Nemti and gold: Religious violence and the semantics of punishment in an ancient egyptian tale

The article discusses the motif of bodily mutilation in connection with the punishment in an ancient Egyptian tale, in the story of the ferryman Nemti. This narrative is compared with similar Egyptian plots about the loss of body parts and their replacement/transformation into gold. Based on the works of Vladimir Propp, the author builds a model of the event which triggers the development of action in the fairy tale and in the myth. In addition, the paper refers to the philosophical aspect of the mutilation motif as addressed in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Georges Bataille and Réné Girard. While stating the universality of the rite de passage narrative model, the author reveals, drawing upon archaeological findings in the tombs of the New Kingdom, some additional semantic load in the Egyptian version of the narrative.