his tormentor.
The first two lines tell a great deal about Gimil-Ninurta. Gimil-Ninurta is
identified as being extremely poor, of course; but he is introduced using the traditional
Mesopotamian introduction for a hero and he is located in the city of Nippur. Comparing
PMN with The Tale of the Illiterate Doctor in Nippur—and contradicting Gurney’s
suggestion that PMN was an unparalleled Akkadian tale—E. Reiner notes several
similarities, including most importantly the setting of a trickster story in Nippur.44 More
than any other city in ancient Mesopotamian city, Nippur occurs as a setting for tales
about swindlers, in much the same way that the Polish city Chelm came to be known in
Jewish folklore for the comic naiveté of its inhabitants (the “Wise Men of Chelm”).45
Reiner concludes that Gimil-Ninurta’s place of residence may have indicated to readers
that he was a trickster-hero. On another level, it may have been surprising to see a hero
described as so vividly indigent. Acknowledging the Poor Man’s place of residence from
Absolute poverty is somewhat more difficult to identify than relative poverty, in large part because the
conditions of life are not always clear or consistent.
42
My analysis of PMN follows the translation in Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur.”
43
See also Lion, “La conception de la pauvreté.”
44
Reiner, “Why Do You Cuss Me?”
45
See, for example S. Simon The Wise Men of Helm and Their Merry Tales (New York: Behrman
House Publishing, 1995); A.-L. Kalish, “Chelm in Jewish Folklore,” EJ, IV:588-589.

the very beginning would have fostered a sense of anticipation and excitement; at this
early juncture in the narrative, however, there has been no trickery and it unclear who
will dupe whom.
Whatever associations the city of Nippur may have had for the tale’s ancient
audience, it is important not to confuse the Nippur depicted in PMN with the actual
ancient Mesopotamian urban center of this name. As noted, the very existence of a man
as poor as Gimil-Ninurta may have indicated that the tale takes place in a fantastic world.
His family, unable to provide anything special for the feast (lines 20 and 49), may have
been able to support him but he does not seem to have any loyalty to them, and although
he does seem to have shelter (the “courtyard” from lines 17 and 46), he has only one
possession, his tunic, which he exchanges for a goat. The Nippur of the tale is a place
where dirty, threadbare clothing would be worth the equivalent of a female goat; naked
paupers would be given audiences with the mayor and the king; kings would dispense
chariots and royal clothing to citizens without question or hesitation; simple disguises
would completely hide individuals’ identities; and so on.
Compared with Gimil-Ninurta, Khunanup seems to have been relatively wealthy.
EP begins by recalling that:
There was once a man
Called Khunanup
he was a peasant of Wadi Natrun,
whose wife was called Meret.46 (R1.1-2)
Wadi Natrun, which R.B. Parkinson identifies with Khunaup’s home, “Salt-Field,” is an
oasis 300 miles west of present-day Cairo and was far removed—spatially and
conceptually—from the political center of the Middle Kingdom.47 Just as Gimil-Ninurta
was assumed to have been a trickster by virtue of hailing from Nippur, it may be assumed
that Khunanup was both a geographical and a political outsider, whether or not one
identifies “Salt-Field” with Wadi Natrun. Although it is clear from his place of residence
that Khunanup, “a peasant of Wadi Natrun” (R1.1), lives far from the center of
46

My analysis follows Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant.”
Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 58, 75 n.1; Cf. D. Devauchelle, Didier
Devauchelle, "Le paysan déraciné," CdÉ 70 (1995): 34-40. I have retained Parkinson’s use of the
designation Wadi Natrun in my analysis because I follow his translation (1997); a more cautious analysis
might avoid this potential anachronism and follow Tobin (2003) or Lichtheim (1973).
47

Hierakonpolitan Egypt, the period in which the tale is set (Dynasties 9 and 10), it should
be noted that the term rendered as “peasant” (sxtj) is perhaps less than appropriate, given
the nature of Khunanup’s relative wealth and the worth of his cargo.
After Khunanup is introduced, he announces that he is going to Egypt to buy
provisions for his children. Meret, Khunanup’s wife, is sent to measure grain for his
journey and for her own use at home, setting aside amounts that, as R.B. Parkinson notes,
are “rather low.” We shall soon see they are also insufficient to last the duration of his
search for legal redress, which was extended repeatedly by Rensi, the High Steward and
lord of the land on which Khunanup was abused.48 Conversing with his wife in R1.3-4,
Khunanup uses the colloquial Egyptian pronominal p3/t3/n3 series of demonstratives,
which J.P. Allen identifies as being colloquial Middle Egyptian.49 In contrast to the
surprising eloquence of his petitions, Parkinson understands the use of p3 to be the
language of the lower strata of society. Indeed, while it does create an interesting
contrast with the nine petitions, because the section of text containing p3 is attested only
in R1, a manuscript that contains no petitions, there is no way to know whether the use of
p3 was not just a feature of R1 alone.50
It is Khunanup’s journey that will create the condition for the tale’s crisis.
Khunaup:
… loaded his asses with reeds and fan palms,
natron and salt,
sticks from […]itu,
and staffs from Farafra,
leopard skins,
and wolf hides
[pebbles] and [serpentine]
wild mint-plants and inbi-fruits
tebu- and uben- plants—
—with all the fair produce of Wadi Natrun (B1 1-15).
Khunanup’s cargo will play a central role in EP, as it is coveted by Nemtinakht en route
to Hierakonpolis. It is should be observed that of the Peasant’s cargo only natron and salt
48

Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 75 n.1
J.P. Allen “Colloquial Middle Egyptian: Some Observations on the Language of Heka-Nakht,"
LingAeg 4 (1994): 1-12.
50
R.B. Parkinson “Imposing Words: The Entrapment of Language in the Tale of the Eloquent
LingAeg 8(2000): 27-51.
49

are native to Wadi Natrun; the staffs are imported from Farafa, a nearby oasis; inbi is not
native to Natrun, and tebu, and uben are unidentified. The “peasant” could not have
grown all of the products to which the tale refers.51
Considering the worth and inventory of Khunanup’s cargo, Parkinson concludes
that “The list of goods shows that he is a trader, not a farmer.”52 O. Berlev agrees,
asserting that calling Khunanup and Meret “peasants” is “singularly inappropriate.”53
The Egyptian sxtj not an exact cognate of the English “peasant,” a nonevaluative term
denoting an agriculturalist from the countryside.54 There is no reason, however, to
conclude that a farmer could not also trade. The Egyptian sxtj may be better understood,
in light of the character of Kunanup, as a farmer-trader whose social standing is markedly
below Nemtinakht and Rensi.
At the very least, the so-called eloquent peasant is poor relative to Nemtinakht
and Rensi the High Steward, creating an organizing hierarchical relationship that parallels
that in PMN. Nemtinakht’s position and social status relative to the peasant is indicated
by the initial success of his confiscation of Khunanup’s cargo and by the circumstances
of the tale that bring Khunanup to petition High Steward, who seems to have jurisdiction
over the territory in which he was wronged.55
It should also be remembered that whatever status was ascribed to Khunanup
before the confiscation of his goods, he had allotted a relatively meager portion to sustain
himself and his wife. Until they are accorded a stipend by the King, the tale does not
indicate what savings the peasant and his wife had accumulated or what resources they
may have had available to live from. That the tale feels it necessary to describe the
allocation of a stipend may indicate—in addition to the fact that no harm ultimately befell
Khunanup and his wife—that Khunanup and Meret had no other means of survival. If

R.B. Parkinson. “Literary Form and the “Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” JEA 78(1992): 58.
Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 75 n. 9.
53
O. Berlev. “The Date of the «Eloquent Peasant»,” Form und Mass: Beitraege zur Literatur,
Sprache und Kunst des Alten Aegypten. Festschrift fuer Gerhard Fecht (ÄAT 12; Ed. J. Osing and G
Dreyer; Wiesbaden: Horassowitz Verlag, 1987), p. 76-83.
54
G. Fecht, “Bauerngeschichte,” LÄ, I.638; Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 168.
See also S. Allam, "Social and Legal Aspects Regarding the Trader from the Oasis," LingAeg 8 (2000): 8392.
55
Berlev, “The Date of the «Eloquent Peasant»”
A. Loprieno. “Literature as Mirror of Social Institutions: The Case of The Eloquent Peasant,”
LingAeg 8(2001): 183-198.
52

the peasant was not poor before, he most certainly was for the time between the
confiscation of his goods and his being assigned a stipend.
Unlike Gimil-Ninurta, whose indigence is described in great detail in PMN, EP
depends to a certain extent on Khunanup not being poor, at least initially; were he too
poor, his cargo would not have attracted the attention of Nemtinakht. Both protagonists
were, however, poorer than their antagonists (and became poorer still at their antagonists’
hands), creating a social dynamic that the tales play with and use to advance their
narrative. What is important is the relationship between social class and oppression in
the two tales: poverty must be understood relative to wealth, and both EP and PMN retell
the story of the oppression and retribution of a poorer person against a wealthier person.
The question that will occupy the remainder of this study concerns the role of the social
location of the protagonists and its significance for these tales.
3.2 Poverty and Crisis in PMN and EP
Although Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup face similar adversity at the hands of
similar antagonists, beyond their mutual state of poverty relative to those that abuse them,
their characters are very different, and we shall see them respond in vastly different ways
according to their means and the varied circumstances of their mistreatment.
Gimil-Ninurta is a comically impoverished resident of a fantastic, dangerous, and
overblown version of the city of Nippur. Although his tale is naturalistic in the sense that
he does not appeal to the supernatural and the problem that he faces is not unbelievable,
the tale is crafted carefully out of carnivalesque reversals, improbabilities, and surprises
and must therefore be read accordingly. The crisis faced by Gimil-Ninurta has two main
dimensions: the goat confiscated by the mayor represented the Poor Man’s entire
livelihood, putting him at great risk of starvation, and the rejection of his gift was
disrespectful and demanded a response. EP is equally naturalistic, in the sense that there
is no supernatural intrusion into the plot, but it is a great deal more realistic: Khunanup is
a very realistic character, who, although not a real person in the historical sense, faces a
very believable problem. While Khunanup’s treatment at the hands of Rensi is, as we

shall see, ironic and comically overblown, Khunanup responds in believable, if not
equally overblown, ways that bring about a second crisis not paralleled in PMN.
3.2.1 Poverty and Crisis in PMN
The story of Gimil-Ninurta’s mistreatment begins with his purchase of a goat in
the market, follows the Poor Man to the house of the mayor, and ends with him standing
outside the mayor’s gate, hungry and abused. When Gimil-Ninurta brings his newly
procured goat to the mayoral compound and offers it to the mayor, the official responds
by confiscating the goat, beating the Poor Man, and ejecting him from the compound
with only gristle and third-rate beer to show for his efforts. Gimil-Ninurta, disrespected
by the mayor, is deprived of his only possession and livelihood. When the Poor Man
vows to visit threefold revenge upon his oppressor, the mayor “laughed all day” (69), an
expression of arrogance that indicates that the mayor did not take the Poor Man’s vow
seriously, enabling Gimil-Ninurta to retain access to the mayor and to realize his vow of
revenge. When the mayor does not laugh after the second ruse, Gimil-Ninurta becomes
worried and revises his tactics.
The crisis faced by Gimil-Ninurta therefore has two facets: the Poor Man,
deprived of his only possession, is at risk of starvation, and has been disrespected by the
rejection and confiscation of his gift. Gimil-Ninurta’s response, we shall see, will
address both aspects of his crisis. The first and perhaps most immediate crisis facing
Gimil-Ninurta is one of survival. Before losing his goat Gimil-Ninurta was, as noted,
extremely poor. Cooper notes that Gimil-Ninurta’s purchase of a nanny goat may serve
to underscore his poverty, which was earlier observed to be more miserable than other
characters in the tale.56 It is abundantly clear from the opening sequence of the tale that
Gimil-Ninurta is located in the lowest stratum of the Nippur society that it constructs in
the folktale. More significantly, however, it creates questions about Gimil-Ninurta’s
judgment. For a man teetering on the edge of starvation, a goat may have been an
attractive but impractical consumption choice. Although meat played an important role
in the ancient Near Eastern diet, it was rarely available to the lower strata of society and it

Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire,” 167.

was only in the rarest of situations that a man as poor as Gimil-Ninurta would have
access to it.57
The fact that Gimil-Ninurta exchanged his last possession for the goat would have
meant that under “real-world” conditions this would have been his last meal. Nights in
Nippur are cold, and it is unclear whether he would have been able to survive without a
garment.58 At the same time, however, the Poor Man would have been without a garment
even if he had not lost his goat. As noted, the fact that our protagonist is from Nippur
would have prepared audiences to expect a trick and they might have expected
Gimil-Ninurta to find a way to survive.59 Nevertheless, the purchase of a goat may not
have been the most practical expense, but considering Gimil-Ninurta indigence it is easy
to understand how tempting the prospect of a feast featuring a goat may have been.
Poverty, then, may be said to underlie the very conditions of his abuse. Gimil-Ninurta’s
crisis of survival was very real—even if he did bring it upon himself by purchasing the
goat—and the loss of his goat would have impeded any tricks that might have enabled his
survival. What is clear beyond any doubt is that Gimil-Ninurta was in grave danger.
Gimil-Ninurta’s decision to offer his goat to the mayor also made his
mistreatment possible; had he not done so he would have enjoyed a meager but safe meal
with his poor family and neighbors.60 Indeed, kin and tribal groups functioned as the
basic structures of Neo-Assyrian society. A.K. Grayson asserts that the “fundamental
motives for every Assyrian’s life were the protection and propagation of his family and
tribe.”61 It might be expected, then, that under these conditions Gimil-Ninurta would
share his meat with his family and the kin-group, as well as the neighborhood.62
Accordingly, it is not surprising that Gimil-Ninurta thinks aloud:
I might indeed slaughter the goat in my plantation;
(but then) there will be no feast : where will be the beer?
The friends at my gate will hear of it and will be angry,
my kinsmen and relations will be furious with me (17-20).

L. Milano. “Aspects of Meat Consumption in Mesopotamia and the Food Paradigm of the Poor
Man of Nippur," SAAB XII.2(1998): 111-127.
58
cf. Exodus 22:26
59
Reiner, “Why Do You Cuss Me?”
60
The mingling of social classes is, as I shall later discuss, a feature of carnivalesque literature.
61
A.K. Grayson. “Mesopotamia, History of (Assyria),” ABD II:732-755.
62
Ibid.

If PMN took place in the world of ancient Mesopotamia then the failure to share
the goat with the family might be a place where Gimil-Ninurta misstepped, but because
the text constructs its own reality and sets it in Nippur—a city known in literature for its
dubious morality—it is difficult to conclude whether or not Gimil-Ninurta erred in taking
the goat to the mayor’s compound. That Gimil-Ninurta was willing to risk alienating his
friends and family—“the fundamental motives for every Assyrian’s life”63—he may have
had a plan and point unequivocally to the poverty and moral flexibility of Gimil-Ninurta
and his family. Had they been able to provide accoutrements to complement
Gimil-Ninurta’s goat he would not have felt compelled to offer it to the mayor—a
morally questionable action—and he would never have been abused.
3.2.1.1 “A Good and Fair Greeting”: Gimil-Ninurta’s Crisis of Honor
It is interesting that Gimil-Ninurta at no point indicates exactly why he sets out to
the mayoral compound with his goat, creating an ambiguity that will help the plot move
forward. The audience is told only that his family would not be able to provide sufficient
food and drink for the feast and so it must be assumed that the mayor, as a member of the
upper stratum of society, would be expected to provide the necessary additions to
complete the meal. Here again, the poverty of Gimil-Ninurta’s family drives him to
confront the mayor. As he sets out for the mayoral compound, the Poor Man says:
I will go and bring the goat to the house of the mayor.
A good and fair greeting I will devise (for him) (21-22).
Lines 21 and 22 will be important to remember as the analysis proceeds, especially in
light of the association of Nippur with tricksters. Although no one knows at this point
what will befall the Poor Man and his newly purchased goat, Gimil-Ninurta will behave
in such a way as to make this equivocal but meaningful couplet come to pass.
Goat in hand, Gimil-Ninurta proceeds to the mayoral compound, expecting,
perhaps naively and perhaps cunningly, to devise a “good and fair greeting” for the
mayor and to eat at his table. If Nippur is a city of swindlers and swindled and the
audience expects Gimil-Ninurta to be a swindler, they must also suspect that the mayor
was a swindler; at this point in the tale it is not yet clear who is dupe and who is rascal.
63

Ibid.

The combination of one swindler visiting another swindler bearing a gift of some kind
would have been a carefully orchestrated farce with no certain outcome.
At first, perhaps surprisingly, it looks as if the Poor Man’s plan might be
successful. Against all odds, the naked Poor Man is given an audience with the mayor
when the doorman announces that a citizen of Nippur (m!r nippurim) is at the gate
bearing a “present” ("ulmanum). In fact, Gimil-Ninurta is introduced at the very
beginning of the tale as “citizen of Nippur” (line 1) and again before his ejection from the
mayoral compound (line 39). We will later see the mayor refer to himself as a m!r
nippurim as he begs the disguised Poor Man for mercy in line 105, leading to the
conclusion that citizenship is a special status, at least according to the internal logic of the
tale.64
Although Gimil-Ninurta does not specify exactly why he brings the mayor his
goat, the doorman announces that he had brought a present. R. Westbrook suggests that
this element of the tale indicates that he is presenting his goat in an effort to establish a
patron-client relationship.65 Gurney translates the term as “present” (29), although it
should be noted that the term denotes a gift given as a “retaining fee” or “gratuity” in
order to secure support, as well as regular gifts, and the former have political implications
by creating indebtedness.66 Gimil-Ninurta does not object to the identification of his goat
in this way, but the text is careful not to indicate the specific nature of the gift.
At all events, the text makes it clear that Gimil-Ninurta greets the mayor
appropriately with his right hand, explaining that he held the goat—whatever its intended
meaning—with his left:
When Gimil-Ninurta entered into the presence of the Mayor
[in] his left hand he grasped the neck of his goat,
while with his right he greeted the Mayor (34-36).
Knowing that Gimil-Ninurta came before the mayor with a goat, the text needed to
clarify how the greeting took place and whether it was conducted appropriately, although
somewhat less warmly than he will later greet the King (lines 72-75). Because the text

“m!rum,” CAD, X.1: 308-316.
R. Westbrook. “Patronage in the Ancient Near East,” JESHO 48(2005): 210-33.
66
“"ulmanum,” CAD #/3, :246.
65

already indicated that Gimil-Ninurta had the goat in his hand (line 23) it was necessary to
make it clear that he greeted the mayor with the appropriate level of formality. This care
echoes lines 21-22, which are worth repeating:
I will go and bring the goat to the house of the mayor.
A good and fair greeting I will devise (for him).
Indeed, building on this association, Gimil-Ninurta proceeds, greeting the mayor
appropriately and invoking the proper blessings:
May Enlil and the city of Nippur bless the Mayor!
May Adad and Nusku cause him to prosper greatly! (37-38)
When the mayor asks why Gimil-Ninurta has brought his gift, the Poor Man
responds by explaining his thought process; the text repeats lines 17-21, with
compensatory tense changes:
[(and) to] my miserable heart thus I spoke:
[I might indeed] slaughter the goat in my plantation;
[but then there will be no] feast; where will be the beer?
The friends at my gate [will hear of it and] will be angry,
[my kinsmen and rel]ations will be furious with me.
I will bring the goat [to the house of] the Mayor (45-50).
Note that Gimil-Ninurta again makes no claims about what the nature of his gift to the
mayor is beyond his desire to share a feast; this would be an ideal time for Gimil-Ninurta
to deny explicitly that it was a bribe. He does not do so, however, allowing the status of
the goat to remain ambiguous. Where Gimil-Ninurta’s inner monologue indicates that he
plans to devise a proper and fair greeting (lines 21-22), in his account to the mayor he
goes off on a tangent that, unfortunately for contemporary readers, is not preserved save
for a few scattered signs (lines 52-57). Cooper reconstructs the slaughtering of the goat,
a reading that is more or less in accord with folklore parallels.67 When the text is again
discernable, the mayor orders that Gimil-Ninurta be ejected from the compound and
given bone, sinew, and third-rate beer.
Analyzing the ethnopoetic structure of PMN, Jason identifies three primary roles
67

Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire,” 171; O.R. Gurney “The Tale of the Poor Man of
Nippur and Its Folklore Parallels,” AnSt 22(1972): 149-158.

