I think Allen has that backwards. The fiction of Sinuhe, predates the David and Goliath story by millennia, so the Goliath story is reminiscent of Sinuhe. And it's only just barely reminiscent in that a huge guy challenges a regular guy and the challenger brings his whole tribe and they set up camp nearby to make their challenge.
This is the peak of the Sinuhe story. Sinuhe runs away from a change in administration, much like a few Democrats flee the U.S. after Trump election for fear of what will happen to them, or disgust with what is happening, and does very well in his adopted new home, is challenged there, prevails as David did in the story about Goliath, and then the rest of the story, not quite half, is about him in old age and enjoying success, yearning for home and his return. Allen does not compare his return to the Biblical story of the prodigal son, although the return is similar, Sinuhe was not prodigal.
The episode is told wonderfully; zip, zip, zip, done. By modern reading, its opening is near pornographic. Amusingly, it can be read as euphemism.
During the night I strung my bow and shot my arrows.
Gave play to my dagger and embellished my weapons
At dawn, Retjenu came.
Ha ha ha. Come on!
He played with his dagger and buffed his pistol, shot his wad and Retjenu came.
You perv!
It's charming. The episode is told charmingly. Retjenu is a place. An area. The whole county was there. This challenging brute had the whole area under his brutish control. Entire towns came to watch him kick butt and take all Sinuhe's possessions, his herds, his people, and all that he owned.
This study is working very well. It's forcing me to look up new words everyday, and seeing how ideas are expressed, how Egyptian sentences are formed, which signs are relied upon, how they're manipulated to service expressions. Allen's super meta grammar language is not that helpful to me so much as simply seeing how it is done sentence for sentence. Looking at blocks of text I cannot make sense of it, while Allen's breaking it down into chunks is excellent, although his description of the sentence is not useful to me. "an unmarked adverb clause with pseudo-verbal predicate" for example means almost nothing to me, although I know what he's talking about as it continues, "the term ng3w refers to the longhorn bull..." is clear because it's shown right there in the hieroglyphs. Like when scientists describe the elements of myosis and mitosis by using words they made up so they can talk about specific elements that we see. They created a name for every little thing that we see. For example, "vesicles derived from the Golgi apparatus move to the middle of the cell along a microtubule scaffold called the phragmoplast." GAWL! I have to look up every single word just to visualize what the guy is talking about when the photographs are right there. Then when the test comes, it's all about the language about the subject than it is about the subject. And I don't care about comprehending grammarians. I care about reading hieroglyphs. I don't want to learn the meta-language that describes all languages to get at it.
It's a twisted world in which we live.
Because to prove you know it you'll have to master the metalanguage to talk about what you know. Not simply translate text accurately. Here's the episode in all it's charm. There are two panels of hieroglyphs. They're shown sentence for sentence, then returned to the beginning to show Allen's notations for both. The second frame is all of the frames. I turned on all of the Photoshop layers so I'd know where to crop off the bottom and I like how they all show at once. I think that's cool. It's only 3 seconds.
David and Goliath is at First Samuel 17. It's more detailed than Sinuhe's fight with the Asiatic giant.
The whole group of Philistines took up on a hill directly opposite another hill of Israelite encampment with a valley between them. Goliath was 10 and half feet tall. Others estimate 9 feet, 9 inches. (The length of a cubit varies)
R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
His armor weighed 125 lbs.
Not that much heavier than what US soldiers packed in Iraq heat.
Goliath taunted Israel to send out a fighter knowing nobody could match his size or his experience. This infuriated the Israelis.
David was supposed to be watching his sheep. When David kept showing up his brothers told him to get back to his job, that all he wanted to do was watch the fight, and David was all, I can take this dude. I can do this. Who does this obnoxious uncut freak think he is anyway?
See, that's funny right there. Of all the things David has to refer to about this guy Goliath, David mentions his dick.
There's humor in the Bible, real charm, that biblical scholars don't admit. That's exactly how guys talk.
This went on for over a month.
The Bible describes David's dad telling David to take a bunch of food to Saul's camp and pass it to his older and bigger brothers and their commander to find out what they have in mind to do.
