Following his reasoning, if a man be obedient as a son, punctilious as
a servant, generous and gentle as a master, and courteous as a friend,
then all good things shall fall to him, he shall reach a green old age
honoured by the King, and his memory shall be long in the land. This
theory, which is not {32} found satisfactory in our day, is insisted on
by most of the ancient moralists, who appear to regard it, not as a
substitute for conscience, but rather as a _raison d'etre_ or
justification thereof. Yet, centuries before a King of Israel had seen
all things that are, and found them vanity, a King of Egypt had left it
on record that he had done all good things for his subjects, and that
'there was no satisfaction therein.'

It has been said with some truth of codes of morals and laws that what
is omitted is almost as important as what is included. But we must not
carry this too far; we should be foolish indeed did we assert that
those things omitted from such a code as Ptah-hotep's were not
practised or not held to be important in his day. For example, he
'knows nothing'--as a Higher Critic would say--of kindness to animals;
but we know from many things that the Egyptians treated animals kindly
and made much of them as pets. In the very tomb of that Ptah-hotep
mentioned above,[15] who may be our author, is depicted the bringing of
three dogs and a tame monkey to him while he is dressing; possibly so
that he may feed them himself. And this kindly feeling obtained
throughout Egyptian history. They treated animals more as 'dumb
friends' in those days than might have been {33} _a priori_ expected,
and more, perhaps, than any other nation of antiquity. Again, he
'knows nothing' of duties to the mother, although he is so insistent on
duties to the father; but the high position of women and their
matriarchal privileges oppose any deduction that Egyptian manners were
somewhat to seek in this direction. Ke'gemni says of the unsociable
man that he is a grief to his mother, and another moralist of uncertain
date (perhaps Twelfth Dynasty, about B.C. 2700), named 'Eney, is
explicit on this matter. He says to his son, '_I gave thee thy mother,
she that bore thee with much suffering.... She placed thee at the
Chamber of Instruction for the sake of thine instruction in books; she
was constant to thee daily, having loaves and beer in her house. When
thou art grown, and hast taken to thee a wife, being master in thy
hous