in the folktale: rascal, dupe, and helper. In PMN, as in all “swindler novellas,” the rascal
dupes the dupe and may be helped by the helper; in the case of the present tale
Tukulti-Enlil the gatekeeper, the king, the king’s men and women, and the man in a third
ruse help move the plot along by allying themselves (advertently or not) with GimilNinurta against the mayor. In the case of PMN, “The qualities of characters in folktales
are not stable throughout the entire story, but are tailored according to the needs of the
role they play...” Jason explains, continuing:
Gimil-Ninurta seems to be naive to the point of stupidity in the first episode,
where he fills the role of Dupe, and clever and shrewd in the three following
episodes, where he is Rascal; the mayor is shrewd in the first episode—being
Rascal—and credulous to the point of stupidity in the subsequent episodes, being
Dupe.68
To conclude, with Jason, that the Poor Man was naïve or stupid to bring his goat to the
mayor may, however, require readers to overlook the twice repeated silence of the tale
concerning the nature of the goat and the sometimes equivocal speech of Gimil-Ninurta
that enabled this deliberate comedy of errors.
All that is clear is that Gimil-Ninurta brings the goat in an effort to devise a “good
and fair” greeting and comes from Nippur, a city with a reputation for trickery. Although
what is “good and fair” in Nippur is unlikely to be “good and fair” elsewhere, it is not
possible to ascertain exactly what Gimil-Ninurta meant by bringing his goat to the mayor.
Gimil-Ninurta’s greeting will turn out to be both “good and fair,” but not in the way that
readers may assume at lines 21-22. By means of this equivocation, the storyteller is
foreshadowing the mayor’s fate; the tale is playing with the audience and may be putting
meaningful equivocations in the Poor Man’s mouth. Gimil-Ninurta is either naïve or
very clever, but he is definitely not stupid.
3.2.1.2 Gimil-Ninurta’s Vow and the Threat of Resolutions
Ejected from the mayoral compound, beaten, and given sinew and third-rate beer
instead of choice cuts of meat and quality beer, Gimil-Ninurta was incensed. The mayor
had confiscated his entire capital, leaving him unquestionably absolutely poor. Standing
in the mayor’s gate, Gimil-Ninurta turns to Tukulti-Enlil the gatekeeper and, addressing
68

Jason, “Ethnopoetic Analysis,” 192.

him formally, exclaims: “The blessings [also “abundance”] of the gods on your master!”
(66) Cooper explains that:
One would normally understand a wish for divine abundance as something
positive, but the following lines (67ff.) reveal that the abundance will consist of
three acts of vengeance for the one instance of mistreatment suffered at the
mayor's hands.69
Recalling his commitment to give the mayor a “good and fair” greeting, in response to his
being treated unfairly, Gimil-Ninurta vows to avenge his treatment, threatening the
mayor:
For the one load which you [put] upon me,
I will pay you back three times for one (67-68).
How we interpret this vow depends in part on how we interpret the treatment of
Gimil-Ninurta; inasmuch as it seems to be the case that Gimil-Ninurta was mistreated,
this vow represents the last recourse of the wronged and follows logically from his
promise to devise a “good and fair” greeting for the mayor.
In response to Gimil-Ninurta’s vow, the mayor “laughed all day” (69), a response
that we will see repeated after Gimil-Ninurta’s first ruse in line 114 and that enables the
first as well as the second ruse. Although laughter can be a response to a number of
stimuli—including amusement, humor, incongruity, relief, and a sense of well-being—it
is clear that this is laughter of mocking disbelief: the mayor seems amused by the Poor
Man’s determination.70 Two lines of evidence suggest this: (1) the mayor does not laugh
after the second ruse, troubling Gimil-Ninurta and compelling him to change his tactics,
and (2) when Gimil-Ninurta fulfills his vow in line 160 the mayor does not laugh and
instead, “entered the city more dead than alive.”
The mayor’s bemused response to Gimil-Ninurta’s threat is inflected—and may
well have been determined—by the dynamics of social class. Had the Poor Man been of
a higher social class there is reason to suspect that the mayor’s response may have been
different. In Gimil-Ninurta’s first act of revenge upon the mayor (line 104), which will
be discussed in greater detail later on, the Poor Man disguises himself as an official of the
69
70

Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire,” 168.
D.W. Black. “Laughter,” JAMA 252.21(1984): 2995-2998.

king and accuses the mayor of wrongdoing, a cunning role reversal that causes the mayor
to beg for mercy. It is the perceived status of the disguised Gimil-Ninurta that scares the
mayor. At the beginning of the tale, however, Gimil-Ninurta is so clearly a member of
the lower stratum of society that the mayor cannot take his threat seriously. Because
Gimil-Ninurta is poor at this juncture the mayor laughs at him and the story is able to
progress; poverty, which is a condition of his abuse, here begins to enable and empower
his response.
Gimil-Ninurta’s vow functions as the fulcrum of the tale; not quite a climax—that
will come when the vow is fulfilled—but the condition for the possibility of the climax
that is laid out in lines 21-22. In a number of ways, Gimil-Ninurta needed to be poor for
the confiscation of his goat to have been so serious a matter. While being careful not to
conflate poverty with starvation, it may be remembered that among the first things that
we learn about Gimil-Ninurta, is that:
His store-room thirsted for the pure grain.
With craving for bread his liver was oppressed,
with craving for meat and beer his face was disfigured.
Daily for lack of food he used to lie hungry.
He was clad in garments for which he had no change (6-10).71
Lines 6-9 illustrate the depth of Gimil-Ninurta’s hunger and line 10 foreshadows the sale
of his garment. Gimil-Ninurta’s vow was born of desperation and poverty. He literally
had nothing left to live for. Gimil-Ninurta has only his quest for justice or revenge,
which we shall see makes his continued survival possible. Gimil-Ninurta ends the tale
having earned one or two minas of red gold. The Poor Man, we shall see, needed to lose
everything in the short term in order to survive in the long term.
3.2.2 Poverty and Crisis in EP
The crisis that Khunanup faces has two parts: (1) the confiscation of his cargo by
Nemtinakht, and (2) the deliberate postponement of justice by Rensi, effected, ironically,
in order to continue hearing the peasant’s petitions on the nature of Ma’at (Justice). The
first crisis occupies the bulk of the narrative introduction to the tale, and is perpetuated by
the peasant’s commitment to proper behavior. The second crisis—which partially
71

Gurney, “Poor Man of Nippur,” 151.

resolves the first crisis—begins in the narrative introduction and continues through the
nine poetic petitions to Rensi the High Steward that occupy most of the tale, made
possible by Khunanup’s social position and driven by his excellent use of accepted
channels of appeal.
3.2.2.1 Crisis I: Livelihood Lost
After leaving his wife and loading his donkey with “all the fair produce of Wadi
Natrun” (B1 15), Khunanup sets out along the public road to Hierakonpolis to purchase
food for his family. Before leaving he arranges for his wife to set aside rations of grain
for his journey and to sustain their family until his return. The tale is careful to note that
a relatively meager amount of food is set aside, and it may be assumed that the peasant
does not have an excess of resources. This observation is later confirmed by the King’s
insistence that “one of those peasants only comes to Egypt when his house is all but
empty” (B1 112-113). What should be noted is that the tale introduces Khunanup as an
itinerant farmer-trader of limited means whose cargo represents the bulk of his capital.
Necessity, then, from the very beginning of the tale, is the reason for Khunanup’s
journey.
En route to the market, Khunanup follows a narrow road that passes through the
area of Per-Fefo, north of Mednit, where he met Nemtinakht, a “liegeman” of Rensi the
High Steward. Coveting Khunanup’s cargo, Nemtinakht devises a plan to steal the
peasant’s belongings, requesting somewhat cryptically that his servant bring him a
garment.72
When the garment arrived, Nemtinakht laid it across the narrow path “And its
fringe rested on the water, with its hem on the barley” (B1 30-31). When “this
peasant”—it is significant that Khunanup is referred to repeatedly by this title because it
highlights the centrality of hierarchy in the tale—approaches the garment, Nemtinakht
warns him not to step on his garment. The peasant replies:
My way is good,
for the bank is high and the way is under barley,
and you block our path with clothes.
Won’t you even let us go past the path? (B1 37-40)
72

Parkinson “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 59.

At that exact moment, Khunanup’s donkey bit off a mouthful of barley from Rensi’s
field. While the animal’s consumption of Nemtinakht’ barley was unlawful, the text
seems at pains to show that Khunanup did not have the mens rea. V.A. Tobin suggests
that by saying “my way is good”:
The peasant perhaps means either that he wishes to cause no inconvenience to
anyone during his journey or that his general way and conduct of life is good and
in accordance with what is required by the values of religion and Ma’at. A freer
translation might render the line as “I am a peaceful man”73
N. Shupak notes additionally that the garment laid down by Nemtinakht was
symbolically significant, explaining that “A man's garment contains his identity and
symbolizes it; it has magical properties and symbolic legal significance. Damaging,
grasping, or tearing a man's garment were considered acts which caused its owner
shame.”74 As such, stepping on Nemtinakht’s garment was unacceptable not only
because it was the property of a social superior, but also because of it may have been
imbued with ritual significance. It is significant that Khunanup does not do this. He will
continue to follow procedure throughout the tale, which will continue, however, to get
him into trouble.
Whether or not Khunanup tread on Nemtinakht’s garment, the farmer was in
trouble. It may be concluded that Nemtinakht’s plan all along was to entrap the farmer,
either by forcing him to tread on the garment or by delaying him long enough by the
barley to give the donkey time to eat. Indeed, the tale foreshadows this conclusion by
noting that the road:
…was narrow; it was not broad
but only as wide as a kilt.
One of its sides was under water,
and the other under grain (B1 26-28).
Either way, Khunanup would have provided Nemtinakht with a pretext for the
confiscation of his donkey and cargo. It might be noted here that the tone of Khunanup’s

Tobin, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 27 n.7.
N. Shupak. “A New Source for the Study of the Judiciary and Law of Ancient Egypt: “The Tale
of the Eloquent Peasant,” JNES 51.1(1992): 7.
74

response to Nemtinakht becomes increasingly formal, as he shifts from using the
language of commoners (with his wife) to the formal language of appeal.75
After entrapping Khunanup, Nemtinakht declares that he will confiscate the
peasant’s donkey for its having eaten a mouthful of barley. The peasant protests:
My way is good;
one clump is destroyed—
one destroying ten!
For ten units I bought my ass
and you seize it for a mouthful
of a clump of grain! (B1 44-46)
Again, by saying that his “way is good,” a line that will be repeated three times in the
dialogue between Khunanup and Rensi, the peasant is highlighting the opposition
between justice and injustice—good and bad—that is the subject of the injustice and his
petitions. Not only is his way good, but it may be inferred, based on the symbolic
significance of the garment, that Nemtinakht’s way is evil. The more symbolic value one
assigns to garments the more malicious his laying it across the road before Khunanup
becomes, although its being the property of a social superior would no doubt have had the
same effect.
The repetition of the designation “peasant” is not incidental; even if we choose
not to understand sxtj as “peasant,” it is clear that the tale is highlighting Khunanup’s
social status, which is beneath Nemtinakht and Rensi and makes him relatively poorer
and definitely deprived of power. When Khunanup invokes the name Rensi and his
reputation for maintaining justice on his land, Nemtinakht responds by reciting a
proverb—a saying that he explains, “people [i.e. “peasants”] say” (B1 50)—that “a
wretch’s name is uttered only because of his master” (B1 51), meaning that a peasant like
Khunanup is of value only in his relationship to his master.76 The proverb has the dual
function of highlighting the role of relative social status in the tale and placing
Nemtinakht (the master) above and apart from the (wretched) masses, which include
Khunanup. Social class—however one chooses to render sxtj—is a central focus of the
tale.
75

