The Maxims of Ptahhotep

Introduction

An Egyptian “teaching” (sebayt), a genre of wisdom literature in which an older man passes on rules of life to his successor. After a prologue in which the vizier complains of the frailty of old age, some thirty-seven maxims follow on speaking and listening, on conduct before superiors and towards inferiors, on greed, marriage and judging, closed by an epilogue in praise of listening. The best-known copy is the Prisse Papyrus in Paris. The text is written in Middle Egyptian, and its attribution to an Old Kingdom vizier is now usually regarded as a literary device. It is read as one of the earliest surviving works of ethical reflection.