Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Instruction of Ptahhotep

Attributed to Ptahhotep

An ageing vizier asks permission to train a successor and sets down thirty-seven maxims: do not be proud of your knowledge, take counsel with the ignorant as with the wise, good speech is more hidden than malachite yet found among servant girls at the grindstones.

The Dispute Between a Man and His Soul

Anonymous

A man weary of life argues with his own soul about whether to die. Death is before me today, he says, like the scent of myrrh, like the clearing of the sky, like a man's longing to see his house again after years in captivity. The soul argues back and finally agrees to stay with him.

The Tale of Sinuhe

Anonymous

A court official flees Egypt on hearing of the king's death, settles among the Asiatics of Retjenu, prospers, marries a chief's daughter, kills a champion in single combat — and grows old longing to be buried at home, until the pharaoh writes and calls him back.

The Book of the Dead

The Book of Coming Forth by Day

Anonymous

Spells written on papyrus and buried with the dead to get them safely through. At the centre is the weighing: the heart set against the feather of truth while the deceased denies forty-two sins one by one — I have not stolen, I have not caused pain, I have not held back water in its season.

The Great Hymn to the Aten

Attributed to Akhenaten

Carved in a courtier's tomb at Amarna. When the sun sets the land is in darkness as though dead, lions come out and every snake bites; when it rises the Two Lands are in festival, people wash and dress and lift their arms, the cattle browse, the birds fly up with wings adoring.

The Admonitions of Ipuwer

Anonymous

A sage describes Egypt turned upside down: the river is blood and men drink of it, plague is throughout the land, the poor now own what the rich had, gold hangs on the necks of slave girls, and there is groaning throughout the land mingled with lamentations.

The Merneptah Stele

The Israel Stele

The court of Merneptah

A victory hymn on a granite slab listing what the pharaoh has destroyed in Canaan — Ashkelon carried off, Gezer seized, Yanoam made non-existent — and then, written with the determinative for a people rather than a place, Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.

The Instruction of Amenemope

Amenemope son of Kanakht

Thirty chapters of counsel for an official: do not move the boundary stone, do not lean on the scales or falsify the weights, do not befriend the hot-tempered man, and do not strain to seek excess — for wealth makes itself wings like geese and flies away.

The Histories

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · c. 484 – c. 425 BC

Nine books on how the Greeks and the Persians came to war, digressing constantly and to great profit: the whole of Egypt in book two, then Cyrus taking Babylon by diverting the river, Cambyses in Egypt, Darius organising the satrapies, and Xerxes at Thermopylae and Salamis.

The Elephantine Papyri

The Jewish garrison at Elephantine

The archive of a Jewish military colony on an island in the Nile: marriage contracts, loans, slave sales, a Passover letter, and a petition to the governor of Judah asking permission to rebuild their temple to Yahu after the priests of Khnum tore it down.

On the Jews

Artapanus

A retelling in which Abraham teaches astrology to the pharaoh, Joseph invents land measurement, and Moses — identified with Musaeus and with Hermes — organises Egypt into thirty-two districts, invents ships and weapons and philosophy, and is credited with the animal cults.

Sibylline Oracles, Book Three

Anonymous

The oldest Jewish Sibylline book, written in Egypt in Homeric hexameters: the empires rise and fall, the seventh king of Greek descent will come, and at the end the nations will send gifts to the temple and the earth will bear its fruit without cutting.

Third Maccabees

Anonymous

Nothing to do with the Maccabees. Ptolemy IV is repelled from the temple by an invisible force, and in revenge herds the Jews of Egypt into the hippodrome to be trampled by five hundred drugged elephants. The plan fails three days running, and the elephants finally turn on his own troops.

The Gospel of the Egyptians

Anonymous

A gospel of the Greek-speaking Egyptian church, surviving only in exchanges between the Lord and Salome quoted by Clement. When she asks how long death will hold sway he answers, as long as you women bear children — and when she says she has done well not to bear, he does not contradict her.

The Rules

Pachomius · c. 292–348

Regulations for a walled community of monks living, working, eating, and praying together under a superior, with detailed provision for admission, clothing, meals, and correction.

The Prayer Book of Serapion

Euchologion

Serapion of Thmuis · d. after 362

Thirty prayers for a bishop's own use: the eucharistic prayer, blessings of oil and water, prayers over the sick, over the newly baptised, over the dead, and for the ordination of deacons, presbyters, and bishops.

The Apostolic Church Order

Anonymous

A short Egyptian order in which the apostles are made to speak in turn about bishops, presbyters, readers, and widows, with a debate over whether women may offer the eucharist.

The History of the Monks in Egypt

Historia Monachorum in Aegypto

Anonymous, translated by Rufinus

Seven pilgrims travel up the Nile in the winter of 394 and write down what they saw: a monk who kept a lion out of his garden by argument, another who had not looked at a woman in fifty years, and towns where the ascetics outnumbered the citizens.

The Letters

Isidore of Pelusium · c. 360–c. 435

Around two thousand very short letters of exegesis, moral advice, and blunt rebuke, addressed to bishops, officials, and monks alike.

The Life of Shenoute

Besa

Written by Shenoute's successor: the miracles, the journeys, the confrontations with officials, and an old man who could be heard arguing with God. It is frank about how frightening he was to live under.

The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Athanasius

Anonymous

Athanasius is made to foretell the writer's own century: a nation of the desert ruling Egypt, a census and a poll tax, Christians apostatising to escape it, clergy buying office, and monks abandoning their cells — followed by a persecution and then deliverance.

The Chronicle

John of Nikiu · 7th century

A world chronicle by a Coptic bishop whose closing books describe the Arab conquest of Egypt from the point of view of the conquered population.

History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria

Anonymous

Serial biographies of the Coptic patriarchs, drawn from earlier Coptic sources and continued for centuries, recording church life under successive Muslim rulers.

The Annals

Nazm al-Jawhar

Eutychius of Alexandria · 877–940

A world history from creation to the author's own day by a physician who became patriarch of Alexandria, covering both Christian and Islamic history.