The article examines one of the toposes of Arabic historical literature about Egypt and its continuity from ancient Egyptian primary sources. The story of Queen Daluk and the sorceress Tadura continues the line of interaction between the images of the ruler and the wizard in ancient Egyptian literature, and also significantly complements a number of folklore motifs about the wizard's use of magical creatures-assistants. A number of features of this story and its comparative analysis with other samples of Egyptian folklore suggest that it has ancient Egyptian and Coptic folklore roots. In general, there is no doubt that the story of Daluk was quite widespread and had a wide oral existence at the time of its entry into the Arab-Egyptian tradition of describing the history of Egypt.

The immediate subject of this work is the story of Queen Daluk, which is part of the first extant Arabic work on the pre-Islamic history of Egypt called "Futuh Misr wa-l-Maghrib. wa-l-Andalus "("The Conquest of Egypt, al-Maghrib and al-Andalus") [Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985]. Its author, Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abd al-Hakam (802-870), was one of the founders and the most prominent representative of the rich Arabic-language tradition of writing the ancient history of Egypt from the beginning of time to the Muslim conquest, and the story of Daluk given by him is an original and stable topos of this tradition.

The mentioned tradition itself is represented by about two dozen Arab-Egyptian and, more broadly, Arab-Muslim authors, whose works form a complete, consistent and very detailed, although vividly legendary in nature, version of the history of ancient Egypt. Moreover, the plots and details of this version often have no direct analogues in any other traditions and sources known to us. It would seem that this circumstance should attract the interest of scientists-Egyptologists to the Arab-Muslim tradition, but in reality it remains practically not in demand by specialists. This may be partly explained by the fact that the subjects of this tradition are scattered throughout a large number of Arabic-language works, not all of which have been translated into European languages and, accordingly, are not yet involved in the circle of professional Egyptological discussions. The main reason for its lack of demand is the almost complete ambiguity of the question of the genesis and sources of information used by the discussed tradition.

Based on the content of the corresponding Arabic-language works and due to some direct indications contained in them, it can be confidently stated that the Arab authors used, on the one hand, the Old Testament tradition about Egypt and related post-Old Testament Jewish legends [Gibb, 1960, p. 131], and on the other - the mass folklore of Copts1-aboriginal Egyptians, native speakers of pre-Islamic, co-

1 Cf. Ibn Abd al-Hakam: "And the Copts have a saying about this... "[Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, p. 50].

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ancient Egyptian tradition, as well as oral reports from some respected and educated Copts2.

The assumption of B. Carr de Vaux, according to which the main source of the Arabic-language tradition about pre-Islamic Egypt was a certain stable cycle of folklore Coptic stories about the history of Egypt from the beginning of time, i.e. a kind of oral folk version of this story [L'abrege des merveilles, 1898, p. XXXIII f.], is unsubstantiated. I will add that this assumption is unlikely, if only because Arabic-language authors describe Egyptian history with a stable sequence of dozens of kings, about whom, apart from their names, nothing is usually known - this way of presenting material is not typical either for folklore fiction, or for folk oral transmission of real history or historical writings. Finally, Arabic-speaking authors refer to Coptic reports much less frequently than to a chain of scholarly writings that ends in some other Arabic-language work, the sources of which are not mentioned at all.

It is particularly noteworthy that the Arabic-language tradition of describing ancient Egypt, as experts have long noted [L'abrege des merveilles, 1898, p. XXXIII f.; Pevsner, 1971, p. 71], has practically nothing in common with the stories of Herodotus and Diodorus (reflecting the historical legendarium of the Egyptians themselves, primarily priests), nor with Manetho (much more directly or ultimately based not on the actual legendary material, but on data official monuments that are contemporary or close to the events described, as well as official annals and royal lists). In other words, it is not directly related to the historical folklore, nor to the historical scholarship of the priests of Late and Greco-Roman Egypt, although it would seem that it is to them, as the main guardians of the historical and cultural tradition of the people, that the origins of any autochthonous version of the history of Egypt, which could be used by the Arab authors studying it, should. Nevertheless, the periods into which the pre-Islamic history of Egypt is divided by Arabic-speaking authors - both in time, and in the events contained in them, and even in duration-exactly correspond to the real course of Egyptian history [Nemirovsky, 2001, p. 220 el.], which would hardly be possible if they did not use the actual history of Egypt. Egyptian historiography.

