Maxims of Ptah-hotep

Ptahhotep and his
wifr (at Saqqara)

Maxims of Ptah-hotep is one  of  the  most  popular  and lasting informative texts of Egypt, believed authored by Ptah-hotep Tshefi, a member of a powerful Fifth Dynasty family, the text was written in the rule of Unis (2356-2323 B.C.E.)  or  in  the  dominate  of  Izezi (2388-2356  B.C.E.).  The Maxims have  lived  in  10  break  forms,  on  papyri and ostraca, and were learned at Deir el-Medina, the community of workers of the valley of the kings, on the west shore of the Nile at Thebes.

Ptah-hotep wrote about the heart of Maat, the guiding rationale of civic and social life in Egypt. Later propagations used the Maxims to  instill  the  moral  measures  of Maat into  their  own  historical  periods.  Peculiarly  referred  with  the  weak  and  the  suppressed,  Ptah-hotep exhorted  his  countrymen  to  conduct  their  affairs  with quietude and righteousness. He urged them to be true and  to  address  one  and  full  with  kindness  and  respect. A major copy of the Maxims is in the Prisse Papyrus in the Louvre in Paris. Other copy is in the British Museum in London.

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