As regards the version here offered, I will only say that it has been done with considerable care, { 39} without prejudice, and, it is thought, in accordance with scientific methods of translation; and that it has been compared with all previous renderings, and will be found to be, on the whole, the most accurate that has yet appeared.
And now I will leave Ptah-hotep to speak for himself. It may be thought that he has been introduced at too great length; but I would point out that his book has been strangely overlooked by the educated public hitherto, although it would be difficult to over-estimate its importance, to literature as the oldest complete book known, to ethics and theology as the earliest expression of the mystery we name Conscience, and to lovers of antiquity as one of the most instructive and touching relics of a people and a power that once were great and are now brought to nothing. By a happy chance the words of our sage have been justified, in that he said, '_No word that hath here been set down shall cease out of the land for ever_.' Would indeed that we had more of such books as this, whereby we may a little lighten the darkness that lies behind the risings of a million suns; and learn how little the human heart, and the elements of human intercourse, alter throughout the ages. And what of the other writers of that time, whose works and whose very names are entirely swept away? To this there is no better answer made than in the lamentation made by the harper close upon five { 40} thousand years ago, which was written up in the tomb of King 'Entef:
_Those that built them tombs_, he sang, _have now no resting-place. Lo! what of their deeds? I have heard the words of Yemhotep and of Hardedef, whose sayings men repeat continually. Behold! where are their abodes? Their walls are over-thrown, and their places are not, even as though they had not been._'
[1] Much ingenuity has been expended to show that Egyptian manners and customs, books, and other things, were "much the same" as our own, as though the supposed similarity reflected any credit either on them or on us. Except in customs which are common to all times and places, as drinking beer, writing love-letters, making wills, going to school, and other things antecedently probable, the Egyptian life can show very few parallels to the life of to-day.