1. How does a leader stay in and
consolidate power?
How does a leader become/remain
popular?
Friday, September 20, 13

2. erra & ishum (47-62)
✤ Why do you stay in the city, like a feeble old man,
✤ why do you stay at home, like a weak little child?
✤ ...
✤ Even a prince who stays in town cannot eat his bread in peace;
✤ he is mocked by his people, and his person is despised.
✤ City bread in plenty cannot compare to flat loaves baked in embers,
✤ the sweetest beer cannot compare to water from a goatskin,
✤ nor can a terraced palace be compared to a hut in the field.
Friday, September 20, 13

3. the teaching for king merikare (40-45)
✤ Show due respect to the nobles, support your people,
✤ Fortify your borders and your buffer zones.
✤ ...
✤ Promote your officials that they may fulfil your decrees,
✤ For he whose house is wealthy will not take sides (against you)...
✤ A poor man does not speak honestly...
✤ He will be partial toward him who is generous to him
✤ And biased toward the one who pays him.”
Friday, September 20, 13

4. the teaching for king merikare (20)
✤ ...who persists as a troublemaker and a spreader of talk,
✤ Get rid of him, and slay his children,
✤ Obliterate his name, and destroy his supporters,
✤ Banish (all) memory of him and of the partisans who respect him.
Friday, September 20, 13

5. 2 Samuel 15:2-6
(New InternationalVersion)
15
Whenever anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a
decision, Absalom would call out to him, “What town are you from?” He
would answer, “Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.” 3 Then
Absalom would say to him, “Look, your claims are valid and proper, but
there is no representative of the king to hear you.” 4 And Absalom would
add, “If only I were appointed judge in the land! Then everyone who has a
complaint or case could come to me and I would see that they receive
justice.”
5 Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him,
Absalom would reach out his hand, take hold of him and kiss him. 6
Absalom behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king
asking for justice, and so he stole the hearts of the people of Israel.
Friday, September 20, 13

6. the teaching of king amenemhet I
for his son senwosret (1,5)
✤ Put no trust in a brother,
✤ Acknowledge no one as a friend.
Friday, September 20, 13

7. How is the power of speech
portrayed?
Friday, September 20, 13

8. the teaching for king merikare
(25-34)
✤
One who disseminates talk is a disrupter of the city.
✤
...
✤
A single dissenter can disrupt the (entire) army.
✤
...
✤
Be proficient in speech, so that you may be strong,
✤
For the strength of a king is his tongue.
✤
Words are mightier than any struggle...
Friday, September 20, 13

9. the maxims of ptahhotep (11,9)
✤ Your silence will be more profitable than babbling,
✤ So speak only when you know that you are qualified.
✤ ...
✤ For speech is more difficult than any craft,
✤ And only the competent can endow it with authority.
Friday, September 20, 13

10. j.l.austin:‘performative’speech acts
a. ‘I do (take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’ – as
uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony.
b. ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ – as uttered when
smashing the bottle against the stem.
c. ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’ – as occurring
in a will.
In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence ... is not to describe my doing of
what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it.
… What are we to call a sentence or an utterance of this type? I propose to call it a
performative sentence or a performative utterance, or, for short, a ‘performative.’ (pp. 5-6)
✤ (From: J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1962.)
Friday, September 20, 13

11. the maxims of ptahhotep (11,5-11,7)
✤ Do not repeat slander,
✤ And do not listen to it,
✤ For it is but the prattling of a churlish man.
✤ Repeat only what is seen, not what is heard,
✤ Or forget it and say nothing at all.
✤ ...
✤ Slander is like a nightmare;
✤ Divorce yourself from it.
Friday, September 20, 13

12. virgil:the aeneid
She thrives on speed, stronger for every stride,
Straightway Rumour flies through Libya’s great cities,
Rumour, swiftest of all evils in the world.
…
… Rumour, quicksilver afoot
and swift on the wing, a monster, horrific, huge
and under every feather on her body —what a marvel—
an eye that never sleeps and as many tongues as eyes
and as many raucous mouths and ears pricked up for news.
… By day she keeps her watch,
crouched on a peaked roof or palace turret,
terrorising the great cities, clinging as fast
to her twisted lies as she clings to words of truth.
Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fagles, (New York: Penguin Classics, 2010), 133-134.
Friday, September 20, 13

13. How is wisdom characterized?
Is it innate, or cultivated?
Do these texts provide ‘absolute’
rules to go by?
Friday, September 20, 13

14. the maxims of ptahhotep (5,11-6,4)
✤ “If you come up against an aggressive adversary (in court),
✤ One who has influence and is more excellent than you...”
✤ “If you come up against an aggressive adversary,
✤ Your equal, one who is of your own social standing...”
✤ “If you come up against an aggressive adversary,
✤ A man of low standing, one who is not your equal...”
✤ “If you are a ruler responsible for the concerns of the populace...”
Friday, September 20, 13

15. the maxims of ptahhotep (5,9)
✤
Do not be haughty because of your knowledge,
✤
But take counsel / with the unlearned man as well as with the learned,
✤
For no one has ever attained perfection of competence,
✤
And there is no craftsman who has acquired (full) mastery.
Friday, September 20, 13

16. the teaching for king merikare (115)
✤ The (ruler) of the two banks is intelligent;
✤ The king, the lord of courtiers, will not act foolishly.
✤ He was wise even at his coming forth from the womb,
✤ And God has made him preeminent over the land above countless
others.
Friday, September 20, 13

17. the teaching of king amenemhet I
for his son senwosret (1,5)
✤ I was generous to the pauper, I sustained the orphan,
✤ I caused him who had nothing to become at length like a man of
means.
✤ But it was one who ate my bread who conspired (against me),
✤ One to whom I had given my support devised dread deeds thereby,
✤ Those clad in my fine linen behaved toward me like worthless louts,
✤ And those anointed with my myrrh made my way slippery before
me.
Friday, September 20, 13

18. the maxims of ptahhotep (9,11-9,13)
✤ One may be deceived by an exquisite body,
✤ But then it (suddenly) turns to misery.
✤ (All it takes) is a trifling moment like a dream,
✤ And one comes to destruction through having known them.
Friday, September 20, 13

19. Date
What endures beyond (a
ruler’s) death?
How does a ruler create a
lasting legacy?
Friday, September 20, 13

20. the teaching for king merikare (65)
✤ Strengthen your monuments as far as is within your power,
✤ For even a single day can contribute toward eternity.
✤ ...
✤ Let your images be sent to distant foreign lands,
✤ (Even) ones which will not acknowledge them.
Friday, September 20, 13

21. 2 Samuel 18:18
(New InternationalVersion)
✤ 18 During his lifetime Absalom had taken a pillar and
erected it in the King’s Valley as a monument to himself, for
he thought, “I have no son to carry on the memory of my
name.” He named the pillar after himself, and it is called
Absalom’s Monument to this day.
Friday, September 20, 13

22. erra & ishum (643-649)
✤
“In the house where these tablets are placed, should Erra become enraged,
✤
should the Seven turn murderous again,
✤
the sword of destruction will not approach them,
✤
but safety will lie upon them.
✤
May this song endure forever, may it last throughout all time!
✤
May all the lands hear it and celebrate my valour,
✤
may all people come to know it, and magnify my name!”
Friday, September 20, 13