Rhampsinitus, a Grecised form of the Egyptian name Ramses, apparently Ramses III., the builder of the pavilion of Medinet Abu at Thebes. Brugsch makes Rhampsinitos a Greek form of Ramesu pa nuter ('Ramses the God'); Maspero, Ramsis-si-nit ('Ramses, son of Neith'), a title never borne by the Theban kings, but first used by the Saitic princes, which fixes the date of the tale to the period of Psammetichus and his dynasty. Of him Herodotus (II., 121 et seq.) relates a story substantially the same as one of the most widespread folk-tales of the Aryan world. The king acquired an enormous treasure, and to secure it built a treasury of stone. The architect left one stone loose, so nicely adjusted as to be unnoticed, yet capable of being taken out and replaced without difficulty. Before death he entrusts the secret to his two sons, who from time to time plunder the king's treasure at their will, until at length the elder is caught in a snare set by the king. According to his desire, the younger brother cuts off and carries away his head, so that he may remain unknown. The king now orders the headless body to be exposed unburied, protected by a guard of soldiers, but the younger brother lades an ass with skins of wine, allows some of it to run out, and is relieved in his distress by the soldiers, to whom in gratitude he gives his wine so freely that they all sink into a drunken sleep. Thereupon he shaves the right half of all their beards, and carries his brother's body to his mother. The king next sends his daughter to find out the clever thief. She promises her love to those who reveal to her the most extraordinary things that have ever happened to them, and when the young man in his turn relates the strange passages of his life she seizes him; but he cunningly slips his brother's dead hand into hers, and so escapes. The king is so much struck with wonder and admiration that he promises the clever thief his daughter in marriage, since he surpassed all mankind in knowledge; for, while the Egyptians surpassed all the world, he surpassed the Egyptians.
Such is the oldest recorded version of Asbjörnsen's 'Master-thief' and Campbell's 'Shifty-lad,' Dr Barbu Constantinescu's Roumanian gypsy story of 'The Two Thieves,' a variant of the story of Trophonios and Agamedes in the treasury of Hyrieus at Hyria (Paus. ix. 37), of Angeias in Elis, and of Hermes (ἀρχὸς φηλητῶν), as well as of the Hindu legend of Karpara and Gata, or that of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in the Arabian Nights. The story occurs in the oldest version (12th century) of the romance of the 'Seven Wise Masters,' the Dolopathos, sive de Rege et Septem Sapientibus, from which Ser Giovanni probably derived the story as found in his Pecorone (written circa 1378), where it is related of an architect named Bindo who stole a golden vase from the treasury of the Doge of Venice. It will be found, more or less perfect, in every collection of European folk-tales, whether Norse, Gaelic, modern Greek, French, Breton, Albanian, Sicilian, Hungarian, Dutch, Tyrolean, Danish, or Russian, as well as Kabyl, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Sinhalese.
Maspero defends the story as fundamentally Egyptian, or at least Egyptianised long before Herodotus, in spite of the Greek dress in which the historian has clothed it. It has been objected by some that the idea of a movable stone is not Egyptian, and is but ill adapted to the size of the stones used in building; but at Dendera have been found a series of crypts communicating with the temple by narrow passages formerly opened and closed in a similar manner, the stone sculptured like the rest of the wall. Again, Wilkinson objected that the soldiers wore no beards; but bas-reliefs and statues show that Egyptians of pure race wore beards according to individual taste; and besides the soldiers of police in question belonged to a tribe of Libyan origin, named Maziou, who usually wore the beard.
See Liebrecht's translation (1851) of Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction; A. Schiefner in vol. xiv. of the Bulletin of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences; W. A. Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions (1887); and Maspero's Contes Populaires de l'Égypte Ancienne (2d ed. 1889).