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FASCINATION WITH ANCIENT EGYPT AT ORVIETO, ITALY
RECONSIDERING SENENMUT'S TT353 AT DEIR EL BAHARI
LEGACY OF TABUBUE, EGYPTIAN FEMME FATALE
LIFE & DEATH IN THE PYRAMID AGE - & MORE
7 ""25274"78386""" 1
Lega
tial
if 'l
by Steve Vinson
rom the days when Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Ring of Thoth" in 1890,
and even earlier than that, all sorts of stories of the supernatural have been set
in ancient Egypt. So no one should be surprised to learn that the ancient Egyp
tians themselves told their own tales of ghosts and living mummies, or that
these stories were often set in forgotten tombs and dark sepulchers, which the
Egyptians found just as uncanny as we do. But it might be surprising to discover
that our modern tradition of Egypt-themed horror tales has a root or two in
Egypt's own ghost-story genre - or better, in one particular tale from the genre: a
story known today as the "First Tale of Setne Khaemwas."l
The "First Tale of Setne Khaemwas" - or, for short, "Setne 1" or "First
Setne" - is a story from Egypt's Ptolemaic period, written in the cursive De
motic script.
2
It is the tale of a priest, prince and magician named Setne Khaem
was, who searches an ancient tomb for a legendary Magic Book written person
ally by Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic and writing. And it's the story of the
consequences of that search - consequences tragic, horrifying and even comic.
But Setne Khaemwas isn't, as it happens, the most interesting character in "First
Setne" or in its many modern adaptations, which include the 1932 Universal
Studios film "The Mummy."3 That distinction belongs to Tabubue, a femme fa
tale so irresistible that she could drive a man to murder his own children, in ex
change for her favors. This ghostly seductress has fascinated readers almost
47 Kmt
since 1867, when the first translation of "First Setne" was publish
ed by the pioneering Demoticist Heinrich Brugsch4 - certainly
since 1882, when the story appeared in the first widely read anthol
ogy of anci ent Egyptian lit erature , Gaston Maspero's Les colltes pop
ulaires de l'Egypte anci enll f (Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt)
5
Ta
bubue even has a registered hyhrid daffodil - the "Thubui" daf
fodil - named for her
6
I am reasonabl y certain lhat nothing like
that can be claimed for any other character from Egypt's ancient
fiction.
efore we turn to the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Cen
tury authors who paraphrased or adapted our tale, we should
take a closer look at the story itself and its background. The
character Setne Khaemwas, in fact , figures in a number of stories or
fragment s of srories from the Graeco-Roman period, in which he
experiences various supernatural misadventures. Besides "First Set
ne," only one other, the predictably named "Second Tale ofSetne
Khaemwas, " is substantially intact.
7
But the Setne Khaemwas of these tales is actually the fic
tional alter-ego of a known, historic person: a high-priest of Ptah
named Khaemwas , one of the most important sons of the Nine
teenth Dynasty pharaoh Rameses 11. Khaemwas has been described
as the "First Egyptologist. " He was known as a scholar who was in
terest ed in Egypt's remot e past, and he restored a number of impor
tant-but-dilapidated Old Kingdom monuments near MemphiS. And
as a priest, he was surely interested in religious texts and in what
we would call "magic." So real aspects of Khaemwas's lire and ca
reer are reneeted in his legendary persona
B
One of the historic Khae.lllwas' priestly titles was thaI of
scm , an office of uncl ea r basic function. Already in the Egyptian
New Kingdom, the l.itl e scm was occasionally spelled with an exLra
consonant t as setcIII, which is the basis of the spelling Setmc that is
often found in Demotic. But also in Demotic, there was a further
development: in some texts, the finalm appears as II, as it does in
the manuscript of "First Setne," which spells the word SeLne. In the
Demotic stori es, these forms or the title seem to be thought of as
part of Khae\TIwas's personal name - in fact , he's most ofl.en re
ferred to as simply "Setne," rather than "Setne Khae\TIwas."
"First Setne" itself is known from a si ngle manuscript ,
today in the Cairo Museum (Cairo Cat. 30646). Auguste Mariette,
founding director of the Egyptian Allliquities Service, bought "First
Setue" as part of a group of Coptic, Demotic and hieraric papyri,
probahly around 1860
9
In its currelll state, the "First Setne" papy
rus is divided into two pieces of two columns each, which - un
usual for an ancient Egyptian manuscri pt - are numbered, three
through si.x. I suspect that whoever discovered the papyrus in mo
dern times tore it into three s h e e L ~ , and sold the sheet with co
lumns one and two to some long-forgotten collector. The remain
ing sheets were later purchased by Mariette.
He bought all the papyri in the group in Luxor, but where
they were actually found remains a mystery. According to the most
widely circulated account of their discovery, the texts came [rom a
Single wooden chest, discovered by local Egypti ans in a CoptiC
tomb i.n Deir cl Medi.na, on the Luxor west hank
JO
- an iruproba
hIe scenario, since the individual texts span a period of more than
1,500 years, from the Third Intermediate Period to Lhe Eighth Cen
tury AD.11 On the other hand, Heinri ch Brugsch himself later
maintained that "First Selllc, " at least, had heen discovered ncar
Cairo, at Sakkara, the necropolis of ancient Memphi s, rather than
near Luxor. 12 But this claim has never been corroborated, or even
repeated in any other source that 1 know of. 1 suspect that the pa
pyri were discovered separately in West Luxor, at various times be
tween 1850 and 1860. l3ut no one can say for certain.
n the tale's lost beginning (columns one-two), Setne somehow
learns of the existence of the Magi c Book, and that it is located in
the Memphite tomh of a certain Naneferkaptah - in life, a
prince and powerful magici an himsel f. Setne breaks into the LOmb
and attempts to steal the 1300k. l3ut he is interrupted by the ghost
of Ihweret , Na neJerkaptah's sister and wife , who is in the tomb
along with the ghost of the coupl e's son , Meribptah.
