The History of Why

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Teaching of Ptahhotep

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A work attributed to Ptahhotep, known through its surviving witness, advises on listening, conduct and authority within an unequal social order.

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3 readings · Title A–Z

  • Guided course · Module 1 · Lesson 3

    How do we know what earlier thinkers thought?

    Papyrus Prisse shows how a work’s setting, its composition and its surviving copy can belong to different times. What can such a witness, or a translation of it, establish about what people once thought?

  • Guided course · Module 2 · Lesson 4

    Listening, power and the Teaching of Ptahhotep

    The Teaching of Ptahhotep urges a leader to hear a petitioner all the way through. Can listening restrain power while leaving the listener’s authority, and the inequality between them, in place?

  • Reference article

    The Teaching of Ptahhotep: a reading guide

    This guide locates the passages of the Teaching of Ptahhotep read in lesson 4 and sets out their attributed setting, their surviving witness and the limits of the translation.