Islamic-Egyptian Tale about Fall of a King Who Planned to Destroy His Subjects, and its Ancient Egyptian Roots

In the 8th–9th centuries AD, an Arabic-language Islamic tradition about Egypt’s ancient past developed in the country, founded by local scholars of Arab-Persian descendance, and based on the original pre-Islamic Egyptian (Coptic) material. The very first surviving specimen of this tradition, i.e. “The Conquest of Egypt…” by Ibn Abd al-Hakam (9th century AD), contains an isolated story about the ancient Egyptian king “Baulah”, told by a “learned Egyptian”, and incompatible with the standard information that this tradition provides about Baulah, including what is reported by Ibn abd al-Hakam himself on his own behalf. According to this information, Baulah (aka Nulah, Bilunah in various manuscripts) is the 5th king, counting from the fall of Egypt’s independence under the Asian conquest, who defeated the king of Judea and was replaced on the throne by his son, all of which corresponds to Necho II. However, in the above-mentioned story of the learned Egyptian, Baulah plots to destroy his subjects, and they overthrow him, placing a representative of another king on the throne, and leaving Baulah (at least for some time) alive. Detailed analysis of this plot shows that it goes back to the Egyptian legendary tradition reflected by Herodotus about the overthrow of King Apries by the Egyptians led by Amasis (Hdt. II.161–163, 169), and its connection with “Baulah”, the main prototype of whom was another sovereign, i.e. Necho II, was a result of the transfer of plots from one real historical figure to another, a quite frequent case in Egypt.