Early in the 2nd millennium in neighboring Egypt, The Instruction of Pharaoh Amenemhat I to his son Pharaoh Senusret I, c. 1909 BCE, 12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom, poses—with realistic detail! —as the posthumous letter of a murdered king to his son and heir. As in ancient Mesopotamia, we have the egis of royal authorship for the likely work of professional scribes. Mingle with this the Egyptian tradition of autobiographical tomb inscriptions reciting the accomplishments of the regal deceased—who is not deceased but helped on to the afterlife by such lavish provision and ceremony inside and outside his tomb as this sort of remarkable inscription:
Beware of subjects who are nobodies,
of whose plotting one is not aware.
Do not go near to them alone.
Trust not a brother, know not a friend,
make no intimates, it is worthless.
When You lie down, guard your heart yourself.
For no man has adherents on the day of woe…
It was after supper, night had come. I was taking an hour of rest, lying on my bed, for I was weary. As my heart began to follow sleep, weapons for my protection were turned against me, while I was like a snake of the desert. I awoke at the fighting, {came to myself}, and found it was a combat of the guard. Had I quickly seized weapons in my hand, I would have made the cowards retreat. But no one is strong at night; no one can fight alone; no success is achieved without a helper.
Thus bloodshed occurred while I was without You; before the courtiers had heard I would hand over to You; before I had sat with You so as to advise You. For I had not prepared for it, had not expected it, had not foreseen the failing of the servants…
I was grain-maker, beloved of Nepri. [god of corn]
Hapy [god of the Nile and flood] honored me on every field.
None hungered in my years.
None thirsted in them…
I subdued lions, I captured crocodiles,
I repressed those of Wawat, [the first waterfall of the Nile, southernmost ancient Egyptian city, Nubia]
I captured the Medjay, [Nubian army]
I made the Asiatics [a nomadic group that swept over Syria, Palestine and Egypt c. 1750 BCE] do the dog walk.
I built myself a house decked with gold,
its ceiling of lapis lazuli,
walls of silver, floors of [acacia wood],
doors of copper, bolts of bronze.
The serfs (however) plotted against me.
Be prepared against this !
If You know this, then You are its Lord, You the All-Lord.
Behold, much hatred is in the streets.
The wise says ‘yes’, the fool says ‘no’ (for)
he has not understood it, (as) his face is lacking (eyes)…
Behold, I made the beginning, You will tie the end.
I have landed by the dead,
(and) You wear the White Crown of a god’s son…
—lines 6-12, 24-25, 36-39, 42-55, 61-63, the divine word(s): The Instruction of Amenemhat, early XIIth Dynasty-ca.1909 BCE, the revelation of truth beyond the tomb, the assassination of the king and his solitude by Wim van den Dungen, http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/amenemhat.htm
Scribe’s exercise tablet with hieratic text. Wood. Dynasty XVIII, reign of Amenhotep I, c. 1514-1493 BCE. Text is an excerpt from The Instructions of Amenemhat (Dynasty XII), and reads: “Be on your guard against all who are subordinate to you …Trust no brother, know no friend, make no intimates.”
Photo: One dead president, David Liam Moran. Shared under GNU, CC licenses. Wikipedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scribe%27s_exercise_tablet_1.jpg
Even if authored by the son Senusret in honor of his murdered father, the nature of the pharaoh’s advice is more specialized, directed at a more regal recipient, than that of the Sumerian king to his son. Practical, worldly as such, although gods are invoked, two of the deities being the father and son pharaohs themselves. And yet it has a generalized wisdom even so, to any son of the upper classes. And a rock star appeal to those who served them perhaps—e.g. its use as a scribal training exercise above? And this particular poem has the added gothic twist of a murder mystery.
There is a resonance with the Egyptian autobiographical recital and its twist, with Chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes where Qohelet describes his wealthy accomplishments and how they have come to nothing. A spectacular brag—crib, turf, bling, sex, drugs (he mentions wine and mirth later) and rock ‘n’ roll—but no, it was nothing. The rhythmic enumeration builds into a strong surprise cadence of “all was vanity and a striving after wind.”
I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself;
I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.
I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.
I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces;
I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man’s delight.
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me.
And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
—Eccles. 2:4-10 [RSV]
It is almost as if Qohelet is satirizing the form—wisdom’s autobiographical account, Egyptian grave inscriptions, and the patterned lists which Crenshaw and Murphy warned us of. But there is humor in murdered Amenemhat’s letter—I laugh every time I read about the Asiatics’ dog-walk—not to mention the macabre absurdity of his fantastic authorship. Humor and death are not unacquainted in word art. A zing Qohelet may have inherited from the Egyptian side. Woody Allen has made a career of something similar in our time.
Seven Egyptian dynasties, one kingdom and three to five hundred years earlier, the Instructions of Ptah Hotep, c. 2200 BCE, 5th Dynasty, Old Kingdom, share Pharaoh Amenemhat’s format—a letter from father to son—but the proffered wisdom is more generalized, as in the Sumerian letter. Maxims stand discrete, lyrically poetic, though lengthy; such as we will see in the later Book of Proverbs and in some portions of Ecclesiastes. More positive in mood than Amenemhat’s or Qohelet’s instructions. Not so much sting and zing. Kinder. More like Shuruppak’s, with which they are slightly more contemporary.
Follow your heart as long as you live,
Do no more than is required . . .
Don’t waste time on daily cares
Beyond providing for your household;
When wealth has come, follow your heart,
Wealth does no good if one is glum!
—Maxim #1, Instructions of Ptah Hotep, c. 2200 BCE, per Rex Pay, Rex Pay’s Humanistic Texts, 1999 http://www.humanistictexts.org/ptahhotep.htm. From translation, Ancient Egyptian Literature—A Book of Readings Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms by Miriam Lichtheim. The University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1973.
The ending of this maxim is similar in message to Ecclesiastes 6:2:
A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them; this is vanity; it is a sore affliction.