When David arrived they were getting ready for battle. It's reported the King will give whoever kills Goliath will be given his daughter in marriage, that would be several steps upward, social mobility through military career, and would be free from taxation for the rest of their life. Soon as the Israeli warriors saw Goliath they all took off running.
David's oldest brother heard David questioning the soldiers and got burning mad, "What are you even doing here? Why aren't you doing your job? Who's with the sheep? You conceited wicked little prick. David can't even speak to his brother so he turned around and asked somebody else and the men answered as they did before. Then Saul heard about David asking all these questions and called for David to be brought to him. David told Saul he can do this.
Saul was all, "You can't do this. You're just a kid, you're not fully grown, just a shepherd. Goliath is a grown man, he's YUGE! And he's been a soldier since he was your age."
David said, "Yeah, but as a shepherd I've had to protect the flock from both lions and bears. I knocked them on their heads and then went in and killed them. The lord protected me from their claws. I can do this, I tell you. Goliath is just another lion or bear to me. I'll do to Goliath what I did with both lions and bears. I can do this. I can do this. I'm telling you, I can do this."
Saul was all, Fine. Go get yourself killed. The way he put it was, "May the Lord be with you."
Then Saul dressed up David like a soldier and he looked perfectly ridiculous, a lad in oversized men's tunic and bronze helmet. Like a cartoon, with a sword buckled on that was way too big. David tried to walk around clanging and clunking and weighed down and he told Saul, "Forget this. I can't do it this way. Thanks for the offer but this armor doesn't work for me." Saul was laughing his ass off but it really wasn't that funny. Just the sight of it while the situation was dire. Then David left with his shepherd's staff in his hand and went down to the stream and picked out five smooth stones and put them in his pouch and went down to confront Goliath.
Goliath kept coming closer and closer with his shield-bearer in front of him and he saw that David was just a boy, positively glowing in good health and handsome and Goliath instantly despised him and cursed him in the name of his gods. "What am I to you, a dog that you come chasing with sticks? Come here and I'll make mincemeat out of you and feed your flesh to the birds and wild animals."
Whap!
Right between the eyes. Goliath went down like a tree forward on his face. David stabbed Goliath with Goliath's own sword and hacked off his head and held it up by its smelly hair with flies buzzing all around it. The Philistines took off and the Israeli soldiers swarmed David and chased off the Philistines and took everything in their camp.
Saul asked who's son is David but Abner, his commander, didn't know. "Well, find out!" Saul snapped. Abner found David and still holding Goliath's head with flies buzzing around it, brought David before Saul where David told Saul, I am son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem.
"Why do you ask? "
"For tax purposes. Plus, you're going to marry my daughter."
7 comments:
Well done. Now do Daniel.
Start with Adam and Eve.
Great online story telling skills, Chip A!
As familiar as I am with this story, I was right there in the thick of things with your telling. And where did that lead? To wonderment about Saul's daughter, The Prize. With the next installment almost as good as your rendition, without the humor.
Michal was the younger daughter of Saul, Israel’s first king. After David defied and killed the giant Goliath who had terrified Michal’s father and his people Michal grew passionately fond of him, and made no effort to conceal her love for this much-lauded champion of Israel.
Saul had vowed that the man who killed Goliath would become his son-in-law, and Merab, Saul’s first daughter should have been given to David, but Saul, regretting his promise, gave her to another man. David was now a veritable hero among the people, and Saul’s jealousy prompted him to devise means whereby David would be slain by the Philistines. Learning of Michal’s love for David, Saul asked as a dowry, usually paid to a father according to Eastern custom, the foreskins of 100 Philistines. David slew 200 Philistines, and Saul was forced to give his daughter to wife to the man whose death he had planned. As David had been victorious, Saul dared not go back upon his word.
Still bent on destroying David, Saul had David’s house surrounded. In a frenzy of envy Saul had messengers “watch David to slay him in the morning.” But Michal’s love smelled danger and, discovering her father’s intention, “let David down through a window; and he fled and escaped.” With her husband safely out of the way, Michal put a hair-covered image in David’s bed, and when the men burst into the supposedly sickroom, they found that they had been cleverly tricked. When Saul heard he had been outwitted, he accused his daughter of disloyalty to her father, and was most bitter in his reproach. Michal, however, pretended that David had threatened to kill her if she did not help him to escape.
