The Maxims of Ptahhotep

Summary

According to Simpson, the Vizier Ptahhotep was an elderly man of 96 years, ready to retire and was ready to pass down his position. The king approved of Ptahhotep's son succeeding him as vizier, but noted that the young cannot be born with wisdom and that they need the experience given by advanced age. Typically viziers were replaced by someone older that had experience, so the Vizier Ptahhotep wrote the instructions to his son to give him wisdom and advice that can only be attained through experience.

The Instructions consisted of various themes, one of which was leadership. For example, prose numbered 9,1:

If you are a leader, / Take responsibility in / the matters entrusted to you, / And you will accomplish things of note...

Prose 9,5 states:

If you are a man of authority, / Be patient when you are listening to the words of a petitioner; / Do not dismiss him until he has completely unburdened himself / Of what he had planned / to say to you.

This demonstrated the significance of growing old in ancient Egyptian society and the importance of having the wisdom to make the right decisions. The Instructions of Ptahhotep were texts that were constantly read and copied by students, scribes, and men that held a higher position.

The purpose of Instruction texts was to teach the youth how to live well and were usually written by elders. The main themes Ptahhotep focuses on are silence, timing, truthfulness, relationships, and manners. The text helps to reconstruct the social context of that time by describing the cultural space in which the writings were influential. In this way, this text can help a historian analyze the history of the period in which it was written.

Parkinson argued that ancient texts should be broken apart to properly understand the meaning of the text and to discern if any of it is accurate. Since most of the wisdom literature was written like poetry, some parts may be true and others fictional to attract the reader. Most of the wisdom writings were accepted by the readers for their choice of words, for the author's elite position held in society, and also based on the author's personal experiences.

There are four known copies of The Instructions of Ptahhotep, the first copy was written in the Old Kingdom and other copies were considered part of the Middle Kingdom. The Instructions from the original text were considered to originate from the Old Kingdom because it matched the social and intellectual thinking of that time period. The copy on the Prisse Papyrus, which is dated in the twelfth dynasty is considered as the original source. However, there are other Twelfth Dynasty versions and New Kingdom versions that omit some phrases, add phrases, and sometimes change the sequence of the words. The Prisse Papyrus contained three literary texts which were titled as "Instruction" or "Teaching", and the only complete text within this papyrus was the Instruction of Ptahhotep.

The Instruction of Ptahhotep was recognized by most Egyptologists as one of the most difficult Egyptian literary texts to translate. For example:

One knows a wise one because of his wisdom, / An official is at his good deed (?): his heart is in balance (?) with his tongue, his lips are accurate when he speaks...

The lines followed here by question marks are of uncertain meaning and subject to interpretation by each translator.