—Eccles 6:1-2 [RSV]
And here is the 10th proto-commandment Egyptian-style in easy, flowing terms. Like the Sumerian, it is less stern than its Mosaic cousin, and again, more wordy. There is more explanation for why one should not do x because y:
Do not plunder a neighbor’s house,
Do not steal the goods of one near you,
Lest he denounce you before you are heard…
If you want friendship to endure
In the house you enter
As master, brother, or friend,
In whatever place you enter,
Beware of approaching the women!
Unhappy is the place where it is done,
Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them.
A thousand men are turned away from their good:
A short moment like a dream,
Then death comes for having known them…
—Maxims #6 and #19, Instructions of Ptah Hotep, c. 2200 BCE, Pay 1999, Lichtheim 1973.
Ptah Hotep
—Photo from Mathilda’s diary: one desperately bored housewife, http://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/ptah-hotep.jpg. Statue is in Imhotep Museum, Saqqara, Cairo, Egypt.
If you are mighty, gain respect through knowledge
And through gentleness of speech.
Don’t command except as is fitting,
He who provokes gets into trouble.
Don’t be haughty, lest you be humbled,
Don’t be mute, lest you be chided.
When you answer one who is fuming,
Avert your face, control yourself.
The flame of the hot-heart sweeps across,
He who steps gently, his path is paved.
He who frets all day has no happy moment,
He who’s gay all day can’t keep house.
—Maxim #23, Instructions of Ptah Hotep, c. 2200 BCE, Pay 1999, Lichtheim 1973.
Ptah Hotep closes with the promise of wisdom’s value and potential immortality:
If you listen to my sayings,
All your affairs will go forward;
In their truth resides their value,
Their memory goes on in the speech of men,
Because of the worth of their precepts…
—Maxim #32, Instructions of Ptah Hotep, c. 2200 BCE, Pay 1999, Lichtheim 1973.
Recall Qohelet’s 7:11-12, wisdom as protection and valued inheritance:
Wisdom is good with an inheritance: and by it there is profit to them that see the sun.
For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.
—Eccles. 7:11-12 [KJV]
In the following lines, he tells a story where wisdom saves the day. Saves lives. A very real power. But then he banks and undercuts it. There was no recognition of wisdom’s role.
There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:
Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.
—Eccles. 9:14-15 [KJV]
Then three verses in quick succession. Zap. Zing. Zffft. The arrows fly by our ears. The middle arrow goes after the king, who’s a fool, flanked by two parallel constructions which open with a statement of wisdom’s value, then slap it down.
Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.
—Eccles. 9:16-18 [KJV]
Again, if we read this carefully, we hear that he is reminding us that we should be listening to the poor wise man, the voice of wisdom, and we are not. And who is the one sinner? Me? You? We are warned.
Finally, note the opening salvo from Chapter 1, where Qohelet says that everything is forgotten, doomed to repeat. This is his single sternest warning, his most threatening to a culture based on remembering and accumulating knowledge through writing as immortality.
Ptah Hotep’s wisdom culture in the 23rd-22nd century and Shuruppak’s in 30th are much younger than Qohelet’s in the 3rd-2nd. For Ptah Hotep and Shuruppak, wisdom is still something to promote, encourage, seduce with. Two to three millennia later in Qohelet’s world, wisdom has long been accepted as a source of power and cultural presence in the Ancient Middle East, its reliance on teaching, study and the written word institutionalized even in late-comer Judaic culture.
But that doesn’t mean that anyone is actually listening. Its value must be revived by reminders which catch our attention. The city you live in may come under fire. Oh no. And wisdom might save you, but will you be wise enough to listen? You will listen to the wealthy and the powerful but you may ignore one who is not so “loud.” The challenges wisdom faced in the first place are the same—it is invisible and unquantifiable. Qohelet makes a direct attack on wisdom’s behalf when he likens wisdom to money (7:11-12) and to weaponry (9:14-18)—attaching it to the tangible sense of physical well-being. Though Ptah Hotep and Shuruppak both give advice which is more practical, and for which the consequences of not heeding we know to be quite tangible—their hinting at these consequences tends to be much more gentle than Qohelet’s sharp frankness.
Said author, Ptah Hotep was vizier under King Isesi of the 5th Dynasty (ruled 2414-2375 BCE) and would have flourished between 2450-2300 BCE, in the late 3rd millennium. However Miriam Lichtheim (1914-2004), intrinsic Egyptologist and translator, suggests that Ptah Hotep may have been author in name only, because there are no mentions of the vizierate and many legalisms which suggest a person who worked in the law. Ms. Lichtheim (who came to the U.S. in 1941 to work at Yale as an academic librarian before beginning to publish her life’s work in the 50s and recognition—cool story) also suggests that the literary style is later, more like 2300-2150 BCE. Someone assuming the literary identity of a person of power, connected to royalty, dead enough not to demur, but recent enough in memory to still confer a cachet of credibility.
So Ptah Hotep may not be Ptah Hotep (Wikipedia thinks Ptah Hotep is really his grandson Ptahhotep Tshefi fl. c. 2200 BCE), just as Shuruppak may not be Shuruppak and Qohelet not Solomon. Just wise scribes.
