The Case of Horus Versus Seth

Bird-headed creatures from the ancient world!See them bite! Fight!And—they’re gods!It ain’t just mummies in Egypt, y’know! Delight and mischief are palpable in Phil Blank’s illustrations,which bring the reader viscerally into this bawdy tale, jubilantlytranslated from an Egyptian manuscript by Mildred Faintly. The text comes from a twelfth-century BCE papyrus, purchasedon the illegal antiquities market in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ of thetwentieth century.    About The Story The 3,400 year old ‘fable’ is a parade example of the particularlyAfrican genius of this particularly African country. Written inplay form (and possibly performed as a puppet show), it showsan intuitive humor and love of language which will be familiarfrom Black American comedy. If one imagines these linesdelivered by Bernie Mac or Whoopi Goldberg, the correctnessof the characterization is immediately apparent. This story is also, unambiguously, an African animal fable, ofthe kind familiar from Uncle Remus and the Sign