Djedi (the magician)

About Djedi (the magician)

Djedi is the aged magician of the Westcar Papyrus, the Middle Kingdom collection of wonder-tales set at the court of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. In the tale that bears his name, Djedi is a commoner of a hundred and ten years, the ideal Egyptian lifespan, who is brought before Khufu and performs marvels of magic, most famously the reattachment of the severed heads of a goose, a waterfowl, and an ox, restoring the decapitated creatures to life. He then delivers a prophecy concerning the future of the kingship, foretelling the birth of three children destined to found a new dynasty. Djedi is the locus classicus of the Egyptian magician-figure, the wise and powerful wonder-worker whose magic and prophecy carry the central themes of the tale, and he is among the most memorable characters of early Egyptian narrative literature.

The Westcar Papyrus, preserved in a single manuscript of around 1700 BCE now in Berlin, presents a cycle of tales in a frame-narrative: the sons of King Khufu entertain their father by relating wonders performed by magicians of earlier reigns. The first tales recount marvels of past magicians, but the tale of Djedi breaks the pattern, for when Khufu asks whether any such wonder-worker lives in his own time, his son Hardjedef tells him of Djedi, a living magician, and brings him to the court. The tale of Djedi is thus set in Khufu's own present rather than the past, and it leads into the climactic prophecy of the cycle, the foretelling of the rise of the kings who would follow Khufu's line.

Djedi's marvels are vividly described. Brought before the king, the aged magician demonstrates his power by reattaching severed heads: a goose is decapitated, its head and body placed apart, and at Djedi's word the two move together and the bird stands up alive and cackling; the feat is repeated with a waterfowl and then with an ox, the great beast restored whole. But when Khufu proposes that the demonstration be performed on a condemned human prisoner, Djedi refuses, declaring that such a thing is not to be done to the noble flock of god, the people, a refusal that marks the magician as a figure of moral as well as magical authority. Djedi also reveals knowledge of secret things, telling the king of the number of the secret chambers of the sanctuary of Thoth, knowledge Khufu had long sought.

The climax of the tale is Djedi's prophecy. The magician foretells that three children will be born to the wife of a priest of Ra, children fathered by the sun-god himself, who will in time hold the kingship of Egypt, the first of them becoming high priest and then king. This prophecy points to the rise of the Fifth Dynasty, whose first kings the tale presents as the divinely fathered children foretold by Djedi, and it makes the tale a narrative of dynastic legitimation, grounding the succession of the new line in the prophecy of a wise magician and the fathering of the sun-god. Djedi's prophecy is the earliest surviving Egyptian dynastic legitimation narrative, and it gives the magician a place not only in the history of the Egyptian wonder-tale but in the Egyptian use of prophecy to justify the rise of a royal line.

The Story

The story of Djedi is told in the Westcar Papyrus, the collection of wonder-tales set at the court of King Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, and it is the most developed and climactic of the tales in that cycle. The frame of the collection is a scene at Khufu's court, where the king, seeking to be entertained, asks his sons to tell him of the wonders worked by the great magicians of the past. One by one the sons relate marvels of earlier reigns: a magician who fashioned a crocodile of wax that came to life and seized an adulterer, a magician who parted the waters of a lake to recover a lost ornament, and other wonders of the days of Khufu's predecessors. These tales of past magic establish the theme of the cycle, the power of the wise magician to work marvels, but they are set in the past, in the reigns of kings before Khufu.

The tale of Djedi breaks this pattern, for it concerns a magician living in Khufu's own time. When the king has heard the tales of past wonders, his son Hardjedef rises and tells him that there is no need to praise only the magicians of old, for a wonder-worker lives in the present reign, an aged commoner named Djedi who can perform marvels as great as any of the past. Hardjedef describes Djedi as a man of a hundred and ten years, the ideal Egyptian lifespan, who eats and drinks prodigiously and possesses extraordinary powers: he can reattach a severed head, make a lion follow him, and knows the secret of the chambers of the sanctuary of Thoth. Khufu, intrigued, commands that Djedi be brought to the court, and Hardjedef goes to fetch the old magician.

