Instructions of Amenemope
c. 1300–1075 BCE · New Kingdom / Third Intermediate Period Egypt (c. 1300–1075 BCE) · Thebes, Upper Egypt
Prologue — The Purpose of Instruction
Chapter I — Give Thine Ears
Chapter III — Beware of Robbing a Wretch
Chapter VI — The Ship of the Silent Man
Chapter VII — Cast Not Thy Heart in Pursuit of Riches
Chapter IX — The Two Roads
Chapter XI — The Weight in Silence
Chapter XXI — Do Not Say I Have Found a Strong Protector
Chapter XXX — The Colophon
notes
The Instructions of Amenemope is an Egyptian wisdom text composed during the New Kingdom or Third Intermediate Period (c. 1300–1075 BCE) and preserved principally in a hieratic papyrus (BM EA 10474) acquired by the British Museum in 1888 and first published by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1923. The text is one of the greatest works of Egyptian wisdom literature and is of exceptional importance in the history of world literature for its close parallels to the Book of Proverbs, chapters 22:17–24:22 — the "Words of the Wise." Many verses correspond almost word-for-word between the two texts (compare Amenemope's warnings against moving boundary-stones or oppressing the poor with Proverbs 22:28, 22:22), and scholarly consensus is that Proverbs 22–24 draws directly on Amenemope, whether through a Hebrew adaptation or through a shared Wisdom-literature tradition of the eastern Mediterranean. The text is divided into a prologue and thirty numbered chapters, addressed by the father Amenemope, a temple official under a New Kingdom pharaoh, to his son Horemmakheru. The recurring contrast between the "hot-headed man" (or "heated man") and the "truly silent man" — figured as trees, one uprooted and burned, one flourishing in a walled garden — is a formative image in the wisdom tradition of the ancient Near East. Translation: E.A. Wallis Budge, "The Teaching of Amen-em-Apt, Son of Kanekht: The Egyptian Original of the Hebrew 'Proverbs of Solomon,'" London: Martin Hopkinson & Co., 1923. Public domain.
currently held: British Museum, EA 10474 (papyrus)
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