ontained in the Book of Proverbs, which is attributed to
Solomon, the King of Israel, and in "Ecclesiasticus," and the "Book of
Wisdom." The priests of Egypt took the greatest trouble to compose Books
of the Dead and Guides to the Other World in order to help the souls of
the dead to traverse in safety the region that lay between this world
and the next, or Dead Land, and the high officials who flourished under
the Pharaohs of the early dynasties drew up works, the object of which
was to enable the living man to conduct himself in such a way as to
satisfy his social superiors, to please his equals, and to content his
inferiors, and at the same time to advance to honours and wealth
himself. These works represent the experience, and shrewdness, and
knowledge which their writers had gained at the Court of the Pharaohs,
and are full of sound worldly wisdom and high moral excellence. They
were written to teach young men of the royal and aristocratic classes to
fear God, to honour the king, to do their duty efficiently, to lead
strictly moral, if not exactly religious, lives, to treat every man with
the respect due to his position in life, to cultivate home life, and to
do their duty to their neighbours, both to those who were rich and those
who were poor. The oldest Egyptian book of Moral Precepts, or Maxims, or
Admonitions, is that of Ptah-hetep, governor of the town of Memphis, and
high confidential adviser of the king; he flourished in the reign of
Assa, a king of the fifth dynasty, about 3500 B.C. His work is found,
more or less complete, in several papyri, which are preserved in the
British Museum and in the National Library in Paris, and extracts from
it, which were used by Egyptian pupils in the schools attached to the
temples, and which are written upon slices of limestone, are to be seen
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and elsewhere. The oldest copy of the
work contains many mistakes, and in some places the text is
unintelligible, but many parts of it can be translated, and the
following extracts will illustrate the piety and moral worth, and the
sagacity and experience of the shrewd but kindly "man of the world" who
undertook to guide the young prince of his day. The sage begins his work
with a lament about the evil effects that follow old age in a man--

"Depression seizeth upon him every day, his eyesight faileth, his ears
become deaf, his strength declineth, his heart hath no rest, the mouth
becometh silent and s