Immortality of Writers

From papyrus Chester Beatty 4, dated to about 1200 BC.

 If you accomplish only one thing, learn to write. The writers of wisdom are descendants of the gods who spelled out the future, now their names are carved in stone.

They are gone and their lives are over, and all their decedent's forgotten. They didn't produce golden altars or stone tablets. They didn't leave money to their children to win their loyalty. Their gift was scrolls filled with wisdom.

They wrote their own scriptures in notebooks loved liked sons, with wisdom as their temple. The pen is their child, and a slab of stone is their wife. Royal to lower class, the writer is the leader of all.

The gates to the temples are destroyed, the ministers of the soul have vanished, the tombstones are covered with sand and the graveyards are forgotten, but their words can still be read.

They wrote when they were young, and are remembered forever. Write with heart, so your name can endure like theirs. A book is more useful than a tombstone, or a crypt. They become like tombstones and crypts in the heart of one who reads their words. For sure, the most valuable thing in a cemetery is the words spoken by every mouth.

Man dies, his corpse decays. His whole family is dead. But what he writes is remembered, in the mind of the reader. A book is more useful than a house, than palaces in the west. Stronger than a castle, aging less than a sculpture in the sanctuary.

Is there anyone like Hardjeff? Another like Imhotep? The family of Neferti is no more, or Khety the leader, not to mention Tah Mejehuty and Kakepper Sunba. Is there another like Tah Hotep? Or Kaires?

They spoke of the future, and what they said came to be. Their students have inherited just as if they were blood decedents.

They were modest in person and only revealed themselves in their writings. They are gone, and would be forgotten, other than through their writings.

Almost perfectly preserned, the papyrus is full of miscelaneous writings as if a writing teacher was copying down professionally relevant tidbits. This is the only copy of the composition.