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.Lichtheim 1976, 146–149. A characteristic product of the New Kingdom "Age of Personal Piety",Williams 1978, 131–137.Weeks 1994, 168–169. 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.Washington 1994. 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.Ray 1997, 17–29.
Overview 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 KingdomLichtheim 1973, 61–80. 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.Wilson 1951, 289–309. 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."Studies in Comparative Religion", General editor, E. C Messenger, Essay by A. Mallon S. J, vol 2/5, p. 16–17, Catholic Truth Society, 1934 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."
Witnesses and publication The most complete text of the Instruction of Amenemope is British Museum Papyrus 10474, acquired in Thebes by E. A. Wallis Budge in early 1888.Budge 1920, 1:337. The scroll is approximately 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.Budge 1923, 18–19; Posener 1945, 112. 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;Renouf 1888, 5–10. but Renouf was forced into retirement in 1891,Usick 2006, 15. 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,Budge 1922. followed in 1923 by the official British Museum publication of the full text in photofacsimile with hieroglyphic transcription and translation.Budge 1923. In 1924 he went over the same ground again in a somewhat more popular vein, including a more extensive commentary.Budge 1924. 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.Black 2002, 212–293. 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 dateBlack 2002, 266 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
Biblical parallels Egyptian influence on Israel and Judah was particularly strong in the reign of Hezekiah during Egypt's Third Intermediate Period;Williams 1971, 271–276. as a result, "Hebrew literature is permeated with concepts and figures derived from the didactic treatises of Egypt",Williams 1971, 276–277. with Amenemope often cited as the foremost example.Williams 1971, 277–282. Even in his first brief publication of excerpts from Amenemope in 1922, Budge noted its obvious resemblance to the biblical wisdom books.Budge 1922, 445. 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.Budge 1923, 12n2, 13n1; Budge 1924, 104–107, 118–119. Others soon followed his lead.
Erman's position The most notable of these was Adolf Erman, "the Dean of all Egyptologists",Mercer 1926, 238. who in 1924 published an extensive list of correspondences between the texts of Amenemope and the biblical Book of Proverbs, with the bulk of them concentrated in Proverbs 22:17–23:11.Erman 1924, 86–93. It was Erman who used Amenemope to emend a difficult reading in the text of Proverbs 22:20, where the Hebrew word shilshom ("three days ago") appeared to be a copyist's error that could be meaningfully translated only with difficulty. Erman pointed out that substituting the similar word sheloshim ("thirty") not only made good sense in context, but yielded the following close parallel between the two texts, with the now-restored "thirty sayings" in Proverbs 22:20 corresponding exactly to the thirty numbered chapters in Amenemope:Erman 1924, 88–90.Black 2002, 303–307.
(Proverbs 22:20): "Have I not written for you thirty sayings of counsel and knowledge?" (ESV) (Amenemope, ch. 30, line 539): "Look to these thirty chapters; they inform, they educate."Lichtheim 1976, 162.
Erman also argued that this correspondence demonstrated that the Hebrew text had been influenced by the Egyptian instead of the other way around, since the Egyptian text of Amenemope explicitly enumerates thirty chapters whereas the Hebrew text of Proverbs does not have such clear-cut divisions, and would therefore be more likely to lose the original meaning during copying.Mertz 1978, 317–318. Since Erman's time there has been a near consensus among scholars that there exists a literary connection between the two works, although the direction of influence remains contentious even today. The majority has concluded that Proverbs 22:17–23:10 was dependent on Amenemope; a minority is split between viewing the Hebrew text as the original inspiration for Amenemope and viewing both works as dependent on a now lost Semitic source.Overland 1996, 276–278.
The majority position A major factor in determining the direction of influence is the date at which Amenemope was composed. At one time the mid-1st millennium BC was put forward as a likely date for the composition of Amenemope,See, for example, Lange 1925, 13–14. which gave some support to the argument for the priority of Proverbs. However, Jaroslav Černý, whose authority on New Kingdom paleography was so great that his conclusions were considered "unquestionable",Ruffle 1995, 296. dated the fragmentary Amenemope text on the Cairo 1840 ostracon to the late 21st dynasty.Williams 1961, 106. Since a 21st-dynasty date inevitably makes Amenemope chronologically prior to the earliest possible date for Proverbs, this would definitively establish the priority of Amenemope over Proverbs and make influence in the other direction impossible.Overland 1996, 277–278.
Other evidence for Egyptian priority includes: the close literary relationship between Amenemope and earlier Ancient Egyptian works such as the Instruction of Kagemni and the Instruction of Ptahhotep (both dated to at least the 12th dynasty)Gardiner 1942, 70. and the Instruction of Ani (dated to the late 18th or early 19th dynasty);Lichtheim 1976, 135; Williams 1961, 106; Quack 1994, 13, 61–62, 84–85, 149, 202, 279. the demonstrably native Egyptian character of the genre, themes, and vocabulary of Amenemope;Williams 1961, 100–106. the discovery of the editorial and structural mechanisms by which the Egyptian original was adapted by the biblical author.Overland 1996; Bryce 1979; Fox 2008.
By the 1960s there was a virtual consensus among scholars in support of the priority of Amenemope and its influence on Proverbs.Shupak 2005, 203. For example, John A. Wilson declared in the mid-20th century: "[W]e believe that there is a direct connection between these two pieces of wisdom literature, and that Amen-em-Opet was the ancestor text. The secondary nature of the Hebrew seems established."Wilson 1951, 303n45. Many study Bibles and commentaries followed suit, including the Jerusalem Bible,Jones 1966, 932. introductions to the Old Testament by PfeifferPfeiffer 1948, 647–648. and Eissfeldt,Eissfeldt 1965, 474-475 and others. The translators of the Catholic New American Bible, reflecting and extending this agreement, even went so far as to emend the obscure Hebrew text of Proverbs 22:19 (traditionally translated as "I have made known to you this day, even to you") to read "I make known to you the words of Amen-em-Ope."Textual Notes 1970, 392; Boadt 1989, 644-645, 664-668. See also the web site of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:
The minority response