him. Yet it is imperative that the children shall be saved from his
wrath, as they are the kings of the Vth Dynasty. There may be a long
episode lost of their flight and adventures.

One reference to a date needs notice. The 25th of the month Tybi is said
to be the predicted birthday of the children; and Khufu refers to going
to Sakhebu about that time apparently, when the banks of the canal are
cut and the land was drying after the inundation, whereon Dedi
threatens that the water shall still be deep there. This points to 25th
Tybi being about the close of the inundation. This would be about
the case both in the beginning of the IVth Dynasty, and also in the
XIIth Dynasty, when the papyrus was perhaps written: hence there is
nothing conclusive to be drawn from this allusion so far. But when we
compare this tale with those following, we see good ground for its
belonging to a time before the XIIth Dynasty The following tale of the
peasant and the workman evidently belongs to the IXth or Xth Dynasties,
when Herakleopolis was the capital, and Sanehat is certainly of the
XIIth Dynasty. Yet in those we see character and incident made the basis
of interest, in place of the childish profusion of marvels of the Tales
of the Magicians. It seems impossible not to suppose that they belong to
very different ages and canons of taste; and hence we cannot refer the
crudities of the Khufu tales to the time of the far more elaborate and
polished recital of the adventures of Sanehat in the XIIth Dynasty.
Being thus obliged to suppose an earlier date for these tales, the
allusion to the month Tybi throws us back to a very early period--the
IVth Dynasty--for their original outlines. Doubtless they were modified
by reciters, and probably took shape in the Vth or VIth Dynasties; but
yet we must regard them as belonging practically to the age to which
they refer.