Djedi is brought before the king, and Khufu asks him to demonstrate his power. The king commands that a prisoner be brought and beheaded so that Djedi may restore him, but the magician refuses, declaring that such a thing is not to be done to the noble flock of god, the people, for the killing of a human being for a demonstration of magic is not permitted. This refusal is a striking moment, marking Djedi as a figure of moral authority who will not use his power for an unjust killing, and it sets him apart from a mere performer of marvels. Instead, the demonstration is performed on animals. A goose is brought and decapitated, its head placed at one end of the hall and its body at the other; Djedi speaks his magic, and the head and the body move toward each other across the floor, join together, and the goose stands up alive, cackling. The feat is repeated with a waterfowl and then with an ox, the great beast beheaded and restored whole at the magician's word, each creature brought back to life by the reattachment of its severed head.

The king then turns to the knowledge he has long sought, the secret of the number of the chambers of the sanctuary of Thoth, knowledge Khufu desired for his own building works. Djedi reveals that he knows of this matter, but he tells the king that he himself is not the one who will bring it to him; rather, it will be brought by one of three children yet to be born. And here the tale moves to its climax, the prophecy that gives it its deepest meaning. Djedi foretells that three children are to be born to Reddjedet, the wife of a priest of Ra, children fathered by the sun-god Ra himself, and that these children will in time hold the kingship of Egypt. The eldest will first become high priest of Ra at Heliopolis, and then the three will rule in succession as kings of Egypt.

This prophecy points beyond Khufu's own line to the rise of a new dynasty, the kings whom the tale presents as the divinely fathered children foretold by Djedi. The prophecy unsettles Khufu, for it foretells that the kingship will pass from his descendants to this new line, but Djedi reassures the king that his own son and grandson will reign before the prophesied children come to the throne, so that the change of dynasty lies some generations in the future. The tale thus grounds the succession of the new royal line in the prophecy of the wise magician and in the fathering of the sun-god, presenting the rise of the dynasty as foretold and divinely ordained.

The remainder of the cycle, as preserved, turns from Djedi to the birth of the three prophesied children, recounting how the goddesses came to assist at their delivery and how the children were born and marked for kingship. The manuscript is incomplete, and the full working-out of the prophecy and the cycle's conclusion are not preserved, but the tale of Djedi and its prophecy stand as the pivot of the collection, the point at which the wonder-tales of past magic give way to the prophecy of the future dynasty. Djedi himself, the aged magician of a hundred and ten years, the worker of marvels who reattaches severed heads, the figure of moral authority who refuses to kill a man for a demonstration, and the prophet who foretells the rise of a royal line, is the most fully realized of the magician-figures of the cycle and the locus classicus of the Egyptian wonder-worker, his magic and his prophecy carrying the central themes of the tale and giving him a lasting place in the history of Egyptian narrative literature.

Symbolism

Djedi symbolizes the wise magician, the figure of age, knowledge, and power who stands at the center of the Egyptian wonder-tale. His hundred and ten years, the ideal Egyptian lifespan, symbolize the fullness of life and the accumulation of wisdom, marking him as a man who has reached the perfect span and gathered the knowledge and power that age brings. The aged magician embodies the Egyptian ideal of the wise old man whose long life is crowned with extraordinary ability, and his age is itself a sign of his stature.

The reattachment of severed heads symbolizes the magician's power over life and death, the restoration of the dead to life through magic. The decapitated goose, waterfowl, and ox, brought back to life by the rejoining of head and body, symbolize the reversal of death, the magical undoing of the most final of injuries, and they display Djedi's command of the deepest powers, the bringing-back of life to the dead. This power over death is the supreme marvel of the magician, the sign of a mastery that reaches to the boundary between life and death.

Djedi's refusal to perform the feat on a human prisoner symbolizes the moral authority of the wise magician and the limits of the right use of power. The magician will not kill a man for a demonstration, declaring the people the noble flock of god, and his refusal symbolizes the constraint of magical power by moral principle, the wise man's recognition that his power is not to be used for an unjust killing. This refusal sets Djedi apart from a mere performer of marvels, marking him as a figure of ethical as well as magical stature, and it symbolizes the Egyptian conviction that power must serve right.