Parkinson, “Imposing Words”; Allen, “Colloquial Middle Egyptian.”
Tobin, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 28 n. 8; Parkinson, “The Tale of the Eloquent
Peasant,” 76 n. 9.
76

As the tale proceeds, Nemtinakht beats Khunanup with a stick of fresh tamarisk
for invoking the name of Rensi and confiscates the peasant’s ass for its consumption of
barley. When Khunanup raises his voice in complaint he is silenced by Nemtinakht:
And the peasant now wept very much,
for the pain of what was being done to him.
And this Nemtinakht said, “Don’t raise your voice peasant,
or, look, you’re for the harbour of the Lord of Silence [=Osiris]!”
And this peasant said, “You beat me and steal my belongings?
And then you’ll rob my mouth of complaint?” (B1 55-61)
The final line of this passage is of decisive significance. We shall see the peasant take
excellent advantage of the instrument of appeal (his voice). For ten days—one Egyptian
week—Khunanup petitions Nemtinakht but does not succeed in attracting his attention,
or at least does not motivate him to act.
Facing the threat of starvation, Khunanup approaches the High Steward Rensi on
the street. The fact that the peasant attained an audience with the lord of the land only by
accosting him on the street is significant and may reflect the inability of one of his social
class to attain an audience with the High Steward in court under normal circumstances.
3.2.2.2 Resolution I/Crisis II: Justice Postponed
At this early stage in the tale it might be noted that the text sets up sharp
oppositions between good and bad, justice and injustice, and rich and poor. The
peasant’s “way is good,” his cargo is “fair,” and his behavior is just. In contrast,
Nemtinakht takes advantage of the peasant’s good nature, entrapping him in order to
seize his cargo. The only reason that the peasant found himself in distress was that
Nemtinakht saw his donkey and was tempted by his cargo. The peasant can hardly be
blamed from bringing high quality goods to sell at market and he cannot be blamed for
not treading on Nemtinakht’s garment.
If Khunanup was so obviously in the right—as he puts it again and again, “my
way is good”—it is legitimate to ask why he stopped in the first place. Khunanup’s
detention serves at least two purposes in the tale: (1) it confirms social hierarchy, with
Nemtinakht above Khunanup, and (2) it shows that Khunanup is a well-meaning person
who did not intend any wrong by stepping on the garment or accidentally causing

consumption of the barley of Nemtinakht. Had Khunanup tread on Nemtinakht’s
garment he would have been in the wrong for stepping on his social superior’s property—
not only was it the property of a social superior but it may have also been symbolically
significant—and the donkey’s consumption of barley shows that he would have been
equally culpable had he tread on the field. Khunanup is clever and his first response to
this adversity is to try to reason with his tormentor, a response that forced his donkey—an
animal with no sense of personal property—to wait beside edible grains that it could not
understand were not its to eat.
Although it is correct to question the appropriateness of the designation “peasant”
for Khunanup, it should not be forgotten that his journey to Hierakonpolis was for the
purpose of buying food for his family. One does not undertake a journey to buy food if
one has access to a sufficient supply close to home. Noting as well that the rations set
aside by Khunanup for himself and his wife are fairly limited, as the King observes, it
may be concluded that the peasant and his wife would not have had enough food to
compensate for the lost cargo.77 The threat of starvation adds an urgency to the peasant’s
appeals and heightens the severity of Nemtinakht’s wrongdoing at the same time as
Khunanup’s wealth restrains his response: Khunanup had much to lose by reacting to
Nemtinakht violently, including his right to appeal, which ironically brings upon him his
second crisis.
The second crisis that Khunanup must resolve takes place as a result of his
eloquent response to his oppression at the hands of Nemtinakht, in the court of his master
Rensi, and is not paralleled in PMN. Following the confiscation of his cargo (also the
result of following proper procedure) and his inability to gain an audience with
Nemtinakht, Khunanup met with a representative of Rensi, who concludes
condescendingly that Khunanup was a runaway serf of Nemtinakht, but that if he had lost
cargo Nemtinakht should remunerate him accordingly. The follower’s response
highlights the class dynamics in the tale and is worth considering in full:
Surely it’s only a peasant of his
who’s run off to someone else.
Look, this is what people do to their peasants
77

Cf. D. Mueller. “Some Remarks on Wage Rates in the Middle Kingdom,” JNES 34.4 (1975):

249-263.

who run off to others,
Is there cause to punish Nemtinakht
for a little natron
and a little salt?
Order him to repay it, and he’ll repay it (B1 75-80).
Because Nemtinakht is of a member of the upper social stratum, Rensi’s representative
immediately sympathizes with his position. If Nemtinakht committed a wrong, however,
the tale is clear that he was not above the law and would have to repay the confiscation.
A punishment, however, would be excessive. Comparing this response to Nemtnakht’s
punishment of the peasant for his donkey’s consumption of a mouthful of barley, it would
seem to be the case that the tale presumes different standards for the rich and poor.
Although Knunanup’s punishment was, admittedly overblown, proceeding
autoreferentially, it establishes a class dynamic that sets the tone for the remainder of the
tale.
When the representative of Rensi reports Khunanup’s case to him in this way, the
tale is careful to point out that Rensi did not respond to either the peasant or the
representative. This silence—which will be mandated by the King in subsequent
petitions, would have seemed to indicate indecision to Rensi’s fictional audience (the
representative who first read Khunanup’s complaint). At all events, the peasant comes
before Rensi and pleads his case. Rensi again remains silent, although it is important to
note that his silence at this juncture is of his own volition and so it will mean something
very different than what it comes to mean when it is mandated by the King:
The High Steward Meru’s son Rensi
then went before his Majesty
then said, “My lord, I have found one of the peasants,
whose speech is truly perfect, and whose goods have been stolen
And, look, he had come to me to appeal about it” (B1 105-109).
It is not clear exactly why Rensi brings the problem to the King, but seems to be the case
that he acknowledges that a wrong has been perpetrated against Khunanup and seems
ready to make amends. The King responds:
As you wish to see me in health
you shall delay him here,
without answering anything he says!

For the sake of his speaking be quiet!
Then we shall be brought it in writing, and we shall hear it.
But provide sustenance for his wife and children!
Look, one of those peasants only comes to Egypt when his house is all but
empty.
Also provide sustenance for this peasant himself!
You shall have the provisions given to him
Without letting him know that you are giving him them! (B1 109-115)
Following the King’s orders, Rensi arranges provisions for the peasant and his wife;
interestingly, they are more generous than those that Khunanup set aside for himself and
his wife in the first place, but not exceptional in compared to other Middle Kingdom
examples.78 Their rations resolve the immediacy of the first crisis, but not its cause, the
unjust confiscation of property. In the next section we will discuss the nature of
Khunanup’s petitions, so for now it will be best to focus on the injustice of his very
detainment in court, a situation that recalls the injustices perpetrated by Joseph upon his
brothers when they go down to Egypt to purchase food in Genesis 42-45.
Rensi seems ready to judge the case in favor of the peasant, at the very least
following the suggestion of his representative who suggested equal remuneration. The
fact the Rensi went before the King and declared that a peasant had been wronged—not
claims to have been wronged—indicates that he accepts the truth of Khunanup’s claims.
Although the immediate danger of starvation caused by the confiscation of Khunanup’s
property was resolved—thus relieving the consequences of the first crisis—Khunanup is
made to think that the rations are dispensed at the pleasure of a friend of Rensi.
Consequently, Khunanup remains unaware of Rensi’s apparent sympathy and is able to
continue delivering artful and motivated petitions. Because Khunanup also does not
know that Rensi’s silence was ordered by the king in order to continue the petitions, the
peasant was, as far as he knew, poorer than he was before the confiscation of his property
and at risk of starvation; he remains socially and economically powerless and, for the
time being, socially and economically inferior to Nemtinakht, Rensi, and the King. The
peasant does not know how long he will continue to be supported and the tale does not
make it clear whether or not he was aware that his wife and children were receiving
similar support.
78

Mueller, “Wage Rates in the Middle Kingdom.”

3.2.2.3 Crisis II and Genesis 42-45
Rensi’s detainment of Khunanup under false charges and with an ulterior motive
finds an interesting parallel in the story of Joseph in Genesis 42-45. It opens in Canaan,
where he—the favored son and eldest of two by Rachel—has transparent dreams that his
older brothers and parents will serve him. Angered, the brothers leave him for dead in the
wilderness; but he is picked up by traders and sold as a slave in Egypt. There, Joseph
acquires a reputation for interpreting dreams, among them Pharaoh’s. When he predicts
famine for Egypt and suggests a solution, Pharaoh’s moves him to the top of his
administration. The famine reaches into Canaan, forcing Joseph’s brothers—all but
Benjamin—to travel to Egypt to buy food. On meeting Joseph they fail to recognize him.
Joseph proceeds to harass his brothers, charging them with espionage and
demanding that they bring Benjamin—the only remaining son of Rachel—down to
Egypt, and twice planting stolen property in their belongings. Eventually they admit to
themselves that they are being punished for their crime against their brother. Facing
potential loss of brothers and sons, they grow to share their father’s anguish at the loss of
a beloved. This is cue for Joseph to recognize divine providence. After hearing a heartfelt
plea by Judah, he reveals his identity and rewards his brothers.
Joseph, like Rensi, detained members of lower social strata under false pretences.
Joseph’s brothers, like Khunanup, responded to adversity by following procedure—
returning with Benjamin and petitioning Joseph (Genesis 45:18-33)—and, like Rensi,
Joseph ultimately rewards his brothers. The social location of Joseph puts him in control
of his brothers, who were, like Khunanup, close to starvation and definitely situated
below the social level of the vizier of Egypt. Like Rensi, Joseph’s deception was made
possible by his privilege and Joseph’s brothers, like Khunanup, were vulnerable because
of their needs. Genesis 42-45 allows for the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams in which his
brothers serve him. Rensi’s detainment of Khunanup was at least well-meaning, in the
sense that it reflected awe at Khunanup’s eloquence and was accompanied by care for
him and his wife; Joseph’s detention of his brother, however, is manifestly more cruel,
far beyond what is needed to substantiate his dreams. Nowhere does the text make any
attempt to justify the anguish that Joseph’s actions unleash on his father. In this respect
while the initially dignified behavior of Joseph’s brother’s recalls Khunanup’s eloquent

