N.B. Drafted beginning last year

Historical comments: I’m an old man, just like I always knew! I grew up around 27-30, and I’m 32 now, and Ancient Egyptians only lived to 35, so.

Since only the rare scribe could write—they were like technicians—and people didn’t read alone but attended readings, which were parties, books were a lot more like going to the movies than working your way through the Oxford World’s Classics books (complete with untranslated Italian epigraph quote).

Oldness aside, I wouldn’t have done well in Ancient Egypt, being neither technician nor movie-goer. Then again, those are still the main two divisions of our own society.

“Otherness, otherness!” Not being a specialist, I undersell otherness, although I know it was there…. I console myself that the specialists are showing off, lol…. They’re just not me. What a mistake, and so common…. “Auf deutsch gespracht!” That’s not the right way to talk, man. (“You make me sad feel.” No! No, you make, me, sad feel, Herr Buchmeister!)

But I think I like a lot of the tales & teachings; as much as I want to be a Romantic (Chopin & Sand) outsider and not an early or imitative technician, I like the didactic eternalness, so much like another sort of Narnia Jack.

I think a speculative point that should be made is, where you have a small group of moral thinkers and a group of peasants and such, the peasants would inherit most of their ideas as a form of simplified state moral thinking; they wouldn’t be rebels. Even in societies with some rebellion, you can’t just collect rebels at random from among all the non-elites. Most people, I think, especially in simple societies, say, The king does things the right way; the scribes are noble. If only we understood, we would see how great! Now push the cart.

And such does have some charm and utility, especially where we are talking about honest peasants and not hypocritical libertarians (freedom for me, not for thee). Of course, if I were wrong about everything else, I’d be wrong now.

…. The other thing is, as bad as artificiality can be, you have to ask yourself whether you like idle conversation. A certain amount of distance is constructive.

…. And they were great kings of Africa.

…. Anyway, if you had a great intellect but no compassion (not that you’d necessarily be able to display that in translation and criticism), you’d become a devil, you know. Sooner or later it does make a difference…. Anyway, that’s why I don’t really like translation and formal criticism, and I don’t do it myself, you know.

…. Anyway, even in old times there’s ‘there and back again’, although I will allow how strange it seems. No more Southern or New Yorker novelists, or German, British, and French scholars, but Ancient Egyptians and Syrians. It’s still true though, that even ages and ages before Marx there was sufficient alienation from home and life that the famous story is about losing home and going abroad, and you only come home at the end.

…. And it’s nice “to have in mind the day of burial”. It’s pretty. “Think of your corpse—and return!”…. That’s also the sense I got of say the Koran, or the Confessions of Augustine, very pretty. And Psalm 88, very pretty. ‘Darkness is my only friend’. Poor girlie.

…. There were days when a middle-class trader was termed an ‘eloquent peasant’.

…. I hate to tear down another culture, (unless it’s the French), but I think that the Eloquent Peasant may be the first recorded co-dependent of history: you’re great; you’re so great; but you suck unless you do what I want…. You’re great, don’t be an ass…. I’m sure you’ll do what I want, since you’re so much better than everyone else….

…. Although it is nice: ‘Do not plan tomorrow before it comes; the evil in it cannot be known….Your heart should be patient, so you will know the Truth!’

…. The Odyssey would be as good as “The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” if it were as concise. Ha! :P

…. It was the rule of custom. That is a little different. (The Tale of King Cheops’ Court).

…. The Words of Neferti: Lost wars are one of the problems of life, but oftentimes if you are very powerful you imagine that all problems consist of not thrusting a sword in somebody’s belly; many ancient writings though do talk about hard times as being the divorce of heaven and earth and the withering away of nature, even if in some ways they are more recognizably ‘rightist’, to use the anachronism: ‘we need hierarchy, the rule of custom, and a strong king’. (Although who knows what the modern right wants, since it is not always a strong king or a more or less even amount of productivity.)

…. The Dialogue of a Man with his Soul: I remember in ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ the teacher counsels against what he calls the ‘romanticism’ of death, which the Egyptians must have known in the old days, and which this text advises against, even if it does allow that the last day is something great.

…. Although I’m sure a more ‘cool’ new ager might call it, The Dialogue of a Man with his Ego, since it gives the ‘wrong’ advice.

…. I think that Richard P should have confined the notes to things that are historically alien—which notes are quite necessary—and not to multiply formalities by summarizing every literary universal in the notes, just because every paragraph in the text should have a paragraph in the notes.

