The Instruction Given to the One Who Begins Again

My adaptation, The Instruction Given to the One Who Begins Again, uses the wisdom book genre to address a modern community of people returning to school, work, or serious ambition after interruption. I wanted the piece to speak to those who have lost time through illness, depression, failure, or academic disruption, but without turning the work into confession or ordinary self-help. The central argument is that beginning again requires neither self-erasure nor shame, but disciplined reconstruction.

The form is most directly influenced by The Instruction of Any, in its dialogic structure. In the epilogue of the Any text, the son speaks back to the father toward the end, objecting that the teaching is difficult to understand and obey, showing that a wisdom book’s instruction can be resisted and not merely received (“The Instruction of Any” 462). I adapted that convention by making the entire text a dialogue. In each section, the teacher gives instruction, while the “one who begins again” responds with doubts that sound like critique but are really anxiety: “Am I not late to the feast?” or “If I ask for help, will I not appear needy?” and similar retorts allow the wisdom book form to acknowledge the difficulty of receiving wisdom, not just the authority of offering it. Any’s final debate, then, becomes a repeated component of the structure in my own rendition.¹

I also emulated Any’s habit of treating ordinary conduct as spiritually and socially meaningful. Early in Any, the speaker tells the listener to observe the feast of his god and to make sure witnesses record his offering, so that later “when one comes to seek your record,” the action will stand publicly in his favor (“The Instruction of Any” 463). That passage influenced my section on shame, reputation, and the public eye. When my adaptation says, “Guard your ren², your name,” and advises the reader to answer messages, keep appointments, and speak early when deadlines cannot be met, I am translating that ancient concern with public record into modern academic life. The point is not merely efficiency. It is that repeated small actions become evidence of character.

I also borrowed from The Instruction of Ptahhotep and other wisdom books like the Book of Proverbs through the use of imperatives, aphorisms, and loosely connected pieces of advice. Ptahhotep is structured as a series of maxims framed by a prologue and an epilogue, which I also imitate in addition to drawing from its thematic focus on conduct, self-control, discretion, and social relations (“The Instruction of Ptahhotep” 96-97). My own lines such as “Do not call the lost years your master,” “Guard your ren, your name,” and “Read before you speak. Cite before you claim. Revise before you display” imitate the genre’s commanding voice. One specific line from Ptahhotep I imitate before I augment it later with a balanced perspective is “Your silence is better than chatter. / Speak when you know you have a solution” (“The Instruction of Ptahhotep” 105). My section “Concerning Speech and Silence” adapts this principle through lines such as “Let no word run ahead of judgment” and “Speak with measure.” At the same time, I later complicate Ptahhotep’s praise of silence by adding, “Do not worship silence,” because in a modern academic setting silence can preserve dignity, but it can also become avoidance, fear, or disappearance.

The adaptation also preserves the wisdom books’ concern with spirituality and social order, but translates those concerns into a modern academic setting. The invocation of ma’at frames rebuilding as a return to balance, truth, and right measure. The reference to ren, or name, adapts the ancient concern with reputation into modern advice about deadlines, appointments, e-mails, and public conduct. Like Merikare, which treats wisdom as preparation for responsibility and future action, my text imagines discipline as training for a serious scholarly life rather than merely private improvement (“The Instruction Addressed to King Merikare” 135).

Much of my wisdom book keeps with Michael V. Fox’s canons, but I depart from it substantially in the one way I found most in line with Barbara S. Lesko’s observations about the limitations in his reading of Ancient Egyptian rhetoric. That is to say, I treat silence as both useful and dangerous. The text of my wisdom book praises “silence, timing, restraint, fluency, and truthfulness” (Fox 18), which I take verbatim from Fox, but to which I then add, “Do not worship silence.” This reflects Lesko’s critique that rhetoric cannot be reduced to elite self-control, and by extension to the values of the elites (Lesko 90-91). For somebody beginning again, rhetoric sometimes means preserving dignity but at other times it means asking for help, naming one’s needs, and refusing to disappear.³