adherence to procedure in form and spirit, Joseph’s realization of his own triumph echoes
Gimil-Ninurta’s exultation on administering just retributions.
3.2.3 The Exploitation of Poverty
Considering the first and second crises that befall Khunanup, it seems fair to
conclude that his social location left him particularly vulnerable to Nemtinakht and
Rensi’s abuses. As was noted in connection with Gimil-Ninurta in PMN, poverty
underlies the conditions of Khunanup’s abuse. If Khunanup was of a higher social
stratum he would not have gone to trade his goods for food, obviating the circumstances
of the crisis in the first place. Even if Khunanup had been a member of an upper social
stratum and had been journeying with cargo that attracted the attention of Nemtinakht, he
would still have been forbidden from treading on Nemtinakht’s garment. It is doubtful,
however, that Nemtinakht would have placed a garment across the narrow path before
someone of an equal or higher social rank. Nemtinakht seems to be of the opinion that,
as the folk saying goes, “a wretch’s name is uttered only because of his master” (B1 51),
and that members of lower social strata are disposable. Reinforced by the constant
repetition of the phrase “this peasant,” it seems fair to conclude that Khunanup’s social
location enabled his abuse on a number of levels.
Significantly, it may also be noted that Rensi’s surprise is directed at the fine
rhetoric of the outsider “peasant.” As the High Steward explains, “I have found one of
the peasants, whose speech is truly perfect…” (B1 106-107) Had Khunanup been a
member of an upper social stratum, it is unlikely that his case would have been brought to
the king and that he would have been thus detained in court, the second mistreatment
that, ironically resolves the first. It seems likely that the High Steward expected
Knunanup to speak in the manner of members of his social stratum, as he does at the
beginning of the tale with his wife (R1.3-4).
Although Khunanup’s cargo—“all the fair produce of Wadi Natrun” (B1 15)—
situates him somewhat above Gimil-Ninurta, the “poor and humble” (1) citizen of
Nippur, both characters struggle under the same immense pressure to redeem their
property. Gimil-Ninurta, it may be concluded from the range of adjectives heaped upon
him in lines 1-10, had no choice but to seek revenge upon the mayor and, it will be

argued, nothing to loose by doing so. He purchased his goat with his only garment, at the
same time his only possession. Although one might ask what he had planned to do after
consuming the goat, without assuming “real world” conditions, there would be no answer
to the question. The tale is fabulous and the characters are caricatures; Gimil-Ninurta
follows his gut feelings and purchases a goat.
Whereas Rensi’s response creates a new crisis for Khunanup, the response of the
mayor of Nippur in PMN enables the continuation of the ruses and the fulfillment of
Gimil-Ninurta’s vow. Both responses to adversity, interestingly, allow for the betterment
of the lives of the abused protagonists in the long term. That said, the initial crisis that
Khunanup faces find a striking, if not incidental, parallel in the abuse of Gimil-Ninurta,
and Rensi’s postponement of justice recalls the circumstances—but not underlying
motivations of—Joseph’s mistreatment of his brothers. Both Gimil-Ninurta and
Khunanup risk starvation as a result of the loss of their property. The pressure on the two
protagonists to resolve their crises is both acute and overwhelming.
3.3 Resolutions and the Justification of Retribution
As the circumstances of their abuses differed, Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup
responded to their adversity in different ways that reflected their individual and social
contexts. Gimil-Ninurta, it has been observed, is a great deal poorer than Khunanup,
although both characters indeed find themselves dangerously close to starvation when
members of the upper stratum of society confiscate their property. The goat that the
mayor of Nippur confiscates from Gimil-Ninurta represents his entire capital. In EP,
Khunanup finds himself forced to resolve two related crises: (1) the risk of starvation
caused by the confiscation of his livelihood, and (2) the deliberate postponement of
justice. Gimil-Ninurta’s response seems to have been conditioned by his overblown
poverty: he had nothing to lose and, as we shall see, everything to gain from his
vengeance. When PMN ends, Gimil-Ninurta finds himself with the means not only to
survive but also to thrive. Compared with Gimil-Ninurta, Khunanup had a great deal
more to lose, but, again, without his cargo, he had no means of sustaining himself and his
family. The most significant structural difference between the two tales is that while

Gimil-Ninurta’s crisis is easily, although unpredictably, resolved, Khunanup’s exemplary
response to the first crisis—his petition to Rensi—effects, ironically, the second crisis
(the postponement of justice) in partial resolution of the first crisis. That too, however,
will allow for Khunanup to live the rest of his life as a member of the upper stratum,
without having to fear starvation.
3.3.1 PMN: Drastic Times—Drastic Measures
Gimil-Ninurta set out from his courtyard having exchanged his only suit of
clothing for a three-year-old nanny-goat. After deciding not to share his goat with his
family, the trickster heads to the mayoral compound with the equivocal mandate of
devising for this official a “good and fair greeting.” Because the Poor Man enters the
mayoral compound after rejecting the possibility of a meal with his family and friends on
the grounds that they would be unable to provide other contributions to the meal—
underscoring the Poor Man’s poverty—readers presume that he is going to share a feast
with the mayor, but the gatekeeper assumes that he has brought a !ulmanum (=gift or
bribe); the mayor responds as if it is a bribe and the Poor Man does not correct him.
When the mayor confiscates the bribe, as head of a morally deficient town such as Nippur
might be expected to do, Gimil-Ninurta vows threefold revenge on the mayor, as one
would expect a pauper from Nippur to do in such a situation. Gimil-Ninurta’s vow, it
was observed, cunningly fulfills his mandate to devise a fitting greeting for the mayor,
but not in the way that was initially supposed.
After declaring his vow before Tukulti-Enlil the gatekeeper, Gimil-Ninurta “set his
face toward the palace of the King,” believing that, “on the orders of the King, prince and
governor [should] give fair judgment” (70-71). This statement reveals two aspects of the
hierarchy of authority operative in the fantasy world of the text: (1) the authority of the
King supersedes that of the mayor, and (2) the Poor Man has reason to expect, against all
“real world” expectations, that he will be given an audience with the king. The naked
Poor Man did not even bring a !ulmanum to present the king, as he had to the mayoral
compound.
Surprisingly, the naked, empty-handed pauper is given an audience with the King,
as he predicted, and, perhaps more surprisingly, once admitted he behaves with all the

formality that one would expect of a petitioner in the royal court. Gimil-Ninurta kisses
the ground before the King and greets him with both hands, which serves to remind the
audience that the Poor Man is no longer burdened with the task of leading a goat and to
indicate an elevated level of greeting. Interestingly, we do not see Gimil-Ninurta
mention any details of his case to the King, as we shall see Khunanup do in EP.
Nevertheless, the Poor Man speaks with eloquence that reminded Oppenheim of
Khunanup:79
Lord, strength of the people, King whom the guardian spirit makes glorious!
Let them give me a single chariot at thy command,
So that for one day, whatever I may intend, I may attain my desire.
For my one day my payment shall be one mina of red gold (75-78).
Perhaps acknowledging the improbability of the situation, the narrator intrudes on the tale
to observe that the King did not inquire why Gimil-Ninurta requested to rent the chariot
(on credit, no less), where he might have acquired one mina of red gold, or even what he
desired to achieve by means of those markers of status. It is clear from the King’s
response that Gimil-Ninurta behaved appropriately, at least according to the standards of
etiquette assumed in the world crafted by the folktale. It is moreover indicative of the
fantasy world created by the tale that Gimil-Ninurta, a pauper with, literally, nothing in
the world, knew the appropriate way to address a king. In any event, it is significant that
the King fulfilled his moral obligation to protect the poor without even realizing why or
how he was doing so.80
Outfitted by the King and clothed for the first time since line 14, Gimil-Ninurta
turns his attention toward Nippur and the compound of the mayor. It should be observed
that at this point in the tale it is not at all clear what Gimil-Ninurta has planned, although
it may be assumed that he gathered these supplies (lines 71-82) in order to fulfill his vow
because it immediately follows its declaration (lines 66-70). Along the way, he catches
two birds and places them in a sealed cashbox, perhaps increasing the wonder of the
audience; as the tale continues, “He (then) proceeded to the gate of the Mayor of Nippur”
(87). Box (and birds) in hand, the Poor Man posed as an official of the King bearing a
donation of gold (the birds) for the temple of Enlil. In honor of his arrival, the mayor,
79
80

Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia.
Lion, “La conception de la pauvreté.”

apparently fooled by the Poor Man’s upper class disguise, slaughters a highly valued
pasillu-sheep, providing Gimil-Ninurta with the meat he earlier sought (compare line 13
with 92).
Milano notes that PMN is a tale of reversals: Gimil-Ninurta visits the mayor in an
effort to obtain meat and fine beer and receives only gristle and third-rate beer while
when in disguise he brings a worthless box and receives the feast he sought earlier.81
Role reversals are one of three devices used in the tale with what Cooper identifies as
humorous effects and the present review will analyze in relation to its social status
significance. We should not, however, expect the sharing of a sheep to temper
Gimil-Ninurta’s lust for vengeance because all along his goal had been to bring the
mayor a “good and fair greeting” (22). When his goat was confiscated the tale ceased to
be about meat and the pasillu-sheep emphasizes that Gimil-Ninurta’s retribution seeks
recompense for more than lost property (3.2.1.1).
After Gimil-Ninurta lulls the mayor to sleep, he releases the birds that he had
earlier trapped and put in the cashbox. Feigning surprise, the Poor Man woke the mayor
and accused him of stealing the King’s donation to the temple. In another dramatic
reversal, the Poor Man tears the clothing lent to him by the King, which he did not have
the last time that he entered the mayoral compound. The mayor begs the Poor Man not to
“destroy a citizen of Nippur” (105), which is exactly what the mayor had done earlier to
the Poor Man, surprising as it may have been that he was named a citizen in the first line
of the tale.82 So Gimil-Ninurta inflicts a severe and comic beating on the mayor and is
rewarded with two minas of red gold and a suit of replacement clothes, building further
on the reversal because he had sold his clothes to purchase what the mayor took away.
As Gimil-Ninurta leaves the mayoral compound, he repeats his vow to the gatekeeper.
When the mayor heard that it was the Poor Man who beat him, he again laughed all day,
perhaps playing with laughter’s various meanings. It is not clear exactly what the mayor
means by his laughter , for, it will be remembered, that laughter can be a sign of
amusement, humor, incongruity, relief, anxiety, or a release from tension.83
81

Milano, “Aspects of Meat Consumption.”
Cooper, “Structure, Humor, and Satire.”
83
Black, “Laughter.”
82

