Numerous New Kingdom sources preserve parts of a Middle Egyptian composition apparently designed to introduce an apprentice to writing-style, including letter formulae and the spelling of words. Examples in the Petrie Museum include UC 31909 and 31946. The sources are themselves written in a curious and distinctive style, evoking early Middle Kingdom cursive (a late form of 'Old Hieratic'): the first Egyptologists to study ostraca with this composition thought that they dated to the Middle Kingdom, but it gradually became clear that most came from the Deir el-Medina crew involved in digging and decorating the tomb of the king in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. The composition was reassembled from numerous Deir el-Medina ostraca and other New Kingdom sources by Georges Posener, who identified it as a work cited in other ancient Egyptian literary compositions as kmyt 'the compilation'. Although this identification is entirely speculative, the composition is generally known in Egyptology as Kemyt.
Date of composition
The first part of the composition contains formulaic letter phrases, sometimes known as the Memphite Formula. Parts are attested on two Middle Kingdom sources:
The second part of the composition is more miscellaneous, though its vocabulary and language also seem to belong in the Middle Kingdom. The reference to the Residence in Section 17 suggests a date of composition after the foundation of the new Residence at Itjtawy, late in the reign of Amenemhat I of Dynasty 12.
From the appearance of a weeping wife in Section 8, it is difficult to establish connected sense, if any was intended. Wente 1990, 16 interprets the Egyptian word Aw 'extended' as a personal name of a man, Au; in the translation below, it is given as 'extended one', and its meaning left to the reader to decide. Whatever the meaning, there seems to be a dialogic exchange from the position of the woman in Section 8, to the address to the woman in Section 9. This anticipates the exchange of love songs between man and woman in Ramesside cycles of poems.
It is not known at what date the various parts were brought together to the New Kingdom form.
Transliteration and translation
The sections are numbered as in the Posener edition, from 'pause' signs in the original sources. Some may reflect later interpretations of the passages, as they seem at places to interrupt a grammatical sequence.
Section 1
bAk Dd xr nb.f
Your condition is as life a million times
may Mont lord of Thebes act for you
May Ptah south of his wall
with an old age, proceeding to reverence,
being in your beautiful reverence,
before the spirit of Mont lord of Thebes
in peace well and greatly,
Now for the writings on which the
I will do what you praise
May you be more content than the Lady of Bast,
this my heart is gladdened,
to send the extended one
I saw him in his third year
Anointed with the myrrh of Punt
with the scents of the Land of the God,
clothed in a kilt of my making,
(only) a child when he saw the Palace
She says 'go, extend
it is bad that she weeps over you,
and she does weep over you
over your fishes in the night
and your birds in the day
Lady, come north
I tell you
the words of companions and brothers there
when they
My heart is glad in a far place?
- head on lap
like an orphan on the shore of another city
I came from the city of my brother
I passed the great head of the city
I found my father the day of my festival,
my mother had gone to the sycamore
praised of my mother,
one whom brothers and sisters love.
Never did I dispute my father,
mor quarrel with my mother
for love of removing problems.
I am the silent one of the Palace,
removing the overheated by creating opportunity.
Free of excess in my voice, the secretary there,
one who is excellent for his master,
the craftsman of his hour
Persevere (?) in writing,
instruct in writings,
the benefit from before me,
as my father instructed me in writings,
a benefit from upon his hands.
I have found (how to be) praised there,
He is struck after need,
Smsw pw Hna nDt
He is the guard with the milling woman
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