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The Instruction of Ptahhotep
When
Middle Kingdom copies, claiming Old Kingdom origin
Where it survives
Papyrus Prisse, in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, and other copies
What it is
Wisdom literature: a vizier's advice to his son on conduct, speech, listening, greed, and how to behave toward superiors, equals and inferiors. The closest thing Egypt produced to an ethical treatise, and it shows what maat looked like in daily practice rather than in cosmology.
Read it with this in mind
It presents itself as the words of a Fifth Dynasty official and survives only in much later copies. Read it as evidence for Middle Kingdom values, and treat the attribution as a literary frame.
Other sources