The prophecy of the three children symbolizes the divine ordination of the royal succession and the legitimation of a dynasty through prophecy. The foretelling of the birth of the children fathered by the sun-god, destined to hold the kingship, symbolizes the grounding of the succession in divine will and prophetic knowledge, the rise of the royal line presented as foretold and ordained. Djedi's prophecy symbolizes the Egyptian use of prophecy to justify the kingship, the wise magician become the prophet of the divine plan for the throne.

The fathering of the children by the sun-god Ra symbolizes the divine origin of the kingship and the descent of the kings from the gods. The children destined for the throne are fathered by Ra himself, and their divine paternity symbolizes the sacred nature of the kingship, the kings as the sons of the sun-god. This motif of divine fathering, carried in Djedi's prophecy, symbolizes the Egyptian theology of the king as the offspring of a god, the throne held by those of divine descent.

Djedi symbolizes, finally, the pivot between the past and the future, the wonder of old magic and the prophecy of things to come. Standing between the tales of past magicians and the birth of the future kings, Djedi is the figure in whom the wonder-tale turns toward prophecy, the magician whose marvels display the power of magic and whose prophecy reveals the future of the kingship. He symbolizes the joining of the magical and the prophetic, the wise man who both works marvels and foretells the divine plan, and his place at the center of the cycle marks him as the figure in whom its themes converge.

Cultural Context

Djedi belongs to the literature of the Middle Kingdom, the classical age of Egyptian narrative and wisdom writing, and specifically to the genre of the wonder-tale, the entertaining and instructive story of marvels and magic. The Westcar Papyrus, in which the tale of Djedi is preserved, is one of the principal monuments of this literature, a cycle of tales set at the court of King Khufu and recounting the wonders worked by magicians. Composed in the Middle Kingdom, though set in the Old Kingdom court of Khufu, the cycle reflects the Middle Kingdom interest in tales of the past, in the marvels of magic, and in the legitimation of the kingship.

The figure of the magician was an important one in Egyptian culture, for magic, heka, was a real and powerful force in the Egyptian conception of the world, the energy by which gods and skilled humans could alter reality through word, gesture, and ritual. The magician who commanded this power was a figure of genuine awe, and the wonder-tales gave narrative form to the Egyptian belief in the reality and the power of magic. Djedi, the magician of the Westcar Papyrus, is the most fully realized of these figures, and his marvels, the reattachment of severed heads, the knowledge of secret things, embody the powers attributed to the great practitioners of heka.

The setting of the tale at the court of Khufu reflects the Egyptian fascination with the great kings of the past and especially with the builders of the pyramids. Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was a figure of legend in later Egyptian tradition, remembered both as a great king and, in some traditions, as a tyrant, and his court provided a setting of grandeur and antiquity for the wonder-tales. The tale of Djedi places the magician and his prophecy at this legendary court, connecting the wonder-worker to the most famous of the Old Kingdom kings.

Djedi's prophecy of the rise of a new dynasty reflects the Egyptian use of prophecy as a literary and political device for the legitimation of the kingship. The foretelling of the birth of the divinely fathered children destined for the throne grounds the succession of the new line in prophecy and divine will, and it is the earliest surviving Egyptian dynastic legitimation narrative. The motif of the children fathered by the sun-god, destined for kingship, reflects the theology of the king as the son of Ra, a theology that would be elaborated in later royal divine-birth narratives, and the tale of Djedi is an early instance of the literary expression of this theology.

The study of Djedi and the Westcar Papyrus draws on the single surviving manuscript, of around 1700 BCE, now in Berlin, and on the scholarship on Middle Kingdom literature and the Egyptian wonder-tale. The tale is translated in the standard anthologies of Egyptian literature, and it is analyzed in the studies of the magician-figure, the prophecy of dynasty, and the narrative art of the Middle Kingdom. The incomplete state of the manuscript, which breaks off before the full working-out of the prophecy, leaves the conclusion of the cycle unknown, but the tale of Djedi stands as a complete and vivid episode, the locus classicus of the Egyptian magician and a key document of the Middle Kingdom narrative tradition.

Cross-Tradition Parallels

Djedi carries two structural functions at once: he is the wonder-worker who demonstrates the limits of power through moral refusal, and he is the prophet whose forecast of a new dynasty legitimates that dynasty before it exists. These two functions, the constrained magician and the dynastic prophet, occur separately and in combination across traditions, and what each tradition does with the combination reveals how it understood the relationship between superior knowledge and political authority.