Interpretation of all these paradoxes, as well as consideration of other sources of the discussed tradition, is beyond the scope of this article, but it is already clear: until the connotations (historical, literary, folklore, etc.) of certain elements of the Arabic-language legendary history of Ancient Egypt are identified, it will be impossible to judge their origin and significance. and, therefore, use them in scientific research. This paper is devoted to establishing one of these connotations.

Ibn Abd al-Hakam lived during the heyday of medieval Arab-Muslim culture; for the Arab-Muslim elite of Egypt, this was a time when they recognized themselves as part of the Egyptian historical and cultural space, and their representatives considered themselves more likely to continue Egyptian history than to be conquerors from outside. The reasons for this lay in the original views laid down in Islam (the Prophet commanded a good attitude to the Egyptians), and the desire of the Arab-Egyptian nobility to political separatism: from the ideological point of view, it is reflected in the claim to the historical and cultural continuity in relation to ancient Egyptian civilization, to the point that the Arab historians of Egypt did not create virtually any "universal history" of the Caliphate, but they

2 Cf. the same author: "A sheikh from the learned Egyptians told me... "[Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, p. 49]; "Some Egyptian sheikhs claim..." [ibid., p. 52].

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In his works, a special kind of fada'il genre was formed (dosl. "advantages, advantages", a more accurate contextual translation is "sights", "memorable things") [Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, p. 9; Pevsner, 1971, p. 79; Pevsner, 1980]. This genre itself was widely represented in historical and geographical writings throughout the Arab Ecumene. But if in other places it reflected the exploits and memorable events that occurred during the spread of Islam in the respective regions, then the fada'ils of Arab-Egyptian historians are devoted almost exclusively to the pre-Muslim history of Egypt and emphasize the greatness of the achievements of the Egyptians of that time (and unlike the Arab-Egyptian authors, no other Arab-Muslim authors of the Copts exalt them) [Boyko, 1991, p. 10 and el.; Pevsner, 1971, p. 73 and el.; Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, p.356, note 12]. That is why it is appropriate to assume that works of the fada'il Misr genre (dosl. "the virtues of Egypt") may contain the transmission of the actual Egyptian late folklore layers and their Coptic adaptation.

The main sources used by Ibn Abd al-Hakam himself in compiling his fada'il are the extant works of the Arab-Egyptian scholars of USH-the beginning of the IX century: 'Abdallah ibn Lahi'a, al-Lais ibn Sa'da, Uthman ibn Salih, Yahya ibn Bukayr, etc. Later Arab-Muslim authors used these works to a much lesser extent; however, the work of Ibn Abd al-Hakam was retold by many of them and, in fact, served as one of the main foundations of the entire Arab-Muslim version of ancient Egyptian history up to al-Maqrizi (XV century) [Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, p. 11 and ate.]

One of the most interesting subjects encountered in this work is the story of Queen Daluka and her assistant, the sorceress Tadura. Other, shorter versions of this story are also found in later Arabic-language historians, including Al-Macoudi [Al-Macoudi, 1863, vol. 2, p. 398]3, so that it eventually became a commonplace of the Muslim version of Egyptian history [Masalik el-absar, 1924,1, p. 239; L'Egypt de Murtadi, 1953, p. 97 f.], but all these later works convey (sometimes with distortions or changes) the story presented in Ibn Abd al-Hakam, who reports the following about Daluk.

After the death of Pharaoh and his army (identified by Ibn Abd al-Hakam with the famous Old Testament death of Pharaoh and his soldiers in the Red Sea during the pursuit of Moses) in Egypt, none of the noble and free men remained: these classes were represented only by women and children. Then the noble women of Egypt chose an old and worthy woman from among them, called Daluka ibn Zabba, who had "intelligence, knowledge, and experience." Since she was afraid that other kings would invade Egypt, she built a wall around "the whole land of Egypt" and set up guard posts with detachments that could send alarm signals to each other by ringing bells (this wall was called the Old Woman's Wall in honor of Daluka, in Upper Egypt its remains have survived to Muslim times). But this did not seem enough to her: the queen turned to the sorceress Tadura, who served the former pharaoh, with a respectful request to help the country with magical protection, referring to the fact that with the death of the Pharaoh and the army, the Egyptians had no other serious hope. Tadura, in response to this request, erected a temple in the middle of Memphis, on the walls of which she painted magical images of horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and people: if anyone approaches Egypt by land or sea, these images will move from the direction from which the enemy is coming, and the damage done to the images will correspond to the real ones. losses in enemy armies. When the enemies decided to take advantage of the fact that with the death of the Pharaoh, Egypt became a "land of women", they tried to attack