Ihwerel hopes to persuade Setne to abandon his quest ,
and tells Setne the tale of Naneferkaptah's and her own disas trous
search for the Book. When we are ahl e to pick up the story at the
beginning of column three , Ihweret's long slOry-wiLhin-a-story is
already underway. Ihweret expl ains that an old priest had tempted
Naneferkaptah with a tale of a Book written by Thoth himself, hid
den in Koptos (modern Qift, near Luxor); and she describes how
the search had ended in her own death and in the deaths of Nane
ferkaptah and their son.
BUl this was not the worst of it. Although Ihweret and
Meribptah are at thi s moment spirituall y present in Nancferka
ptah's Mcmphite tomb, thei.r mummies are actually huried in Kop
tos, near the site of their deaths, and so the family must endure
eternal separation. Ihweret begs Setne to leave the 1300k in peace,
since the entire family had given their lives for it. But Sctne will not
he put off; and , following a slapstick encounter with the living
mummy of Nanderkaptah, he succeeds in taking the Book.
Setne heli eves that he has gotten away scot-free, but soon
he has a terrifying encounter with the mysterious Tabubue, who
convinces him to agree to the murder of his own children in ex
change for her favors. Fonunately, this turns oUl to be an illusion,
contrived by Naneferkaptah andlhweret (of whom Tabubue is
probably a manifestation), to motivate Setne to return the Book.
And Setne now realizes this is the better part of valor.
l3ack ill Naneferkaptah's tomb, Setne asks what he can do
to make amends. Naneferkaptah asks that Setne travel to Koptos to
bring the mummies of Ihwerel and Meribptah to Memphis for re.
burial with Naneferkaptah. Se tne agrees, and a reader gets the di s
Linct impression that the entire convoluted train of events had been
orchestrated by Naneferkaptah with just that resolUl.ion in mind.
I
n the many adaptations of "First Setne" created since the late
Nineteenth Century, it's been the encounter between Setne and
Tahubue that has attracted by far the most attention. So we
should examine t.hat in more detail. The episode begins after SeIne
had escaped from the Tomb of Nanefcrkaptah with the Book. At
the Templ e of Ptah in Memphis, Setne sees "a certain extraordi nar
ily, pcerlcssly beautiful \Vomwl' ShE 11'(1$ wearing a qllClntity of go ld
jewelry, with a 11III11bcr of young gi rls accompanying lJ el; and witl! two
staff-members of the /Joll se/Jold aSSi gned to hel:"
Setne learns that this woman is Tabubue , daughter of a
priest of Bastet. He sends a sen'ant to her with an offer of ten pieces
of gol d for a tryst. I3Ul Tabubue makes a provocative counter-offer:
Go say to Setne: "[ am priestly; [ mn not common. If it so happens that
you [desirel to do what yOIl lust for witll me, YOll (ne to come to the
BllbClslieioll [the Temple of Bastet at Sakkara 1, to my hOll se. EvelY
thillg is thel'f . [Ollly ill this way] is it that YOll shall do what YOIl \Vallt
with me: without allyo/le at all havingfoulld IIIC, and with /lie /l ot hav
ing acted the strllmpc1 ill the sight of the 51 I'eft' "
Setne is happy to take her up on this proposal, and trav
els hy boat to her sumptuous villa. She greets him warmly, but af
ter introductory pleasantries things get strange inde.ed. Sellle press
es Tabubue to the business at hand, but she begins to make a series
of demands, always prefaced with the same, inscrutabl e statement:
You will reach your hOllse, the thing that you ar'c in. If YOIl desil'e to do
49 Kmt
what you lust for with me, you must .. .
At one level, Tabubue probably means herself, when she
says that Setne will "reach" his "house." In ancient Egyptian love
poetry, a man's entry into a woman's "house" is often an obvious
metaphor for sex. But Tabubue's favors don't come cheap, and her
demands begin to mount. First , Setne has to sign over all of his
property to Tabubuc. Next, Setne's childre.n are to co-sign the trans
fer documents, so that they will not later sue to reclaim their lost
inheritance. Setne agrees to both conditions.
All of this may sound somewhat drastic, but, legally speak
ing, Tabuhue is simply demanding what amounts to a marriage
so far, her requirements are in line with real, Ptolemaic-era matri
monial and property law13 What is suspiciously odd , however, is
the convenient coincidence that Setne's children just happen to ap
pear at Tabubue's door at this very moment. And while they sign
off on Tabllblle's paperwork, Tabubue herself makes a quick cos
tume change: Tahuhue got up and put 011 a dress offinest linen. Sane
saw evel)' pan of her hody through it, and how his lust came on - to
a point even heyond that which he Iwd experienced at fi rst!
Now, Setne is primed for Tabuhuc's final demand: his
children are to he killed, so they cannot renege on their agreement.
And Setne can't say no. His children are murdered and thrown to
the dogs and cats in the slreet, and Setne heads for the bedroom
with Tabubue. But before he has his way, Tabubue suddenly screams
and vanishes, along with her villa. Setne finds himself outside, nak
ed, hot and wilh his penis inserted in some physical object - ap
parentlya pot, possibly a chamber-pot. 14
Setne ne.xt meets a figure who appears to be the Pharaoh.
Setne is humiliated and unable to rise in the presence of Pharaoh
- probably actually Naneferkaptah - who takes pity and informs
him Ihat his children are still alive.
T
abllbue's manipulation of Setne, the titillating juxtaposition
of sex and death, and especially Tabubue's transparent linen
dress, were immediately picked up by alllhors who borrowed
aspects of the tale. Today, the 1932 film "The Mummy" is probably
the Single best-known and most-influential "Setne" adaptation; but
its connections to our tale are not completely obvious, doesn't re
ally involve a Tabubue-like character, and was not discussed in
print before 2003. More often, whenever anyone familiar with
"First Seme" has contemplated the tale's modern influence, it's
probable that the name "Nefernefernefer," the felllllle fatale from
Mika Waltari's The Egyptian (original Finnish publication, ]945),
has come to mind. 15
The authorized English edition of Waltari's novel is sub
stantially abridged; but even so, the connections between Neferne
fernefer and Tabubue are obvious: Nefernefernefer drives Sinuhe,
hero of The Egyptian, to give her all of his property - even the
tomb he has purehased for his parents - in exchange for her fa
vors. But in the Finnish original (and in unabridged translations),
the link is completely expliCit. Nefernefernefer actually recounts
the story of Tabubue and Setne Khaemwas (called "Setne the son of
Khemvese") for Sinuhe , and even says directly: "Sinuhc, you should
III10w that 1, too, coljld be called 'Tabubue.' "1 6
But "SeIne" adaptations can actually be traced back to the
1880s - in fact , "First Setne" and Tabubue fit the Victorian Zeit
geist perfectly. "First Setne" resonated strongly with the fascination
for mummies and the supernatural that characterized late-Victorian
Britain.
