ABSTRACT
Deceptively simple in format and language, the tale is one of the most beautifully structured, as well as one of the earliest, examples of narrative fiction in the Egyptian language. The relation between traveller and foreign lands in these tales changes over time, revealing deeper changes in Egyptian perception of the world outside and of Egypt itself. These literary spaces can only be explored if first we confront the problems surrounding our definition of literature in the Egyptian context. The search for ancient Egyptian literature becomes a search for the 'human' aspects of a society that, through its written and pictorial records, usually appears to the modern observer to be preoccupied with gods, power and death. A description of exotic products has given way to an analysis of deep problems facing Egyptian society. The development of such a concept of space can be observed in other Middle Egyptian texts and traced even more precisely from an historical point of view.
