Instruction of Amenemope - Witnesses and Publication

Witnesses and Publication

The most complete text of the Instruction of Amenemope is British Museum Papyrus 10474, which was acquired in Thebes by E. A. Wallis Budge in early 1888. The scroll is approximately 12 feet (3.7 m) long by 10 inches (250 mm) wide; the obverse side contains the hieratic text of the Instruction, while the reverse side is filled with a miscellany of lesser texts, including a "Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days", hymns to the sun and moon, and part of an onomasticon by another author of the same name. In November 1888, Peter le Page Renouf, Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum (and Budge's supervisor), made mention of a "remarkable passage" from the papyrus and quoted a few words from it in an otherwise unrelated article about the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis; but Renouf was forced into retirement in 1891, and publication of the papyrus was delayed for more than three decades while Budge concentrated on other projects such as the Book of the Dead.

In 1922 Budge finally published a short account of the text along with brief hieroglyphic extracts and translations in a French academic work, followed in 1923 by the official British Museum publication of the full text in photofacsimile with hieroglyphic transcription and translation. In 1924 he went over the same ground again in a somewhat more popular vein, including a more extensive commentary. Subsequent publications of BM 10474 in hieroglyphic transcription include those of H. O. Lange (1925), J. Ruffle (1964), and V. Laisney (2007). Photographic copies of the papyrus are available from the British Museum.

Since the initial publication of BM 10474, additional fragments of Amenemope have been identified on a scrap of papyrus, four writing tablets, an ostracon, and a graffito, bringing the total number of witnesses to eight. Unfortunately, none of the other texts is very extensive, and the British Museum papyrus remains the primary witness to the text. As can be seen from the following table, the dates assigned by scholars to the various witnesses range from a maximum of ca. 1069 BCE (for the papyrus fragment and one of the writing tablets) down to a minimum of ca. 500 BCE (for BM 10474):