Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor
Misfortune survived and honestly reported can still fail to console a superior anxious about his own audience with the king, exposing the limits of consolation through storytelling.
- a story told within a story to console a nervous official
- a benevolent monstrous serpent as prophet and host
- irony in the frame's unresolved ending
- an early attested tale of a marvelous island encounter
A frame tale in which a returning official, dreading his report to the king, is told a story by a subordinate about surviving a shipwreck and washing up on an island ruled by a giant, benevolent serpent who prophesies rescue and rewards the sailor with treasure. The story is meant to reassure, but the official's terse closing reply suggests he remains unconvinced, an ironic undercutting rare in the genre. It survives on a single Twelfth Dynasty papyrus.
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