Mesopotamian — The Sage Who Cannot Be Ordered to Kill (Gilgamesh tablet III, c. 1200 BCE; the apkallu tradition)

The Mesopotamian apkallu, the antediluvian sages who brought the arts of civilization to humanity, were depicted in later Neo-Assyrian tradition as half-fish, half-human figures, advisors of kings who carried the divine decree but were categorically outside royal command — their authority came from the gods, not the king. The structural parallel with Djedi's refusal to behead a man is the figure of the sage whose knowledge grants him a standing above the king's directive. The apkallu could not be overridden because their wisdom was of divine origin; Djedi cannot be overridden because the people are the noble flock of god. Both sages invoke a divine category that the royal command cannot enter. The difference: the Mesopotamian apkallu tradition makes the sage's immunity structural and institutional; Djedi's refusal is a personal ethical stand in a specific moment, not an institutionalized precedent.

Persian — Cyrus Foretold: Astyages's Dream and the Birth-Prophecy (Herodotus, Histories 1.107–108, c. 440 BCE)

Herodotus records that the Median king Astyages had two prophetic dreams foretelling that his grandson would supplant him as king. His court magicians interpreted the dreams, and Astyages attempted to prevent their fulfillment by ordering the infant Cyrus killed — an act that his own agent refused to complete. The dynastic-prophecy structure is exact: a figure with privileged access to divine knowledge foretells the succession of a new dynasty; the current ruler is unsettled; agents in the human chain refuse to carry out the killing the prophecy demands. Both Djedi's prophecy and the Astyages dreams deliver the same message to the sitting king — your line will be superseded. The difference is temporal direction: Djedi's prophecy is delivered by a magician aligned with the future dynasty's interests; Astyages's dreams are forced upon a king who actively resists the prophecy. Egyptian prophetic legitimation flows toward power; Persian prophetic revelation flows against it.

Hebrew — Nathan's Parable and the Prophet Who Refuses a King (2 Samuel 12:1-13, c. 10th century BCE in final form)

The prophet Nathan appeared before King David after David had ordered the death of Uriah and told him a parable — a rich man who took a poor man's only lamb — then said: 'You are the man.' Nathan's rebuke restrained what royal authority had already done. The structural overlap with Djedi is the figure of the wise man who speaks a truth the king cannot command otherwise, whose superior access to divine judgment constrains royal power from within the royal court. The structural difference is in the mode of constraint: Djedi refuses a future action before it occurs and justifies the refusal with a statement of principle; Nathan confronts a past action already done and delivers condemnation. Djedi's wisdom is pre-emptive; Nathan's is retrospective. Both constrain the king, but Egyptian wisdom operates as prevention while Hebrew prophecy operates as accountability.

Indian — Vyasa and the Dynastic Prophecy (Mahabharata, Adi Parva, composed c. 4th century BCE–4th century CE)

The sage Vyasa, compiler of the Mahabharata, is both its narrator and a character within it — a figure of such supreme knowledge that kings repeatedly come to him for guidance and for the continuation of dynastic lines. When the Kuru dynasty faced extinction, it was Vyasa who fathered the princes Dhritarashtra and Pandu through the practice of niyoga, ensuring the line's continuity. The structural function matches Djedi's: a figure of cosmic wisdom who stands outside normal power relations and is called upon by kings not to serve them but to participate in the shaping of dynasties. Where Djedi foretells the succession, Vyasa creates it. The Egyptian magician-prophet receives and transmits the divine plan; the Indian sage participates in making it.

Modern Influence

Djedi has become the best-known of the magician-figures of ancient Egyptian literature, familiar to modern readers through the translations and discussions of the Westcar Papyrus, which is among the most frequently anthologized and studied of all early Egyptian narrative texts. The vivid tale of the aged magician who reattaches severed heads and foretells the rise of a dynasty has a natural appeal, and Djedi is regularly cited as the classic example of the Egyptian wonder-worker, the wise and powerful magician of the early literature.

