The Instruction of Ptah-hotep and the Instruction of Kegemni

child, or the humble amulet placed long ago with weeping on the still bosom of a friend, will move his heart as strongly as the proud and enduring monument of a great conqueror insatiable for praise. At times, moving among the tokens of a period that the ravenous years dare not wholly efface in passing, he hears, calling faintly as from afar, innumerable voices—the voices of those who, stretching forth in Sheol The Hebrew term for the place of the dead or the underworld. eager hands toward life, greatly desire that some memorial of them, be it but a name, may survive in the world of men.

Ancient Egypt fares perhaps better than other countries of antiquity at the hands of the "general reader," and sometimes obtains a hearing when others do not, by reason of its intimate contact at certain periods with the nation that has brought us the Old Testament. Because of this, the report of it has been with us constantly, and it has nearly become a symbol in religion. The stories of Moses and the magicians, and of the dealings of Abraham and Joseph with Pharaoh, together with the rude woodcuts of Egyptian taskmasters and cupbearers in family Bibles, have invested the venerable land with a dreamy mystery. Everyone has heard of "Rameses, the Pharaoh of the Oppression," and "Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus." And it is possible that for the sake of such associations, if not for his own sake, Ptah-hotep will be considered worthy of notice.