STORIES OF MAGICIANS WHO LIVED UNDER THE ANCIENT EMPIRE


The short stories of the wonderful deeds of ancient Egyptian magicians
here given are found in the Westcar Papyrus, which is preserved in the
Royal Museum in Berlin, where it is numbered P. 3033. This papyrus was
the property of Miss Westcar of Whitchurch, who gave it to the eminent
German Egyptologist, Richard Lepsius, in 1839; it was written probably
at some period between the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties. The texts
were first edited and translated by Professor Erman.


THE MAGICIAN UBAANER AND THE WAX CROCODILE

The first story describes an event which happened in the reign of Nebka,
a king of the third dynasty. It was told by Prince Khāfrā to King Khufu
(Cheops). The magician was called Ubaaner,[1] and he was the chief
Kher-heb in the temple of Ptah of Memphis, and a very learned man. He
was a married man, but his wife loved a young man who worked in the
fields, and she sent him by the hands of one of her maids a box
containing a supply of very fine clothes. Soon after receiving this gift
the young man proposed to the magician's wife that they should meet and
talk in a certain booth or lodge in her garden, and she instructed the
steward to have the lodge made ready for her to receive her friend in
it. When this was done, she went to the lodge, and she sat there with
the young man and drank beer with him until the evening, when he went
his way. The steward, knowing what had happened, made up his mind to
report the matter to his master, and as soon as the morning had come, he
went to Ubaaner and informed him that his wife had spent the previous