THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP

Such are the love-songs, full of the burning expression of desire; the pathetic and even bitter dirges, whose singers have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and found all to be vanity and a frustration of spirit. And such also are the didactic poems for the instruction of youth, which—in poetic phrase and in great detail—teach, among other things, the practice of right conduct as the price of happiness; a courtesy hardly less considerate than our own; and a charity which, when certain inevitable shortcomings are allowed for, bears comparison with almost any later system. Out of these, there are many that may properly claim a place in a series bearing the seal of the "Wisdom of the East," though they belong only to the more objective and "practical" side of that wisdom.

But, as touching the books here translated—the Instructions of Ptah-hotep and of Ke'gemni—they possess, apart from the curious nature of their contents, a feature of the greatest interest and an adequate claim on the notice of all persons interested in literature and its history. For if the dates and attributions in them be accepted as trustworthy (and there is no reason why they should not be), they were composed about 4,000 B.C. and 3,550 B.C., respectively. And the significance of those remote dates is that they are the oldest