Pepi II Neferkare - Literature

Literature

Only a small number of pharaohs were immortalized in ancient fiction, Pepi II may be among them. In the tale of King Neferkare and General Sasenet, three fragments of a papyrus dating from the late New Kingdom (although the story may have been composed earlier), report clandestine nocturnal meetings with a military commander - a General Sasenet or Sisene. Some have suggested this reflects a homosexual relationship; although it is disputed that the text relates to Pepi II at all.

The story is dated to the late New Kingdom though it was composed earlier and purports to describe the nightly exploits of Pepi II Neferkare; some like R. S. Bianchi think that it is a work of archaizing literature and dates to the 25th dynasty referring to Shabaka Neferkare, a Kushite pharaoh.

Read more about this topic:  Pepi II Neferkare

Famous quotes containing the word literature:

    “If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
    “And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
    Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)

    In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)