Teaching For King Merykara

The Teaching for King Merykara, alt. Instruction Addressed to King Merikare, is a literary composition in Middle Egyptian, the classical phase of the Egyptian language, probably of Middle Kingdom date (2025 BC-1700 BC).

In this sebayt the author has a First Intermediate Period king of Egypt possibly named Kheti address his son, the future king Merykara, advising him on how to be a good king, and how to avoid evil. Merykara is the name of a king of Dynasty 9 or 10, the line or lines of kings who ruled northern Egypt during a period of division, the First Intermediate Period (about 2150 BC-2025 BC). Perhaps this allowed the author of this composition greater freedom in describing the limits of royal authority than might have been possible in referring to kings of a unified Egypt; the Teaching for King Merykara is effectively a treatise on kingship in the form of a royal testament, the first of this genre. Similar works were created later in the Hellenistic and Islamic world, and, in the speculum regum, had a parallel in medieval Europe. Like similar later "royal testaments" one of its functions may have been the legitimization of the ruling king.