"Let not thy heart be proud for valor in the midst of thy troops. Beware
of overbearingness [?]: one knoweth not what shall happen; what a god
will do when he striketh."
[These proverbs were evidently set in a short story, calculated
to point the moral that obedience to wise teaching leads to
preferment. The introductory part has gone with the beginning
of the document; but here at the end of the book there is a
passage showing that they were composed by a wazir, _i. e._,
by the chief administrative official of the kingdom. He read
them to his children; one of whom, it seems, named Kagemni,
afterwards succeeded to the wazirship. The following is the
translation of this concluding text.]
The wazir caused his children to be summoned when he had finished the
conduct of men;[263] they rejoiced greatly at coming; therefore when he
said to them:--"Verily, all things that are in writing on this roll,
obey them as I say [them];[264] do not pass beyond what is commanded,"
they [the children] cast themselves upon their bellies and read them
even as they were written; they were good within them[265] more than
anything that is in the whole land; their uprising and their downsitting
was according thereto.
Then the majesty of King Huni moored his ship;[266] then was set up the
majesty of King Sneferu as the good King in this whole land. Then
Kagemni was appointed governor of the royal city, and wazir.
_This is its arrival._[267]
[Huni was the last king of the IIId Dynasty, Seneferu the
founder of the IVth Dynasty, and Kagemni is a name found in
some of the earliest inscribed tombs; but the language, at
least of this last paragraph, betrays the style of the Middle
Kingdom. The proverbs themselves may be much earlier.