Overview
A long hieratic papyrus in Leiden, bought in 1828 from the collection of Giovanni Anastasi, who said it came from Memphis. The front (recto) holds a literary poem in seventeen pages, with the beginning lost and pages 8-17 badly damaged. The back holds sun hymns in a different, later hand. Alan H. Gardiner published the text and translation in 1909. He measured the roll at 378 cm long and 18 cm high.
The speaker is a sage named Ipuwer. He laments a land in collapse: civil strife, plundered tombs and offices, servants taking their masters' place, foreigners ('Asiatics') in the Delta, trade with Byblos and Keftiu cut off, famine, death, and a river that 'is blood'. The latter part addresses a 'Lord of All', and the final pages are fragmentary. Most of the poem is built from refrains repeated line after line ('Forsooth...', 'Behold...', 'Destroyed is...').
Modern readers who connect it with the Exodus point to the blood-river line and the general picture of catastrophe. Egyptologists connect it with a period of internal breakdown in Egypt, or read it as a literary lament. The manuscript itself names no king, no Hebrews and no Moses, has no plague sequence, and carries no internal date.
In its own words
Forsooth, (men's) hearts are violent. Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere. … Forsooth, the river is blood, and (yet) men drink of it. Men shrink from (?) (tasting) human beings, and thirst after water.A. H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Pap. Leiden 344 recto) (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909), translation of Admonitions 2,5-6 and 2,10 (page.line of the papyrus). Gardiner notes that the word he renders 'plague' in 2,5 is the word the first Sallier papyrus uses of the Hyksos.
What the evidence shows
- Object: Papyrus Leiden I 344, 378 cm × 18 cm, inscribed on both sides. The recto has 17 pages of about 14 lines each (Gardiner 1909, Introduction §1).
- The recto's hand is dated no earlier than the start of the 19th Dynasty. Unfilled spaces and omissions suggest the scribe was copying from a damaged older manuscript (Gardiner 1909, Introduction §1).
- Acquired at the 1828 Anastasi sale. Anastasi reported Memphis as the source, and there is no excavated context.
- The text says 'the river is blood, and (yet) men drink of it' (2,10) and 'Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere' (2,5-6).
- Asiatics are in the Delta: 'A foreign tribe from abroad has come to Egypt' (3,1) and 'The Asiatics are skilled in the arts of the Marshlands' (4,5-8) (Gardiner's summary translation).
- Social reversal: gold, lapis lazuli, silver and malachite 'are fastened on the necks of female slaves' (3,2-3), and 'He who had no grain is (now) the possessor of granaries' (9,4-5).
- Cattle: 'Cattle moan because of the state of the land' (5,5), and 'cattle are left to stray, and there is none to gather them together' (9,2-3).
- The text names no pharaoh, no Israelites and no event that can be dated. The beginning of the poem is lost.
Open questions
- When was it composed? A. H. Gardiner (1909, Appendix) weighed two backgrounds: the First Intermediate Period (6th-11th Dynasties) and the Hyksos period (K. Sethe). He came down for the 12th Dynasty, citing the language and administrative details such as the six 'Great Houses' (6,12), 'but … we have no means of attaining anything more than a strong presumptive probability.' J. Van Seters (JEA 50, 1964) dated it to the late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period from its vocabulary, its administrative titles and its references to Asiatics. R. Enmarch (2009) treats it as a Middle Kingdom literary composition (c. 1980-1630 BCE) and reads it as literature rather than reportage.
- Is it an Egyptian account of the Exodus plagues? I. Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos, 1952) read it as an Egyptian witness to the plagues and moved the Exodus to the end of the Middle Kingdom, starting from parallels such as the blood-river line. (His chapter has not been opened for this entry; this summary of his claim comes from secondary accounts.) Against that reading, from the text itself: it has no sequence of plagues, no Hebrews, and no slave people leaving. The foreign Asiatics it names are entering Egypt, not leaving it. Gardiner tied the 'plague' word in 2,5 to the Hyksos by way of the Sallier papyrus. Any correspondence with Exodus is a reading brought to the text from outside.
- History or literature? A reading of the text as a record of real conditions (Gardiner 1909, who thought it described a real collapse) competes with a reading of it as a literary lament using stock 'world turned upside-down' themes (Enmarch 2009). The papyrus contains no dated event that could decide between them.
Sources
- A. H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Pap. Leiden 344 recto) (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1909) link editio princeps
- J. Van Seters, 'A Date for the "Admonitions" in the Second Intermediate Period', Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50 (1964): 13-23. doi:10.1177/030751336405000104 (JSTOR 3855738) link study
- R. Enmarch, A World Upturned: Commentary on and Analysis of The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2009). doi:10.5871/bacad/9780197264331.001.0001 link study
- I. Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos, vol. I (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952) link study
- Library of Congress Name Authority: 'Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden. Manuscript. Papyrus I. 344, recto' (no2006038388) link museum record
Corrected from the earlier edition of this page
- The old entry dated the papyrus to 'the Middle Kingdom period' and called it a 'copy of a text originally composed during the 13th Dynasty' surviving in 'a later copy from the 12th century BCE'. The surviving manuscript is a New Kingdom copy whose hand Gardiner (1909) dates to no earlier than the start of the 19th Dynasty. The date of composition is disputed (12th Dynasty per Gardiner; Second Intermediate Period per Van Seters 1964) and is not fixed at the 13th Dynasty.
- The old entry gave the length as 'approximately 3 meters'. Gardiner measured it at 378 cm long and 18 cm high.
- The old entry gave the discovery as 'Early 19th century, Egypt'. The papyrus was bought at the Anastasi sale in 1828. Anastasi gave Memphis (Saqqara) as its source, and it has no excavated findspot.
- The old entry said the text describes 'the suffering of the poor, the plundering of the wealthy'. It mostly describes the reverse: the poor become rich and servants take their masters' places (Gardiner's section on the social order reversed).
- The old entry said the papyrus reveals conditions 'that may have contributed to... the Israelites' enslavement and subsequent liberation'. The text never mentions Israelites, slaves leaving Egypt or any plague sequence. The foreigners it names are Asiatics entering the Delta.
- The old entry said 'many scholars draw parallels'. The specific parallel reading is Velikovsky's (1952). The shared material is one image, a blood-river, plus general disaster themes.
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