3 For a summary of Arabic references to Daluk and the rule of its successors, see [Boyko, 1983, pp. 131-133, 136-137; L'Egypte de Murtadi, 1953, p. 26, f. n. 4].

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these charms worked on him, and the neighbors, convinced of the magical power of Egyptian women, stopped attacking and began to fear them [Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 1985, pp. 46-48].

As K. A. Boyko drew attention to, the very magic technique described here (causing damage to an object representing an enemy, with the damage being transferred to the enemy itself) was actually used in ancient Egypt as a state ritual against external enemies even in the Middle Kingdom period. This is evidenced by the materials of archaeological excavations - "tablets of curses" and broken vessels with the names of enemies and foreign rulers [Boyko, 1982, p. 132, note 4]. This fact, and the ancient Egyptian origins of the legend of the wall built by Daluk 4, and the general considerations about the Coptic (dating back to ancient Egyptian) sources of Fada'il Misr, given above, all make it very likely that the story of Daluk is a legacy of pre-Islamic Egyptian folklore.

In this regard, it would be interesting to trace the presence in this passage of folklore toposes, known from the works of ancient Egyptian folklore (primarily fairy tales and their literary records), and their evolution relative to previous models. As we will see later, such toposes in the story of Daluk are indeed found and fall into two groups of motives: the relationship between the king and the wizard in a crisis, when magic becomes the most important and even the only means of state policy; the use of magical assistants by this wizard (they can be creatures or objects) that ensure the effectiveness of protection.

Egyptian folklore provides us with many examples of the use of magic by heroes for various purposes determined by the plot of the works, regardless of whether the action takes place in an ordinary environment or at the level of the pharaoh and his entourage. Magical methods of influencing reality in this context should be understood as any actions that fundamentally go beyond the physical and mental capabilities of a person. Magic-related subjects are typical of the literary works of almost all periods of the Egyptian state's existence, and, as we will see later, the evolution of the wizard's image correlates well with the historical realities of various eras, reflecting the comparative strength and weakness of Egypt in relation to its neighbors.

Since the story of Daluk deals with magic as a tool in the hands of the sovereign, who uses it not himself, but resorts to the help of a nearby wizard, it seems appropriate to trace how in various plots of ancient Egyptian folklore, which developed at different times, the magical actions of characters relate to state policy; what place does the figure occupy in the plot? the Pharaoh and how his relationship with the wizard is determined; and if, by way of exception, the wizard is the Pharaoh himself, then what are the goals of his magical actions. According to the criteria of similarity and difference revealed in the comparative analysis of such Egyptian narratives, the story of Daluk and Tadur will also be compared with them.

The first extant work containing descriptions of magical actions is The Tales of Papyrus Vestkar (Erman, 1890; cf. Russian translation: Tales and Stories of Ancient Egypt, 1979, pp. 60-77). They were written during the late Middle Kingdom, but they refer to pharaohs whose reign dates back to an earlier historical period - the Ancient Kingdom: these are Khufu and his sons (IV dynasty), as well as Snefru, the founder of this dynasty, and Nebka, the founder of preda-

4 Diodorus (I. 57) mentions that the Pharaoh Sesostris built a wall to protect Egypt from Asia.

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dacha, III dynasty. The fairy tales themselves were formed in the First Transition Period, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC.