A section of the Prisse Papyrus from the National Library in Paris, France. Found at Thebes, Egypt by M. Prisse d’Avennes in 1846. Contains copies in hieratic script of Precepts of Kakemna and Precepts of Ptah-hotep. Source: Plate IV. The S.S. Teacher’s Edition: The Holy Bible. New York: Henry Frowde, Publisher to the University of Oxford, 1896. Public Domain. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Prisse_papyrus.jpg
The literary document that seems to have drawn the most extravagant comparisons with Jewish wisdom literature is the Instruction of Amenemotep, Amenemope or Amenhotep, an Egyptian papyrus containing 30 chapters of proverbs written about the time of the 19th Dynasty under pharaoh Amenmesse (circa 1200 BCE). More recent than Ptah Hotep’s (5th dynasty) or Amenemhat’s (12th dynasty), Amenemotep’s instructions bear so much similarity to Proverbs 22:17-24:22, and the later Book of Sirach, that it’s thought that Amenemotep may have been a Jewish scribal sage living in Egypt. Wikipedia gives a wonderful “cliff notes” summary:
Introduction: The beginning of the instruction about life…
Chapter 01: Give your years and hear what is said…
Chapter 02: Beware of stealing from a miserable man…
Chapter 03: Do not get into a quarrel with the argumentative man…
Chapter 04: The hot-headed man in the temple is like a tree grown indoors…
Chapter 05: Do not take by violence the shares of the temple…
Chapter 06: Do not displace the surveyor’s marker on the boundaries of the arable land…
Chapter 07: Do not set your heart upon seeking riches…
Chapter 08: Set your good deeds throughout the world That you may greet everyone…
Chapter 09: Do not fraternize with the hot-tempered man, Nor approach him to converse…
Chapter 10: Do not address your intemperate friend in your unrighteousness…
Chapter 11: Do not covet the property of the dependent Nor hunger for his bread…
Chapter 12: Do not covet the property of an official…
Chapter 13: Do not lead a man astray <with> reed pen or papyrus document…
Chapter 14: Do not pay attention to a person, Nor exert yourself to seek out his hand…
Chapter 15: Do well, and you will attain influence…
Chapter 16: Do not unbalance the scale nor make the weights false…
Chapter 17: Beware of robbing the grain measure To falsify its fractions…
Chapter 18: Do not go to bed fearing tomorrow, For when day breaks what is tomorrow?
Chapter 19: Do not enter the council chamber in the presence of a magistrate And then falsify your speech…
Chapter 20: Do not corrupt the people of the law court, Nor put aside the just man…
Chapter 21: Do not say, I have found a strong protector And now I can challenge a man in my town…
Chapter 22: Do not castigate your companion in a dispute…
Chapter 23: Do not eat a meal in the presence of a magistrate…
Chapter 24: Do not listen to the accusation of an official indoors…
Chapter 25: Do not jeer at a blind man nor tease a dwarf…
Chapter 26: Do not stay in the tavern And join someone greater than you…
Chapter 27: Do not reproach someone older than you…
Chapter 28: Do not expose a widow if you have caught her in the fields…
Chapter 29: Do not turn people away from crossing the river When you have room in your ferryboat…
Chapter 30: Mark for your self these thirty chapters…
—Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Amenemopet
The complete instructions are available at TourEgypt.net—both in well-formed English stanzas and a long column of beautiful colored hieroglyphs. Or at Ancient Egypt’s Books of Wisdom—illustrated with majestic tomb bas-relief. Or, as a twelve-foot scroll in the British Museum known as Papyrus 10474, acquired unwittingly in 1888 by E. A. Wallis Budge.
Photograph of E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) in his office at the British Museum. Wikimedia Commons.
The British Museum has the complete text of the Instruction of Amenemopet. The original is thought to date to the Twentieth Dynasty (about 1186-1069 BCE) or later. The poem lacks a narrative framework; instead it is divided into thirty sections or maxims, each concerned with one topic. In each section, a piece of advice is put forward, and then refined through a series of similes. Two themes common are the sections, the ‘silent man’ and the ‘heated man’, in other words, the ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’. The poem praises the omniscience of god, and contrasts it with human fallibility.
ma’at
Goddess Ma’at wearing the feather of truth. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
For Qohelet, perhaps the most influential element of Egyptian wisdom literature is the powerful underlying worldview embodied in the principle of ma’at. Ma’at is order, good order, much like the 20th-c.’s “Good Orderly Direction,” which explicates the word “god” as acronym. Ma’at is the way the world is supposed to be, the way it was intended. Ma’at is the divinely established principle of social order. Ma’at is physical and moral law. Ma’at is justice. Ma’at is truth. Ma’at is a goddess, the guide of the divine pharaoh who must ensure justice and truth on earth. Ma’at created the world. Ma’at is the mother of gods. Ma’at asks for restraint of appetite and tongue, honesty and a proper attitude towards wealth and impoverishment. Ma’at teaches the right way and the good life. Most of all, ma’at is wisdom.
Here is Ptah Hotep’s description of ma’at per Professor Murphy:
Justice is great, and its appropriateness is lasting;
it has not been disturbed since the time of him who made it….
It is the (right) path for him who knows nothing….
The strength of justice is that it lasts….
— as quoted in Roland E. Murphy, The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature Eerdmans, 1990, p. 161, Appendix, “Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom”
Here is an early 2nd-millennium view of ma’at:
Speak Maat, do Maat.
For she is mighty.
She is great, she endures.
Her worth is tried,
She leads one to the state of reveredness.
—from The Eloquent Peasant (Lichtheim, 1975, p.181. Four copies on papyrus dating Middle Kingdom, also Assmann, J. : Ma’at, 1999, p.70 – dated XIIth Dynasty). Via Wim van den Dungen, “Discourse of a Man with his Ba: the chaotic heart and the just ways of the living soul in Ancient Egyptian didactical literature & funerary anthropology” www.maat.sofiatopia.org/ba
Michael V. Fox, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin, abstracts for his students five canons of rhetoric implicit in the wisdom precepts:
keeping silent,
waiting for the right moment to speak,
restraining passionate words,
speaking fluently but with great deliberation,
and above all, keeping your tongue at one with your heart so that you speak the truth.
—from Michael V. Fox, Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric, Rhetorica, 1 (1, Spring, 1983):9-22.
Fox says “they imply one another. Knowing the right moment for speech means waiting until then, in silence; speaking fluently results from sincerity, the unity of tongue and heart. The need to restrain passionate words might seem to conflict with the requirement of honesty, but the teachers taught only that whatever you speak must be true, not that whatever is true must be spoken.”
