This treatment of ethics did not prevent the Egyptian writers from giving way to their natural inclinations, and composing large volumes on this subject after the manner of Kaqimni or Phtahhotpu.  One of their books, in which the aged Ani inscribes his Instructions to his son, Khonshotpu, is compiled in the form of a dialogue, and contains the usual commonplaces upon virtue, temperance, piety, the respect due to parents from children, or to the great ones of this world from their inferiors.  The language in which it is written is ingenious, picturesque, and at times eloquent; the work explains much that is obscure in Egyptian life, and upon which the monuments have thrown no light.  “Beware of the woman who goes out surreptitiously in her town, do not follow her or any like her, do not expose thyself to the experience of what it costs a man to face an Ocean of which the bounds are unknown.* The wife whose husband is far from home sends thee letters, and invites thee to come to her daily when she has no witnesses; if she succeeds in entangling thee in her net, it is a crime which is punishable by death as soon as it is known, even if no wicked act has taken place, for men will commit every sort of crime when under this temptation alone.”

* I have been obliged to paraphrase the sentence considerably to render it intelligible to the modern reader.  The Egyptian text says briefly:  “Do not know the man who braves the water of the Ocean whose bounds are unknown."To know the man means here know the state of the man who does an action.

“Be not quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious.  Thou fallest, thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy boon-companions around thee say:  ‘Away with the drunkard!’ Thou art wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like an infant.”  In speaking of what a man owes to his mother, Ani waxes eloquent:  “When she bore thee as all have to bear, she had in thee a heavy burden without being able to call on thee to share it.  When thou wert born, after thy months were fulfilled, she placed herself under a yoke in earnest, her breast was in thy mouth for three years; in spite of the increasing dirtiness of thy habits, her heart felt no disgust, and she never said:  ‘What is that I do here?’ When thou didst go to school to be instructed in writing, she followed thee every day with bread and beer from thy house.  Now thou art a full-grown man, thou hast taken a wife, thou hast provided thyself with a house; bear always in mind the pains of thy birth and the care for thy education that thy mother lavished on thee, that her anger may not rise up against thee, and that she lift not her hands to God, for he will hear her complaint!” The whole of the book does not rise to this level, but we find in it several