Following the second ruse in fulfillment of Gimil-Ninurta’s vow, the Poor Man
has fully made the character shift from being the dupe (when he brought the goat to the
mayor) to the rascal (duping the mayor), which he achieves by fulfilling his vow. If it
were not already clear, it should by now be obvious that the Poor Man and the mayor are
caricatures of themselves. Gimil-Ninurta, the poor victim was wronged (duped) and is
bent on revenge (as a rascal) and the rich official, originally a rascal, cannot bring himself
to take the threat of the poor man seriously, allowing himself to duped twice more. The
role of the mayor in the story is as a dupe to Gimil-Ninurta’s rascal. The Poor Man, on
the other hand, is the trickster whose cause is the restoration of justice by means of threefold reciprocation.
Having completed the first ruse, Gimil-Ninurta immediately goes to visit a barber,
who shaves his head in the style worn by physicians. Again the tale gives readers no
insight into the rascal’s plan. Minimally disguised, the Poor Man returns to the mayoral
compound and introduces himself to Tukulti-Enlil the gatekeeper as a doctor from Isin,
recalling Reiner’s “Tale of the Illiterate Doctor in Nippur.”84 Tukulti-Enlil either fails to
recognize Gimil-Ninurta or wishes to bring more distress on his master the mayor,
because he allows him entrance—perhaps remembering the mayor’s chastisement for
having kept the Poor Man, a citizen of Nippur, at the gate (line 31)—and the “physician”
enters the presence of the mayor undetected. The mayor exclaims to his attendants “the
doctor is clever” (126), and he is correct: just not in the way that he apparently means. If
Nippur had a reputation for swindlers, Isin—the city of Gula the healing goddess—had a
reputation for healing. Gimil-Ninurta tells him that his cures are administered only in the
dark, and the mayor follows him far away from the eyes and ears of his attendants.
Shrouded by darkness, away from the attention of anyone who could help the mayor,
Gimil-Ninurta administers a second comic beating to his abuser.
As Gimil-Ninurta leaves the presence of the mayor, he declares a second time to
Tukulti-Enlil:
The abundance of the gods on your master! Give him this message:
For the one load which you put upon me
I have paid off the second score; there remains one (137-139).

Reiner, “Why Do You Cuss Me?”

Having disguised his identity from the mayor twice, Gimil-Ninurta was sure that he
would not be able to do so again: the mayor did not laugh at the Poor Man after the
second beating and it may be the case that he was beginning to take Gimil-Ninurta’s vow
seriously. Thus, in order to fulfill the third and final act of his promise of revenge,
Gimil-Ninurta employs the assistance of a bystander to draw the mayor out of his
compound by posing as “the man with the goat” (146) and announcing that his third
revenge was coming. Whereas before Gimil-Ninurta disguised himself, now he disguises
others as himself, in another reversal of roles. Ever the dupe, the mayor follows the
bystander to where the rascal Poor Man lay in wait. Gimil-Ninurta beats the mayor a
third and final time, fulfilling his goal of devising a “good and fair” greeting for the
mayor.
It should be noted that Gimil-Ninurta emerges from the fulfillment of his vow
earning a profit of two minas of red gold, one of which he owed to the King as payment
for the chariot and clothing that he used in his first ruse. It is not revealed that the Poor
Man actually retuned the articles lent to him by the King, so he may have retained the
chariot and garments as well as both minas of red gold, although tales such as this do not
need to tie up loose ends. It is this gold—either one or two minas—that readers presume
would allow the Poor Man to survive. It is his persistent and utter poverty in the scenes
leading up to his ejection from the mayoral compound that enables the complete abandon
that he displays in the fulfillment of his vow, even as it fed his rage. The goat that the
mayor confiscated was, literally, everything that he had in the world. For the same
reasons, readers might question exactly why Gimil-Ninurta decided to exchange his
garment for a goat, although, as has been noted, one can understand the way that a
starving man may be tempted by the prospect of a feast. It was the Poor Man’s desperate
hunger that compelled him to make a purchase as extravagant as a goat, adding further
importance to the poverty of Gimil-Ninurta. Indeed, Gimil-Ninurta’s poverty raises the
stakes of his crisis at the same time as it enables him to fulfill his vow to visit threefold
vengeance upon his abuser. Gimil-Ninurta had, literally, nothing to lose, and everything
to gain. Moreover, the mayor’s laughing response to the first two declarations of the
Poor Man’s vow enable the first two acts of revenge and plays a fundamental role in the
progression of the narrative.

3.3.1.1 PMN and Bakhtin’s Carnival
PMN exhibits a number of aspects of the carnivalesque, a term devised by
Russian literary theorist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin “to describe various
manifestations of popular humour and cultural resistance to the restraints of official
cultural hierarchies.”85 Bakhtin first observed the carnivalesque in the writing of
François Rebelais, a French Renaissance writer whose work, Bakhtin holds, exhibited the
qualities of medieval carnivals—role reversals and social inversions, profanation, parody
and satire, folk humor, comic violence, and often food. Bakhtin also observed the
carnival mode in the work of Dostoyevsky and Roman satires, leading him to the
conclusion that carnival literature is a transhistorical phenomenon.86
Bakhtin explains in Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics that medieval carnivals
were a mode of life “turned inside out,” and were rooted deeply in the “primordial order
and primordial thinking of man.”87 Carnival was not a spectacle, he explains, noting that
it:
does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators... Carnival is
not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates
because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no
other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is,
the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit; it is a special condition of
the entire world, of the world's revival and renewal, in which all take part.88
Carnivals were both destructive and productive, allowing society to overturn and renew
social convention. Destructively, carnival functions to create the world of inversions:
The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of
ordinary, that is non-carnival, life are suspended during carnival: what is
suspended first of all is hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror,
reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it.89

“Carnivalesque,” The Oxford Companion to English Literature (ed. M. Drabble; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000)
86
M. M. Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World (Trans. Helene Iswolsky; Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984); Idem. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (Trans. Caryl Emerson; Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984)
87
Bakhtin, Problems, 122.
88
Bakhtin, Problems, 7-8.
89
Bakhtin, Problems, 122-123.

Productively, carnival—and by extension carnivalesque literature—allows for the
creation of:
a new mode of interrelationship between individuals, counterposed to the allpowerful socio-hierarchical relationships of non-carnival life. The behavior,
gesture, and discourse of a person are freed from the authority of all hierarchical
positions (social estate, rank, age, property) defining them totally in non-carnival
life, and thus from the vantage point of carnival life become eccentric and
inappropriate.90
The productive aspect of carnival is made possible by the destructive aspect. At the same
time as carnivals turned cultures upside down, however, as T. Eagleton points out, they
were not fundamentally countercultural:
Carnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of
hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as
a revolutionary work of art. As Shakespeare's Olivia remarks, there is no slander in
an allowed fool.91
As much as it may turn society on its head, carnival was an accepted aspect of medieval
society that was a part of the mainstream, an insight that would be good to remember
when Bascom’s vision of folklore is discussed later on in this analysis.
As noted, PMN displays a number of characteristics of carnivalesque literature.
Most prominently, instances of comic violence move the plot and are the way that
Gimil-Ninurta avenges his injustice at the hands of the mayor. Three thorough beatings
are administered and organized in ways that lampoon the intelligence and integrity of the
civic administration. The beatings are made possible because the mayor, a caricature of
individuals in his position, unjustly confiscates the Poor Man’s goat and ejects him from
the compound, and his revenge is made possible by the mayor’s comic inability to
recognize danger, even when something as unlikely occurs as the arrival of a doctor from
a far away city at the exact moment that he needed medical attention.92 Besides comic
violence, humanity’s basic functions are highlighted in the tale—the desire to eat is the
primary factor that leads Gimil-Ninurta to the mayoral compound. It is Gimil-Ninurta’s
90
91

148.

Ibid.
T. Eagleton. Walter Benjamin, or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: NLB, 1981), p.

Cf. S.B. Noegl, review of H. Avalos, Illness and Healthcare in the Ancient Near East, AJS
Review 22.1(1997): 107-109.

extreme and comic poverty that leads him to make so impractical a decision as to sell his
garment, purchase a goat, and attack a mayor.
The frequently observed role reversals in PMN help to create the fantasy world of
the text, one that, to use Bakhtin’s description of carnival itself, might be called monde à
l’envers, “life turned inside out” or “the reverse side of the world.”93 The plot of the
story depends of the mingling of classes, what Bakhtin calls the “free and familiar
mingling of people” when he observes it manifested in carnival. Through the destruction
of class barriers in the world of the tale, Gimil-Ninurta is admitted to see the mayor and
the King even though he is naked. It is the (perhaps shocking) familiarity that the Poor
Man displays towards the institutions of his day that recalls the syncretic pageantry of
carnival. The carnivalesque tone of the tale is entirely dependent on Gimil-Ninurta’s
poverty, which underlies his behavior and enables his abuse at the same time as it allows
him to fulfill his vow by keeping the mayor from taking him seriously. As Eagleton
reminds readers, carnival is “a permissible rupture of hegemony,”94 and as such PMN
may be understood in Bascom’s terms as an escape that reinforces cultural norms of
social stratification by breaking them down in the world of the tale.
3.3.2 EP: Drastic Times—Measured Response
After having his livelihood confiscated by Nemtinakht—the first crisis—and
unsuccessfully appealing his case to his abuser Nemtinakht, Khunanup brings his
complaint to the next level of authority, Nemtinakht’s lord, Rensi the High Steward. The
majority of EP details the nine petitions of Khunanup to Rensi. First the peasant,
accosting the High Steward on the street, is granted an audience with one of Rensi’s
officials. After hearing the injustice of Khunanup’s case, Rensi, duly impressed by the
outsider’s eloquence, approaches the King. Apparently intrigued, the King orders Rensi
to detain the peasant as long as possible in order to hear and record as many petitions as
he is able to craft. The peasant’s rhetorical skill—combined, of course, with the King’s
unscrupulous but devoted love of rhetoric—ironically becomes the reason for
Khunanup’s second crisis, partially resolving the first crisis and highlighting the

93
94

Bakhtin, Problems, 122.
Eagleton, Walter Benjamin, 148.

