Teaching a man to his son

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The doctrine of a man for his son is a work of ancient Egyptian literature and dates to the Middle Kingdom . It belongs to the so-called wisdom or life teachings and deals with loyalty to the king and speeches that do justice to the mate .

Lore

The teaching is preserved in numerous fragments , none of which is nearly complete. The text therefore had to be put together painstakingly, but there are still gaps. The first scientific edition of the work was provided by Wolfgang Helck in 1984 , but at that time only 39 sources were available. Another edition by Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert appeared in 1999 , who meanwhile has access to around 150 sources and, according to his own estimates , was able to reconstruct around 90 percent of the original text .

content

The teaching is divided into two parts, which Fischer-Elfert divides into 24 chapters. It is written in direct speech which a distinguished man (an official) addresses to his son. Neither of the two is named, so the teaching should not have been addressed to a specific person, but to a group of the civil service.

The first part comprises chapters 1 to 8. It begins with a prologue in which the addressee of the teaching is explained to the perfect rhetoric. There follows a treatise on the king. The addressee should always be loyal to him, love him and praise him.

The second part (chapters 9 to 24) deals with speaking according to the divine world order Maat in relation to justice, family and household.

literature

  • Hellmut Brunner : A man's lesson for his son . In: Ders .: Ancient Egyptian wisdom. Lessons for Life (The Library of the Old World / The Ancient Orient). Artemis-Verlag, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-7608-3683-6 , pp. 185-192.
  • Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert : A man's lesson for his son. A stage on the path to God of the loyal and solidary officials of the Middle Kingdom (= Egyptological treatises, vol. 60). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-03919-1 (also habilitation thesis, University of Würzburg 1994)
  1. Text tape. 1999.
  2. Panel tape. 1999.
  • Wolfgang Helck : The teaching of Djedefhor and the teaching of a man to his son (= Small Egyptian texts. Vol. 9). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-447-02453-4 .
  • Günter Burkard , Heinz-Josef Thissen: Introduction to ancient Egyptian literary history. Vol. 1: Old and Middle Kingdom (= introductions and source texts on Egyptology. Vol. 1). LIT, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6132-5 , pp. 169-173.
  • Wolfgang Kosack : Berlin booklets on Egyptian literature 1 - 12 .: Part I. 1 - 6 / Part II. 7 - 12 (2 volumes). Parallel texts in hieroglyphics with introductions and translation. Book 6: The Teaching of Djedefhor (Hardedef). Christoph Brunner, Basel 2015, ISBN 978-3-906206-11-0 .