…. The Loyalist Teaching is pretty; Jack and Deepak would like it.

…. I don’t want to get too crazy, because I do the same thing, but I don’t like the Teaching of Khety, the (Scribe’s) Satire on Trades. Oh yes, the foodies and the exercise people and the jewelry store people and the people who talk—and everyone who doesn’t just read and read and read…. Well, if you’ve got it all, then you don’t need them, right? “But I need servants.” Because you’re weak! You’re not an Angel! “It’s not my fault!” Yeah, and it’s not their fault that there’s only one bookstore in the mall instead of three or ten or twenty; they’re just living their lives. You too, have but a brief life.

…. —Twenty bookstores?
—Well, they wouldn’t all be as big as Barnes & Noble. Barnes and Noble doesn’t carry a lot of books. There could be niche book stores—
—But twenty? They’re all just books.
—Well, you only really need three food types: High Calorie, High Vitamin, and High Protein. So have three food places at the mall—for breads, fruit juices, and vegan protein bars.
—Vegan?…. Wait, only three?
—And then you could have a clothing store, for your annual trip to replace worn-out clothes, some kind of therapists emporium or chess garden where you could meet up with people in a respectful way, and—
—And you’re a nut! Therapy? YOU need therapy!
—And then there could be a place to sell you a cross, for when the church stops being embarrassing and driving people away from Jesus.
—But what about the normal people?
—Are normal people happy?
—No. but they don’t want. This.

…. (The Teaching of Khety) These fuckers are all poor! Punish them, steal their things, and become a scribe!
—Lord have mercy; you’re ruining it. It could have been so great! There could have been a church, a gym, a music store—lots of stuff! Now we won’t get anything!
—It’s all a lie! I don’t even like books. The people who like them are all like that Ketie freak, or you. You’re both freaks.
—I tried, Jesus. When you come back, and we’ve scorched the earth…. I tried…. I cried; I cried….

…. (Fragments) “He who fails the drowning man, fails everyone
He who drives away his protection is protection-less
A man does what he does, without knowing that someone is doing the same against him.”

Now there’s a sign for a goddamn pizzeria. Most of the signs just say something that means, Get Fat. And Pay Me.

Although I live about two blocks from the largest museum of Egyptian antiquities on the West Coast, I know little to nothing about ancient Egypt. I picked up this anthology of Middle Kingdom literature to remedy that defect. Parkinson, a scholar in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, translates and provides commentary on these 13 short works of literature, with genres ranging from moral tales, dialogues exploring various moral and spiritual crises, and teachings of wisdom that remind me of biblical proverbs. Unlike many edited anthologies, his commentary was just as vivid and interesting as the texts themselves.

Parkinson explains that the literature in this book comes from a time of cultural unease:

The Middle Kingdom was preceded by a period of less centralized power, when the country was divided, and its literature remained very aware of the dangers of civil unrest and the chaos of the interregnum. (5)

That being true, the literature in this book also attempts to uphold the cultural beliefs and structures of an early Egypt, such as the divinity of the king and the moral order of the cosmos.

Its literature is, in modern terms … didactic. The poems are generally unromantic in all senses of the word, but they are not impersonal or abstract; they have an intimate mode of address and deal with personal themes, being concerned with the human heart. Man’s ethical life is their central concern, and not the cultivation of subjectivity, or personal emotions such as romantic life. (9)

But there is always an edge. For example, “The Teaching of King Amenemhat” is a Hamlet-like text, in which an assassinated king visits his son in a vision and advises him not to trust his advisors as he did. While this text firmly holds to the divinity of the Egyptian king, it also alludes to the anomie of regicide. Another text, “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” is narrated by a peasant who was robbed and left destitute by an official until the king himself rights the situation. Yes, justice is served in the end; but in the meantime, life is unfair, and the powerful abuse their privileges. These texts are emblematic of many others in this anthology that walk a fine line between skepticism and chaos on the one hand, and upholding the divinely sanctioned social order on the other.

I would recommend this anthology to someone unexposed to Egyptian literature. Parkinson includes a chronology and detailed bibliography for anyone wishing to go further. (Too bad most of the works in the bibliography are in German and French!) For me the fun was in seeing parallels with biblical literature, even particular idioms that sound familiar from the Hebrew Bible. Parkinson continually laments that we know so little about each text and so many of them are only partially extant, but the fact we have anything this old at all amazes me. ( )

Interesting how basic human behavior has not changed in 4,000 years. Unfortunately, the extant writings only hint at the wisdom of the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom. ( )