The "Tale of the Doomed Prince" is an ancient Egyptian story, dating to the 18th Dynasty, written in hieratic text, which survived partially on the verso of Papyrus Harris 500 currently housed in the British Museum.
Some scholars speculate that the missing ending was mostly likely a happy one and that the tale could be more aptly named "The Prince who was Threatened by Three Fates" or the like.
When the king's son is born the seven Hathors (goddesses, who pronounce the fate of each child at birth) foretell that he will die either by crocodile, snake or dog.
Fleeing from the dog, he runs to a lake where he is seized by a crocodile who, instead of killing him, carries him back to the old wise man and his wife.
Some of its motifs reappear in later European fairy tales: The Seven Hathors are goddesses that appear at the prince's birth to decree his fate.
[12] Since the tale ends on an ambiguous note, some versions and translations of the story conclude with the death of the prince, as if to keep with the idea of inevitability of fate or the futility of trying to escape it.
[16][17] Once again, due to the unknown precise ending of the story, and also to the general direction of the traits (the dog's hesitance, the death of the snake, the crocodile's offer of help) one very likely conclusion of the tale is the general avoidance of the prince's gruesome fate and the more positive ending of having him avoid death by those creatures, eventually being free of his doomed fate.
Andrew Lang adapted the story as The Prince and the Three Fates for his work The Brown Fairy Book.
https://www.storynory.com/the-doomed-prince/ The Egyptian story was the inspiration for the 1992 Amelia Peabody mystery by Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog.