Note 38 — INTRODUCTION.

The “Clever Thief” (No. 4) is one of the numerous variants of the well-known story which we generally associate with the treasure of Rhampsinitos.38 As Professor Schiefner has pointed out some of its Western parallels (pp. 37 and 43), it is not necessary to do more here than to add a few references to those which he has given. Professor Schiefner has himself written on the subject.39 The most recent commentator is Professor G. Maspero, who has devoted to it four pages of the Introduction to his collection of ancient Egyptian tales.40 The name of Rhampsinitos, he says, is a Greek form of the Egyptian name Ram-sis-si-nit, or Ramses the son of Nit. Two objections, he remarks, have been made to the supposition that the story is of Egyptian origin. One is the nature of the masonry employed by the builders of the treasury, which has been stated not to be in keeping with Egyptian architectural practice. The other is the shaving of the beards of the drunken soldiers who had been set to watch the corpse of the clever thief’s comrade. This has been said to be an incident evidently not of Egyptian origin, seeing that in Egypt only barbarians wore beards. But Professor Maspero impugns both objections. He shows that some Egyptian temples did actually possess hiding-places resembling that described in the story; and as regards the shaving, he points out that in the first place Egyptians could wear beards, and did wear them when they felt inclined, and that in the second place the soldiers who guarded the corpse would belong “to a tribe of Lybian origin of the name of Matiou,” and therefore be fully entitled, in their capacity of foreigners, to wear their beards. A modern Greek variant of the story has been lately discovered in Cyprus,41 and Mr. Tawney has recently translated an Indian variant,42 which offers a striking resemblance to the Gaelic tale of “The Shifty Lad.”43 The Tibetan tale, however, is more nearly akin to the Egyptian form of the story than to that which it takes in this Indian variant.