The Elephant Figurine/The Bread Elephant
A wife prepares a meal for her husband who works in the fields, and brings it to him daily. One day, she is ambushed on the way by a group of men (twelve theives, in some versions; in others, a pair of men), who not only assault her but also eat the meal she has prepared, unbeknownst to her. One of them takes the remaining bread dough and shapes it roughly into the form of an elephant, before slipping it back into her basket. Unaware of this, the wife carries on, and takes the basket to her husband. When he opens it, he demands to know where the meal is, and why she has made an elephant out of bread. Thinking quickly, the wife replies that she had a terrifying dream about an elephant or elephant-headed monster foretelling bad fortune for them, and that the only way to avert disaster is for her husband to eat a cake in the shape of an elephant. Her husband believes her, and gratefully eats the bread.
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Note: in one version (Tuti-Nameh), the wife accepts money from a man before consenting to have sex with him. It seems that in all other versions, the encounter is non-consensual.
Nishimura notes that this story, which falls under the motif heading TMI J2301 ('Gullible husband'), has several relevant analogues and reference stories, including: Seventy Tales of a Parrot, Textus ornatior 33 (Consensual sex; a tiger figurine is made by two observers), Textus simplicior 22 (the flesh of a camel is put into the basket); The Bible, Judges 19.22-26; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, V136-149; Les Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles, 98.
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| Elephantinus appears in the following versions and secondary versions
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| Elephantinus is narrated in the following occurrences
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| Elephantinus appears in the following manuscripts
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