The Teaching of Ptahhotep: a reading guide

What we have read

This guide locates the selected passages used in lesson 4, where advice about listening raises a question about power. They come from the web presentation by University College London (UCL), which sets an English translation beside a transliteration, that is, a rendering of the Egyptian words in another writing system. Papyrus Prisse is the principal manuscript used for that presentation. [1]

The surviving manuscript is a copy of the work, not proof of when it was first composed, and the teacher named within the work is not thereby established as its author. Lesson 3 explains these distinctions and the scholarly disagreement about the date of composition.

How to find the passages

On UCL’s page, begin with section 20, which concerns hearing a petitioner, someone making a request. UCL places it at column 9, lines 3–7 of the manuscript. Lesson 4 also draws on section 4 and sections 5–7. [1]

Miriam Lichtheim numbers the sayings, or maxims, differently: UCL’s section 4 is her maxim 1, sections 5–7 are maxims 2–4, and section 20 is maxim 17. The course’s comparison of the two translations covers these selected English passages. When you cite a passage, keep the edition’s name with its section or maxim number so that another reader can find it. [2]

Reading question. Can a duty to listen limit how a leader behaves while leaving the leader’s power intact? Lesson 4 explores this question through an invented council hearing. The council is a reasoning exercise, not a reconstruction of Egyptian life, and the question is our own way into the teaching rather than a quotation from it.

Source and limits

[1] UCL (University College London), “Teaching of Ptahhotep”, for the translation, transliteration and manuscript references: the introduction, the translation note and the sections listed above. The comparison covers selected English passages; it does not cover both translations in full.

[2] Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, volume I, The Old and Middle Kingdoms, in the 2019 collected edition (University of California Press), “The Instruction of Ptahhotep,” EPUB file OEBPS/Volume1_Part_01_Chapter_05.xhtml#head14, for her numbering and translation of the maxims.

• Maxims 1–4: internal markers page98–page99, with printed textual markers (61 = 5, 11), (70) and (81 = 6, 3), and notes 7–10.
• Maxim 17: internal marker page103, with textual marker (273).

The internal page markers locate passages in the EPUB; they are not verified print-page numbers. The entire supplied entry and its notes were read, including notices that maxim 32 and some obscure lines were omitted. No book or volume was read in full.

[3] BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France), Prisse catalogue, and the joint IFAO/Sorbonne/BnF edition, Le papyrus Prisse, version 2.0.2 (2025-06-16), for a check against the manuscript images: verse 298 and its mapping across the boundary between pages IX and X.

Two manuscript-image details were inspected using the editors’ mapping. This clarified a page boundary in the passage about greed; the images did not show the central petition passage. The check did not amount to a complete collation (a systematic comparison of manuscript readings) or an independent analysis of the Egyptian language.