Qohelet says: “Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?” (Eccles. 5:6 [KJV])
Christa Kayatz, Professor of Evangelistic Theology at the University of Duisberg-Essen, enumerates beliefs shared by Egypt and Israel:
- Wisdom, even when personified (Lady Wisdom per Solomon) or deified (the divinity Ma’at), is referred to in the 3rd person, while other divinities (including Y-H-V-H, Elokim or “the Lord”) speak “I-style”
- the association of royalty and Wisdom/ma’at
- Wisdom/ma’at is life and the giver of life
- the wearing of symbols of wisdom/ma’at for protection and guidance: in Prov. 6:21 “the student is ordered to bind the teachings of his parents about his neck, over his heart. Similarly high officials in the Egyptian court would wear an amulet of ma’at about the neck.”
- reciprocity of love: I love them that love me…(Prov. 8:17) is found in Egyptian scarabs as well
- ideal of manliness: strong, self-controlled, silent type who has achieved “harmonious integration with the divine order and is master of any situation” vs. the “heated man” who is constantly stirring up trouble with his unthinking, rash actions.
- although Egypt was pantheistic, only a single collective reference to divinity appears in the “instructions” genre. This presence is omniscient, omnipotent and just, but relatively silent, though ready to help those who would pursue the divine order of ma’at. The focus in Egyptian wisdom literature like its biblical counterpart, is on day-to-day living in the here and now (then), with little attention to the afterlife, even though the Egyptians believed in life after death.
Qohelet’s ma’at underlies the two poems I have set to music: Eccles. 3:1-8, “To every thing there is a season…” and Eccles. 1:4-7 “Generations come and go but the earth endures beyond mind…” James Crenshaw thinks Qohelet may even have “borrowed” both from the Egyptians (Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, 1998, p. 129). I just believe that Egypt under the Ptolemies, despite their abuses as leaders, would have exerted a strong cultural pull on the world around it. Anyone living outside of Alexandria would have been aware that the tempo there moved faster, that the ideas flew. And anyone who lived in the world of wisdom, as Qohelet did, could not have been impervious to the persuasion of the Egyptian concept-world which underlay the commerce of ideas and fashion of that time.
Qohelet illustrates the Egyptian ideal man, when he counsels:
Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.
—Eccles. 5:2-3 [KJV]
The God he mentions, Elokim, is an honorific plural, and so in a strange way reflects the collective Egyptian reference. And although mentioned, God is remote. Qohelet counsels adherence to the principle of ma’at, when he warns:
Though sinners do evil a hundred times and prolong their lives, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they stand in fear before him; but it will not be well with the wicked, neither will they prolong their days like a shadow, because they do not stand in fear before God.
—Eccles. 8:12-13 [RSV]
He implies that ma’at, good order, will be restored in this lifetime. And here he decries the disorder of the political situation he lives in, presumably a Graeco-Egyptian rule under the Ptolemies:
There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as great an error as if it proceeded from the ruler:
folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place.
I have seen slaves on horseback, and princes walking on foot like slaves.
—Eccles. 10:5-7 [RSV]
This is from the chapter that closes with one of Qohelet’s “loudest” disparagements: Woe to you, O Land, whose king is a child… We know from history that the child-king’s violation of ma’at was well-punished. And because of Qohelet’s next line, Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of free men…, we know that he knows that ma’at was served too.
His disgust with the Egypt-based governance but deep accord with Egyptian ma’at, should demonstrate how separate the political allegiance was from the cultural. Qohelet was a loyal son of Jerusalem who believed in and abided by Egyptian concepts of good order.
When the question of the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in the Jewish biblical canon arose later, no one objected to the possibility of Egyptian influence. They objected to possible Graecisms and the absence of affirmations of the afterlife.
But the afterlife was probably an Egyptian idea too.
The idea that some part of you lives on, was almost universal in the ancient Near East, but an actual afterlife, which you might actually look forward to, was unique to ancient Egypt. In earliest times, the privilege of afterlife was reserved for pharaohs and their intimates, who thus became immortal. By the 5th dynasty (2498-2345 BCE), the hope of afterlife was extended to everyone. According to ma’at, human life followed the cyclic rhythms of nature—a belief set clearly espoused by Qohelet in the nature poem. If cyclic, then universal afterlife is a natural corollary (although Qohelet himself never goes that far).
To support the belief, elaborate and spectacular rituals of death and burial developed in Egypt. Those which have caught 20th-c. pop notice are pyramid tombs and mummification, the hieroglyphs associated with burial inscriptions, the sculpted effigies of the deceased and the occult lore of post-mortem instructions such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Upon closer inspection, the rituals have a ring of recognition and there is more than an incidental connection to Christian ideas of death, purgatory, judgment, heaven, hell, angels and the general relationship between immortal soul and mortal body, than pop culture chooses to assume:
After a person dies their soul is led into a hall of judgment in Duat by Anubis (god of mummification) and the deceased’s heart, which was the record of the morality of the owner, is weighed against a single feather representing Ma’at (the concept of truth and order). If the outcome is favorable, the deceased is taken to Osiris, god of the afterlife, in Aaru, but the demon Ammit (Eater of Hearts)– part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus–destroys those hearts whom the verdict is against, leaving the owner to remain in Duat. A heart that weighed less than the feather was considered a pure heart, not weighed down by the guilt or sins of one’s actions in life, resulting in a favorable verdict; a heart heavy with guilt and sin from one’s life weighed more than the feather, and so the heart would be eaten by Ammit. An individual without a heart in the afterlife in essence, did not exist as Egyptians believed the heart to be the center of reason and emotion as opposed to the brain which was removed and discarded during mummification. Many times a person would be buried with a “surrogate” heart to replace their own for the weighing of the heart ceremony.
—“Ancient Egyptian religion,” Wikipedia
The soul has five parts: its name, its shadow, its ka or life force, its ba or persona, and its akh or final resurrected glory. In order to achieve akh, the physical vessel, the body’s shell, has to journey to rejoin its now-separated ka, at rest until ritual reactivation after mummification. If reunion is impossible, the ba will act in the body’s stead. For the physical body to survive the journey, the ba must return to it every night. Its fate intricately interwoven with the physical body, the ba requires food, drink, sex, toys and pets. The ka too requires food and offerings, all of which are provided within the tomb.
