The Ancient, Enduring Wisdom of Egyptian Aphorisms

A Lineage of Brief Counsel From Ptahhotep to Ibn ʿAṭā’ Allāh

Papyrus EA10474, showing the Instruction of Amenemope, at the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Editor’s note: Yahia Lababidi is a prolific Arab-American writer and poet who has long championed the pithy wisdom of the aphorism. “In this moment where it seems the grand narratives are failing to hold our attention, maybe the humble epigram can do its work,” Lababidi once told an interviewer. “While deceptively slight and slender, then you sit with it, and perhaps it liberates you somehow, or reminds you of what you’ve forgotten.”

Richard Blanco, who served as the fifth inaugural poet of the United States for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, has called Lababidi the “modern-day master” of the aphorism. Lababidi, who has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, is the author of more than a dozen books of aphorisms, essays, poetry, and prose.