ings that
have taken place. Troubles flow in to-day, and to-morrow [tribulations]
will not cease. Though all the country is full of unrest, none will
speak about it. There is no innocent man [left], every one worketh
wickedness. Hearts are bowed in grief. He who giveth orders is like unto
the man to whom orders are given, and their hearts are well pleased. Men
wake daily [and find it so], yet they do not abate it. The things of
yesterday are like those of to-day, and in many respects both days are
alike. Men's faces are stupid, and there is none capable of
understanding, and none is driven to speak by his anger.... My pain is
keen and protracted. The poor man hath not the strength to protect
himself against the man who is stronger than he. To hold the tongue
about what one heareth is agony, but to reply to the man who doth not
understand causeth suffering. If one protesteth against what is said,
the result is hatred; for the truth is not understood, and every protest
is resented. The only words which any man will now listen to are his
own. Every one believes in his own.... Truth hath forsaken speech
altogether."

Whether the copy of the work from which the above extracts is taken be
complete or not cannot be said, but in any case there is no suggestion
on the board in the British Museum that the author of the work had any
remedy in his mind for the lamentable state of things which he
describes. Another Egyptian writer, called Apuur, who probably
flourished a little before the rule of the kings of the twelfth dynasty,
depicts the terrible state of misery and corruption into which Egypt had
fallen in his time, but his despair is not so deep as that of the man
who was tired of his life or that of the priest Khakhepersenb. On the
contrary, he has sufficient hope of his country to believe that the day
will come when society shall be reformed, and when wickedness and
corruption shall be done away, and when the land shall be ruled by a
just ruler. It is difficult to say, but it seems as if he thought this
ruler would be a king who would govern Egypt with righteousness, as did
Ra in the remote ages, and that his advent was not far off. The Papyrus
in which the text on which these observations are based is preserved in
Leyden, No. 1344. It has been discussed carefully by several scholars,
some of whom believe that its contents prove that the expectation of the
coming of a Messiah was current in Egypt some forty-five centuries ag