Fools Are Everywhere
Beatrice K. Otto finds court jesters across the world and in every age.
During Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty (c. 2323-2150BC) an official wrote to the Pharaoh Neferkere to let him know he’d found a dancing dwarf. The Pharaoh’s response is the first instance known to us of a monarch delighting in a jester:
Come northward to the court immediately; thou shalt bring this dwarf with thee … to rejoice and gladden the heart of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkere, who lives forever.
About four millennia later another dwarf was talent-spotted in Thailand. He was brought to Bangkok, trained in acrobatic wizardry and then presented to the king as a jester.
Frederick Millingen, a Victorian writer, visited the Maghreb. where:
the Bey of Tunis … had fools to amuse him in the evening, who insulted and diverted him by the contrast between their permitted insolence and his real power.
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