#THE ELOQUENT PEASANT PRO#

Almost the entire french nation became divided between pro and anti Dreyfusards.Attitude of the pressAgainst this odious campaign was set in motion … Wikipedia The public scandal of the Dreyfus Affair - The scandal over falsely accused Alfred Dreyfus grew into a public scandal of unprecedented scale. The maxim of the golden rule is exemplified in many Christian stories … WikipediaĬonte du Paysan éloquent - Le Conte du Paysan éloquent, ou Conte de l Oasien, est une histoire de l Égypte antique racontant les aventures d un paysan, nommé Khoun Inpou (Ḫwn Ỉnpw), qui traverse par hasard la propriété du noble Rensi fils de Mérou, gardée par son sévère… … Wikipédia en Français For other uses, see Golden Rule (disambiguation). This term refers to the maxim do as you would be done by. The Golden Rule - Not to be confused with the Golden Law or the Golden ratio. His complaints were so eloquently worded that his case was prolonged by officials so they could… … Ancient Egypt The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant - A literary tale from the Middle Kingdom that describes the pleadings of the peasant Khunanup for justice at the hands of the Egyptian bureaucracy. * – in hieroglyphs (includes literal translations by various contributors) Amenemhat, after reading Khun-anup's last speech, was impressed and ordered the donkey to be returned to Khun-anup and the peasant to be compensated with all the property of Nemtynakht, including his job, making Nemtynakht as poor as Khun-anup had been. But rather than being punished for his insolence, the peasant was given justice. After one last speech, the discouraged peasant left, but Rensi sent for him and ordered him to return. After sensing that he was being ignored, Khun-anup insulted him and was punished with a beating. The king was impressed, but ordered the peasant not be given justice just yet and his petitions to be put in writing.įor nine days Khun-anup complimented the high steward Rensi and begged for justice. Rensi brought the case before Pharaoh and told him of Khun-anup's rhetorical powers.

Khun-anup could find none, but the magnificent speech of the eloquent peasant convinced Rensi to continue to consider his case. Rensi and his judges heard his case and replied that witnesses to Nemtynakht's so called crime were needed for the case to continue.

Khun-anup searched for Rensi and found him near the riverside of the city. The donkey then began to eat the grain and whereupon Nemtynakht took custody of the donkey and started to beat Khun-anup, knowing that Rensi would believe the word of his overseer rather than any allegations of trickery and theft from Khun-anup. Nemtynakht, the overseer of noble's lands, was renowned for his misdeeds and tricked Khun-anup into causing damage to his master Meritensa's property by spreading a sheet across the road beside the farm, forcing Khun-anup and his donkey to trample over the crops. The story begins with a peasant, Khun-anup, and his donkey stumbling on to the lands of the noble Rensi son of Meru. It is set in the Ninth/Tenth dynasty around Herakleopolis. Finally, I discuss how the irony at the heart of its narrative can lead us to interpret the tale as having either conservative or revolutionary implications for the political system it depicts.The Eloquent Peasant is an Ancient Egyptian story about a peasant, Khun-Anup, who stumbles upon the property of the noble Rensi son of Meru, guarded by its harsh overseer, Nemtynakht. I discuss challenges in translating the key term in the tale – ma'at – in light of the fact that it can be taken to mean ‘justice’ and/or ‘truth’. I claim that the tale's argument from dysfunction anticipates the move in contemporary Western political philosophy towards privileging non-ideal over ideal theory. After contextualizing the tale as part of a tradition of moral and political philosophy in ancient Egypt, I explore the methods by which the text defines the proper roles of political authority and contrast its approach to justifying political authority with the argument from the state of nature so common in modern Western political philosophy. This article is an introduction to an ancient Egyptian text called The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and an argument that it ought to be seen as a classic of political philosophy.

The eloquent peasant