Teachings

The Ancient Egyptian label for this genre was sbAyt, ‘‘teaching, instruction’’ (Parkinson 2002: 110), and examples occur in Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic. The teachings are usually addressed by a wise man to his children, and provide advice on ‘‘the way of living correctly’’ (as the Loyalist Instruction of Kaires 1.7 puts it), that is, in keeping with the moral norms and expectations of Egyptian society.

The teachings vary in their tone and didactic emphasis, with the most exhortatory being the Loyalist Instruction of Kaires (Posener 1976; Verhoeven 2009) and the Teaching of a Man for his Son (Fischer-Elfert 1999). These two teachings enjoin above all loyalty towards, and reverence for, the king, who is described in explicitly divine terms as the guarantor of Egypt’s prosperity (Loprieno 1996: 404-14). The king is presented as the only possible source of material success for an official, and the only one who can provide an official with a decent burial. The Teaching of a Man for his Son 3.1-5.6 even points out that, while the span of a human life may be fixed by fate, what happens within that span is entirely at the whim of the king. Both of these teachings, in their later sections, move away from praising the king, and give more general advice on correct behavior. The Teaching of a Man for his Son enjoins truthfulness and courtesy, as well as restraint in speech; the circumspect man does not mock the unfortunate, and the wise man does not sit in judgement on one more powerful than himself. The Loyalist Instruction of Kaires stresses the dependence of the elite on their servants and subordinates: field-laborers should not be over-worked lest they run away, and a harsh task-master ultimately undermines his own prosperity.

This earnest expression of‘‘social solidarity’’ (for which, see Assmann 1990: 85-9), the awareness of the reciprocal relationship between the rulers and the ruled, stands in stark contrast to the Teaching ofKhety (also known as the Satire of the Trades, Helck 1970; Foster 1999). In this teaching, a father tries to convince his son that being a scribe is the only worthwhile profession, and he does this by caricaturing with extreme scorn the wretched state of a long sequence of other, more lowly livelihoods: for example, the fingers of a metalworker stink like fish roe and look like those of a crocodile, while worse still is the washerman who has to clean menstrual women’s undergarments, and who lives in perpetual fear of crocodile attack. The hyperbolic descriptions are comical, and it is unlikely that many potential trainee scribes would seriously be tempted into these other jobs. It is unsurprising that this text enjoyed wide popularity in the New Kingdom as a scribal training text, and indeed inspired a large number of imitation exercise texts with a similar ‘‘be a scribe’’ theme in the Late Egyptian Miscellanies (for which, see Caminos 1954).

Some teachings are provided with historical settings in the Old Kingdom, such as The Teaching of Ptahhotep (Junge 2003), in which an aged vizier petitions the king to be allowed to pass on his office and advice to a successor. The text is extensively concerned with hierarchies, and how to behave with subordinates, equals and superiors in various professional situations. In disputes with others one should exercise silence and discretion, but one should report accurately to ones superiors. When one hears a petitioner, it is more important to let the petitioner have his say than that his petition necessarily be granted: ‘‘a good hearing is soothing for the heart’’ (Ptahhotep 276). A man should ‘‘follow the heart,’’ pursuing happiness and wealth which come as a divine gift, but one should not be greedy, selfish, arrogant or scornful towards those less fortunate lest god take everything away again. Ptahhotep advises that one should marry and produce a family; wives should be controlled, and sons should be made to listen to their father’s wisdom. Other men’s wives should be avoided, as should sexual deviancy.

The fragmentary Teaching for Kagemni contains a number of themes similar to those in Ptahhotep. For example, it expands at some length on manners and etiquette, urging restraint when dining so as not to be thought a glutton or to give offence to a host. The Teaching of Hardedef is mostly preoccupied with the importance of building a tomb and raising a family while still young. This Prince Hardedef is the son of Cheops, and also features as a protagonist in the Tale of King Cheops’ Court.

Two Middle Egyptian teachings claim to have been written by kings and differ markedly in tone from other examples of this genre, being much darker and more pessimistic in their subject matter. The Teaching for King Merikare (Quack 1992) is spoken by a First Intermediate Period king to his son and successor Merikare. Much of the advice is almost Macchiavellian, focussing on how a king should create and maintain support for himself through eloquence, and how he should destroy without mercy anyone who threatens his authority, though Merikare is also advised ‘‘do not kill a man when you know his worth’’ (Merikare E50). A king should enact justice, protect his people, and defend Egypt’s borders from foreign encroachment. This teaching also stresses the concept that even a king will be judged for his actions after death, and as the teaching progresses it becomes clear that the king himself has committed a sacrilege for which he will have to answer: under his authority the cemetery of the holy city of Abydos was desecrated. Towards the end of the teaching, the king delivers a long eulogy to the wisdom and care of the creator god, ending with the simple statement ‘‘god knows every name’’ (Merikare E140).

This rather human, fallible portrayal of kingship contrasts sharply with normative royal ideology, and it is unclear how Middle Kingdom Egyptians would have interpreted this teaching; it is perhaps significant that King Merikare and his father belonged to the Herakleopolitan dynasty that eventually was defeated in the struggle for the reunification of Egypt at the start of the Middle Kingdom. The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant is also set in the Herakleopolitan period, and likewise provides an ambivalent portrayal of Herakleopolitan king’s conduct.

The second royal teaching is the Teaching of King Amenemhet (Adrom 2006), in which the eponymous king appears to his son and successor Senwosret I and describes an assassination attempt on him. It is likely that Amenemhet I is portrayed as appearing to his son from beyond the grave (Parkinson 2002: 242), and the Rames-side ascription of the authorship of this text to a man named ‘‘Khety’’ might conceivably reflect a certain scepticism towards this supernatural context. The teaching is an intensely dramatic monologue expressing the old king’s bitterness at the ingratitude of his subjects; a king must have no intimates, and must trust no-one. Amenemhet vividly describes the night time attack on him in his bedchamber (‘‘but no one is strong at night, and no one can fight alone’’), before moving on to an enumeration of the achievements of his reign. As Amenemhet departs, he addresses his son and describes his elevation to the throne. It is likely that this literary text in some way relates to the real life troubled transition between the reigns ofAmenemhet I and Senwosret I, and it has been suggested that it might have been promulgated by Senwosret I to support his personal and dynastic legitimacy (Blumenthal 1984, 1985). While this is plausible, the moving and intense pessimism of Amenemhet’s speech goes far beyond the requirements of simple propaganda.

Several other, more fragmentary teachings are preserved in Middle Egyptian. The Ramesseum Maxims preserved on the fragments of P. Ramesseum II are extremely enigmatic, but seem to contain a series of gnomic one-line statements that prefigure the later development of the teachings genre in Late Egyptian and Demotic (Parkinson 2002: 310). Another wisdom fragment, preserved on a writing board in the Ashmo-lean Museum, Oxford, apparently stresses the relationship between god and the pious man (Barns 1968). It is noteworthy that Middle Egyptian teachings often use the general term ntr ‘‘god,’’ rather than name any particular divinity (Hornung 2005: 49-60). It is possible that this vagueness was intended to enable the ancient readers and audiences to envisage whichever god was ofmost importance to them, though in some cases it is clear that the term ‘‘god’’ refers to the solar creator god Atum. In other cases, ‘‘god’’ refers to the king (Fischer-Elfert 1999: 15-17).