Instruction of a Man for His Son

Anonymous / tradition · c. 2025-1700 BC (Middle Kingdom; scholars cannot fix the composition more precisely within the period) · Itjtawy (Egypt) · philosophy

A father's counsel to his son moves from restrained, careful speech into an extended call for loyalty to the king, the text's dominant theme, continuing the instruction genre in a composition every surviving copy of which is New Kingdom, leaving its Middle Kingdom date of composition impossible to fix more precisely within the period.