The main plot outline of the work is the events that take place at the court of Khufu: the bored Pharaoh is entertained by his sons, who tell interesting stories about kings and wizards of the past, and one of the princes even brings the current wizard Djedi, who demonstrates his skills to the Pharaoh. Here are some magical actions performed in one of the fairy tales of this cycle: the priest-reader Ubaone made a crocodile out of wax, which came to life and punished the lover of his wife; the main heriheb5 Jajaemanh folded the waters of the lake in half and thus returned the girl to the dropped pendant; the sorcerer Jedi was able to put the severed head of the animal in place, so that it then it started moving again. In all these cases, it is necessary to pay attention to the following: first, it is quite obvious that magic is not performed by the Pharaoh, but by a special person, except that sometimes he does it for the sake of the pharaoh (but not by order, but at the request), while the pharaoh himself is an outsider and, sometimes, a usufructuary of magic; secondly, the miracles that occur for the pharaoh are in fact entertainment, a successful pastime, and the use of magic is not caused by any dangerous circumstances for him, the need to protect himself from threats; thirdly, in the works of the Ancient and Middle Kingdom periods, the images of the pharaohs are quite canonical and positive, there are no indications in any of the fairy tales irony or hidden disrespect for the three mentioned rulers 6.

In other words, this cycle of fairy tales presents a generalized image of a wizard entertaining the Pharaoh with his magic or, in extreme cases, solving very minor problems for both the pharaoh and the state, such as the return of a sunken jewelry. Let us emphasize once again that the Pharaoh himself is quite a positive figure in the plot.

New Kingdom stories often refer to the use of magic in connection with supreme power, but magic acts are performed either by the gods ("The Dispute between Horus and Set") or by their incarnations (the statue), and there is no direct connection between magic and the actions of the Pharaoh ("Two Brothers"). In the story "The Healing of Bentresh "[Kitchen, 1979, p. 284-287; cf. English and Russian translation: Simpson, 2003, p. 362-366; Tales of Ancient Egypt, 1998, p. 57-63] a statue of the god Khonsu exorcises sickness and obsession from the pharaoh's wife's sister. The text explicitly tells about the transfer of magical protection through this statue to the patient, as well as about the statue's battle with the spirits of possession and victory over them. In the construction of the plot of this fairy tale, in general terms, the model adopted in the works of the Middle Kingdom is repeated, with the only change that the goals of using magic become much more significant - the salvation of man. In everything else - in the distribution of roles between characters, in plot moves, in the positive image of the pharaoh - the old traditions are observed. Messengers come to the Pharaoh to ask for help for Bentresh, the pharaoh first sends a knowledgeable person (i.e., a magician) to the country of Bakhtan, who certifies the need for magical intervention. Only then does the Pharaoh ask the statue of the god Khonsu for consent to transport it to this country and, in fact, to heal it. The statue here acts as a "quasi-magician" - a magical assistant to the pharaoh and the direct "author" of magic. Pharaoh respectfully asks her for a display of power.

Heriheb is the highest priestly position in ancient Egypt.

6 In this case, we are not talking about the ideological content of the last, third fairy tale: the question of changing dynasties is beyond the scope of the problems of this article.

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However, another work of the New Kingdom period, "Meri-Ra and the Pharaoh" (Posener, 1985; cf. Russian translation: Tales of Ancient Egypt, 1998, p. 4). 134-145], shows significant changes in the previous model. Unfortunately, the text is extremely poorly preserved, the narrative is full of lacunae, and most of the plot twists are simply incomprehensible. However, a number of features of this work attract attention. First of all, the plot itself is remarkable. The Pharaoh with the assumed name of Sobek was known for excessive gluttony, and one day, after swallowing spoiled food out of greed, became mortally ill; realizing this, he called Meri-Ra, his most skilled scribe, and asked him to beg the gods for additional life time for himself. Meri-Ra did not decline the request, although he knew that he could only do so if he gave his own life in return, and he really prepared to die. After taking a promise from Pharaoh that he will never encroach on his beautiful wife and will take care of his son, he goes to the kingdom of the dead instead of the king. However, the Pharaoh does not fulfill the promise: Meri-Ra, who is in the afterlife, becomes aware that he, at the instigation of his sages (long-time enemies and envious of Meri-Ra), killed his son and took possession of his wife. Then Meri-Ra creates and sends a clay ("earthen") man to the earth to punish the sages, in whom the gods and, apparently, Meri-Ra himself see the main culprits of the evil that has happened. The clay man encourages Pharaoh to execute the wise men, and then returns to his master.

