The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni Part 1

The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni.

by Battis...o...b.. G. Gunn.

EDITORIAL NOTE

The object of the editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the amba.s.sadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought, and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of the East"

series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand.

L. CRANMER-BYNG.

S. A. KAPADIA.

4, HARCOURT BUILDINGS, INNER TEMPLE, LONDON.

THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP

INTRODUCTION

Memorials of the Past--The Land of Darkness--The Time of Ptah-Hotep--Concerning the Book--The Treatise of Ke'Gemni--Date of the Ma.n.u.script--An Egyptian Chesterfield--Who was Ptah-Hotep?--His Teaching--Views on Women--The G.o.ds of Egypt--Previous Translations--The Oldest Book Known

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new!

It hath been already of old time, Which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; Neither shall there be any remembrance Of things that are to come With those that shall come after.

In these days, when all things and memories of the past are at length become not only subservient to, but submerged by, the matters and needs of the immediate present, those paths of knowledge that lead into regions seemingly remote from such needs are somewhat discredited; and the aims of those that follow them whither they lead are regarded as quite out of touch with the real interests of life. Very greatly is this so with archaeology, and the study of ancient and curious tongues, and searchings into old thoughts on high and ever-insistent questions; a public which has hardly time to {12} read more than its daily newspaper and its weekly novel has denounced--almost dismissed--them, with many other n.o.ble and wonderful things, as 'unpractical,' whatever that vague and hollow word may mean.

As to those matters which lie very far back, concerning the lands of several thousand years ago, it is very generally held that they are the proper and peculiar province of specialists, dry-as-dusts, and persons with an irreducible minimum of human nature. It is thought that knowledge concerning them, not the blank ignorance regarding them that almost everywhere obtains, is a thing of which to be rather ashamed, a detrimental possession; in a word, that the subject is not only unprofitable (a grave offence), but also uninteresting, and therefore contemptible. This is a true estimate of general opinion, although there are those who will, for their own sakes, gainsay it.

When, therefore, I state that one of the writings herein translated has an age of nearly six thousand years, and that another is but five hundred years younger, it is likely that many will find this sufficient reason against further perusal, deeming it impossible that such things can possess attraction for one not an enthusiast for them. Yet so few are the voices across so great a span of years that those among them having anything to tell us should be welcome exceedingly; whereas, for the most part, they have cried in the {13} wilderness of neglect hitherto, or fallen on ears filled with the clamour of more instant things.

I could show, if this were a fitting place, that Archaeology is not at all divorced from life, nor even devoid of emotion as subtle and strange, as swift and moving, as that experienced by those who love and follow Art. She, Archaeology, is, for those who know her, full of such emotion; garbed in an imperishable glamour, she is raised far above the turmoil of the present on the wings of Imagination. Her eyes are sombre with the memory of the wisdom driven from her scattered sanctuaries; and at her lips wonderful things strive for utterance. In her are gathered together the longings and the laughter, the fears and failures, the sins and splendours and achievements of innumerable generations of men; and by her we are shown all the elemental and terrible pa.s.sions of the unchanging soul of man, to which all cultures and philosophies are but garments to hide its nakedness; and thus in her, as in Art, some of us may realise ourselves. Withal she is heavy-hearted, making continual lamentation for a glory that has withered and old hopes without fulfilment; and all her habitations are laid waste.

As for the true lover of all old and forgotten things, it may justly be said of him, as of the poet, _Nascitur, non fit_. For the dreams and the wonder are with him from the beginning; and in early childhood, knowing as yet hardly {14} the names of ancient peoples, he is conscious of, and yearns instinctively toward, an immense and ever-receding past. With the one, as with the other, the unaccountable pa.s.sion is so knitted into his soul that it will never, among a thousand distractions and adverse influences, entirely forsake him; nor can such an one by willing cause it to come or to depart. He will live much in imagination, therein treading fair places now enwrapped in their inevitable shroud of wind-blown sand; building anew temples whose stones hardly remain one upon the other, consecrate to G.o.ds dead as their mult.i.tudes of wors.h.i.+ppers; holding converse with the sages who, with all their lore, could not escape the ultimate oblivion: a spectator of splendid pageants, a ministrant at strange rites, a witness to vast tragedies, he also has admittance to the magical kingdom, to which is added the freedom of the city of Remembrance. His care will be to construct, patiently and with much labour, a picture (which is often less than an outline) of the conditions of the humanity that has been; and he neither rejects nor despises any relic, however trivial or unlovely, that will help him, in its degree, to understand better that humanity or to bridge the wide chasms of his ignorance.

Moreover, great age hallows all things, even the most mean, investing them with a certain sanct.i.ty; and the little sandal of a nameless {15} child, or the rude amulet placed long ago with weeping on the still bosom of a friend, will move his heart as strongly by its appeal as the proud and enduring monument of a great conqueror insatiable of praise.

At times, moving among the tokens of a period that the ravenous years dare not wholly efface in pa.s.sing, he hears, calling faintly as from afar, innumerable voices--the voices of those who, stretching forth in Sheol eager hands toward Life, greatly desire that some memorial of them, be it but a name, may survive in the world of men....

Ancient Egypt fares perhaps better than other countries of antiquity at the hands of the 'general reader,' and sometimes obtains a hearing when they do not, by reason of its intimate contact at certain periods with the nation that has brought us the _Old Testament_. Because of this the report of it has been with us constantly, and it has nearly become a symbol in religion. The stories of Moses and the magicians, and of the dealings of Abraham and Joseph with Pharaoh, together with the rude woodcuts of Egyptian taskmasters and cupbearers in family Bibles, have invested the venerable land with a dreamy mystery; while every one has heard of 'Rameses, the Pharaoh of the Oppression,' and 'Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus.' And it is possible that for the sake of such {16} a.s.sociation, if not for his own sake, Ptah-hotep will be considered worthy of notice.

But in spite of the fact that the Ancient Egyptians enjoy rather more popularity than their contemporaries, it is evident that the books which they wrote are closed books to those who have not the glamour of vanished peoples, and the fascination of mighty cities now made desolate, strong upon them.

Yet in the heterogeneous and pitiful flotsam that reluctant seas have washed to us piecemeal from a remote past, there are, as will be shown later, many things which, although proceeding from a culture and modes of thought as far removed from our own as they may well be,[1] are worth the reading, which do not require any special knowledge for their understanding; and of these are the translations in this book.

The following pages, which, although addressed to the 'general reader,'

may yet be of some a.s.sistance to those especially interested in Egypt, give, among other matters, the place of the Instructions of Ptah-hotep and Ke'gemni in the 'literature' of Egypt; their place--their {17} unique place--in the literature of the world; their value historically; a description of the doc.u.ment in which they were found; what is known of their authors; a discussion of their contents.

The land of which the Father of History declared that no other country held so many wonders, has bequeathed us, by various channels, the rumour and remnant of a strange knowledge. She has devised us enigmas insoluble, and rendered up to us signs and messages whose meaning is dark for all time. And she has left a religion, 'veiled in allegory and ill.u.s.trated by symbol,' as fascinating as impenetrable for those who approach it. For into our hands the keys of these things have not been delivered; wherefore much study of them is a weariness to the flesh, and of the hazarding of interpretations there is no end.

But apart from the mazes of mythology, the broken ways of history and the empty letter of a dead faith, there are, as is known to some, and as this little book professes to show, many doc.u.ments which are antique, but not antiquated, possessing interest above the purely archaeological--the interest called human. Of these are the tales which recall, in incident as in style, those of the immortal collection, full of the whole glamour of the East, the _Thousand Nights and a Night_. {18} Such are the love-songs, full of the burning utterance of desire; the pathetic and even bitter dirges, whose singers have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and found all to be vanity and vexation of spirit. And such also are the didactic poems for the instruction of youth, which--in poetic phrase and in great detail--inculcate, among other things, the practice of right conduct as the price of happiness; a courtesy hardly less considerate than our own; and a charity which, when certain inevitable shortcomings are allowed for, bears comparison with almost any later system. Out of these there are many that may properly claim a place in a series bearing the seal of the Wisdom of the East, though they belong only to the more objective and 'practical' side of that Wisdom.

But, as touching the books here translated--the Instructions of Ptah-hotep and of Ke'gemni--they possess, apart from the curious nature of their contents, a feature of the greatest interest, and an adequate claim on the notice of all persons interested in literature and its history. For if the datings and ascriptions in them be accepted as trustworthy (there is no reason why they should not be so accepted), they were composed about four thousand years before Christ, and three thousand five hundred and fifty years before Christ, respectively. And the significance of those remote dates is, that they are the oldest {19} books in the world, the earliest extant specimens of the literary art. They stand on the extreme horizon of all that ocean of paper and ink that has become to us as an atmosphere, a fifth element, an essential of life.

