[Transcriber's note: the various sections of this book had
varying page headers. Those headers have been collected
at the start of each section as introductory paragraphs.]
THE WISDOM OF THE EAST
THE INSTRUCTION
OF PTAH-HOTEP AND
THE INSTRUCTION OF
KE'GEMNI: THE OLDEST
BOOKS IN THE WORLD.
TRANSLATED FROM THE EGYPTIAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND APPENDIX
BY BATTISCOMBE G. GUNN
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1906
TO
MY MOTHER
VII.NOV.MCMIV
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
THE INSTRUCTION OF KE'GEMNI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
APPENDIX
NOTE TO APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
THE INSTRUCTION OF AMENEMHE'ET . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
EXPLANATION OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
{10}
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 ambassadors 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.
{11}
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
Manuscript--An Egyptian Chesterfield--Who was Ptah-Hotep?--His
Teaching--Views on Women--The Gods 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 noble 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 passions 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
passion 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 gods dead as
their multitudes of worshippers; 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 sanctity; 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 passing, 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} association, 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 assistance 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 document 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 illustrated 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 documents 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