hey exerted in their peculiar
provinces. A book, therefore, which spoke of one God only--by
name--would have been found much limited as to popularity and use.
Hence the old moralists and didactic writers, whatever God they might
themselves worship, forebore to mention Him, since by many readers He
would not be recognised as paramount; they wrote instead, 'The God,'
that is, 'the God of your allegiance, whoever He may be.' Thus, were
the reader a native of Heliopolis, his God would be Atomu, the Setting
Sun; of Memphis, Ptah, the Revealer; of Hermopolis, Thoth, Master of
Divine Words and Chief of the Eight. It was for this reason that the
unknown author of what is called the 'Negative Confession'[17] makes
the deceased say, '_I have not scorned the {36} God of my town_.' And,
indeed, so simply and purely does Ptah-hotep speak of the God that the
modern reader can, without the least degradation of his ideals,
consider the author as referring to the Deity of monotheism, and if he
be of Christendom, read God; if of Islam, read Allah; if of Jewry,
Jehovah.[18]

No doubt the gulf fixed between teaching and practice was as great then
as now. We have the teaching, we know that the teaching was current
all over Egypt in various forms, but of the practice we know very
little. Human nature being much the same at all times and places, we
must beware of measuring the one by the other, the unknown by the
known, and must be content to take such counsels as showing the
Egyptian--

Not what he was, but what he should have been.

It is established that they were a kindly, peace-loving people, genial
and courtly; but whether law-abiding is another matter. We know
nothing about their laws, but we know {37} that the law-courts were
busy, and that legal officials were numerous; and we know, further,
that their duplicity and lack of straightforwardness were proverbial
among the Greeks and Romans, and persists to this day.

I have noted above the resemblance of the Egyptian Instructions to the
Jewish didactic books (_Proverbs and Ecclesiastes_ in the _Old
Testament_, _Wisdom of Solomon_ and _Ecclesiasticus_ in the
_Apocrypha_); this will be obvious to all readers. Compare, e.g., the
opening of Ptah-hotep (Sec.B) with the opening of Proverbs. It is not
necessary to point out all the parallels in detail.

I come, lastly, to speak of other translations.[19] The first into any
language was that of the Rev. D. I. Heath, Vicar