17
And the nOLion of the ancient Egyptian or Middle-East
ern fel11me fatale was also a powerful image for late-Nineteenth
Century Europe. This was tied to the period's conception of the
Middle East generally as "feminine," but also to a traditional image
of Cleopatra and other notorious Middle Eastern females (the Bi
Kmt50
ble'sJezebel and Salome, for example) as homicidal vixens, which
long pre-dated the discovery of any "Setne" [ales. 18
P
robably the most influential Victorian "Setne" adaptation
indirect, to be sure - was She: A HislOlY of Advellturc, by H.
Rider Haggard (1887). She was one of the most popular nov
els of the late-Victorian period, and set the pattern for the super
natural adventure thriller [hat we are still familiar with, in films
like the "Indiana Jones" or modern "Mummy" series
19
In fact, She
loomed large in the basic plotting of the 1932 "The Mummy" Hag
gard's She shares a number of themes with "First Setne," the most
important being its central premise: a (near)-immortal magician
hopes for an eternal reunion with a beloved, whose death the magi
cian had caused in the distant past.
20
"She" - or as often in the novel, "She-who-must-be
obeyed" - is A),esha, an Arabian sorceress who rules a kingdom
somewhere in sub-Saharan East Africa. Ayesha seems to combine
aspects of both Tabubue and Naneferkaptah's protective, loyal sis
ter Ihweret , in a femll1c-fatal e character who is both sympathetic
and terrif),ing. In some ways, she also recalls Naneferkaptah and
Selne: Ayesha is a magician herself, able to read ancient hi ero
glyphic inscriptions. Ayesha has been obsessed for centuries with a
Greek priest named Kalikrates, whom she had murdered more than
2,000 years earlier, after he had rebuffed her attempts at seduction.
Now Kalikrates has been reincarnated as a young English adven
turer, Leo Vincey, and Ayesba hopes to win his love and spend eter
nity with him.
One of the greatest scenes in Shc comes when Ayesha un
veils herself for the novel's besotted narrator, a middle-aged BriLish
scholar named Horace Holly - a scene that closely resembles Ta
bubue's unveiling for Setne: She lift cd her white and rounded ar//lS
never had 1 seen sllch anns hefore - and slowly, very slowly, withdrew
some fastening henf(lth her hair Th en all of a sudden th e long, corpse
lihe wrappingsIell frol11 her to the ground, and Illy eyes traveled up her
fO l-111 , llOW mhed only in a garh of clinging white that did but serve to
show its pC/fect and imper-ial shape, instinct. with a life that was //lore
tiran life, and with a certain serpentlike grace that was more than Iru
21
man
B
Ut if Haggard's adaptation was indirect, many other late
Nineteenth Century authors paraphraseclthe story directly.
Among the most dramatic versions was "The Book of Thoth,"
by the once-famous Lafcadio Hearn, included in his antholog),
Stray Leaves fro 111 Strange Literature (1884)22
Hearn was a fascinating character. Born in Greece to a
Greek mother and an Irish father, he lived for a time in New Or
leans, where he worked as a journalist, translator and author.
23
Like most early popularizers of the tale, and many scholars as well ,
Hearn could not bring himself to mention Setne's penis in print,
but his description of Thoutboui's body (his spelling of our "Tabu
bue") in the obligatory "unvei.ling" scene, was unusually daring for
its era: Thou/holll appeared upon the t/lI'cs hold, ro/Jed in texllll'cs of
whitc, transparent as the dresses of those danCing women limned IIpon
the walls of the Pharaoh's palace; and as she stood against the light ,
Sawi ,24 heholding th e litheness of her limbs, the flexihility of her hody,
felt his heart ccase to heat within him, so that he could not speah.
.. And Satni , gazing upon the wite/leI)' of her/Josoltl , curved like ivory
carving, rollllded like the eggs of till: ostricil,jorgot his loving chil
dren.,,25
Hearn was at his most dramatic in the tal e's climax: But as
Sawi sought to clasp her and to fliss IleI; lof Her ruddy mOllth opened
arld extended and broadened and deepened - yawning widel; dar/l eI;
quichly, vastly - a hlachlless as of necropoles, a vastness as of Amell
",! ~ Ii ;.,:,:.;'}.::, .:;:. '.' '.
. ' .'
.'
thi !26 And SaIni beheld only a gulf before him, deepening Clnd shadow
ing lillC nighl ; andfrom oul of the gulf a burst of lempest roared up,
and bore him wilh iI, and whirled him abroad as a leaf. And hi s s e l l . ~ e s
leflhim .. .27
decade later the tale was adapted in a short illustrated-novel
titled Tabubu (1894) - a paraphrase of the 1877 Revillout
ediLion - puhli shed in France under the name J .- H. Ros
ny28 This was a pseudonym, used collaboratively by two Belgian
brothers, Joseph and Seraphin Boex, pioneers of science- and fan
Lasy-fiction .