After the initial reunion with ka, the ba journeys into the heavens to attain the soul’s full immortality as akh.
Egyptian afterlife beliefs resonated throughout the Eastern Mediterranean basin. Norman Solomon in his chapter “Life After Death from a Jewish Perspective”, suggests that:
Egyptian and perhaps Indian beliefs [about reincarnation] reached Greece not later than the time of Pythagoras [Pythagoras believed he was a reincarnation of Euphorbus, a Greek warrior at Troy], in the sixth century BCE…The earliest Jewish sources to speak openly of an afterlife belong to the second century BCE, the Maccabaean period. Daniel and late additions to Isaiah, together with several apocryphal books, testify to the bodily resurrection of the faithful; the apocryphal story in 2 Maccabees 7 of the mother and her seven sons who submitted to torture and death for their faith links this to the concept of martyrdom.
—p. 289, Norman Solomon, “Life After Death from a Jewish Perspective,” Abraham’s Children: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conversation, Norman Solomon, Richard Harries, Tim Winter. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
Sarah Iles Johnston adds that:
In Egypt we find what are probably the earliest foreshadowings of hell: a place where unrighteous people are subjected to torments and “the second death,” a notion that is taken up later in the Christian Book of Revelation. Righteous Egyptians could look forward to their counterpart to the Elysian Fields, the Field of Reeds.
—p. 470, “Death, the Afterlife and Other Last Things”, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, edited by Sarah Iles Johnston, Harvard University Press, 2004.
Johnston also notes the Mesopotamian contribution to heaven and hell:
Ideas of a blessed hereafter and of punishments for the damned also appear to be present in ancient Persia from a very early period… after death the soul is escorted to a bridge that leads to paradise. There it is judged by a divine court. The righteous soul is able to cross the bridge; the unrighteous falls off to perdition…
—p. 470, ed. Johnston
She then connects the conceptual advances of the two older cultures to the younger two. First to Greece, whose territory became the immortal soul:
A revolution in attitudes to the afterlife began in the Greek-speaking world about the end of the 6th century BCE, in the teachings of Pythagoras and the Orphics and in the mystery cults, all of which involved ideas of reward and punishment after death. The philosopher Plato incorporated some of these myths about the afterlife into his dialogues and gave them currency in the philosophical world. Henceforth, the immortality of the soul would be regarded as a quintessentially Greek idea, but various mythic conceptions of the afterlife flourished in the Hellenistic age. These included belief in astral immortality, whereby a person might hope to be elevated to the heavens after death.
—p. 470, ed. Johnston
As the Egyptian akh.
Then Johnston follows the idea of apocalyptic judgment into Judaism around 300 BCE—earlier than Solomon above—in a description from the apocryphal Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 22).
Enoch is shown “a large and high mountain, and a hard rock and four beautiful places, and inside it was deep and wide and very smooth,” Here the souls of the dead are gathered to await the judgment. The souls of the righteous are kept apart, with a spring of water and light. Another place is prepared for sinners “accomplished in wrongdoing.” We are told that “their souls will not be killed on the day of judgment nor will they rise from there.” This is the oldest passage in Jewish literature that attempts to distinguish the lot of righteous and wicked in the afterlife.
—p. 481, ed. Johnston
We began this journey of the soul’s judgment with the Egyptian weighing of the heart. Feather-weight is the pure soul unburdened by guilt. If we survived the transition into the afterlife we rose to the celestial realm or wafted forever in the Field of Reeds. Or else we were tortured and died a second death. We crossed the bridge to Persian paradise or fell off into the abyss. In Greece, our immortal soul descended through Hades, crossing the river Styx, and then on to torment in the abysses of Tartarus or eternal peace in the Elysian Fields. In Israel, between a rock and a high mountain, we awaited second death or resurrection. From the Roman Catholic world, we descended into Purgatory, were judged sinless enough to rise to heaven, or sinful enough to burn forever in the fires of hell, or somewhere in between requiring us to be detained in Purgatory. And just as the Egyptian living could pave the dead’s successful transition into the good afterlife through provision of food and other offerings, so can the Christian living pave the road to heaven through prayer, indulgences and the giving of last rites.
When these ideas arrived in Jerusalem is what matters. Qohelet wrote Ecclesiastes sometime after cyclic wisdom and before afterlife. Or it may be that he accepted some Egyptian beliefs, such as ma’at, and rejected others, such as the afterlife. He would have been well aware of afterlife beliefs in Judaism by the end of the 3rd c. into the start of the 2nd. Might this have been his protest against the inroads of Egyptian thought?
No human being has the force of breath to stop the breath of life from passing; nor the force to set the day of dying: there is no escape from this assignation, no tricking death.
—Eccles. 8:8 [KJV & KB]
Ka statue of Horawibra-
(Pharaoh w: Hor), 1760s BCE
A ka statue is a type of ancient Egyptian figure intended to provide a resting place for the ka, or spirit, of the person after death. The ancient Egyptians believed the ka (or life-force), along with the physical body, the name, the ba (personality or soul), and the swt (shadow), made up the five aspects of a person.
After death, the ethereal aspects of the soul were believed to be released from the body, free to roam the earth, but required the physical body or a surrogate, such as the ka statue, to return to as a permanent home.
The hieroglyph representing the ka is composed of a pair of upraised arms, and is sometimes depicted on top of the head of the statue to reinforce its intended purpose.
Ka statues could also be set up as a type of memorial for the deceased in absentia; for example in Abydos hundreds were set up to allow the dead to participate in the yearly festivals commemorating the resurrection of Osiris.
Ka statues were usually carved from wood or stone and sometimes painted in the likeness of the owner to reinforce the spiritual connection and preserve the person’s memory for eternity.