Books of many kinds had of course been written for centuries before Ptah-hotep of Memphis summarised, for the benefit of future generations, the leading principles of morality current in his day; even before the Vizier, five hundred years earlier, gave to his children the scroll which they prized above all things on earth;[2] but those have perished and these remain. There are lists of t.i.tles which have a large sound, and prayers to the G.o.ds for all good things, on the tombs and monuments of kings and magnates long before the time of Ke'gemni; but those are not books in any sense of that word. Even the long, strange chants and spells engraven in the Royal Pyramids over against Memphis are later than the time of Ptah-hotep, and cannot be called books in their present form, although some of them apparently originated before the First Dynasty.[3]

Nor do the oldest books of any other country approach these two in antiquity. To draw {20} comparisons between them let us, in imagination, place ourselves at the period at which Ptah-hotep lived, that is, about B.C. 3550, 'under King Isosi, living for ever,' and take a glance at futurity.

The Babylonians are doubtless exercising their literary talents; but they will leave nothing worthy the name of book to the far posterity of fifty-four centuries hence. Thirteen centuries shall pa.s.s before Hammurabi, King of Babylon, drafts the code of laws that will be found at that time. Only after two thousand years shall Moses write on the origin of things, and the Vedas be arranged in their present form. It will be two-and-a-half thousand years before the Great King of Jerusalem will set in order many proverbs and write books so much resembling, in form and style, that of Ptah-hotep;[4] before the source and summit of European literature will write his world epics. For the s.p.a.ce of years between Solomon and ourselves, great though it seem, is not so great as that between Solomon and Ptah-hotep.

The number of extant texts of the cla.s.s to which the subjoined immediately belong is not large in proportion to the rest of Egyptian MSS., {21} but they seem to be representative of the cla.s.s, being diverse in date and subject, but similar in form. There is great uniformity in the arrangement of most of them, in the following respects. They have as t.i.tle the word 'Instruction' (_seb'oyet_), and are written by a father for the advantage of his son; they are very poetic in their arrangement of words and phrases, and are usually divided into short sections or paragraphs by the use of red ink for the first sentence of each. Such is the Instruction of Ptah-hotep on morality (the finest of its cla.s.s); the Instruction of King Amenemhe'et on the hollowness of friends.h.i.+p and other matters; the Instruction of Deu'of, the son of Kherti, on the excellence of the literary life; and others. In many respects and in many details they greatly resemble the didactic works of the _Old Testament_ and _Apocrypha_.

These 'Instructions' were held in high esteem as text-books and writing exercises in schools--a circ.u.mstance to which we owe the preservation of many of them. For a considerable number of important and interesting poems, letters, and narratives are only known to us from school exercise-books. The pupil at the 'Chamber of Instruction' wrote out about three pages of these each day, as a means of improving his writing, as a model of style in composition, and for purposes of edification. These exercises {22} abound in errors of spelling and grammar, having sometimes the master's corrections elegantly written above in red. As may be imagined, a schoolboy's scrawl over three thousand years old is no easy thing to translate; but _faute de mieux_ the Egyptologist welcomes any version, even the most barbarous.

Fortunately, the MS. from which these translations come is not of this kind; a detailed description of it may interest some of my readers.

The Prisse Papyrus, which is well known by name and a few extracts to all persons conversant with Egyptian matters, was acquired in Egypt by M. Prisse d'Avennes, a French archaeologist of distinction, and published by him in 1847.[5] The exact place of its discovery is unknown. M. Prisse is said to have bought it of one of the _fellahin_ whom he employed to make excavations at the burial-ground of Thebes.

This man pretended that he had no knowledge of its finding, as he was trying to sell it for a friend. It is believed that it was actually taken by the Arab from the tomb of one of the Kings 'Entef;[6] but this is not certain. If it were, it would perhaps enable us to fix a _terminus ad que,_ for the writing of this copy, although tombs often contain objects of later date. The papyrus was presented in about 1847, by M. Prisse, to the {23} Bibliotheque Nationale (in those days the Bibliotheque Royale) at Paris, where it still is, divided and glazed in the usual manner.

Spread out flat, it measures about 23 ft. 7 in., with an average height of 5 7/8 in., which is about the usual height of papyri of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties. It contains at present eighteen pages of heavy and bold black and red writing, in the so-called hieratic character.

At first sight it appears to be in perfect preservation, being entirely free from the cracks and decay which mar many fine ma.n.u.scripts of far later date; but an examination of the contents shows that an unknown quant.i.ty has been torn off from the commencement. Originally the roll contained at least two books, of which we have the latter part of one and the whole of the other. Between these there is a blank s.p.a.ce of some 53 in.

The characters are clearly and carefully made, but are not always correct, as though the copyist had a badly written or very cursive copy before him, and was not always sure of his spelling.

