Read the folk tale Tobia loves
Rhodopis and the Golden Sandal
A slave girl’s sandal is carried off by a falcon, all the way to a king’s lap in Memphis, in what may be the oldest Cinderella story ever told.
In the Egyptian river town of Naucratis, there lived a girl named Rhodopis, whose name meant “rosy-cheeked.” She had been brought from far across the sea and now worked in the house of a kind master, tending geese and washing wool at the riverbank, while the other servant girls teased her for her fair hair and her strange accent.
One evening, when Rhodopis had finished her chores, her master, who had grown fond of her gentle nature, gave her a pair of sandals with soles of gilded leather, so delicate they seemed made for dancing rather than walking. That night, while the other girls went off to a festival in the town, Rhodopis stayed behind to wash clothes at the river, setting her beautiful sandals on a flat stone to dry in the sun.
A sandal carried by the wind
As she worked, a falcon swept down from the sky, snatched one small golden sandal from the stone, and rose again into the clouds before Rhodopis could even call out. She never imagined she would see it again, and, brushing away a tear, she quietly finished her work and went home in her one remaining sandal.
A sandal in a Pharaoh’s lap
Far away, in the great city of Memphis, the young Pharaoh Amasis sat holding court in the open air. Without warning, the falcon circled once above his head and let the tiny sandal fall, so precisely that it landed in his lap. Amasis turned it over in his hands, marveling at its small size and its fine gilded leather, and declared that he would not rest until he had found the foot it belonged to.
Boats were sent up and down the river, and messengers walked from town to town, until at last one reached the house in Naucratis where Rhodopis lived. When she stepped forward, quietly, in her single remaining sandal, and the golden one was set beside her bare foot, everyone could see it was a perfect match.
A queen from the riverbank
Amasis brought Rhodopis to Memphis himself, and there, in the palace where the falcon had first let the sandal fall, he made her his queen. She never forgot the geese she had tended or the river where she had washed wool, and it is said that for the rest of her life she kept a small dish of grain on her windowsill, in case a falcon ever came to visit again.
And that, some say, is the oldest telling of a story retold in a hundred different lands ever since: that kindness, however quietly given, has a way of finding its way home.
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Nubian Lullaby (Egypt)
Play this softly while you read: a traditional handplayed Nubian lullaby from Egypt, the same culture this tale comes from.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world, each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.