THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

word itself now enable a larger class of people to find salvation, politically and
spiritually, beyond the primordial blood boundaries of the kingly clan? Certainly
Ankhtifi’s emphasis upon his speech seems to bear this out. A later treatise on
kingship from the 9th-10th Dynasty, The Instruction Addressed to King Merikare,
probably a pseudepigraphic work according to Miriam Lichtheim, for which “a fully
sustained compositional coherence as found in comparable works of the Twelfth
Dynasty has not been achieved” 80
exhibits precisely the interest in the spoken word
we would expect with an underlying ascendant Memphite cosmology in place:
If you are skilled in speech, you will win,
The tongue is a king’s sword;
Speaking is stronger than all fighting,
The skillful is not overcome...
The wise is a school to the nobles.
Those who know what he knows will not attack him,
No crime occurs when he is near;
Justice comes to him distilled,
Shaped in the sayings of the ancestors.
Copy your fathers, your ancestors,
See, their words endure in books,
Open, read them, copy their knowledge,
He who is taught becomes skilled. 81
This passage is from near the beginning of the text. The following is from the very
end of the document:
For god knows every name.
Do not neglect my speech,
Which lays down all the laws of kingship,
Which instructs you, that you may rule the land,
And may you reach me with none to accuse you! 82
Here indeed is a direct depiction of divine power operating through the king through
the medium of language as opposed to an unembellished genealogy. 83
The Memphite
theology is instructive in preserving the power of the king and, indeed, the entire
Ennead from which he is descended, yet it prepares the theological grounds for social
80
Ibid., 98.
81
Ibid., 99.
82
Ibid., 106-7.
83
Compare the above, then, with an Old Kingdom pyramid text which displays the
Heliopolitan emphasis upon the king’s cosmic genealogy: “The King’s mother was pregnant
with him, even he who was in the Lower Sky, the King was fashioned by his father Atum
before the sky existed, before the earth existed [etc.]... for the King is an Imperishable Star,
son of the star-goddess who dwells in the mansion of Selket... He who is in his service has
commended this King to Him who is in his litter that they may serve the King, for the King
is a star,” (PT Utt. 571). Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 226-27.