The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor survives in a single manuscript, Papyrus Hermitage 1115 in St Petersburg. The text is written in hieratic and preserves a story within a story: a returning expedition leader fears reporting failure, so a companion tries to encourage him by recounting an earlier disaster at sea. Modern scholarship dates the composition to the early Middle Kingdom, roughly 2000 to 1900 BCE, while the surviving papyrus is itself a Middle Kingdom manuscript. The opening may be incomplete, but the narrative that survives gives the Serpent King one of the earliest fully developed personalities in Egyptian literature.

In the sailor's story, a large vessel is struck by a violent storm before reaching its destination. Every other man aboard dies, while the narrator survives by clinging to a piece of timber and is washed onto a strange island. For three days he finds food in abundance, including fruit, fish and birds, and eventually makes an offering to the gods. Then the ground shakes, the trees move and a sound like thunder announces the arrival of the island's ruler. The serpent is thirty cubits long, with a beard of more than two cubits, a body overlaid with gold and brows of genuine lapis lazuli.

The serpent demands to know who brought the sailor to the island and threatens to destroy him if he will not answer. The man is too frightened to speak, so the serpent lifts him in its mouth and carries him to its dwelling without injuring him. Once the sailor can explain the shipwreck, the mood changes completely. The serpent tells him not to fear, saying that a god has allowed him to live and brought him to an island where nothing is lacking. He then predicts the future with precision: the sailor will remain for four months, a ship crewed by men he knows will arrive, and he will return home to his family and eventually die in his own city.

The Serpent King answers the sailor's fear by telling a tragedy of his own. He had once lived on the island with his offspring and kinsmen, seventy-five serpents in all. A little girl is also mentioned separately in the difficult passage. One day a star fell, and the serpent says the others were burned while he was away. Returning to find the dead, he grieved for them deeply. The episode makes him more than a threatening monster. He has survived the destruction of his own family and uses that experience to persuade a terrified stranger to master his heart, endure the present danger and trust that he will again embrace his wife and children.

When the sailor promises to praise the serpent before the king and send incense, perfumes and other offerings, the Serpent King laughs. He identifies himself with the wealthy land of Punt and explains that his island already possesses such riches in abundance. He knows the rescue ship is coming before the sailor sees it and sends his guest away loaded with gifts, including perfumes, precious woods, ivory and animals. He asks only that the sailor make his name good at home. The serpent also warns that once the ship departs, the island will become water and will never be seen again.

The Serpent King's role is deliberately ambiguous. His golden body, lapis features, great beard, prophetic knowledge and the sailor's prostration give him unmistakably divine qualities, yet the tale does not simply name him as one of Egypt's familiar gods. Some scholars read him as a divine or creator-like figure, while others emphasise his literary role as the wise ruler of the Island of the Ka. He also provides a striking contrast with destructive serpents such as Apep. Where Apep embodies cosmic hostility, this serpent threatens only at first, preserves the castaway, teaches endurance and sends him home enriched. His vanishing island leaves the sailor with something more valuable than treasure: a story whose truth cannot be revisited, only remembered and retold.