Instruction of Amenemope

Ancient Egyptian literary work

Instruction of Amenemope (also called Instructions of Amenemopet, Wisdom of Amenemopet) is a literary work composed in Ancient Egypt, most likely during the Ramesside Period (ca. 1300–1075 BCE); it contains thirty chapters of advice for successful living, ostensibly written by the scribe Amenemope son of Kanakht as a legacy for his son. A characteristic product of the New Kingdom "Age of Personal Piety", the work reflects on the inner qualities, attitudes, and behaviors required for a happy life in the face of increasingly difficult social and economic circumstances. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient near eastern wisdom literature and has been of particular interest to modern scholars because of its similarity to the later biblical Book of Proverbs.

Amenemope belongs to the literary genre of "instruction" (Egyptian sebayt). It is the culmination of centuries of development going back to the Instruction of Ptahhotep in the Old Kingdom but reflects a shift in values characteristic of the New Kingdom's "Age of Personal Piety": away from material success attained through practical action, and towards inner peace achieved through patient endurance and passive acceptance of an inscrutable divine will. The author takes for granted the principles of natural law and concentrates on the deeper matters of conscience. He urges the reader to defend the weaker classes of society and to respect the elderly, widows and the poor, while he condemns abuses of power or authority. The author draws an emphatic contrast between the "silent man", who goes about his business without drawing attention or demanding his rights, and the "heated man", who makes a nuisance of himself and presses petty grievances. Contrary to worldly expectation, the author assures that the former will ultimately receive divine blessing, while the latter will inevitably go to destruction. Amenemope counsels modesty, self control, generosity, and scrupulous honesty, while discouraging pride, impetuosity, self advancement, fraud, and perjury—not only out of respect for Maat, the cosmic principle of right order, but also because "attempts to gain advantage to the detriment of others incur condemnation, confuse the plans of god, and lead inexorably to disgrace and punishment." The scroll is approximately 12 feet (4 m) long by wide; the obverse side contains the hieratic text of the Instruction, while the reverse side is filled with a miscellany of lesser texts, including a "Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days", hymns to the sun and moon, and part of an onomasticon by another author of the same name. In November 1888, Peter le Page Renouf, Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum (and Budge's supervisor), made mention of a "remarkable passage" from the papyrus and quoted a few words from it in an otherwise unrelated article about the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis; but Renouf was forced into retirement in 1891, and publication of the papyrus was delayed for more than three decades while Budge concentrated on other projects such as the Book of the Dead. In 1922 Budge finally published a short account of the text along with brief hieroglyphic extracts and translations in a French academic work, followed in 1923 by the official British Museum publication of the full text in photofacsimile with hieroglyphic transcription and translation. In 1924 he went over the same ground again in a somewhat more popular vein, including a more extensive commentary. Subsequent publications of BM 10474 in hieroglyphic transcription include those of H. O. Lange (1925), J. Ruffle (1964), and V. Laisney (2007). Photographic copies of the papyrus are available from the British Museum. Since the initial publication of BM 10474, additional fragments of Amenemope have been identified on a scrap of papyrus, four writing tablets, an ostracon, and a graffito, bringing the total number of witnesses to eight. Unfortunately, none of the other texts is very extensive, and the British Museum papyrus remains the primary witness to the text. As can be seen from the following table, the dates assigned by scholars to the various witnesses range from a maximum of ca. 1069 BCE (for the papyrus fragment and one of the writing tablets) down to a minimum of ca. 500 BCE (for BM 10474):
+ Textual witnesses by date Dates B. C. Dynasties Fragment Type Lines 1069–712 21–22 Stockholm MM 18416 Papyrus 191–257 1069–712 21–22 Louvre E. 17173 Tablet 34–37 1000–900 late 21 – early 22 Cairo 1840 Ostracon 47–66 945–712 22 Medinet Habu Graffito 1 747–525 25–26 Turin 6237 Tablet 470–500 747–525 25–26 Moscow I 1 δ 324 Tablet 105–115 747–525 25–26 Turin Suppl. 4661 Tablet 1 600–500 late 26 – early 27 B. M. 10474 Papyrus 1–551

Egyptian influence on Israel and Judah was particularly strong in the reign of Hezekiah during Egypt's Third Intermediate Period; as a result, "Hebrew literature is permeated with concepts and figures derived from the didactic treatises of Egypt", with Amenemope often cited as the foremost example. Even in his first brief publication of excerpts from Amenemope in 1922, Budge noted its obvious resemblance to the biblical wisdom books. He amplified these comments in his 1923 and 1924 publications, observing that the religiously based morality of Amenemope "closely resembles" the precepts of the Hebrew Bible, and adducing specific parallels between Amenemope and texts in Proverbs, Psalms, and Deuteronomy. Others soon followed his lead.

R. N. Whybray, who at one point supported the majority position, changed sides during the 1990s and cast doubt on the relationship between Amenemope and Proverbs, while still acknowledging certain affinities. He argued, in part, that only some of the topics in the Egyptian text can be found in Proverbs 22:17–24:22 and that their sequence differs. J. A. Emerton and Nili Shupak have subsequently argued strongly against Whybray's conclusions. John Ruffle takes a more conservative approach: "The connection so casually assumed is often very superficial, rarely more than similarity of subject matter, often quite differently treated and does not survive detailed examination. I believe it can merit no more definite verdict than 'not proven' and that it certainly does not exist to the extent that is often assumed", and "The parallels that I have drawn between [the huehuetlatolli of the Aztecs], (recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún in the 1500s) and ancient Near Eastern wisdom are in no way exhaustive, but the fact that they can be produced so easily underlines what should be obvious anyway, that such precepts and images are universally acceptable and hence that similar passages may occur in Proverbs and Amenemope simply by coincidence."