#WingedWordsWindsday: 02/23/2022 -- Insights on Leadership from Ancient Egypt

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 17: February 23, 2022

 

 

Insights on Leadership from Ancient Egypt

 

“The Wisdom of the Elders: Ptahhotep”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from the February 2014 Issue of the Illinois Administrative Professionals’ Newsletter

                Contemporary Western culture places a high value on youth and strength, not on age and wisdom. This emphasis is a rather recent innovation; just a few hundred years ago, reaching the silver years was considered to be the crowning achievement of human life. Elders were widely revered and consulted because of their long years of experience and valuable insight into the human condition. The reverence due to elderhood is still practiced every day by billions of people around the world. In honor of African-American History Month in February, let’s take a look at an ancient African sage to see what lessons we can learn from him about leadership and elderhood.

                Ptahhotep was an Egyptian sage who flourished around 2400 BCE. He was prime minister (grand vizier) to King Isesi, a Pharaoh of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. Ptahhotep was renowned for his great learning and wisdom, along with his remarkable longevity (he lived to be 110 years old!). His chief claim to fame, however, is his authorship of the oldest known book in world literature, the Maxims of Good Discourse, in which he instructed his son with wise proverbs and common-sense advice so that he could acquire good leadership qualities and achieve success and fulfillment in life.

 

Ancient Egyptian portrait of Ptahhotep, the wise elder statesman. (Image Credit: Public Domain)

 

                Here are some of the lessons that Ptahhotep recorded in his book and that still speak to us today, across a gulf of 44 centuries. (The Editor has slightly modernized the spelling and grammar of this translation from a century ago.)

 

·         B. Here begin the proverbs of fair speech, spoken by the Hereditary Chief, the Holy Father, Beloved of God, the Eldest Son of the King, of his body, the Governor of his City, the Vizier, Ptah-Hotep, when instructing the ignorant in the knowledge of exactness in fair speaking; the glory of him that obeys, the shame of him that transgresses them. He said unto his son:

·         5. If you are a leader, as one directing the conduct of the multitude, endeavor always to be gracious, that your own conduct may be without defect. Great is Truth, appointing a straight path; never has it been overthrown since the reign of Osiris. One that oversteps the laws shall be punished. Overstepping is by the covetous man; but degradations bear off his riches. Never has evil-doing brought its venture safe to port. For he says, “I will obtain by myself for myself,” and says not, “I will obtain because I am allowed.” But the limits of justice are steadfast; it is that which a man repeats from his father.

·         16. If you are a leader, cause that the rules that you have enjoined to be carried out; and do all things as one that remembers the days coming after, when speech avails not. Be not lavish of favors; it leads to servility, producing slackness.

·         17. If you are a leader, be gracious when you hearken unto the speech of a suppliant. Let him not hesitate to deliver himself of that which he has thought to tell you; but be desirous of removing his injury. Let him speak freely, that the thing for which he has come to you may be done. If he hesitates to open his heart, it is said, “Is it because he — the judge – does the wrong that no entreaties are made to him concerning it by those to whom it happens?” But a well taught heart hearkens readily.

·         25. If you are powerful, make yourself to be honored for knowledge and for gentleness. Speak with authority, that is, not as if following injunctions, for he that is humble – when highly placed – falls into errors. Exalt not your heart, that it not be brought low. Be not silent, but beware of interruption and of answering words with heat. Put it far from you; control yourself. The wrathful heart speaks fiery words; it darts out at the man of peace that approaches, stopping his path. One that reckons accounts all the day passes not a happy moment. One that gladdens his heart all the day provides not for his house. The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim. He that obeys his heart shall command.

·         34. Let your face be bright what time you live. That which goes into the storehouse must come out therefrom; and bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment shall himself have an empty belly; he that causes strife comes himself to sorrow. Take not such a one for your companion. It is a man’s kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life.

·         D. If now you attain your position, the body shall flourish, the King shall be content in all that you do, and you shall gather years of life not fewer than I have passed upon earth. I have gathered even 110 years of life, for the King has bestowed upon me favors more than upon my forefathers; this is because I wrought truth and justice for the King unto my old age. It is finished, from its beginning to its end, even as found in writing.

 

Editor’s Note: The complete text of Ptahhotep’s Maxims of Good Discourse can be read in Brian Brown’s classic 1923 book, The Wisdom of the Egyptians, at http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/woe/.

 

“Egypt”

By Gerald Massey (1828-1907)

 

EGYPT! How I have dwelt with you in dreams,

So long, so intimately, that it seems

As if you had borne me; though I could not know

It was so many thousand years ago!

 

And in my gropings darkly underground

The long-lost memory at last is found

Of motherhood – you Mother of us all!

 

And to my fellow-men I must recall

The memory too; that common motherhood

May help to make the common brotherhood.

 

Egypt! it lies there in the far-off past,

Opening with depths profound and growths as vast

As the great valley of Yosemite;

The birthplace out of darkness into day;

The shaping matrix of the human mind;

The Cradle and the Nursery of our kind.

 

This was the land created from the flood,

The land of Atum, made of the red mud,

Where Num sat in his Teba throned on high,

And saw the deluge once a year go by,

Each brimming with the blessing that it brought,

And by that waterway, in Egypt's thought,

The gods descended; but they never hurled

The Deluge that should desolate the world.

 

There the vast hewers of the early time

Built, as if that way they would surely climb

The heavens, and left their labors without name –

Colossal as their carelessness of fame –

Sole likeness of themselves – that heavenward

Forever look with statuesque regard,

As if some Vision of the Eternal grown

Petrific, was forever fixed in stone!

 

They watched the Moon re-orb, the Stars go round,

And drew the Circle; Thought's primordial bound.

The Heavens looked into them with living eyes

To kindle starry thoughts in other skies,

For us reflected in the image-scroll,

That night by night the stars for aye unroll.

 

The Royal Heads of Language bow them down

To lay in Egypt's lap each borrowed crown.

 

The glory of Greece was but the Afterglow

Of her forgotten greatness lying low;

Her Hieroglyphics buried dark as night,

Or coal deposits filled with future light,

Are mines of meaning; by their light we see

Through many an overshadowing mystery.

 

The nursing Nile is living Egypt still,

And as her lowlands with its freshness fill,

And heave with double-breasted bounteousness,

So doth the old Hidden Source of mind yet bless

The nations; secretly she brought to birth,

And Egypt still enriches all the Earth.