The image of Meri-Ra is certainly continued by a number of magicians in contact with the Pharaoh in ancient Egyptian folklore. Meri-Ra is able to perform magical actions (creating a clay man) and communicate with the gods (magically interfering with the fate of a man-pharaoh - and changing it). An innovation in comparison with the plots discussed above is the negative, and partly satirical coloring of the image of the Pharaoh. The wizard in this fairy tale comes to the aid of the Pharaoh in a situation in which he is guilty (the threat of death as a result of gluttony). In addition, the solution of the problem created by the pharaoh requires a considerable sacrifice from the wizard - he must leave the world of the living instead of the doomed ruler. The Pharaoh pays for this with black ingratitude, breaking his word to the wizard and causing harm to his relatives. As a result, in this case, the relationship between the pharaoh and the wizard is built up in a completely new literary model. Unlike the plots discussed above, here the wizard solves not an insignificant or completely unrelated problem personally related to the Pharaoh, but the most important problem of his own - the question of the pharaoh's life, and the latter is completely dependent on its solution, and is not just a bystander for the fulfillment of his own wishes. Raising the " stake "(the importance of the task to the king) also requires raising the" price " (the effort/sacrifice required of the wizard) - in this case, he is sacrificing his own life. In other words, in this fairy tale, the magician turns from a man who entertained the king with his art, into the savior of the Pharaoh. I note that so far we are talking about saving the tsar personally, and not the state as a whole.

One of the most significant and extensive works, the heroes of which turn to magic for help, is the cycle of tales about Satni - Hemuas [Griffith, 1900; cf. English translation: Simpson, 2003, p. 453-469, and Russian exposition: Ancient Egypt: tales, parables, 2000, p. 207-283.], formed in the Sais-Persian period, but recorded later in the Hellenistic period. Two separate stories of this cycle have come down to us on the back of a papyrus with administrative notes in Greek, dating from 47-46 BC; the third story is preserved by Herodotus, in which Satni-Hemuas appears under the name Sethos. First, it is noteworthy that in this work, three of the four wizards who appear in the story are of royal blood: Satni-Hemuas is the son of Pharaoh Usermaatr, and accordingly his son Sa-Osiris is the grandson of Usermaatr, Neferkaptah is the son of Pharaoh Merneptah. In all races-

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In the cases discussed earlier, the images of the wizard and the king are clearly separated, the wizard is not only not a relative of the Pharaoh, he has always been separated from him and from his entire family. Secondly, it should be noted that the tasks that heroes solve with the help of magic are raised to a fundamentally new level in their seriousness and scale.

The dual relationship "pharaoh-wizard" is revealed in the second fragment of the Greek papyrus and in the story of Herodotus. In the first case, the plot is built around the confrontation between the Pharaoh and the Ethiopian wizard. An Ethiopian comes to the king with a sealed scroll and invites the Egyptian scribes and sages to read the text contained in the scroll without breaking the seal, otherwise he threatens to shame Egypt. Sa-Osiris, the twelve-year-old son of Satni-Hemuas, volunteered to solve this problem, which affects both the prestige of the Pharaoh and the interests of the state. He starts reading the contents of the scroll. It uses the compositional technique of a story within a story, as the scroll tells how a certain Chorus, the son of a Black woman, was able to use magic to kidnap Pharaoh Menkhpar from his chambers in Egypt and take him to the Country of the Ethiopians, where the Egyptian pharaoh was severely whipped with rods in front of all the people. Naturally, the Pharaoh of Menhpara needed magical protection, and the sorcerer Hor, the son of Pa-Neshe, came to his aid, who not only stopped further attempts to kidnap the Pharaoh by magic, but also with the help of wax figures, in turn, transferred the ruler of the Country of Negroes to Egypt, where he was also publicly flogged. The story within the story gets its compositional conclusion when it is revealed that Sa-Osiris is the incarnated wizard Horus, the son of Pa-Neshe, and the Ethiopian is, respectively, the incarnation of Horus, the son of a Black woman.

In the passage preserved by Herodotus (Hdt. IV. 141), the storyline is as follows: Setos (resp. Satni-Hemuas), who disdained the warrior class and deprived them of land plots, was left without their help when the "king of the Arabs and Assyrians Sanaharib"attacked the country. Then Sethos turned to the deity, and in the morning it turned out that the mice that attacked the Assyrians had chewed out their quivers, bows and shield belts, after which the Assyrians fled and were defeated.

