Egyptian Stories and Writings
The quantity of manuscripts discovered during the course of all the archeological excavations in Egypt is astounding. The Hieratic manuscripts are 3 to 4 thousand years old, and it’s only very recently they have been deciphered. I find myself mainly interested in the Hieratic writings, due to their content, not anything to do with the Hieratic alphabet. The texts are far more monotheistic than one is expecting, with very little presence by the suite of pagan gods, and far more reality based and life based. These are not funeral stories, like the Book of the Dead, and again, paint a quite different picture than one expects of ancient Egypt.
Normally the stories carved in stone are stiffer and less interesting then the papyri, but this is a phenomenal outlier. Only a partial scroll exists, but the 5 temples it was carved on all survive, and by taking all of them into account, a complete version can be made. Self dated to Year 9 of Rameses II, which is 1270 BC.
A boastful and somewhat generic account of mediocre success, with a surprising amount of unique features.
An amazing text. Non doctrinal, almost atheistic. The writers mentioned near the end are half known, half unknown. Writers mentioned are many of those of the stories following, Kakepper, Hardjeff, and Ptah Hotep. “Khety the great” is not the Khety of Khety’s Screed, but a Pharoah Khety.
One of the names mentioned in ‘Immortality of Writers’. This is the sole extant passage of his writing. Kakepper Sunba, although it’s unclear if Anku Seni is Kakepper or a disciple. The nature of the writing, noted as exemplary by Alan Gardiner who sort of discovered it in a museum in a corner storeroom.
From Papyrus Harris. 5 stories for Pharoah Khufu, told to him by his sons. The begining is lost, and the narrative begins with the 2nd story.
Dispute Between a Man and his Body
A single copy of the story exists, Papyrus Berlin 3024, purchased on the black market in 1843 by Karl Lepsius. From about 1500 BC.
What can I say? It’s an astounding story, and would make Joseph Campbell weep with frustration. The manuscript is assumed by some Egyptologists as contemporaneous, ie, the truth, from 1075 BC. By others as a moral fable, from maybe 1000 BC. It depicts accurately the situation of Rameses like Louis the Sun King, the Siegfried moments of the glorious immortal civilization of the Pharonic Pyramidistas, slowly crumbling, like the end of the old world and the begining of the new world.
Ptah Hotep was a Vizier of Egypt around 2350 BC, although the manuscripts are from 1900 to 1500. He gives advice on how to be a civil citizen, for all classes of society. To a great extent, the advice probably consists of popular sayings. Ptah is the god of scribes and knowledge, and is represented as a green man, representing a persons eternal reputation. Most gods of Egypt were animalistic, and the human gods were uncommon. Hotep means to be at peace, or blessed.
The 4 Heqanakht letters are, to my mind, the most astounding discovery of all the manuscripts. Egypt is very dry, and things do not rot. A man was buried in a tomb. The letters were discovered haphazardly thrown at the entrance pit. The tomb was like a small crypt, nothing majestic, and underground. The letters were thrown in after the burial, and were then covered by dirt to fill in the tomb after the burial. There is no indication the man in the tomb is Hequanakt or Merisu. They are perfectly preserved and unopened. Folded up and sealed, and then found by the archeologists. They are letters communicating instructions from a landowner who is away on priestly duties, to his estate manager, newly installed in the position. Perhaps the letters are actually addressed to the man in the coffin, and the names don’t match? The whole scene is odd, normally one does not find this. Most graves do not contain discarded letters received by post after ones death but before ones burial, nor do they contain miscellaneous letters in transit around the country, accidentally dropped during a funeral, generally speaking. In some sense, any number of random possibilities could be considered.
Commonly called ‘the satire of the trades’ or ‘the instruction of Dua-Kheti’. The Sallier II manuscript in the British museum is the main source. The story is adressed from a father to his son, as the son heads to writing school at about the age of 6 to 12, and promotes the benefits of reading and writing, with 18 different profesions used as counter examples, finally ending on a sober note with general moral advice.
The shipwrecked sailor is complete with only a single copy found in 1890. Hundreds of scholarly articles have been written on just this one story alone. There are many translations, of great difference, the case for all ancient Egyptian writings. As such, they make a great writing exercise, rephrasing hermetic academise into clear speech.