R.B. Parkinson, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant.
144 pp; 25 x 17 cm; p/back ISBN 0 900416 60 2 £12.00; h/back ISBN 0 900416 61 0; 1991. £25.00.

This is one of the masterpieces from the golden age of Egyptian literature in the Middle Kingdom. Although the Tale has been much studied and quoted, there has never been a full parallel edition of the manuscripts. This volume fills that gap and provides a standard text to serve as a basis for future research. For the edition of the Egyptian text, Richard Parkinson has collated the transcriptions with the original papyri in Berlin and London, and proposes a number of new and improved readings. The textual notes supply facsimiles of problematic passages, offer restorations for damaged sections, and record the variant readings of previous scholars. The introduction describes the four manuscripts and discusses their date and provenance. Richard Parkinson constructs the first stemma for the textual tradition of the Tale, as well as presenting a history and bibliography of previous studies.

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