29
The Boex brothers' preface shows just how com
pelling Lhey had found Tabubu: II Ithe talel is absorbing ill detail,
sometil11es touching, sometimes eni gmatic, and quite completely am
01'0115 and terrible in the advenlure of the daughter of the pri est of
Bubaslet,30 the incomparable alld perilous Tabllbu , with Prince SelIW
J1
By no means shall we, wilh a clulllsy SUllllnal)" despoil for the reader
thi s incredibl e stol)" ill which anci enl Egypt sholVs itself so expert in
th e sci ence of seduction, in the Imowledge of tile power of W0l11Wl
J 2
A publi sher'S blurb used in advertisements for the novel
was even more lurid: This lillI e novel , I.he 1110s1 perfect remnant of
Egyptian literalure yel discovered, treats the elernal subject of the ter
rible power of woman over til e enamored lIIatl. Tabubu , th e hel'O in e
whose perversily equals her beauty, is the Salom e, the Cleopatra, the
Lllcretia Borgia, the Manoll Lescaut , of anci cl1I Egypl.55
The Boex brothers' feeling that Tabubu is the cellter of
gravity of the tale was refl ected in both the book's tide and its illus
trati ons, in which Tabubu is especially prominent . These illustra
tions were done by the team of Ludek Marold. a young Czech illus
Irator active in Paris in the 1890s, and a certain "Milli s. "
Whoever "Millis" was , he - or she - was responsible
for six generiC illustrations of Egyptian landscapes , imagery and
buildings
3 4
Marold did the five Tabubu illustrations which include
characters - all skillfully racy, if conventionally neo-Classical. Hi s
fronti spiece shows Lhe head and shoulders of a reclining. semi
nude Tabubu, face in profil e. with just a vulture-headed diadem for
Egyptian flavor. This Tabubu's face cl osely resembl es Cleopatra in
Lawrence Alma- Tadema's 1883 painting of the meeting between
Cleopatra and Marc Amony at Tarsus. The shoulders are in si milar
positions, the faces both in profile with similar backswept hair, di
adems, heavy eye make-up and prominent aqUiline noses, rounded
jawlines and bulbous chins - although Marold has made Tabubu
prettier by LOning down her chin .
Next is Tabubu as Setna first sees her, on the main av
emle of the Temple o( Ptah in Memphis, modestly dressed, strolling
past a small sphinx. This sphinx is not part of the scene in "First
Selne" itsel f or ill Tabubu -1 suspect that Marold imagined it bas
ed on Lhe avenue of sphinxes that Mariette had di scovered at Sak
bra in 1850, associated with the Serapeum (tombs of the Apis
Bulls) 35
Setna himsel f appears only once in 1(lbubll , being served a
Kmt52
drink by one 01 Tabubu's servams. This servant-girl is Marold's in
vention, as is SeIna's nudity. The girl's vulture cap is the only direct
clue that this is an Egyptian scene; but her nudity might have been
inspired by images of naked servant-girls at Egyptian banquets,
which contemporary excavations of Theban tombs were revealing.
The key image in Tabllbll is of the heroine in her transpar
em linen dress. This romantic image conveys jusllhe sort of gauzy
sexuality that late Victorians appreCiated.
Finally, Tabubu prepares to welcome Selna to bed. With
her heels together and toes pointed outward, Tabubu takes the
"First Position" of a ballet dancer - completely understandable,
since these images belong to Paris of the 1890s, when ballerinas
had become almost a cliche.
But the more importam detail is the way in which Tabu
bu arranges her hair. This is a Greek convention found in sculp
tures of the nude Aphrodite rising from the ocean, wringing water
from her braids. So, between the reclining Tabubu in the book's
frontispiece and this image, Marold has situated his Tabubu visu
ally between Cleopatra and Aphrodite - exactly where a Ptolemaic
Jemme Jatale ought to be.
T
he original Rosny Tabubu was a pocket-sized volume that
cost two francs. Today, it's possible to buy a first-edition for
around US$1 00. But Tabllbu was republished in 1932, in a
limited edition with new images by Maurice Lalau, a very skilled
but largely forgotten French illustrator
3 n
Today, copies of this rare
re-edLtion can sell for close to US$lO,OOO.
What explains this price? Only 110 ten copies were prim
ed, essentially by hand, in a four-year-long project. There are ten
full-page illustrations and many smaller illuminations done in Art
Deco style, with superb draftsmanship. Lalau did not slavishly
copy Egyptian art, but he understood Egyptian artistic conven
tions, and he used them, combined with other conventions, very
effectively. The plates are especially striking for their hand-applied
gold c1etai.ls.
The most attractive of Lalau's illustrations is Setna's [irst
view of Tabubu, with Setna's head turned almost all the way around
to look at her. There's something particularly affecling about the
hand gestures of Tahubu and her servant-girls - they seem simul
taneously Oirtatious and ritualistic, which is perfect.
But the dramatic climax of the tale is Tabubu's presenta
tion of herself to Setna and the murder of Setna's children. Neither
the Demotic tale nor the Rosny text make Tabubu nude at this
point. But Lalau's image of Tabubu reclining on a divan, Setna's
children being executed in the background, and Setna burying his
face in his hands , is tremendously ironic.
Marold's nude Tabubu updates the "odalisque" motif fa
miliar from Nineteenlh Century Orientalist art, in which a scantily
clad or completely naked harem girl is displayed on a bed or divan.
But this image has a closer analog: Alexandre Cabanel"s 1887 paint
53 Kmt
ing of Cleopatra looking on as prisoners are administered poison.
In each image a young, beautiful, impassive Egyptian woman is
Juxtaposed with males who die in agony at her whim. Compare the
body positioning, the placement of c.ach Jemme Jatale on a divan, it
self on a raised platform, with the killings carried out in the bac.k
grounds. Each figure has a vulture cap, and even the light rakes
into each scene from [he same direction and at approximately the
same angle. So, like Marold before him, Lalau connects Tabubu vi
sually LO Cleopatra - but here, specifically to Cleopatra in her
black-widow aspect.
ne of the few alterations that the Boex brothers made to the
Demotic tale's plot was that they have Setna actually make
love to Tabubu. This was not from any romantic impulse.
Every writer of the era who translated or adapted "First Setnc" for
general readers faced a common problem: how to handle the after
math of the Setne-Tabubue encounter, in which Setne's manhood
features so prominently. Maspero removed the reference Lo Setne's
penis from his translation in Popldar Stories. The British archaeolo
gist Flinders Petrie, who edited an anthology of Egyptian tales him
self in 1895, went farther: he expurgated the entire Setne-Tabubue
episode, on the grounds that it was "not creditable to Egyptian soci
ely. ,,37
Some non-Egyptologists took the same approach as the
Boex brothers
38
Gilbert Murray, a professor of Classics at Oxford
University who published a book-lengLh, poetic version of "First
Setne" in 1911 (The StOty o{NeJrehepta), solved the "problem" with
a unique, Gothic touch: he had his Ta-bubue (as he spelled the
name) suddenly transformed into a corpse. In Murray's poem, after
Setne has allowed Ta-bubue to execute his children, he appears
momentarily sorry, and Ta-bubue replies:
'Hast tholl not me,' she said, 'in place of alP
Come, thereJore!' And she led him through the hall
To aJail' WItch, ebon and ivory;
And down he lay, and spread swiJI arms withal
To clasp 111'1'; and wilhin his arms OllLsprecul,
Behold, she withered, withered, (llld Iter head
/I had 110 eyes, alld downward (II/ her jaw
Dropped, lihe the jaws oj tile uncared-Jor dead
3 9
B
ut one way or another, nearly every "First Setne" adaptation
[rom this era was consistent in emphasizing what modern
readers have almost always seen: the centrality of sexuality,
focused on the character of Tabubue, and her apparent resonance
with the long tradition of Cleopatra as sexually insatiable - even
sadistic - Jemme Jatale. So, conSidering (his conSistency across nu
merous Setne adaptations over decades, it's interesting to conclude
with a look at a completely different Tabubue: the Tabubu of Thom
as Mann's 1936 novel Joscph in Egypl.4o
Mann, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929,
was the most distinguished author by far to work aspects of "First
Sell1e" into a modern work of fiction. Joseph in EgypL was the third
of four novels in Mann's cycle about the Biblical hero Joseph, pub
lished from 1933 to 1943. The joseph novels were the product of
years of reading by Mann of Biblical, Near Eastern and Egyptologi
cal scholarship. Mann aClUally visited Egypt in 1930, for some on
the-ground research wiLh the great German DemOlicist Wilhelm
Spiegelberg, who was an important consultant for Mann.
Joseph in Egypt narrates events from the aftermath of jo
seph's sale by his brothers to slave traders, down to his imprison
mentfollowing the false rape charge made against him by Mut-em
enet, Mann's name for the wife of Potiphar (unnamed in the Bibli
cal tradition; see Genesis 39). In constructing his version, Mann
used some aspects of the obvious ancient Egypt.ian analog of the
story, the New Kingdom "Tale of Two Brothers, " with its false rape
charge.
41
But Mann also introduced a "Tabubu" into the plot: a sor
ceress who helps Mut-em-enet in her campaign to win joseph's af
fections.
Mann's Tabubu is absolutely different from any other mo
dern version of the ancient Egyptian seductress. In fact, she is not a
seductress at all: she's an aged Nubian slave and witch, a "hag of Ihe
Jirst walel; .. 42 described here (in not altogether politically correct
terms) as she prepares a magical ritual intended to help Mut-em
enet: \Vhile the wind nWlIl1aged in lite IllJts of her gray hail; Tabllbll
stood there blach and naIled to the waist, (./ goatskin cinched benealh
her hag:, breast s - her helpcl' was dres.sed in Ihe same way - ... her
loosely flapping n10ulh revealillg two lonely snagglelcell! a.1 she uied
oul /ifIC a peddlCl:. 43
55 Kmt
But as different as Mann's Tabubu and the Demotic Tabu
bue are, they also have important similarities. Both are closely COI1
nec ted to the themes of sexuality, magic a nd psychological mani
pulation. And the idea to turn Tabubu into a Nubian sorceress ac
tually came from the other major Setne s tory, the "Second Tale of
Se l11e Khaemwas. " The villains in "Second Setne" are three Nubian
mngi cians and their witch-mother, who to rment Pharaoh until
thwarted hy Siosir, the son of Se tne Khaemwas. So Mann was clear
ly impressed with the "Setne" cycle , and in particular he found Ta
bubue full of potential for adaptation.
In fact , the other major femal e character in Mann's novel ,
Mut-em-e n et , also has a certain Tabubue-ness about her: As fa" her
body, eve ,yone Imew its form and all its beauti es, for "wovcn air"
that gentle breath of silken, IW(!lriolis gossamer that she wore in accor
dan ce with custom - revealed every linc of it to her advantage.. .. With
its small, finn breasts, delicat.e neel? and bach, supple shoulders, per
f ectly swlpt ed an11S, alld noble long,finn legs, whose upper lines jlow
cd in a most feminine curve to fo,-,n t.he splendid hips and buttocks , it
was recogni zed as the finest f emale body f ar and wide.
44
This d escription of MlIl-em-enet's body and her garment
of "woven air" could d e finitely owe something to Ihe image o f Ihe
Demotic Tabubue in her transparent-linen dress.
45
And other as
pects of the Demoti c Tabubue's character turn up in d e ta il s about
Mut-em-enct , particularly when she urges Joseph to kill her hus
band Potiphar - apparently, an adaptation of the Demotic Tabu
bue's demand that Setne allow the murder of his c hildren.
And as Mut-em-enet's obses sion with Joseph grows, Jo
seph in Egypt also describes her as becoming a "witch," grotesque
ly voluptuous , and even subtly "haglike": Under the injluence of her
own emotional slate, Milt 's breasts, once dainty WId virginal, had de
wloped int o great, robllst f ruits of love, whose protruding exuberance
tooh on sometiling ilaglillf only because they contrasted with her thin,
indeed emaciated and fragile shoulder blades. . 46
One way to interpret this transformation is that , within
the novel , Mann has Mut- em-enet begin to unde rgo the same pro
cess that he had already applied to the Demoti c Tabubue, t o create
his version of the characte r. In other words , Mut- em- enet and Ta
bubu in Joseph in Egypt begi n to merge, which is possibl e because
both are based o n the Demotic Tabubue: one reflecting h er sexual,
seductive side, the o ther he r fearsome magical power.
n this article I've barely scratched the surface of modern adapta
tions of Ihe "First Tal e o f SeIne Khae mwas. " But il should be ob
vious thaI no other ancient Egyptian tale has had (he sort of in
flue nce Ihal "FirSI Setne" has had on modern, popular culture
it's been adapted in advcnrure novels , horror movies, poems , even
the serious fiction of a luminary like Thomas Mann. And whil e
there are many reasons for the impact that "First Setne" has had ,
none is more important than Tabubue, and her unique, dangerous
but-thrilling sex appeal.
