The Immortality of Writers
The Immortality of Writers is an
...Those writers known from the old days, the times just after the gods. Those who foretold what would happen (and did), whose names will endure for eternity. They disappeared when they finished their lives, and all their kindred forgotten. They did not build pyramids in bronze with gravestones of iron from heaven. They did not think to leave a patrimony made of children who would give their names distinction, rather they formed a progeny by means of writing and in the books of wisdom they left...[3]
They gave themselves [the scroll as lector]-priest, the writing board as loving son. Instruction are their tombs, the reed pen their child, the stone surface their wife..... Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter. Better is a book than a well built house...[1]
The oratorical style of its writing is evidenced by the metrical structure of the text.[1]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-520-03615-8
- ISBN 1-84472-007-1
- ^ "Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology", John Lawrence Foster, p. 226, University of Texas Press, 2001, ISBN 0292725272