importance of rhetoric in ancient Egyptian society. Because this aspect of the tale’s plot
differs so markedly from PMN it bears mention again: the partial resolution to the first
crisis brings upon the second, the resolution of which will resolve what remained
unresolved from the first crisis as well. The King’s decree remains unknown to
Khunanup, who proceeds to appeal his case eloquently eight additional times before
becoming frustrated with the process and storming out of the court. As far as Khunanup
knew, the second crisis was caused by the misunderstanding of his case, as expressed by
the silence of his fictional audience (Rensi), and Khunanup’s nine petitions wax
eloquently about the nature of Ma’at. Ultimately, the danger of starvation that seems to
motivate Khunanup’s petitions will lead to his elevation to the upper stratum of society.
3.3.2.1 Resolution II: An Eloquent Peasant?
A.H. Gardiner argued in 1923 that Rensi’s postponement of justice hinged on the
High Steward’s disdain for the petitions of the peasant, which he described as being:
clumsy and turgid in their expression. The metaphors of the boat and of the
balance are harped upon with nauseous insistency, and the repetition of the same
words in close proximity with different meanings shows that the author was
anything but a literary artist.95
Recent scholarship has cast a much more favorable light on Khunanup’s petitions, the
eloquence of which allow for understanding the grand artistry of the tale. As Parkinson
notes, “the petitions display a high level of rhetoric, and their motivation turns the plot
from a simple sequence of events into something more elaborate and ironic.”96 Lichtheim
agrees, describing EP as “a parable on the utility of fine speech.”97
Khunanup’s petitions are well crafted in a way that is entirely unexpected of such
a social and political outsider, an incongruity that may have guided Gardiner’s negative
evaluation. This is indicated in the text by: (1) Khunanup’s use of colloquial, “low”
language in communication with his wife, (2) the repeated emphasis on the peasant’s
class during his altercations with Nemtinakht and petitions, and (3) Rensi’s

Gardiner, “Eloquent Peasant,” 7-8.
R.B. Parkinson. Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt: A Dark Side to Perfection (New
York: Continuum, 2002): 168.
97
Lichtheim, AEL, 169.
96

communication with the King, which emphasizes the unexpectedness of the peasants
well-crafted speeches.
Noting the length of the petitions, M.V. Fox observed that there are a number of
aspects of Khunanup’s rhetoric that defy what is normally expected of petitioners,
including the length of petitions 2-9.98 Parkinson agrees, observing that petitioning in
ancient Egypt tends to have been a concise affair, comparing Khunaup’s lengthy appeals
to the Seventeenth Dynasty Karnak Juridical Stela, which records a petition that occupied
no more than one sentence.99 It bears mentioning as well that Khunanup’s petitions were
a great deal more poetic than the terse complaints referred to by Parkinson. It may be
concluded, therefore, that Khunanup’s petitions are exemplary in every respect, even
though they may not be accurate reflections of the etiquette of petitioning. They stand in
sharp relief with the way that he communicates with his wife and they seem to defy the
expectations of Rensi and the King. They are phenomenal and overblown versions of
petitions, crafted carefully to exemplify the excellence of the peasant.
The peasant’s first petition to Rensi begins by extolling the virtues of Ma’at, a
term which Tobin chooses leave untranslated to better reflect is Egyptian dual aspect.100
E. Teeter explains that the term Ma’at refers both to:
The ethical conceptions of “truth,” “order,” and “cosmic balance” …and the
personification of those principles is the goddess Maat… The goddess represented
the divine harmony and balance of the universe, including the unending cycles of
the rising and setting of the sun, the inundation of the Nile River, the resulting
fertility of the land, and the enduring office of kingship; she was considered to be
the force that kept chaos (isft) the antithesis of order, from overwhelming the
world.101
The peasant’s discourse on Ma’at begins in the very first line of his first petition, which
Parkinson explains:
is enjoined and its efficacy is described in gnomic statements, as are the results of
its presence and absence (e.g. ‘Look, Maat flees…’, B1 128-9). The eulogistic
sections allude similarly to Maat as the basis for the ideal official they acclaim.

M.V. Fox “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric” Rhetorica 1.1(1983): 12-15.
Parkinson, “Imposing Words,” 32.
100
Tobin, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 25.
101
E. Teeter. “Maat,” OEAE, II:319; In German, see J. Assmann. Ma’at: Gerechtigkeit und
Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (C.H. Beck, 1990), p. 58-91.
99

His articulation of Maat draws on cosmic, social and ethical aspects,
progressively emphasizing their interrelationship.102
Khunanup’s first petition speaks of Ma’at using the terminology of navigation and sets
the stage for subsequent appeals. It is the first petition that attracts Rensi’s attention. The
rhetoric of this petition is exceptional, and entirely unexpected of an itinerant trader like
Khunanup.
The fifth petition represents what Parkinson calls “a condensed statement of the
tale’s social aspect.”103 Khuanup entreats the High Steward to consider his case:
Do not rob the wretch of his belongings!
Hopelessness—you know what it is:
a pauper’s belongings are his breath—
taking them is suffocating him… (B1 262-265)
The general sentiment of the fifth petition is captured exquisitely by its closing three
lines, which feature another occurrence of the water imagery:
You were appointed as a dyke for the pauper—
beware lest he drown
Look, you are his lake, you who drag under! (B1 268-270)
One would expect a great deal of exaggeration in a petition such as this, and, as we noted
earlier, there is no reason to conclude that Khunanup was actually a pauper. Indeed, the
narrative introduction indicated quite the reverse. By means of this hyperbolic passage,
the rhetorician, exaggerating actual petitions, was highlighting the social dynamic (the
relative poverty of Khunanup) and making reference to his obvious need for the
necessities of life that are deprived him by Nemtinakht. Similarly, the term “slave”
occurs frequently in communications between individuals, especially when petitioners are
appealing to their social superiors.104 Contrary to Gardiner’s assertion, which we observe
was far from universally accepted, Khunanup’s eloquence does attract the admiration of
the King and it is justifiably praised: the peasant’s speech was crafted by a fine
rhetorician, leading Jason, among others, to conclude that although the tale was adapted

102

Parkinson, Dark Side to Perfection, 169.
Ibid.
104
S. Allam. "Slaves," OEAE, III:293-296.
103

from an oral original, like PMN, it was much further removed from its oral source than
the rhetorically simpler tale of Gimil-Ninurta.105
What does Khunanup’s social location do for the rhetorical speeches? Rensi,
surprised by the peasant’s petitions, goes to the King and notes explicitly that a peasant
pleaded his case eloquently; the King is also surprised. As noted, members of particular
social strata are often believed to have particular attributes (2.1.2), and it would seem that
eloquence was not expected in an outsider like Khunanup. The peasant’s poverty and his
unlikely eloquence lead the King to demand Rensi’s silence and provide the basis for the
subsequent development of the tale. The relatively low social status and relative poverty
of the peasant affect the message about rhetoric. The message conveyed by EP is that
one should reward skill wherever one finds it, a sentiment that echoes The Instruction of
Merikare in which Merikare is instructed:
Do not prefer the wellborn to the commoner
Choose a man on account of his skills,
Then all crafts are done ---…106
Whether the author of the instruction was exaggerating is a matter of debate; the central
point to be remembered is that upward mobility was both possible and a feat to be proud
of. It also notes that skills—including, for example, rhetoric—were acknowledged to
reside not only in the wellborn in the Middle Kingdom and that nobility are advised to
reward ability rather than rank. This, Parkinson notes, is one major theme in Middle
Kingdom literature, alongside the solitary hero—in our tale, Khunanup—both of which
figure prominently in EP.107
It was earlier observed that the first crisis that Khunanup faces, starvation after the
confiscation of his cargo, is partly resolved when the King orders Rensi to provide him
and his family with stipends. Ironically, however, this stipend is delivered only as long
as Khunanup continues to petition the High Steward to bring Nemtinakht to justice for
confiscating his livelihood. Khunanup’s ninth and final petition to Rensi proceeds much
like those that precede it, beginning by focusing on the supernatural aspect of Ma’at,
contrasting it in the second half with the social aspect of Ma’at. Khunanup ends his
105

Jason, Ethnopoetic Analysis, 194.
Lichtheim, AEL, 101.
107
Parkinson, Dark Side to Perfection, 129-138.
106

petitions with a tacit acceptance that justice sometimes does not come from this world,
substantially heightening the suspense in the audience that knows Rensi’s sympathy for
Khunanup’s case, by appealing to the god Anubis:
Look, I am pleading to you, and you do not hear—
I will go to plead about you to Anubis (B2 113-114).
With that, Khunanup leaves the court not to return with new petitions, appealing to a
higher authority just as he had earlier when he began appealing to Rensi over
Nemtinakht.
Khunanup does not attempt to make contact again with Rensi. Instead he is called
back, and to his surprise—but in a plot movement that seems foregone to readers—the
peasant is read back his petitions and they are sent to the King.
And they seemed more perfect to his [= the King’s] heart
than anything in the entire land (B2 131-132).
Consequently, Nemtinakht was given to Khunanup as a slave, along with his property
and his position. With this, the first part of Khunanup’s initial crisis—loss of property,
rather than starvation—is resolved, along with the complete second crisis. There remains
some degree of moral ambiguity concerning the treatment of the peasant, but all is set
right in the end. Indeed, it might be argued that the peasant is much better off than he
was before. The return of property effects a resolution of those elements of the first crisis
that remained unresolved—the injustice of Nemtinakht’s confiscation of Knunanup’s
property—and the complete resolution of the second crisis.
3.3.2.2 Some Functions of EP
The nine petitions of Nemtinakht artfully consider the nature of Ma’at, a
discourse that would have seemed somewhat surprising coming from a social outsider
like Khunanup. The so-called eloquent peasant was remarkable, despite Gardiner’s
contempt, for precisely this reason. On a very basic level, then, EP artfully considers the
nature of Ma’at. That Ma’at becomes the subject of the peasant’s petitions as a result of
injustice perpetrated through the abuse of power indicates that the tale may have also
functioned as a warning against abuse of lower strata, conveying the ethical imperative of

protecting weak members of society. The placement of the petitions in the mouth of a
social outsider recalls the Instruction of Merikare’s injunction to reward skill wherever
one finds it.
It also bears mention that, although Khunanup was not so poor that his cargo was
unattractive, he was poor enough that he was powerless when abused. (Additionally,
were Khunanup of a higher social standing, it is unclear whether he would have made the
trip by himself, but speculation like this tends to be unproductive.) Unlike the Poor Man
of Nippur, Khunanup had a great deal to loose, and he had a great deal to gain by winning
it back properly. Throughout the tale, Khunanup—for all he knew, disastrously—
followed procedure, but in the end his proper behavior is rewarded. It is ironic, we noted,
that Khunanup’s excellent petitions caused him so much grief, but in the end they also
elevated him to the upper stratum of society and led to the enslavement of his abuser.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine Khunanup responding to Nemtinakht with the same
abandon harnessed so productively (and destructively) by Gimil-Ninurta. Khunanup had
more to loose, and in any event his tale ends with a reversal that depends on Khunanup’s
proper conduct. All along the peasant behaved impeccably—as he repeats to
Nemtinakht, “my way is good”—and his lower social status is ultimately elevated to
reflect that conduct even as Nemtinakht’s is status downgraded to reflect his amoral
behavior.
As for the High Steward and the King, their devotion to rhetoric is exemplary, if
morally questionable. The tale is careful to indicate that no harm befell Khunanup at
their hands—the postponement of justice was inconvenient and inconsiderate but
partially resolved the first crisis and ultimately led to the doing of justice. That said, from
the perspective of Khunanup it might be asked whether the ends justified the means; that
is, does his eventual reward make the elongation of his suffering acceptable, and that
question has a great deal of validity and remains open at the end of the tale.
EP reinforces the value of proper behavior: although Khunanup believes Rensi to
be unsympathetic, the peasant’s exemplary response is eventually rewarded and
Nemtinakht’s abuse of power is ultimately punished. Not only did Nemtinakht lose the
social status and power that enabled him to take advantage of Nemtinakht, but he was
reduced to a social position (Khunanup’s slave) well below that originally held by his

victim (and new master), while Khunanup was given his abuser’s position and property.
Bascom asks whether it is possible to find a folktale that works against the
perpetuation of social norms. Tales that seem to do this, he maintains, should be
understood as escapes from the everyday hardships faced by the creators and audiences
of folktales. EP, it would seem, contains elements that reinforce social norms in a very
straightforward way—proper behavior, the rewarding of skill, respecting one’s social
superiors, judging fairly members of lower social strata, and devotion to rhetoric—and
elements that would seem to defy convention, primarily the postponement of justice.
Ultimately, however, the postponement of justice serves to heighten suspense in a
narrative that conveys very positive messages. It may thus be seen as an escape that
serves to reinforce social norms, not only by defying them in fantasy as “a compensatory
escape,” but also by aiding the transmission and inculcation of social norms.108

