Imhotep · Science

The Pharaoh’s Polymath: The Ideal of the Wise Official

The offices Imhotep held made him the living image of an Egyptian ideal: the wise scribe-official who serves the king and masters knowledge. From that root grew his fame as a sage - and the belief that he authored a famous ‘Instruction.’ But no such text survives; it is lost or legendary, and this lesson says so plainly while teaching the real wisdom tradition he was joined to.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Egypt celebrated the wise scribe-official through its ‘Instruction’ literature, that Imhotep’s offices made him a natural emblem of this ideal, that later tradition remembered him among the great sages (as in the Harper’s Song), and that an ‘Instruction of Imhotep’…

Leads to Ptahhotep.

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