Even a brief retelling of these passages allows us to see that the idea of protecting Egypt through magic from external enemies, both representing a military force and threatening the prestige of the Pharaoh and state power in general, runs through all these plots. An equally persistent motive is the extreme, pathetic weakness of the military and administrative position of the Pharaoh himself: he is punished with rods in front of the people, the soldiers refuse to help him in the hour of war, etc. In these stories, wizards are called upon to solve disproportionately more serious tasks than in the ones discussed above. In the Tales of Papyrus Vestkar, magic only entertained the Pharaoh; in the tale of Meri-Ra, it was necessary to save the pharaoh's life; in the stories of the Sais-Persian period, magic was supposed to save the state prestige and the country itself from an external enemy. Apparently, this is how the political situation that was fundamentally different from the New Kingdom was reflected in the works of folk art: the threat of foreign domination over Egypt and the periodic implementation of this threat, which demonstrated the military and administrative impotence of the supreme power. In order to compensate for this impotence in folklore stories, the role of the magician - the king's assistant and the only defender of the country-is strengthened. In connection with the increased actualization of the idea of magical protection, magicians themselves - as long as they achieve the results that the Pharaoh should, but cannot provide - are endowed with royal blood.

In folklore stories related to this historical period, the images of the magician and the Pharaoh gradually converge, and then merge, so that the latter, as if compensating for his impotence as the ruler and defender of the country, performs magical functions. The apogee of this process can be observed in the text, for-

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written even later, the legend of the last Egyptian king Nectanebus (IV century BC), quoted by Pseudo-Callisthenes (Pseudo-Callisthenes. I. 1-3) and undoubtedly transmitting the corresponding Egyptian legend (Pieper, 1935, koll. 2238 f.). In this story, the Pharaoh himself performs magical actions. Once again, the motif of using wax figures as magical objects appears. If the enemy came from the sea, the king retired to a special chamber, took out a bowl specially kept for this purpose and filled it with water. Then he made wax figures of the enemy and his own ships and people and lowered them into the water around the edges of the bowl. After that, the king called out to the gods: wax figures of people came to life and began to fight, and ships made of wax began to move like real ones, while figures representing his own people defeated enemies. But one day the king saw that the gods were on the side of the attackers, and their figures were winning, and the Egyptians were drowning; Nectaneb had to flee, and Egypt lost its independence forever.

This tale clearly reveals eschatological motives and reflects the complete collapse of hopes even for magical protection, which until then had always led to the desired result. In the image of Nectaneb, the final fusion of the traditional characters of Egyptian folklore - the pharaoh and the wizard next to him-took place. The last Pharaoh himself is the greatest magician and sage, and he himself uses magic to protect his country.

Thus, following the evolution of the image of the magician in folklore plots of different periods of Egyptian history, we can conclude that this figure developed incrementally - from a priest, commoner or official entertaining the king, to a person of royal blood (or the pharaoh himself), who is responsible for the security of the entire country and who provides this security with magical means. by other means. As Egypt's military power actually declines, magic gains a compensatory function in folk art, and if the monuments of material culture provide us with evidence of attempts to influence foreign policy by magic throughout all periods of Egyptian history, then in folklore a similar process correlates with the weakening of the power of the Pharaoh and the military power of the country.

Returning to the plot of Ibn Abd al-Hakam's story about Queen Daluk, in the light of all the above, it is easy to see that the images of the queen and the sorceress Tadura in it are separated, but at the same time extremely close to each other: Daluk and Tadura are both old women, famous for their knowledge (one for ordinary wisdom, the other - witchcraft science); both come from a simple, non-royal family. It seems that this kind of convergence of these images is characteristic of the late stage of development of the studied topos, when the wizard has the mission to save the country from enemies with magic, since military power is no longer there. Indeed, the image and actions of Tadura in the story of Daluk correspond exactly to this pattern.

Thus, the listed features allow us to determine the exact place of the story of Daluk in the Egyptian tradition of narratives about the Pharaoh and the wizard, and to place it at a specific (late) stage of the development of this tradition, which corresponds to the real fate of this work, which survived before the Arab invasion.

