The tales of ancient Egypt have for centuries delighted and spurred the imagination of anyone who loves a good story, yet sadly, many of these tales have fallen into obscurity over the years. Now these stories have been brought back to life for a new generation of readers.
When first published in 1882, the folktales collected in Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt comprised the first anthology of ancient Egyptian narratives ever to be compiled into book form. The culmination of a life's work by Gaston Maspero, a towering figure of nineteenth-century Egyptology, it presented a wealth of information on Egyptian culture, language, history, and society. Since its publication, additional texts have been discovered, deciphered, or translated into modern languages. The present collection is made up of twenty-four tales gleaned from countless ancient written sources, and from a variety of historical periods. It contains some of the most ancient folktales in existence, such as The Tale of the Two Brothers, thought to be the oldest in the world. Other stories include King Khufui and the Magicians, The Lamentations of the Fellah, The Shipwrecked Sailor, TheAdventure of Satni-Khamois with the Mummies, The Doomed Prince, and The Story of Rhampsinitus. This edition contains a new Foreword that introduces Maspero and describes his work, and provides for the first time extensive identifications of the ancient stories in terms of international tale-types and motifs.
Certain to be of interest to folklorists, this classic collection will also amuse parents, students, storytellers, and anyone who enjoys authentic folk wisdom.

At a meeting sponsored by UNESCO at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, nineteen international scholars presented their work on the transnational aspects of the ""Arabian Nights"". This volume collects their papers, whose topics range from the history of the ""Arabian Nights"" manuscripts, to positioning the Nights in modern and postmodern discourse, to the international reception of the Nights in written and oral tradition.Essays are arranged in five sections. The first section contains essays on Galland's translation and its ""continuation"" by Jacques Cazotte. The second section treats specific characteristics of the ""Nights"", including manuscript tradition, the transformations of a specific narrative pattern occurring in the ""Nights"" and other works of medieval Arabic literature, the topic of siblings in the ""Nights"", and the political thought mirrored in the ""Nights"". The essays in the third section deal with framing in relation to the classical Indian collection Panchatantra and as a general cultural technique, with particular attention to story-telling in the oral tradition of the Indian Ocean islands off the African coast. The two concluding and largest sections focus on various aspects of the transnational reception of the ""Nights"".While the essays of the fourth section predominantly discuss written or learned tradition in Hawai'i, Swahili-speaking East Africa, Turkey, Iran, German cinema, and modern Arabic literature, the fifth section encompasses essays on the reception and role of the ""Nights"" in the oral tradition of areas as wide apart as Sicily, Greece, Afganistan, and Balochistan. A preface by Ulrich Marzolph unifies this volume.In view of the tremendous impact of the ""Arabian Nights"" on Western creative imagination, this collection will appeal to literary scholars of many backgrounds.