Ancient Egyptian Literature by Miriam Lichtheim is one of the most important collections of ancient Egyptian texts available in English. Across three volumes, Lichtheim translated and introduced inscriptions, wisdom teachings, hymns, prayers, narratives, funerary compositions, royal declarations, love poems, and scribal texts written over more than...

The Instruction of Amenemope is one of the most important surviving works of ancient Egyptian wisdom literature. Organized into a prologue and thirty numbered chapters, it teaches readers how to control anger, speak carefully, perform public duties honestly, protect vulnerable people, resist the pursuit of wealth,...

The Instructions of Kagemni is one of the earliest surviving examples of ancient Egyptian wisdom literature. Through practical advice about speech, appetite, humility, and social conduct, the text presents self-control as an essential quality for anyone expected to live responsibly among others. Despite its traditional title,...

The Maxims of Ptahhotep, also known as The Instruction of Ptahhotep, is one of the most important surviving works of ancient Egyptian wisdom literature. Presented as advice from an elderly vizier to his successor, it examines leadership, justice, humility, self-control, speech, listening, wealth, family responsibilities, and...

Did philosophy begin in ancient Greece? The conventional history of Western thought often answers yes, presenting the Presocratics as the first thinkers to replace mythical explanations with rational investigation. In Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia, Marc Van De Mieroop challenges...

Long before Plato and Aristotle, the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and the wider Near East were already asking difficult questions about justice, knowledge, mortality, moral responsibility, divine order, and the limits of human power. They did not usually express those questions in philosophical treatises resembling...