Charles:

Just back from a week at a state park.  Thank you for your reply to my last.
First, as you probably have guessed, I am not an Egyptologist.  I am merely
a person fascinated by their history to the point of dabbling in their
language.

Don't rely heavily on Budge.  His reputation amongst today's reputable
Egyptologists is not very good.  Alan Gardiner remains the authority.  James
Allen has a book just published in 2000 entitled "Middle Egyptian".  Of
course your opinion of today's Egyptologists may be such that Budge remains
your authority.  As near as I can tell, though,  Budge never translated the
"Instruction for King Merikere".

Gardiner did the definitive transaltion of the "Instruction" in a 1914
article "New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt" in "Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology" Volume 1.  He translates the sentence as "A good disposition is
a man's
heaven".  He also footnotes the word "heaven" as "i.e. the loftiest point he
can reach(?)".   Boris should have been aware of this article.

The western idea of paradise and heaven as being a perfect place in the sky
where perfect souls dwell is not what was intended in the Egyptian.  What
was intended with the instruction was something like "A good disposition is
the highest achievement of a man".

Concerning the word order and the emphasis within the translation.
Boris/Pound translate the sentence in almost the same order as the signs
appear.  This assumes the same order to the parts of the sentence in
Egyptian as in English.  The English sentence typically is subject first and
then predicate.  However, in the Egyptian verbal sentence (Egyptian can have
a non-verbal sentence) the order is predicate and then subject. Reading the
signs from left to rignt, "Pet" (sky or highest that can be reached) and the
signs for "pw"(it is), "nt" (of) and
"'s' logo man" (man)  are in the predicate of the Egyptian sentence; "iwn"
(nature) and "nefer" (good) are in the subject. The sentence then reads
something like "Good nature is of the highest man can reach".  Egyptian does
not have an "A" equivalent but supplying it,  "A good
nature is of the highest a man can reach".  The translation you point to by
Lichtheim follows the norm with "Good nature" being the subject of the
sentence.  No translator of the sentence uses the construction that
Boris/Pound uses.

Boris/Pound have inverted the proper sentence order, changed the emphasis
and wrongly introduced the idea of "Paradise" (A Western Christian concept)
to the translation.  This linkage is explicit in a letter from Pound to
Boris which Boris recounts in his article "Pagan and Magical Elements in
Ezra Pound's Works" which appeared in Eva Hesse "New Approaches to Ezra
Pound".  The letter. as recounted by Boris,  clearly links King "KATI" to
Pound's prior used phrase "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel".  Pound uses
this phrase 7 times beginning with Canto 74 and ending with Canto 92.
Clearly Pound is trying to link a non-man created Paradise with Kati and
later with Kung.  Even Budge on page 74 of his "Egyptian Language" defines
"Pet" as "what is above, heaven" (heaven is not capitalized).  On page 107
he again defines "Pet" as
heaven.  I can find no translation of "Pet" as "paradise".   In fact a "p"
with a little star hanging from it is a logo for night,  with zig zag lines
coming down it is a logo for rain.  Boris/Pound's changes do not even fit
within Pound's generous translation ideology of making/letting an author
speak in a different language.  The Egyptian was not trying to say what
Boris/Pound have him saying.  Boris has not "humanized the egyptians/ and
Budge didn't".  Boris has struck out totally on his own.

I am not pointing this out as a bad translation.  The important question is
why did Boris decide to strike out on his own with this translation?
Gardiner's article on the instruction was written in 1914 and would have
been available to Boris.   Gardiner's grammar was not written until 1957,
however, Samuel Mercer wrote "The Handbook of Egyptian Hieroglyphics" in
1926.  Numerous German Egyptian grammars were available in the 1920's
including one by Adolf Erman.  Adolf Erman's "Ancient Egyptian Poetry and
Prose" was
available in German in 1923 and in English in 1927.  Erman's translation of
the instruction closely follows Gardiner's.  These scholars were the
recognized authorities and should have been well
known to any 20th century student of Egypt.

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM