nomads who live in the desert.  I arrayed myself in apparel made of fine linen, I anointed my body with costly ointments, I slept upon a bedstead [instead of on the ground], I left the sand to those who dwelt on it, and the crude oil of wood wherewith they anoint themselves.  I was allotted the house of a nobleman who had the title of smer, and many workmen laboured upon it, and its garden and its groves of trees were replanted with plants and trees.  Rations were brought to me from the palace three or four times each day, in additions to the gifts which the royal children gave me unceasingly.  And the site of a stone pyramid among the pyramids was marked out for me.  The surveyor-in-chief to His Majesty chose the site for it, the director of the funerary designers drafted the designs and inscriptions which were to be cut upon it, the chief of the masons of the necropolis cut the inscriptions, and the clerk of the works in the necropolis went about the country collecting the necessary funerary furniture.  I made the building to flourish, and provided everything that was necessary for its upkeep.  I acquired land round about it.  I made a lake for the performance of funerary ceremonies, and the land about it contained gardens, and groves of trees, and I provided a place where the people on the estate might dwell similar to that which is provided for a smeru nobleman of the first rank.  My statue, which was made for me by His Majesty, was plated with gold, and the tunic thereof was of silver-gold.  Not for any ordinary person did he do such things.  May I enjoy the favour of the King until the day of my death shall come!

Here endeth the book; [given] from its beginning to its end, as it hath been found in writing.

THE STORY OF THE EDUCATED PEASANT KHUENANPU

The text of this most interesting story is written in the hieratic character on papyri which are preserved in the British Museum and in the Royal Library at Berlin.  It is generally thought that the story is the product of the period that immediately followed the twelfth dynasty.

Once upon a time there lived a man whose name was Khuenanpu, a peasant of Sekhet-hemat,[1] and he had a wife whose name was Nefert.  This peasant said to this wife of his, “Behold, I am going down into Egypt in order to bring back food for my children.  Go thou and measure up the grain which remaineth in the granary, [and see how many] measures [there are].”  Then she measured it, and there were eight measures.  Then this peasant said unto this wife of his, “Behold, two measures of grain shall be for the support of thyself and thy children, but of the other six thou shalt make bread and beer whereon I am to live during the days on which I shall be travelling.”  And this peasant went down into Egypt, having laden his asses with aaa plants, and retmet plants, and soda and salt, and wood of the district of ..., and aunt wood of the Land of Oxen,[2]