,lh,'
1. All of the translations of the "First Tale of Selne Khacmwas" here are my
own. Two good English translati ons of the complete talc can be found in
Miriam Lichtheim's Ancifllt Egyptian Lil erature 3, The Lule Period (Berkeie)'
and Los Angeles, 1980), 125- J 38; and Robert Ritner's "The Romance of
Sctna Khaemuas and the Mummies (Sellla I) ," in W.K. Simpson (ed.), The
Lil er"lure o{ Allciellt Egy pt: All Anthology oj IlI sl ructions, Slelae, Autobiogra
phies. alld Poelly, Third Edition (New Haven and London, 2003), 453-469.
The most-thorough scholarly trea tmel1l of the tale is still Francis Llewelyn
Griffith's Srories oj lite High Priesls o{ Memphis: Tlte Sctho" oj HClOdatt, s alld
Ihe Delllotic Tales oj Klt<lltlUas (Oxford, 1900).
2. Broadly speaking, the period from the death of Alexander the Great in
323 BC, whc.n Egypt fell under the control of Alexander's general Ptolemy
Kmt56
son of Lagus, down to the suicide. of Cleopatra VII , Ptolemy's last descen
dal1lto rul e Egypt, in 30 Be. Demotic refers both to a cursive script derived
from hi e.raLi c (itself derived from hieroglyphs), io use from about 650 BC
il1lo the Fifth Cent ury AD, and to the more-or-less "vernacular" Egyptian
that was t)1JicaUy written in the script.
3. First noted by Ritner, "Setna I," 454; e. Lupton, " ' Mummymania' for the
Masses," in S. MacDonald and M. Rice (eds.), Co nsuming Ancienl Egypt
(London), 31-34.
4. The very first translation: H. Brugsch, "Le Roman de Setnau COl1lenu
dans un papyrus demotique du Musee egyptien a Boulaq, " Revue QI'cheo
logi que, 2nd seri es, 16 (1867),161-179.
5. This anthology was so popular it weill through four French editions
(1882,1889, 1906 and 1911 ) . Ao English translati on appeared in 1915,
whicb was re-issued in 2002 by Oxford University Press, with additional
materi al by Arabic folklore-expert Hasan EI Sham),
6. "Thubui," also "Thouboui" and even "Thoutboui" are spellings of tbe
name of our "Tabubue" which are sporadically encoul1lered, parti cularly in
the 1890s, apparentl y based on typographical confusion bet ween "h" and
"b" (i.e., mistakes for "Tbubui " or "Tbouboui "). The "Thubui " daffodil was
created in the 19305 by Australian honi cultnralist Wilham Jackson, Sf.; see
"Naming Daffodil Seedlings in Tasmania," Daffodil Yearbooll1 942, 54.
7. f or the "Second Tale of Setne Khacmwas," see Li ehtheim, Ancienl Egypl
ian Lilenuure 3, 138-151; Ritner in Simpson (cd.), LiteralUre, 470-489.
8. For a good overview of the life of Khaemwas, see J. Ray, Reflections oj
Osiri s: LivesJl'Om Ancient Egypl (Oxford and New York, 2002) , 78-96. De
tailed , schol arly trea tmelllS of the remains connected to him can be found
in F Gomaa, CiJaemwcse: Sahli Ramses' II. und Hohcrpri cslel' von Memphis.
Agyplologischc AblJandllHlgell 27 (Wiesbaden, 1973) and M. Fisher, The Sam
o{Ramesscs II, Agyplfrl unci Altes TeslamenlS3 (2 vols .) (Wiesbaden, 20(1).
9. Maspcro thought that "First Setne" and its associated papyri had been
discovered in 1864; sec p. x of the 1915 English editi on of Popular Stori es
(= p. xciv of the 2002 re-ediLion); but this date is certainly wrong. One of
the papyri that Mariette purchased along with "First Setne" was the first
known manuscript of the wisdom text "The Instructi on of An)'" (sec aI.so
note 11 below). And in August J.86I , the "Any" papyrus was described for
an audience of French savants in a lecture by the French Egyptologist Em
manuel de Rouge. This was the first time any of the papy.i in the group
seems to have been reJerred to in public (lecture published the same year:
E. de Rouge, "Note sur les principaux resultaLs des fouillcs exeeutees en
Egypte par les ordres de S.A. Ie vice-mi," COl11l'lfs rcndus des seallce.1 de I'A
cademir des Inscriptions et Belles-Lellres, 5f (lI1I1CC [1861]; see esp. 211-212) .
So Mariette must have purchased the group in or before early 1861, perhaps
most likely some time in 1860.
10. Sec again Maspero, Popular Slodes, p. x of the 1915 English editi on, p.
xciv of the 2002 re-edi ti on. The tale was al so repeated by Brugsch, Mariet tc
and others.
lIThe oldest of the texts acquired with "First Setne" was the "An)''' pa
pyris, generally attributed to 21st or nnd Dynasty (c. 1069 - 715 BC) . It is
not entirely certain which Copti c documents Mariette purchased aloug with
"First Setne" and the ot her pre-Christian texts, but there is a case to be
made that they had wme from an archive belonging to the Monastery of SI.
Phoibammon at nearby Deir el Bahri, di scovered in the 1850s. The bul k of
those papyri come from the Eighth Century AD. See W. Godlewski, Le
mallaslere de SI Plioibammon, trans. S. Kiss, Dei,' c/-Baliari 5 (Varsovie, 1986),
53-58 (ref. Terry Wilfong and Tasha Vorderstrasse.)
12. H. nrugsch, "Setna," DWI.seli e Revue Ilber clas gesammle ,w!iollalc Lebll
del' Gege.nwQrl 3.1 (1879),3.
13. For marriage formalities that really clo invol ve a man pledging all of hi s
worldly goods to his spouse, as collateral for future support, and using ex
actly the kinds of legal instruments specified in our story, see W. Clarysse
and K. Vandorpe , "A Marriage Settlement from Edfa in the Panopolite nome
(229 BC)," in F Hoffmann and H.-j. Thissen (eds.), Res Severa \'erum
Galldium: FeslschriJt Jiir Karl- Th eodor Zauzieh zwn 65. Geburtswg am B . .lulli
2004, Sludia Delllolica 6 (Leuven, 2004), 47-57, esp. 48 with ns. 3 and 4.
For nominal future heirs agreeing to the sale of famil y property that they
would otherwise have stood to inherit , sec H. Smith, "Another ,Vitness
Copy document from the FaYYllll1, " Journal o{ Egyptian Archaeology 44
(I957), 89, n. 2.
14. So Ritner, "Scma I," p. 466. See also my "Ten Notes on the First Tak of
Sellle Khaemwas," in H. Knuf, e. Leitz and D. von Recklinghau5e11 (cds.),
HOlli soil qui mal y pense: Swdiell t lml phamollischw, gl"iechis(h-riimischcn
"lid sl'ilianlilwn Agy ptcn z.u Ehren 1'011 Heinz-josef Thi.,scn, Oriclltalia Lo
l'unicllsi(l Allaleeta 194 (Lcuvcn, 2010), 461-66, with furth er references.
15. The Egyplian was originall y published in Finnish in 1945 as Si nuhc egyl'
LilainC/!, or Sinul,,: the Egypli(Hl (Porvoo and Helsinki) The English transla
tion by N. Walfurd appeared in 1949 (New York) ; and the novel was filmed
as "The Egyptian" in 1954. As Barbara Mertz has pOinted out , the name
"Ncfcrnefernefer" must have bem based on Waltari's misinterpretation of
the pe.rsonal name "Neferu, " spelled with three repeated neJer glyphs. See B.
Mertz , Tel11ples , TOl11bs, and Hieroglyphs: tlte Sto ry oj EgyplOlogy (New York,
19(4) , 271 (ref. E. Melzer). In the ori gi nal Middl e Egyptian "Story of Sin
uhf ," Nefcru is Sinuhc's ruyal mistress and his patroness; she is both the
daughter of Amenemhet l and wife of his successor (and son) Scnwosret L
16. My translation from the 1948 German edition, Sinuhe, dcr Agypter (Bern),
98-99.
17. Overviews in C Lupton, " 'Mummymania' for the Masses," in S. Mac
Donald and M. Rice (cds.), Consul11ing All cie11t Egypl, 23-46;]. Day, The
,'vrwlIll1Ys Cu,.se: MUr>1Il1Yl1lania in the Ellgli sh-Spea/lill g World (Lundon and
New Yurk, 2006). Sec also E. Meltzer, "The Supernatural Lady frum Egypt
to Walt Whitman and Beyond," Seshal 7 (2003),3-14.
18. An interesting ead y exampl e: Thcophile Gauti er's novella [fHe m.iL de
Clcopall'e, originally published serially in the Parisian newspaper La Pressc
in November and December, 1838, later anthologized in Nouvelles (Pari S,
lRR9) , 321-360. An English translati on by Lafcadi o Hearn can be found in
Olle oj CieopaLras Nights and Other Fantastic Romllnces (New York, 1890). In
the story a bored Cleopatra offers to sleep with a commoner ir he will allow
himself to be killed aft er the experi ence. He agrees. This unf1attering con
ception of Cleopatra goes back to ancient Rome, where the s tor), had eircu
lated that, in anticipation of her own suicide, she had tested poisons on
prisoners dragged f rom her dungeons (see discussion below of the 1887
painting on this theme by Alexandre Cabanel ).
19.1 quote She from Haggard , She: 1\ Hislory oJAdl'elllurc (London and New
York, 2001), which duplicates the text, but not the paginat ion, of the first
edition (London, lRR?).
20. For a detailed di scussiun of the links between Haggard's She and "First
Setne," sec l11y "They-Who-Must-Ilc-Obcyed: Arsake, Rhadopis and
Tabubue; lhweret and Chari.kleia," Comparati ve Lilerature Studies 45.3
(2008), 289-11 5.
21. She,158- 159.
22. SIr'ay LeavesJrom Strange Literature: Slories Rewl!Stn.ctedJrom the An
vari -Solt eili , Bail , Pachfsl, Malwblrarata, Panlcltalan!.m, Gu/i slan, Talmud,
Kalcwala, Etc. (Bos ton, lR84). "The Book or Thoth" is on 19-33.
23. A good source for informati on on Hearn is j. COll , WandCl'il1g Ghos t: The
Odyssey oj LaIcadi o Hea rn (New York, 1991). During his years in New Or
leans, Hearn authored the firs t-known Creole cookbook, u. Cui si ne Creole
(New York, 1885); later, he emigrated to Japan, married aJapancse woman,
and took the name Kuizumi Yakumo. He may be hest remembered for his
eclecti c 1904 collection of (mostl y) Japanese rolk- and ghos t-stories, Kwai
dan : Stories and Sludles of Sl range Things (Boston), filmed in 1964 by the
Japanese director Masaki Koha)' ashi.
24. The spelling of our charact er "Setne" that was preferred by Maspero in
PopulCll' Sial-irs. As a result , many earl)' anthors who first learned of "Fi rst
SeU1c" by reading Maspero's translation in French or English spel l the name
in thi s way.
25. "Book of Thoth, " 29-30.
26. I. E. Hearns s pelling of lmenty, the Egyptian word for "the West," the
common term for the land of the dead (because it is where the sun sets).
