Epilogue: The Immortality of Writers

Those writers known from the old days,

the times just after the gods—
Those who foretold what would happen (and did),
whose names endure for eternity—
They disappeared when they finished their lives,
and all their kindred were forgotten.

They did not build pyramids in bronze

with gravestones of iron from heaven;
They did not think to leave a patrimony made of children
who would give their names distinction.
Rather, they formed a progeny by means of writings
and in the books of wisdom which they left.
The papyrus roll became their lector-priest,
the writing-board their loving son;
Books of wisdom were their pyramids,
the reed-pen was their child, smoothed stone their spouse.
In this way great and small became inheritors;
and the writer was the father of them all!

What they built of gates and chapels now are fallen,

their soul-priests and their gardeners are gone,
Their headstones undiscovered in the dirt,
their very graves forgotten.
But their fame lives on in their papyrus rolls
composed while they were still alive;
And the memory of those who write such books shall last
to the end of time and for eternity.

 A N C I E N T E G Y P T I A N L I T E R AT U R E
Be a writer! Set your heart upon it
so your name shall be like theirs!
A book is finer than a graven stele,
more than a memorial wall.
Those men built pyramids and chapels of the mind
to make their names renowned!
Surely it is a thing of glory, in the land beyond,
that one’s name be fresh in the speech of mankind.

Man dies, his body is dust,

his family all brought low to the earth;
But writing shall make him remembered,
alive in the mouths of any who read.
Better a book than a builded mansion,
better than body’s home in the West,
Splendid above a fine house in the country
or stone-carved deeds in the precinct of God.

Are there any here today like Hordjedef?

Is there another like Imhotep?
There has not come in our time one like Neferty
or Khety, the best of them all.
I give you the names of Ptahemdjehuty
or Khakheperreseneb.
Is there another like Ptahhotep
or the equal of Kaires?

Those sages who saw into the future—

what came from their mouths came to be;
It is found as wisdom and truth
inscribed on their papyrus rolls.
The children of others are given to them
to be co-heirs with their own;

The Poems 

And the sacred knowledge they saved for the world
can be followed and known in their writings.
They themselves are dead and gone,
but their names are immortal in books.

 A N C I E N T E G Y P T I A N L I T E R AT U R E