Another ancient Egyptian topos, which is reflected in the story of Queen Daluk, is the use of magical assistants by a wizard, i.e., beings of human or non-human appearance who perform certain actions on the orders of their creator, which for various reasons they themselves are unable to perform. This topos is typical for most of the narratives that contain references to magical actions.

Following the standard features of this topos in various Egyptian folklore plots, we can then identify some exceptions and modifications of this model, one of which is the story of Daluk. I'll give you some examples from the classic-

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of the ancient Egyptian tradition: In the Tales of the Papyrus Westcar, the priest Ubaone makes a wax crocodile; in the tale of Satni Hemuas, the wizard Neferkaptah makes a "barge with rowers and shipmen" out of wax, casts a spell over it, "breathes the breath of life into it" and launches it; in the tale of the last Egyptian king Nectaneb, the wizard king also uses the magic of the sea to create a boat. wax figures to influence the outcome of the battle with enemies.

Among the common features that unite all these plots, first of all, it is necessary to mention the fact that all the listed magical assistants are created from wax. This is easily explained by the physical properties of this material - wax is able not only to take the desired shape, but also to hold it. In addition, with very little effort on the part of man, wax can take on any new shape and do it an unlimited number of times, thus being an ideal substance for endless transformations that are easily subject to human will. Secondly, it is very remarkable that wax creates either animals (crocodile) or groups of people united by a common cause (shipwrights or soldiers), perceived as a single whole, since, in fact, individually each of them is useless, just as one soldier in a war or one sailor on a ship is useless. The individual-person is not made of wax. Third, the figures are mute and never speak, they are only able to execute an order - any reaction to this order is unusual for them. This trait clearly correlates with the previous one-depersonalization, non-individualization of creatures created from wax.

In general, it can be noted that magical assistants created from wax perform functions related to the manifestation of aggression, whether in defense or attack (some exceptions are the shipwrights in the legend of Satni-Hemuas, but they were also called to life in view of the upcoming duel with the serpent, although they do not participate directly in this battle). In none of these stories was the appearance of wax helper creatures driven by the need to transfer information from one character to another.

The only exception to this scheme is found in the fairy tale "Meri-Ra and the Pharaoh", where a completely different type of magical helper creature is derived: a "clay " or" earthen " person. It is noteworthy, first of all, that this creature is not made of wax, but of a material with much more permanent forms, not so plastic and capable of transformation. Second, a human-shaped creature is meant to act on its own - it is not part of any group whatsoever. Third (which is a logical extension of the previous circumstance), it has a minimal will of its own and the ability to express it: for example, Meri-Ra makes the clay man swear that he will do what he wants. Fourthly, it acts as an intermediary between Meri-Ra, who is in the world of the dead, and the hated Pharaoh, while talking to the latter itself and, moreover, judging by the context, it directly affects the further development of the situation. Thus, in this case, we are faced with a creature-a magical assistant, significantly different from the main traditional model.

Ibn Abd al-Hakam's story about Tadura's creation of a temple with images that could be damaged to cause real damage to enemy armies, in general terms fits into the main ancient Egyptian model of stories about the use of magical assistants, but with some reservations. First, the narrative does not exactly indicate the material from which these images are made: the temple itself is built of stone, but first it says that the images are located on its gates, then we are talking about "idols in the temple", respectively, it is unclear whether these are sculptural creations, relief or painting. Secondly, these helper creatures have a new function that is not mentioned in other extant texts - tracking

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hazards and warnings about them. This is due to another significant difference - the duration of their action: magic assistants in earlier stories acted for a short time after the moment of creation and lost their value immediately after completing their mission, they were, so to speak, "one-time". The images created by Tadura operate in a continuous operation mode, since this is the only way to track the danger. With such a change in the functions of the helper creatures, it is also logical to change the material (if you still consider it a stone, according to the mention of the stone temple), since stone, being stronger than clay and even more so wax, is better suited for long-term use. Moreover, the creatures or objects in question can even be called helpers only in the sense that their use helps the person who made them; they themselves are a projection of the enemies of Egypt. In the story of Daluk, for the first time, we encounter a situation where the image of an enemy, rather than an ally, acts as a magical assistant. Thus, the creatures created by the sorceress Tadura are another type of magical helper.