Many ka statues were placed in a purposely-built mortuary chapel or niche, which could be covered with appropriate inscriptions.
Like most ancient Egyptian statuary, Ka statues display a rigid frontalism in which the body faces squarely forward in a formal way. Whether seated or standing, their posture reflects the need for the statue to “see” the real world in front of them and conform to an ideal standard of beauty and perfection.
Because the ancient Egyptians believed statues could magically perceive the world, they were ceremonially brought to life by priests in a special ritual called the Opening of the mouth ceremony. In the full version of this ceremony, the mouth, eyes, nose, and ears could be touched with ritual implements to give the statue the power of breath, sight, smell, and hearing.
—Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt & http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/cairo_museum_24.html
Photo: Jon Bodsworth, 23:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC) All photographs on http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk are copyright free and can be reproduced in any medium
the sage in the ancient near east
The Macedonian Empire from 336-323 BCE. From the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/macedonian_empire_336_323.jpg
But he that giveth his mind to the law of the most High, and is occupied in the meditation thereof, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancient, and be occupied in prophecies.
He will keep the sayings of the renowned men: and where subtil parables are, he will be there also.
He will seek out the secrets of grave sentences, and be conversant in dark parables.
He shall serve among great men, and appear before princes: he will travel through strange countries; for he hath tried the good and the evil among men.
He will give his heart to resort early to the Lord that made him, and will pray before the most High, and will open his mouth in prayer, and make supplication for his sins.
When the great Lord will, he shall be filled with the spirit of understanding: he shall pour out wise sentences, and give thanks unto the Lord in his prayer.
He shall direct his counsel and knowledge, and in his secrets shall he meditate.
He shall shew forth that which he hath learned, and shall glory in the law of the covenant of the Lord.
Many shall commend his understanding; and so long as the world endureth, it shall not be blotted out; his memorial shall not depart away, and his name shall live from generation to generation.
Nations shall shew forth his wisdom, and the congregation shall declare his praise.
If he die, he shall leave a greater name than a thousand: and if he live, he shall increase it.
—Ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus 39:1-11[KJV, Apocrypha]
The social unification produced by the conquests of Alexander, brought the Jews into intimate relations with Greek thought. It may be inferred from Ben-Sira’s statements (Ecclus. xxxix. i-n) that it was the custom for scholars to travel abroad and, like the scholars of medieval Europe, to increase their knowledge by personal association with wise men throughout the world. Jews seem to have entered eagerly into the larger intellectual life of the last three centuries before the beginning of our era. For some the influence of this association was of a general nature, merely modifying their conception of the moral life; others adopted to a greater or less extent some of the peculiar ideas of the current systems of philosophy. Scholars were held in honour in those days by princes and people, and Ben-Sira frankly adduces this fact as one of the great advantages of the pursuit of wisdom. It was in cities that the study of life and philosophy was best carried on, and it is chiefly with city life that Jewish wisdom deals.
— Crawford Howell Toy (1836-1919), “Wisdom Literature”, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911, p. 750.
Just to get a grab on why it’s so important to look to the neighbors, when struggling to understand biblical wisdom:
About.com’s list of largest cities in the world, courtesy of geographer Matt T. Rosenberg, begins with Memphis, Egypt, hosting a population of over 30,000—the size of Waxahachie, Texas, or the town of Barnstable, Billerica or Beverly, Massachusetts—in 3100 BCE. Jerusalem may or may not have existed at this time.
Thereafter, the title was won by a succession of cities in Sumer: Akkad, Lagash, and Ur. The last reached 65,000—the size of Portland, Maine, or Enterprise, Nevada—in 2030 BCE. Jerusalem was a small town of under 2000 at this time.
Title is won back by Egypt with Thebes in 1980 BCE. The city of Babylon itself reigned 1770-1670. Then Egypt again: Avaris, 1670 BCE, Memphis, 1557, Thebes, 1400 and Egypt kept the numbers for over seven hundred years. Nineveh, Assyria, in 668.
And Babylon resurges to a population cresting above 200,000—the size of Savannah, Georgia; Salem, Oregon; Fort Collins, Colorado; or post-Katrina New Orleans—in 612 BCE, shortly before it overran the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, only to be toppled by the Hellenized Alexandria, Egypt in 320 BCE. At this time Jerusalem was a small city of about 25,000.
—TOP: After the Battle of Ipsus (301 B.C.). BOTTOM: At the Beginning of the Struggle with Rome (about 200 B.C.).
Map by William R. Shepherd, “Kingdoms of the Diadochi,” Historical Atlas, New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1926 ed., pp. 18-19.
From the Perry-Castañeda Map Collection – Courtesy of the University of Texas Library Online. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/diadochi_kingdoms_301_200.jpg
This composite map allows you to see the Ancient Near East in many epochal layers simultaneously as well as the modern context.
It shows the archaeological sites of the Oriental Institute of Chicago as well as other ancient cities. The squares represent modern cities.
Oriental Institute Map Series – Site Maps
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, founded in 1919, is an interdisciplinary research center whose goal is to integrate archaeological, textual, and art historical data to understand the development and functioning of the ancient civilizations of the Near East from the earliest Holocene through the Medieval period. We achieve this by conducting archaeological excavations, artifact analyses, the development of new research methodologies, the stewardship of systematic museum collections, philological studies, historical research, and the development of dictionaries of ancient languages.
Combining separate maps to produce a composite map of the ancient Near East:
This first installment of the Oriental Institute Map Series presents seven [I’ve used six] Site Maps covering the ancient Near East:
- Egypt
- Sudan
- The Levant
- Syria
- Turkey [not used here]
- Iraq
- Iran
locating primary archaeological sites, modern cities, and river courses set against a plain background. All Site Maps are Simple Conic projections at the same scale and orientation
The Oriental Institute Map Series is a publication of the Oriental Institute Computer Laboratory, which welcomes your comments and suggestions regarding future versions of the Map Series. Email them to the John C. Sanders, Oriental Institute Computer Laboratory.