108

Bascom, “Four Functions,” 349.

CHAPTER IV:
CONCLUSIONS
Structurally and substantively, PMN and EP have a great deal in common. Both
tales tell the stories of lower stratum protagonists whose livelihoods are confiscated
unjustly by members of the upper strata of society. Although Khunanup is less poor than
Gimil-Ninurta, they are both far poorer than their antagonists, and their poverty
establishes a context of need in which the tales play with social location to advance their
plots. The relative poverty of the two protagonists raises the stakes in both tales and
leaves them vulnerable to the abuse of members of the upper stratum. If either Khunanup
or Gimil-Ninurta were to fail in their quests for justice, there is reason to believe that they
would not have survived, and indeed it is the success of their quest for justice that enables
them to do so. By means of contrasting the two tales, the present analysis has explored
the crises faced by Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup and the resolutions that they found,
while considering the central role played by need in the progression of the narrative.
The abuse suffered by Gimil-Ninurta, the caricature of a pauper who is abused at
the hands of the mayor in PMN, is made possible by his extreme poverty—outlined in the
opening ten lines of the tale—which, paradoxically allows for the fulfillment of his vow
for threefold revenge, against all “real world” expectations, by allowing him to slip under
the guard of his abuser who assumes, on the basis of Gimil-Ninurta’s social location, that
he does not pose a threat. Extreme poverty drove the Poor Man to make the less than
sensible decision to purchase a goat at the beginning of the tale, and his poverty drove
him to offer it to the mayor in hopes of parlaying the goat into a feast. Poverty left
Gimil-Ninurta vulnerable to the mayor’s abuse and it fueled the mayor’s indifference to
the threat posed by his vow, enabling the Poor Man to fulfill it. Gimil-Ninurta’s poverty
moreover creates a carnivalesque atmosphere that enables the mingling of social classes.
His poverty, it has been observed, heightens the stakes in his quest for justice and permits
him to take great risks in its pursuit.
In contrast, Khunanup’s more moderate response is that of someone with much to
lose. Khunanup seems to have been an itinerant trader whose stock was of some value.
His excellent use of accepted channels of appeal, however, is both surprising and

disastrous: Rensi is so taken by the peasant’s rhetoric that he brings his case to the King,
and postpones justice at his command in order to continue hearing his appeals. Poverty,
however, left the peasant vulnerable to the conniving of Nemtinakht and fostered his
indifference when the peasant tried to plead his case. When finally the peasant gains a
sympathetic audience in Rensi, his surprising rhetoric brings on another crisis, the
postponement of justice. This second crisis, which has an interesting parallel in Genesis
42-45, resolves the immediate threat of starvation—a byproduct of the first crisis—but
does not resolve the injustice perpetrated by Nemtinakht. Like Rensi, Joseph uses his
position as a member of the upper stratum of Egyptian society to detain his brothers
under false pretences in Genesis 42-45, charging them with espionage and dealing very
harshly with them. While the biblical tale fulfils the promise that Joseph would lord over
his brothers, Joseph’s excessive punishment of his brothers and abuse of his father recalls
the sentiment of Gimil-Ninurta’s threefold retribution. Rensi’s intentions were good,
while Joseph went beyond the assumption of dominion over his brothers to agonize their
father.
In view of what befell Khunanup, it is perhaps understandable why Gimil-Ninurta
acted so dramatically to resolve his crisis, although again, Gimil-Ninurta had nothing to
lose and everything to gain. The mayor had already shown himself to be unscrupulous by
confiscating the Poor Man’s gift and Gimil-Ninurta’s response may well have been his
only recourse. Although Khunanup is provided with a stipend, effectively preventing any
real harm from befalling him or his family, the perceived threat of harm that Khunanup
must deal with is substantial and, as far as he knows, he is fighting for his very survival.
Similarly, although Joseph’s brothers do not recognize the Egyptian vizier responsible for
their anguish as their brother, the audience knows that it is Joseph. In Egypt, Joseph
lords over his brothers in fulfillment of the dreams that led to his expulsion from Canaan.
Going one step further, however, Joseph antagonizes his brothers and their father,
perhaps excessively, echoing the spirit of Gimil-Ninurta’s call for threefold revenge.
The end result of PMN, EP, and Genesis 42-45 is the same: their lower stratum
characters are elevated to higher strata. In the case of Khunanup, the eloquent peasant is
given the property of his abuser Nemtinakht, and indeed is awarded the person of
Nemtinakht as a slave. Gimil-Ninurta finds himself in possession of one or two minas of

red gold, and, possibly, a chariot and suit of the mayor’s clothing. His reward, however,
was acquired on his own and somewhat illegally, although not necessarily amorally,
while Khunanup’s was bestowed upon him by Rensi and through accepted channels.
Joseph’s brothers, finally, are given land in Goshen and supplies for the duration of the
famine. Although their elevation the upper stratum of society will be short lived, and
their very presence outside of the land of Canaan puts into question God’s promise to
Abraham that his descendants will be numerous and posses the land of Canaan, Joseph
successfully resolved the immediate crisis facing Joseph’s family (starvation).
Because Joseph’s intentions are not clear, his abuse of his brothers is very
different from the postponement of justice by Rensi. In EP no actual lasting harm, as
opposed to perceived harm, was done to Khunanup. The tale makes it clear to the
audience very early on that Rensi sympathizes with Khunanup’s case and that his silence
is a ploy to continue hearing the peasant’s petitions. In addition, Khunaup’s second
crisis, the postponement of justice, makes possible his elevation to the upper stratum of
society.
The messages of the tales are not as clear as some have assumed. Whether one
lauds PMN for its implied social criticism, with Oppenheim in Ancient Mesopotamia, or
dismisses it, following Bascom, as a mechanism “to escape in fantasy from repressions
imposed upon him [and her] by society”109 depends, ultimately on the orientation of the
reader. One can as easily criticize Gimil-Ninurta for reacting radically as one can laud
him for taking decisive action. Although PMN is clear that the mayor was wrong,
whether Gimil-Ninurta was right to respond in the way that he did is another question
entirely. While the values of social hierarchy are challenged comically, other values are
reinforced, including, among others, reciprocity and fair treatment of those less fortunate.
The tale itself does not evaluate the behavior of the peasant and functions as a
carnivalesque escape from the hardships of the real world.
The message conveyed by EP is perhaps less straightforward. Khunanup’s
response to adversity followed accepted channels of appeal and he was punished for
doing so. Although EP is careful to show that no real physical harm—as opposed to
threatened harm—was inflicted upon Khunanup at the hands of Rensi, the High
109

Bascom, “Four Functions,” 343.

Steward’s commitment to rhetoric, at the expense of Khunanup, is at the very least
morally questionable. The postponement of justice underscores the importance of
rhetoric, even though it at times seems to defy the moral imperative of taking care of the
poor. Ultimately the postponement of justice functions to heighten suspense and irony in
the tale, and may thus be said to support the perpetuation of social norms by making EP a
more engaging story and by providing a sanctioned outlet of escape, especially for
individuals involved with the court.
Both PMN and EP tell the story of exceptional lower stratum protagonists; it is
precisely because their actions are remarkable that their stories are worth telling. Neither
character, it has been noted, conforms exactly to the norms of their social matrices.
Conveniently, Bascom’s proposal accounts for all contingencies: if the tale diverges
from accepted societal norms, as Gimil-Ninurta’s vow and Rensi’s devotion to rhetoric
would seem to, then it functions as a mechanism of escape from the pressures of
everyday (“non-carnival”) life. If, on the other hand, the folktale inculcates accepted
norms, such as fighting injustice, with whatever lack of proportion, in the case of
Gimil-Ninurta, or following procedure or rewarding skill wherever one finds it, in the
case of EP, then the tales may be said to reinforce accepted norms. Although poverty and
the quest for justice play an absolutely central role in the progression of PMN and EP, it
is only possible to speculate about exactly what function the tales may have served in
their social contexts, whether it be escape or reinforcement of social norms. And, at all
events, that functions of the tales no doubt evolved as they migrated into different social
and historical environments.
The unique contribution of PMN and EP among other ancient Near Eastern texts
that talk about the poor is in the way that their storytellers represent lower strata
characters, and as such the tales serve as indispensable artifacts of ancient life even if
they cannot necessarily be relied upon as historical records. Speiser was indeed correct
to stress with Gurney that PMN presents Mesopotamians in a lighthearted mood, and the
text, along with EP, plays with poverty in a way that is also unexpected.110 Poverty
functions as an important underlying condition of the abuse of Gimil-Ninurta and
Khunanup that empowers and motivates their very different reactions. Khunanup and
110

Speiser, “Sultantepe Tablet 38 73 and Enuma Eli! Iii 69.”

Gimil-Ninurta are caricatures of themselves and cannot, of course, be considered accurate
descriptions of lower strata people. Accordingly, little from PMN and EP can be
assumed to reflect the everyday speech and mores of lower strata Mesopotamians and
Egyptians; indeed, Khunanup got into trouble precisely because his speech exceeded
expectations! In this sense, PMN and EP reflect the imaginations of their storytellers,
whose tales, as Bascom has argued, function to reinforce social norms.

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