Ancient Egypt and the dawn of literature: Revisiting the oldest book in the world

Which book came first? The Teaching of Ptahhatp was published as ‘the oldest book in the world’ as long ago as 1858, about a decade after the most important papyrus scroll containing the text was acquired by an antiquarian in Egypt. Presumably the work could have become as world-renowned as the paintings of Altamira, the pyramids of Giza, or Stonehenge, but instead it gained a reputation as gobbledygook and essentially disappeared from public sight. Nevertheless, the survival of this book sheds light on a key moment for human history: the appearance of literature. It remains a celebration of how the written word has been transforming lives since history began – an event as momentous as the invention of writing, the printing press, or the internet. Prefacing his own 1906 translation, Battiscombe Gunn (later professor at the University of Oxford) emphasised that The Teaching of Ptahhatp marks ‘the extreme horizon of all that ocean of paper and ink that has become to us as an atmosphere, a fifth element, an essential of life’.

In fact, The Teaching of Ptahhatp is also the oldest philosophy book in the world, written many, many centuries before the dawn of Western philosophy. Neither religious in character nor mythological in form, it is committed to a love of learning and answering that perennial puzzle, the meaning of life, which it explores through 37 concise, practical insights into the human condition and seven conclusions we can reasonably deduce from them. Hence it is the oldest text committed to knowledge founded on the twin pillars of evidence and the awareness of the human mind: ‘No, genuine understanding’, the author writes, ‘is there before your eyes’. Ultimately, Ptahhatp concludes, everything that happens has meaning precisely because everything has come into being through an intention, whether earthly or divine.

Preserved on papyrus

In a practical sense, what do we mean by the phrase ‘the oldest book in the world’? First of all, a bundle of sheets bound along a spine is formally a codex, an approach popularised by the Bible, so we should not expect to find anything that resembles a bound book much earlier than the first Christians. On the other hand, during pharaonic times in Egypt, the ideal, portable format for compiling books was a scroll made from papyrus – flexible, erasable sheets manufactured from an indigenous plant, which could be cut to size and glued together easily. The National Library in Paris has the only complete manuscript of The Teaching of Ptahhatp, copied during the late 18th or early 17th century BC, at the end of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. This scroll has been known as Papyrus Prisse since it was procured by the antiquarian Émile Prisse d’Avennes (1807-1879), reputedly at Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes. It is about 15cm high, like a modern paperback novel, but 23 feet 7 inches long (more than 7m), and has 19 pages in excellent condition. That said, the beginning of the scroll is missing and the first two pages, as we have them, give the end of another, otherwise unknown book, The Teaching of Kagemni, before a complete version of The Teaching of Ptahhatp takes up the remainder.