The first of these books, of which only the last two pages remain to us, is a treatise on deportment, and is here called the _Instruction of Ke'gemni_. It has always been attributed to this person since its discovery, but examination of as much of the book as exists will show that it is not said to have been written by him. Because {24} his is the only name mentioned, Egyptologists have concluded that he is the author. The unnamed Vizier, who called his children to him, can hardly be Ke'gemni, who was not raised to the rank of Vizier and Governor of a city until afterwards. Ke'gemni may well have been a son of the author. This is not of material importance, however, as the date of writing is given as the end of the reign of Heuni, the last King of the Third Dynasty, who died about 3998 B.C. This book, then, which argues a society of some refinement, is, so far as it goes, the oldest in the world.

After a long stretch of blank papyrus, from which a third book has perhaps been erased, we come upon the _Instruction of Ptah-hotep_ in its entirety, divided into sections by red writing, as aforesaid.[7]

In this, also, we get a definite date, for we learn in the opening lines that its author (or compiler) lived in the reign of King Isosi.

Now Isosi was the last ruler but one of the Fifth Dynasty, and ruled forty-four years, from about 3580 to 3536 B.C. Thus we may take about 3550 as the period of Ptah-hotep.

Of these two kings there is hardly anything to say. Heuni is only known to us by mention of his name; we have no record of any act of his. {25} Of Isosi the only exploit that remains is this: that he sent his Treasurer, Be'werded, to Somaliland[8] to obtain for him a certain kind of dwarf; this the Treasurer brought back, and received much reward therefor. That is all that is left of the reigns of two kings, who ruled long, who perhaps ruled greatly and wisely, having just cause to hope that their fame and the report of their good deeds might never pa.s.s away. Such is the fate of kings.

The copy of these Instructions that we have, the only complete copy,[9]

is far later than the later of these dates. An examination of the writing shows that it is not earlier than the Eleventh Dynasty, and is probably of the Twelfth.[10] More than this cannot be said; where it was written, by whom, and when, are not stated, as they are in many cases. The writing lacks the fine regularity of that of the professional scribes of the Twelfth Dynasty, and has many points of divergence therefrom; but the papyrus is a.s.signed by the best judges to this period. This gives it an antiquity of about four thousand five hundred years; and it looks good to last as long again, if only it be not examined over-much nor brought out into the light too often. {26} It is as fresh and readable as in the year after it was written. Will the books of our time last one-tenth so long? It is not without a feeling of awe, even of sadness, that one with any sense of the wonder of things gazes for the first time on the old book, and thinks of all it has survived. So many empires have arisen and gone down since those words were penned, so many great and terrible things have been.

And we are fortunate indeed in having such a book as this of Ptah-hotep for the most ancient complete literary work extant. For not by any magical texts, or hymns and prayers, should we be so well shown the conditions of that early time; but our moralist, by advancing counsels of perfection for every contingency, has left us a faithful record of his age. The veil of five-and-a-half thousand years is rent, and we are met with a vivid and a fascinating picture of the domestic and social life of the 'Old Kingdom.' We read of the wife, who must be treated kindly at all costs; the genial generosity of the rich man, and the scowling boor, a thorn in the side of his friends and relations, the laughing-stock of all men; the unquenchable talkers of every station in life, who argue high, who argue low, who also argue round about them, as common as now in the East, and the trusted councillor, weighing every word; the obstinate _ignoramus_ who sees {27} everything inverted, listening open-mouthed to the disjointed gossip of those near him, and the scholar, conversing freely with learned and unlearned alike, recognising that, measured against the infinite possibilities of knowledge and skill, we are all much of the same stature; the master of the estate or province, treated with infinite respect by his subordinates in rank and wealth, and the paid servants that are never satisfied, who leave after presents have been made them; the hard-working clerk who casts accounts all day, and the tradesmen who will perhaps give you credit when money is dear, if you have previously made friends of them; the well-bred diner-out, lightly pa.s.sing on his favourite dish, contenting himself with plain fare, and the _gourmand_ who visits his friends at meal-times, departing only when the larder is entirely exhausted.

Not only do we find such characters as these in Ptah-hotep's hand-book, but interesting scenes are brought near to us by the writing-reed of that primaeval Chesterfield. We find ourselves taking supper at the table of a great man. His subordinates sit round, scarcely daring to raise their eyes from their food, not speaking to their host until spoken to. He serves the food that is before him according to his liking for each guest; and the less favoured find solace in the reflection that even the distribution of food is {28} according to Providence. We pa.s.s on. Now we are in the hall of council with the other overseers and officials of the province, and our overlord presiding. We notice with astonishment the extreme solemnity and strict observance of custom and precedence in this archaic period.

Many of those who have met report on the matters under their charge, and others debate on them. The one now speaking is discussing a trade about which he knows nothing, and an expert rises and makes very short work of his opponent's arguments. Now we are among some people dividing up property. One of them has tried, of course, to bully his friends into giving him more than his due share, and, having failed, leaves the house in a rage. He will regret it later. And so on.