The Oriental Institute Map Series was produced from map projection, terrain relief, and cartographic data in the Mountain High Maps product, by Digital Wisdom, Inc., of Tappahannok, Virginia.
Revised: February 7, 2007.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/lab/map/site.html
Accessed 4/13/09
These numbers reflect the movement of imperial power. More or less. They certainly suggest the centers of cultural and commercial dominion for the less populated areas in the vicinity. Jewish diaspora populations also contribute to these numbers in the urban centers themselves. Babylonian Jews. Egyptian Jews. Whether enslaved or seekers of opportunity, many Jews would have experienced immersion in the urbane cultures of Egypt and Babylon.
In comparison to the vast cities of these two cultural empires, Israel was an outback. By the time of Qohelet, Jerusalem had grown to the size of a small city but it still didn’t reach even the size of Missoula, Montana, until the time of Herod, a century and a half later. Alexandria would have been thirty times the size. The relative difference between Boston and New York. Born in Boston, that’s why I live in New York.
The Sumerians or Old Babylonians, the Neo-Assyrians or New Babylonians, and the Egyptians—were where the money, the power, the art, the technology, the wise and the written word—was at.
Two thousand years before the mid-first millennium Judaic scribalism of the Persian Period and Ezra’s post-exilic leadership out of Babylon, twenty-three hundred years before the authorship of wise Qohelet, there is evidence of the birth of a class of scribal sages in 3rd-millennium Egypt and in co-eval Mesopotamia.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the palaces of the Sumerian kings welcomed the presence of wise men as experts in arts, sciences, crafts, palace scribes, diviners, exorcists, physicians and scholars. The king, of course, was primary sage, literate or not. And as general literacy grew, toward the end of Old Babylonian rule in the late 2nd millennium—shortly before the time of both The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer and the Babylonian Theodicy—tablet houses, where written tablets were manufactured or “published” as it were, became seats of learning as well. The manufactured tablets found their way into private homes:
The many discoveries of tablets containing literary texts and scholarly compilations in private houses indicate that learning was fostered not only in the great institutions of palace and temple, but also in private families. But the leisure (Greek schole) necessary for scholarship required patronage as much in ancient Mesopotamia as it has in later ages and in other lands, and the palace was better able to supply that patronage than were private individuals or even temples.
— p. 107, “The Sage in Mesopotamian Palaces and Royal Courts” by Ronald F. G. Sweet, Professor of Assyriology, Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto; Part II, The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue, eds., (Eisenbrauns, 1990).
So the private homes would have been satellites of a central palace. Sages hired to instruct private family members would have been in the royal orbit as well. If literacy conferred social standing, the Mesopotamian sage would have been in possession of intangible treasure. Treasure made tangible by the material presence of the tablet and the written word. The social promise offered by the sage would have guaranteed him/her a living. A viable professional opportunity attracts comers. Then diversification. Knowledge grows. In this fertile conceptual environment, art and literature appear.
Similarly, in Egypt, sages were hired to instruct children of the wealthy in manners, business, politics, glyph writing, speech and general socialization. As in Mesopotamia, they also fulfilled more specialized roles in palace life: magicians and sorcerers, interpreters of dreams, diplomats, problem solvers, physicians, eloquent entertainers, chancellors, architects, government officials, and counselors. These roles echo the Babylonian except in one regard: the pharaoh was a god, not a sage. The pharaoh was responsible for the administration of ma’at on this earth and sages were crucial to his execution of that duty in this life. Sages approached divinity, with circumspection and tact, from the back door.
Following the fashion of Egypt and Babylonia, sages began to appear elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean basin. In late 6th century Greece, according to legend, the first Greek sage Pythagoras divined the fundamental mathematics of the cosmos, acoustics, trigonometry. The fact that there is no proof of these intellectual feats is even greater testimony to the culture’s retrospective need to lionize him as the first his kind.
By the first centuries BCE, moreover, it became fashionable to present Pythagoras in a largely unhistorical fashion as a semi-divine figure, who originated all that was true in the Greek philosophical tradition, including many of Plato’s and Aristotle’s mature ideas. A number of treatises were forged in the name of Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans in order to support this view.
—Carl Huffman, “Pythagoras”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/Pythagoras © 2006 by Carl Huffman <cahuff@depauw.edu> Fair Use
Huffman reminds us that it is important to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, as in Oz:
Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous
(1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations;
(2) as an expert on religious ritual;
(3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time;
(4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.
—Carl Huffman, “Pythagoras”, SEP
Which sounds rather Egyptian. And Mesopotamian. Current Pythagorean mythology—alive and well on the Web—gives us these tidbits:
Pythagoras arrived in Egypt around 547 BC when he was 23 years old. He stayed in Egypt for 21 years learning a variety of things including geometry from Egyptian priests. It was probably in Egypt where he learned the theorem that is now called by his name.
—Jacobo Bulaevsky, “The History of Pythagoras and his Theorem”, Arcytech Research Labs, Educational Java Programs, http://www.arcytech.org/java/pythagoras/history.html
Some say he fled Samos for Egypt to escape the tyranny of Polycrates, who [had] seized control of Samos some years before. There is some evidence, however that there was a friendship between the two men and Pythagoras actually traveled to Egypt with a letter of introduction from Polycrates around 535 BC…There are some accounts that indicate he was denied access to all but a few temples. One, however, which he apparently entered, was Diospolis, where he was accepted into the priesthood after completing the rites necessary for admission. While in Egypt, Pythagoras continued his education, especially in mathematics and geometry.
Ten years after Pythagoras arrived in Egypt, relations between that country and Samos fell apart. Polycrates sent 40 ships to help Cambyses II, the king of Persia, invaded Egypt. During this war, Egypt lost and Pythagoras was taken prisoner and taken to Babylon. Pythagoras wasn’t treated as a prisoner of war as we would consider today. He continued his education in mathematics and music and delved into the teachings of the priests, learning their sacred rites. He became extremely proficient in his studies of mathematics and sciences as taught by the Babylonians.