27. Hearn, "Book of Thoth," 31. The image of a storm coming from the
mouth of Thoutboui was not originally Hearn's, but docs not appear in
modern translations of the talc. It comes fronl an incorrect interpretat ion of
the Egyptian idiom "She opened her mouth to the ground Ii. e., "very wide
ly" ] in a great cry" that Maspero had used as the basis of his translat ion of
this passage in the French fir st edition of Pop!Jlar Stories (1882), 77; Mas
pero had incorrec tly concludcdthat the word segep, "cry, scream" meant
"storm'). And Maspero was not the only earl)' translator who had found
this passage difCieult. At first, Brugsch himself had no idea at all what the
text was gelling at here. And the French Demoticist Eugene Revillout, who
published his own edition in lR77, actually thought that the phrase "she
opened her mouth" referred to Tabuhue's vagina. Accordingly, he switched
from French to Latin at this point in his own edit ion, Lc .-oman ele SCl/!a,
etlJde philologique eL crili 'llJe avec traducti on 1110t c. mot du lexle dtmotique, in
troduction hislorique et commentaire grmnl1lali ca l (Paris), 161. Not un til
1900 was the proper - ancl disappointingl), banal- interpretation es tab
lished by Griffith (Stori es, 132).
28. ROll1(11l egyptien: ulbubu, Pelite coll ecti on GlJill<IU111 (Paris). The speLling
"Tabubu" is a very common alternative spelling of our characler-name,
"Tabubue."
29. One of the rew Rosny novels that is still read is La gucrre durn. (Paris,
1911) , which appeared in English ill 1967 as Q!JcstJor fire (New York). La
gucrre duJeu was act ually wrillen by Joseph Boc" alone (as "j. -J-l. Rosn)' the
elder"), aft er the brothers had ended their coll aborati on. A popul ar film
based on the novel, directed by .J ean-Jacques Annaud, was rel eased in Eu
rope in 198 1 and in the Unit ed States in 1982 (here as "Quest for Fire").
The film won an Academy Award in 1983 for Best Makeup. Rae Dawn
Chong's body pai nt is especially memorable.
30. That is, Bastet. This spelling reOects an ancient Greek con rusi un or the
name of the goddess Bastet with Bubastis, the Cit y in the Egyptian Delta in
which she was honored.
31. An alternate modern spelling of the name.
32. 1(tbubu , 4-5 ( my translation of the French tex t).
33. My trans lation of a French bl urb retrieved from Google Books 01119
Jan. 2011, fram a scanned volume at Pennsylvania State Universit y entitl ed
Calalogue de livres modfnlcs coml'osallL la bibliollltquf deIeu ,vir G. Cllwpcn
ti er ( Paris, 1907). lJoweve.r, the volume actually appears to contai n a nmu
ber of unrelated commercial book-catalogs from around the period of 1906
to 1907 bound togc Lher; and the title page of the specifi c catalog rroll1 which
the Tabubu blurb comes appears, unfortunatel y, to have been omitted.
34. "Mittis" worked on a number of projects for E. Demu, Tabubus pub
li s her, and oft en collahorated with Marold; hut no biographical informati on
on this person seems to have survived to the present. "Millis" is prohably a
pseudonym.
35. Seej.-Ph. Lauer, Saqqara: The Royal Ce metery oj Memphis: Exca vation s
and 1850 (London, 1976), 22-2.3.
36. Roman egYl'ti en: Tabubu (Paris).
37. WM.F Petrie (ed.), Eg,ypli(lIJ Tales Translalcarmll! lhe P"pyh, Second Se
ries, XV lllth Lo X/Xlh Dyna.lty ( London, 1895). 114.
3R. Two short , latc-Nineteenth Century narrative poems based un "First
Setne" also si mpl y end with the couple making love: "La Legcnde de Satni
Khamois" by the French poet-and-novdist Danic.l Lesueur (pseudonym of
J eanne Lapauze), in her Pocs ies (PariS, 1896),53-60; and "Satni i Tabubu"
b)' the Ukrainian puet-and-author Ivan Franko in his Poemy (l:vovi, 25-34.
No translation of Franko's poem has ever been puhlished. lowe my knowl
edge of it to an unpublished English translati on prepared at 111)' re4uest in
2010 by friends who prefer to remain anonymolls.
39. G. Murray, The SWIY oj NfJrd1epta Jrom (J Demoti c Papyrus Pul into Verse
by Gilbert M!Jn'ay (Oxford), 40.
40. First published as joseph in AgYP1W (Vienna) My quotations here arc
[rom the 2005 English transl ation hy J. Wood in joseph and his Botllers: The
Stori es ofJawb, Youngjoscph,joseph in EgypL,joseph the Provider (New York,
London and Toronto) .
41. f'ur a good overvi ew of the relati ons hip he tween the Biblical 'Joseph"
tradition and ancient Egypt, see D. Redford, A Swdy oj lire I3iblical Story oj
joseph (Genes is 37-50) , Suppl ement s to Vetus Teslwllenl!ml 20 (Leiden, 1970).
42. j oseph in Egy pl , 941.
43. Ibid., 1002.
44. Ibid., 819.
45. The phrase "woven air" comes from the. "Satyricon" by the Roman poel
Petronius . The phrasc was earli er used in an Egyptian contc,xt in the de
scripti on of Cleopa tra in Gautier's U"f Iwil de Clcopell n' (1889 French edi
tion, 326; 1R90 Englis h translation, 9- 10). Maspero also linked the image to
the transparent linen dress of Tahubue, beginning with a note to "First
Setnc" in the second Freneh edition of Le.1 ( O"lcs populaires (1889, 199, n.
2, end: "air Lissr " = 191 5 English edi ti on, n . .I = 2002 reprint, 114, n. 62).
46. joseph ill Egypt, 941-942.
\h(lut the ,\ulhur Steve Vins on is associate professor of Near East
ern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Blooming to n .
He earned his Ph.D, in Egyptology at the J o hns Hopkins U niversity
in 1995, a nd is currently writing a book on liter ary approaches to
the "First Tale o f Setne Khae mwas" and other Demot ic fi ction.
57 Kmt