Instructions to his son,
Khonshotpu, is compiled in the form of a dialogue, and contains the
usual commonplaces upon virtue, temperance, piety, the respect due to
parents from children, or to the great ones of this world from
their inferiors. The language in which it is written is ingenious,
picturesque, and at times eloquent; the work explains much that is
obscure in Egyptian life, and upon which the monuments have thrown no
light. "Beware of the woman who goes out surreptitiously in her town, do
not follow her or any like her, do not expose thyself to the experience
of what it costs a man to face an Ocean of which the bounds are
unknown.* The wife whose husband is far from home sends thee letters,
and invites thee to come to her daily when she has no witnesses; if
she succeeds in entangling thee in her net, it is a crime which is
punishable by death as soon as it is known, even if no wicked act has
taken place, for men will commit every sort of crime when under this
temptation alone."

* I have been obliged to paraphrase the sentence
considerably to render it intelligible to the modern reader.
The Egyptian text says briefly: "Do not know the man who
braves the water of the Ocean whose bounds are unknown."_To
know the man_ means here _know the state of the man_ who
does an action.

"Be not quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced
forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having
spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious. Thou fallest,
thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy
boon-companions around thee say: 'Away with the drunkard!' Thou art
wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like
an infant." In speaking of what a man owes to his mother, Ani waxes
eloquent: "When she bore thee as all have to bear, she had in thee a
heavy burden without being able to call on thee to share it. When thou
wert born, after thy months were fulfilled, she placed herself under a
yoke in earnest, her breast was in thy mouth for three years; in spite
of the increasing dirtiness of thy habits, her heart felt no disgust,
and she never said: 'What is that I do here?' When thou didst go to
school to be instructed in writing, she followed thee every day with
bread and beer from thy house. Now thou art a full-grown man, thou hast
taken a wife, thou hast provided thyself with a house; bear always in
mind the pa