The tale of Djedi has contributed to the modern understanding of the Egyptian conception of magic and the figure of the magician. As the locus classicus of the magician-figure, the tale illustrates the powers attributed to the great practitioners of heka, the Egyptian magical force, and it is a standard reference in the study of Egyptian magic and its literary representation. The magician who commands life and death, knows secret things, and foretells the future is the embodiment of the Egyptian belief in the reality and power of magic, and Djedi is the figure through whom this belief is most vividly expressed in narrative.

Djedi's prophecy of the rise of a new dynasty has made the tale important to the modern study of the Egyptian use of prophecy and the legitimation of the kingship. As the earliest surviving Egyptian dynastic legitimation narrative, the tale is a key document in the study of how the Egyptians used prophecy and divine fathering to justify the succession of royal lines, and the motif of the children fathered by the sun-god, destined for the throne, is studied as an early instance of the theology of the king as the son of Ra that would be elaborated in later royal narratives.

The name of Djedi has entered modern popular culture in an unexpected way, for it has been noted as a possible source or echo for the term Jedi in the Star Wars films, the order of wise and powerful figures who command a mysterious force. Whether or not the connection is intended, the resemblance between the Egyptian magician Djedi and the fictional Jedi has been remarked, giving the ancient magician a curious place in modern popular consciousness and a point of recognition beyond the study of Egyptian literature.

Within Egyptology and the study of literature, Djedi and the Westcar Papyrus remain standard subjects, treated in the scholarship on Middle Kingdom narrative, the Egyptian wonder-tale, the figure of the magician, and the prophecy of dynasty. The tale is translated in the major anthologies of Egyptian literature and analyzed in the studies of early Egyptian fiction and its themes, ensuring that this aged magician of the court of Khufu, the worker of marvels and the prophet of a royal line, continues to inform the modern understanding of Egyptian magic, narrative, and the literary legitimation of the kingship, the locus classicus of the Egyptian wonder-worker and one of the memorable characters of early Egyptian literature.

Primary Sources

The sole primary source for Djedi is the Westcar Papyrus (P. Berlin 3033), a Middle Kingdom manuscript written in classical Middle Egyptian hieratic, acquired by British traveller Henry Westcar around 1823–25, then transferred to the Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin, where it is currently held. The papyrus dates paleographically to approximately 1700 BCE (Second Intermediate Period) but its stories are set at the court of the Old Kingdom king Khufu (c. 2589–2566 BCE) and were likely composed in the Middle Kingdom. The manuscript contains seven columns, of which the earlier columns are damaged and the later ones better preserved; the tale of Djedi begins in column six.

The standard German edition and translation is Adolf Erman, Die Märchen des Papyrus Westcar, 2 vols. (Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1890), the foundational philological edition. The principal English translation and commentary is found in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms (University of California Press, 1973), pp. 215–222, where the tale is titled 'The Tale of King Cheops and the Magicians' and presented in full with notes. Lichtheim discusses the manuscript's date, the frame-narrative structure, and the prophecy of the Fifth Dynasty. A second accessible English translation is in William Kelly Simpson (ed.), The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 3rd ed. (Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 13–24, translated by Simpson himself, with an introduction covering the genre and the manuscript.

R.B. Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940–1640 BC (Oxford World's Classics, 1997), pp. 102–128, provides a third English translation with literary commentary on the Westcar tales as a group, analyzing the tale of Djedi in particular for its narrative art, the moral refusal scene, and the dynastic-prophecy structure. Parkinson situates the wonder-tales within the Middle Kingdom literary tradition and discusses the manuscript's relationship to other court narratives.

For the context of Egyptian magic (heka) within which Djedi's powers belong, see J.F. Borghouts, Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts (Brill, 1978), which provides translated spells and an introduction to the Egyptian conception of magic as a real force, giving the background against which the literary magician Djedi must be read. John Baines, 'Literacy, Social Organization, and the Archaeological Record' in John Baines, Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (Oxford, 2007), pp. 33–56, discusses the Middle Kingdom literary production context. For the dynastic-prophecy dimension, Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 57–60, addresses the use of prophecy and divine fathering in Egyptian legitimation narratives, of which the tale of Djedi is the earliest surviving example.

Significance

Djedi is significant as the locus classicus of the Egyptian magician-figure, the most fully realized of the wonder-workers of early Egyptian literature. As the aged magician who reattaches severed heads, knows secret things, and foretells the rise of a dynasty, Djedi embodies the Egyptian conception of the great practitioner of heka, the magical force, and his tale is the classic narrative expression of the Egyptian belief in the reality and power of magic.