After this incident, Michal’s love for David waned. Where was the pleasure in being the wife of a man forced to spend his days a fugitive, hunted like a wild animal in the wilderness? Phalti of Gallem was a better catch, seeing he was on his way to royalty which she was eager to secure and hold. So Michal became the wife of Phalti. This was an illegitimate union as David was alive and was in no way lawfully separated from Michal.
Continued below
With Saul’s death, circumstances changed for David whom God had already chosen to be king over His people. Michal and her husband Phalti were living to the east of Jordan during the short rule of Ishbosheth. Abner made an arrangement to assist David to take over the kingship of the nation, and David made the restoration of Michal the one condition of the league. So despite Phalti’s sorrowful protest, Michal was forcibly restored to David as he returned from his wanderings as king. Evidently his ardor for Michal was the same as at the first, and his desire to claim her proves how he wanted her as queen in Hebron.
How pathetic it is to read of Phalti with whom Michal had lived for some considerable time. We see his sorrow as he went with her in tears, only to be rudely sent back by Abner! We do not read of Michal weeping as she left the man who had showered so much affection upon her.
The closing scene between Michal and David is most moving, for what love Michal might have had for David turned to scorn and disdain. After making Jerusalem his capital, David brought the sacred Ark of the covenant, the ancient symbol of Jehovah’s presence, to Moriah. On the day of the Ark’s return David was so joyful that, stripping himself of his royal robes, he “danced before the Lord with all his might.” Michal watched from a window and seeing David—the king—leaping and dancing before the Lord, she “despised him in her heart.” Although she had loved him, risked her life for his safety, she now abhors him for his loss of royal dignity. Her haughtiness was shocked by David’s participation in such an excitable demonstration.
Nursing her contempt Michal waited until David returned to his household. When they met, she with a biting sarcasm, revealing “her self-pride, and lack of sensitiveness to her husband’s magnificent simplicity,” sneeringly said, “How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!” For her there were no pious and affectionate feelings at the return of the Ark to Zion. Like her father, Saul, she had no regard for the Ark of God (1 Chronicles 13:3). But David, mortified by Michal’s pride as a king’s daughter, was curt in his reply. Resenting her reproach, he made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was not ashamed of what he had done “before the Lord” who had chosen him rather than any of Saul’s family to reign as king. Michal had missed the essential significance of David’s career, that in spite of his failures he was a man after God’s own heart. As Alexander Whyte put it, “What was David’s meat was Michal’s poison. What was sweeter than honey to David was gall and wormwood to Michal.... At the despicable sight [of David dancing] she spat at him, and sank back in her seat with all hell in her heart..."
She Lost David. After such an outburst of reproach we read that “Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death,” and such a final flat statement practically means that she lived apart from David, more or less divorced (2 Samuel 6:16). The estrangement between them likely became more acute because of the other wives now sharing David’s prosperity. Childless till her death was a punishment appropriate to her transgression. David was given many sons and daughters, and her sister Merab bore five sons, but Michal never achieved the great attainment of being a mother. She ended her days without the love and companionship of a husband, caring for her dead sister’s five children, all of whom were ultimately beheaded.
As for Adam and Eve, it took me years to come to the awareness that the point of the Creation story and the Fall, which were passed on in the oral tradition long before human history was recorded in glyphs, and Moses took to writing things down, was to make a memorable and repeatable point rather than provide a historical description of what took place. I was well and truly brainwashed, and am grateful to the professor at the Christian college I attended who ask us to take note of the key concepts in the Creation story, and see the "And it was good" conclusion repeated over and over as a refrain." That was my "aha moment" the first time I understood it to be a story told to make a point.
Done up as "Real Wives of Jerusalem" even Troop would watch that story.
I got to "Ishbosheth" and tried to figure out if the person doing the naming was struck with a plague of the lisp 90% through that job. That one is a tongue twister.
Going down in history as Phalti is another matter.
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