—Nick Greene, “Pythagoras of Samos Biography: The Father of Numbers,” About.com: Space/Astronomy. http://space.about.com/od/astronomerbiographies/a/pythagorasbio.htm
Who knows what to believe? The only vaguely solid thing seems to be that Pythagoras brought the Egyptian idea of the soul’s separability—ba, ka and akh, “name” and “shadow”—from the physical body into Greek culture, and translated the parts of the soul roughly, into psyche, pneuma, aer, nous, soma…and what have I missed?
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (early 5th c. – 424 BCE), the Greek historian, writes an “account of Egypt” in his second book, Euterpe. In Chapter 81, he refers to Pythagoras and his followers with respect to burial practices that seem to have been Egyptian in origin. Throughout the book, Herodotus cites Egyptian precedence, not only ritual, but in calendar, names of gods, not having sexual congress within the temple, careful dietary practices, historical recording, and more:
Chapter 81:
- They wear linen tunics with fringes hanging about the legs, called “calasiris,” and loose white woolen mantles over these. But nothing woolen is brought into temples, or buried with them: that is impious.
- They agree in this with practices called Orphic and Bacchic, but in fact Egyptian and Pythagorean: for it is impious, too, for one partaking of these rites to be buried in woolen wrappings. There is a sacred legend about this.
Chapter 123:
- These Egyptian stories are for the benefit of whoever believes such tales: my rule in this history is that I record what is said by all as I have heard it. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus are the rulers of the lower world.
- The Egyptians were the first who maintained the following doctrine, too, that the human soul is immortal, and at the death of the body enters into some other living thing then coming to birth; and after passing through all creatures of land, sea, and air, it enters once more into a human body at birth, a cycle which it completes in three thousand years.
- There are Greeks who have used this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own; I know their names, but do not record them.
—Herodotus, Chapters 81 & 123, Book II: Euterpe http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/hdtbk2.html
However the attribution of the soul’s cyclic incarnation is incorrect, according to Alan B. Lloyd, in his 1975 commentary Herodotus II. Actually this conception of the immortal self/soul is Greek and doesn’t match the Egyptian at all.
But the damage is done. The connection has been made. And in the 5th c. BCE. Egyptians were the more advanced culture and influenced the less developed Greek culture. Thus the Greeks inherit Egyptian Wisdom, translating it into their own version: philosophy (which means “love of wisdom”). Anyone leading the way into this new sophistication would have come to be identified—perhaps even synonymous—with that cultural progress, as King Solomon for the Jews, Pythagoras for the Greeks. No wonder they aggrandized him.
So in the 6th c., Pythagoras became the first Greek “wise man.” One thousand years or more after the Egyptian and Babylonian sages and their Sapiential culture come into play. Like “wise” Solomon, Pythagoras became emblematic, and the philosophers and their schools followed after him, just as he followed after his Egyptian and Mesopotamian prototypes. Greek philosophy, the Wisdom culture of Greece, however, doesn’t come into full swing until the 5th c. So everything to do with Pythagoras is in hindsight, and the Socratic writings of Plato are the real beginning of the Greek Wisdom literature.
Similarly for the Jews, while Solomon in the 10th c. is the mythical start, the Jews don’t receive sage culture in full til later in 6th-5th c. BCE. Perhaps because ambitious Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah, Tyre and Egypt, and absconded with their best and brightest, submerging them in the Wisdom culture of urban Babylon. Then Cyrus of Persia brought it back to the west. If one sees culture as viral, perhaps Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus perpetrated the contagion of the sage “germ,” its Mesopotamian strain. Or picked it up along the Nile as they pillaged and subjugated, and carried it back home to Babylon.
Nevertheless, the sage, or wise man, or philosopher, pervaded the Eastern Mediterranean purveying Wisdom, as of the mid-1st millennium BCE. The nativity myth that three sages as well as three kings showed their deference in the lowly manger in Bethlehem, signifies the messiah’s triumph over political power as well as Wisdom. Sagism continued, continues. The monastery. The university’s “ivory tower.” Impenetrable and potent to the extent we believe in it. When we see education as necessary for the good life, we are subscribing to the ancient culture of the wise man.
Pre-Christian sage culture brought universality—respect for human wisdom, the possibility of a better life through study, the non-agrarian profession of the scholar and advisor and a new middle class between ruler and peasant—to all nations. At the same time Wisdom culture was transformed by the host culture into a unique amalgam: the Greek philosopher with his complex eudaimonistic principles of morality, the Hebrew priestly scribe with his monotheistic adherence to the Torah and divine law.
By the time the Greeks swelled to dominance in the 4th century, a universal Wisdom culture was already in place—with its local “variations.” Low immunity to the viral ideas of Alexander’s army. This is the world the sage Qohelet would have entered as a child receiving education from the local Jerusalem sages.
Perhaps the best portrait of the sage in the ancient world is his self-description, chiseled into the statue of Amenhotep, son of Hapu, architect, priest, scribe, and trusted public official under Amenhotep III (1391–1353 or 1388–1351 BC, 18th Dynasty):
I am a great man, greatest of the great, skilled in hieroglyphs and reasoned(?) counsel, adhering to the king’s plans, whose position the sovereign advanced…I was appointed to be the royal scribe at the palace, and moreover was introduced to the god’s book(s), saw the powers of Thoth and was equipped with their secrets. I opened up all their mysteries and my advice was sought concerning all their matters.
—p. 97, The Sage, etc., but originally from H. W. Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie (Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums 4, fascs. 17-22; Berlin/Gratz: Akademie-Verlag, 1955-61), 21:1820.6-15.
Here he is, in the Luxor museum, with his papyrus and writing instrument on his lap:
Antiquité égyptienne, Musée de Louxor, (Égypte). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GD-EG-Louxor-126.JPG