The tale of Djedi is significant for what it reveals about the Egyptian conception of magic and its powers. The marvels of the magician, above all the reattachment of severed heads and the restoration of the dead to life, display the powers attributed to the masters of heka, and the tale illustrates the Egyptian understanding of magic as a real and potent force capable of altering reality and even reversing death. Djedi is the figure through whom this conception is most vividly expressed in narrative.

Djedi's refusal to perform his feat on a human prisoner is significant for its expression of the moral dimension of magical power. The magician's declaration that the people are the noble flock of god, and his refusal to kill a man for a demonstration, mark him as a figure of moral authority who constrains his power by ethical principle, and they express the Egyptian conviction that power must serve right. This moral stature sets Djedi apart from a mere performer of marvels and gives the tale an ethical depth.

The prophecy of Djedi is significant as the earliest surviving Egyptian dynastic legitimation narrative. The foretelling of the birth of the divinely fathered children destined for the throne grounds the succession of a new royal line in prophecy and divine will, and it is the earliest surviving instance of the Egyptian use of prophecy to justify the kingship. The motif of the children fathered by the sun-god, destined for kingship, anticipates the later royal divine-birth narratives and the theology of the king as the son of Ra.

Djedi is significant, finally, for his place in the history of Egyptian literature as one of the memorable characters of the early narrative tradition. The aged magician of the court of Khufu, the worker of marvels and the prophet of a royal line, is among the most vivid figures of Middle Kingdom fiction, and the tale that bears his name is a key document of the Egyptian wonder-tale and the narrative art of the Middle Kingdom. His enduring recognition, reaching even into modern popular culture, testifies to the lasting appeal of the figure of the wise and powerful magician that Djedi embodies.

Connections

Djedi is bound most closely to the Westcar Papyrus, the cycle of wonder-tales set at the court of Khufu in which his tale is the climactic episode. The tale of Djedi stands at the pivot of the cycle, the point at which the tales of past magicians give way to the prophecy of the future dynasty, and it cannot be understood apart from the collection of which it is the central part.

The tale connects to the legendary Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid at whose court the magician performs, and to the broader Egyptian fascination with the great kings of the Old Kingdom and the pyramid-builders. The legendary Khufu of the wonder-tale, distinct from the historical pharaoh, provides the setting for Djedi's marvels and prophecy.

Djedi connects to the Egyptian conception of magic, the heka concept, the magical force that the magician commands, and to Thoth, the god of magic, wisdom, and writing, whose secret sanctuary-knowledge Khufu seeks and Djedi knows. As the divine patron of magic and hidden knowledge, Thoth stands behind the wonder-working of the magician.

Through his prophecy, Djedi connects to Ra, the sun-god who fathers the three children destined for the kingship, and to the theology of the king as the son of Ra. The fathering of the future kings by the sun-god is the heart of Djedi's prophecy and connects the tale to the broader Egyptian theology of the divine origin of the kingship.

Djedi's prophecy connects the tale to the broader Egyptian tradition of royal legitimation and the divine birth of kings, a tradition expressed in later narratives such as the divine-birth cycle of Hatshepsut and the dream-narrative of the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV. As the earliest surviving dynastic legitimation narrative, the tale of Djedi is an early instance of the literary justification of the kingship that these later monuments would develop.

Finally, Djedi connects to the broader genre of the Egyptian wonder-tale and the figure of the magician in Egyptian literature, the wise and powerful wonder-worker who commands the forces of magic. As the locus classicus of this figure, Djedi stands at the head of the tradition of the literary magician, and his tale connects to the wider world of Egyptian narrative fiction and its fascination with magic, marvel, and the powers of the wise.

Djedi connects also to the later folkloric magicians of Egyptian literature, such as the legendary figures of the Demotic Setna cycle and other tales of wonder-working and forbidden knowledge, in which the figure of the powerful magician continued to develop. The tale connects, through its refusal of the killing of a man for a demonstration, to the Egyptian concern with Maat, the right order and justice, and to the conviction that power must serve right, themes that bind the wonder-tale of Djedi to the broader ethical and religious world of Egyptian thought.

Further Reading