The Written Word Endures

 

Seated scribe of the Nile Valley

Dag Herbjørnsrud, writing for the American Philosophical Association, describes the 3200-year-old manuscript "The Immortality of Writers" as a "remarkable example of classical Egyptian philosophy." 

The manuscript, attributed to the writer Irsesh, states:

Man perishes; his corpse turns to dust; all his relatives return to the earth. But writings make him remembered in the mouth of the reader. A book is more effective than a well-built house or a tomb-chapel, better than an established villa or a stela in the temple! [...] They gave themselves a book as their lector-priest, a writing-board as their dutiful son. Teachings are their mausolea, the reed-pen their child, the burnishing-stone their wife. Both great and small are given them as their children, for the writer is chief.

The only copy of Irsesh’s manuscript, formally known as “Chester Beatty IV” (EA 10684, verso) has been stored at the British Museum in London. In 1997, it was removed from public display. New translations from Egypt’s ancient cursive writing system called "hieratic" have made the text accessible to the public.

Irsesh begins his argument by stating one should be skilled in writing. He then goes on to refer to the “wise writers from the time after the gods,” indicating that the gods are not among us after the creation of the Earth. Irsesh states that the names of these writers “have become everlasting, even though they have departed this life and all their relatives are forgotten.”

What is written survives long after a person has died. The more universally sympathetic your writing, the better the chance that it will survive time's ruinous effects.

Related reading: The Radical Philosophy of Egypt; Plato's Debt to Ancient Egypt