Instruction of Merikare
The Teaching for King Merikare
A king's legitimacy rests on justice, generosity, and calculated self-presentation, not on conquest alone, because the ruled must be persuaded as much as the enemy defeated.
- kingship legitimated by justice, not conquest alone
- a warning against reprisals that breed future rebellion
- an early statement that the gods judge the individual after death
- a political testament as a wisdom-instruction subgenre
A political testament composed during Egypt's civil war between the Herakleopolitan and Theban dynasties, in which a king advises his son and heir Merikare to rule with restraint toward the vanquished, generosity toward loyal officials, and caution against desecrating tombs or stirring provincial resentment. It also contains one of the earliest Egyptian statements that a god created humanity for its own sake and will judge each person individually after death. It survives only in later New Kingdom school copies of a much older composition.
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