As a result, the following scheme emerges: wax figures at the functional level play the role of direct aggression, clay man - communication and information transfer, and stone creatures from the story of Daluk - monitoring, tracking and projecting danger, as well as represent a way to deal with it (functionally, this role is close to communicative).

A number of the above-mentioned features of the studied topos in the story narrated by Ibn Abd al-Hakam distinguish it from the most common model in Egyptian folklore. However, the analysis of the same topos in the narrative of Pseudo-Callisthenes about Nectanebus allows us to determine that the story of Daluk occupies the place of a transitional link between it and the main model. These two folklore works have a lot in common. Both are concerned with the country's security interests and the protection of its borders. Here and there, the supreme ruler turns to magical protection without any possible alternatives (in the legend of Nectanebus, this aspect is initially hidden by the fact that the king himself was the greatest wizard, and it simply did not come to military operations; however, as it turns out by the end of the story, magic had barely failed, as everything collapsed at once. Daluka, on the other hand, speaks from the very beginning of magic as the only hope.) Both rulers are associated in the popular consciousness with catastrophic turning points in Egyptian history, the time of loss of independence or change of state identity of the country (Nectaneb suffers such a defeat in his magical enterprise that even the gods of Egypt are on the side of his enemies; Daluka, chosen by the people after the death of the pharaoh and his troops, is forced to by leading Egypt through a kind of "political death", when for a while it turned out to be a "kingdom of women", i.e., obviously "extrapolitical" subjects). Finally, in both plots, magic images are used in a similar way. On the one hand, all these features are related to the story of Nectaneb with the story of Daluk and distinguish it from the main ancient Egyptian model, on the other - in the story of Nectaneb, the hero uses wax images, which brings him closer to the main model and moves away from the story of Daluk.

Thus, by studying the ways of developing the folklore image and the methods of using the wizard's helper figures, it is possible to quite accurately determine the place occupied by the story of Daluk among the extant samples of ancient Egyptian folklore of various times. In the story of Ibn Abd al-Hakam, there is a direct continuity in a number of features with a whole series of previously created and recorded works that have similar plot elements. And at the same time, for a number of reasons, this story, with all its specifics, fits well into a certain (late) phase of the development of these elements. In it, first of all, there is a further development of the plot interaction of the images of the ruler and the wizard: they have not yet merged

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in one whole, as in the story of Nectanebus, who was both a king and a wizard, but they are extremely close, endowed with great similarities. Secondly, as in the ancient Egyptian tradition, this convergence correlates with the motive of the need for magical compensation for complete military impotence. Third, the topos of the use of magical (quasi-magical)symbols is developed further and quite naturally against the background of other examples of its use in Egyptian folklore.helper creatures that are very vaguely described, but acquire new functions that are justified by the situation. Fourth, the detailed similarity of the plot conflicts (as far as magic is concerned) with the Late Egyptian story of Nectanebus is striking.

In general, regardless of the origin of the names Daluki and Tadura themselves, there is no doubt about the folklore ancient Egyptian and Coptic origin of the plot of the story about Daluk, nor their oral existence (or writing in a form that almost coincides with the oral one). at the time of its entry into the Arab-Egyptian tradition: had this story gone through a written transformation earlier, it would have had a much more lush and fictionalized appearance in Ibn Abd al-Hakam than in reality.

The approximate time of the formation of the Daluk legend should be considered the moment when the construction of the wall around Egypt, previously attributed to the world warlord Sesostris, in other words, related to the apogee of Egyptian legendary power, was attributed to Daluk, i.e. it began to be associated with stories about the opposite point of Egyptian history-the point of its perigee, when there were no men left in Egypt. What is the reason for this change? Let me remind you that according to the Arab-Egyptian version of the story of Daluk, the Pharaoh and the free and noble men of Egypt perished in the Red Sea in pursuit of Moses, i.e. here there is a penetration of Judeo-Christian ideas into Egyptian folklore. In this case, it is possible to assume that the final formation of the Daluk story on Egyptian soil occurred during the transition from the last stage of the "classical" ancient Egyptian culture to the stage of the Christian/Coptic culture.

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