The First Cinderella Was Egyptian — and an Eagle Delivered the Shoe
Around 7 BC a Greek writer recorded a tale of a stolen sandal, an eagle and a pharaoh. It may be the oldest Cinderella we know, by about 1,700 years.
Long before glass slippers, a Greek geographer named Strabo wrote down a story from Egypt. A young woman called Rhodopis, a name that means "rosy-cheeked", was bathing when an eagle swooped down and snatched one of her sandals. It flew to Memphis and dropped the sandal into the lap of the king, who was sitting outdoors hearing cases. He was so struck by the little sandal that he sent men across Egypt to find the woman it belonged to. They found Rhodopis, and she became his wife.
Is it really Cinderella?
Strabo recorded it around 7 BC, though the story is set in the sixth century BC. That is about 1,700 years before Charles Perrault gave Europe the fairy godmother and the glass slipper in 1697. The Egyptian version has the lost shoe, the royal search and the happy ending, but no ball, no fairy godmother and no cruel stepsisters; those came in later tellings. Scholars still argue about whether a shoe and a royal wedding are enough to call it Cinderella. That argument is half the fun.
Cinderella kept travelling
- In China, a tale called Ye Xian, written down around the ninth century, has a golden shoe and a magic fish in place of a fairy godmother.
- By 1893 the folklorist Marian Roalfe Cox had gathered 345 versions of the story.
So the most famous slipper in the world may have started life as a sandal on the banks of the Nile.
Read her in the library
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the oldest Cinderella story?
The oldest story usually called a Cinderella variant is the tale of Rhodopis, recorded by the Greek geographer Strabo around 7 BC. A girl's sandal is carried off by an eagle and dropped in the lap of the king of Egypt, who searches for its owner. Some scholars dispute that it counts as a true Cinderella.
Was Rhodopis a real person?
A Greek woman named Rhodopis living in Egypt in the sixth century BC is mentioned by the historian Herodotus. The eagle-and-sandal story is recorded by writers centuries later, so how much of it is fact is unknown.