Rhodopis, the Egyptian Cinderella
Classical Stories · No. 49 — The oldest Cinderella of all, with a falcon and a rosy slipper.
- Classical Stories
- 40 min
- Ages 8–13
- 7 chapters
About this audiobook
Rhodopis is a Greek girl sold into servitude in Egypt, teased by the other servant girls for her fair skin and quiet ways, with only the animals for friends. Her one treasure is a pair of rose-red slippers her kind master gives her. One day, as she washes by the Nile, a falcon — sacred to the sky-god Horus — swoops down, snatches a single slipper, and carries it off. It drops the slipper into the lap of the Pharaoh at his court, and he takes it as a sign from the gods: he will marry the woman whose foot it fits. He searches all Egypt by barge, and comes at last to the riverbank where a mocked servant girl steps forward, holding the slipper's twin.
Why it's worth a listen
Two thousand years before the fairy tale you know, ancient Egypt told of a servant girl mocked for her looks, a pair of rose-red slippers, and a falcon that snatches one and drops it in the lap of the Pharaoh himself. The original Cinderella — no fairy godmother, just a bird, a slipper, and a king who decides to go looking.
A question to keep
Is it luck, kindness, or something in a person that fortune finally notices?
Chapters
- The Girl from the Northern Sea
- The Gift of Rose-Red Leather
- The Day of the Great Festival
- The Shadow of Horus
- The Sign in the Pharaoh's Lap
- The Footprint in the River Silt
- A Question to Keep