Author Description

Makes available a difficult-to-find folkloric scholarship classic and illuminates it with contemporary commentary from a preeminent authority on Egyptian folktales. Gaston Maspero is a towering figure in Egyptology. Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt offers a wealth of primary data and authoritative commentaries on ancient Egyptian culture, language, history, society, and ethnic groups as depicted in Egyptian and Greek–Egyptian narratives. The work provides the contextual data necessary for understanding the tale-texts and reflects Maspero's deep knowledge of many fields, from the classics to life in modern Egypt. This new edition includes a contemporary foreword, which introduces Maspero and describes his scholarship. It also provides, for the first time, extensive identification of the ancient stories in terms of international tale-types and motifs. The new information places the anthology in a broader academic context and is a valuable resource for students of Egyptology, folklore, literature, history, and social and cultural anthropology.