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THE PRECEPTS OF PTAH-HOTEP
Precepts of the prefect, the lord Ptah-hotep, under the Majesty of the King of the South and North, Assa, living eternally forever.
I
The prefect, the feudal lord Ptah-hotep, says: O God with the two crocodiles,[1] my lord, the progress of age changes into senility. Decay falls upon man and decline takes the place of youth. A vexation weighs upon him every day; sight fails, the ear becomes deaf; his strength dissolves without ceasing. The mouth is silent, speech fails him; the mind decays, remembering not the day before. The whole body suffers. That which is good becomes evil; taste completely disappears. Old age makes a man altogether miserable; the nose is stopped up, breathing no more from exhaustion. Standing or sitting there is here a condition of . . . Who will cause me to have authority to speak, that I may declare to him the words of those who have heard the counsels of former days? And the counsels heard of the gods, who will give me authority to declare them? Cause that it be so and that evil be removed from those that are enlightened; send the double . . .
The majesty of this god says: Instruct him in the sayings of former days. It is this which constitutes the merit of the children of the great. All that which makes the soul equal
- ↑ Honhen or Osiris, as is shown by the 43d invocation of the 142d chapter of the Book of the Dead: "O Osiris, god with the two crocodiles!" But it is Osiris reborn and regaining, after decline and death, rejuvenescence and vigor. Chabas ("Zeitschrift," 1868, p. 101), studying the stelæ of Horus standing on the crocodiles, and noticing that this god is named "the aged who becomes young in his hour, the old man who becomes a child," very justly recalls the passage where Ptah-hotep invokes the aid of the god with the two crocodiles against the evils of old age.
