they are different from those of last year.  Each year is more wearisome than the last.  The whole country is disturbed and is going to destruction.  Justice (or right) is thrust out, injustice (or sin) is in the council hall, the plans of the gods are upset, and their behests are set aside.  The country is in a miserable state, grief is in every place, and both towns and provinces lament.  Every one is suffering through wrong-doing.  All respect of persons is banished.  The lords of quiet are set in commotion.  When daylight cometh each day [every] face turneth away from the sight of what hath happened [during the night]....  I ponder on the things that have taken place.  Troubles flow in to-day, and to-morrow [tribulations] will not cease.  Though all the country is full of unrest, none will speak about it.  There is no innocent man [left], every one worketh wickedness.  Hearts are bowed in grief.  He who giveth orders is like unto the man to whom orders are given, and their hearts are well pleased.  Men wake daily [and find it so], yet they do not abate it.  The things of yesterday are like those of to-day, and in many respects both days are alike.  Men’s faces are stupid, and there is none capable of understanding, and none is driven to speak by his anger....  My pain is keen and protracted.  The poor man hath not the strength to protect himself against the man who is stronger than he.  To hold the tongue about what one heareth is agony, but to reply to the man who doth not understand causeth suffering.  If one protesteth against what is said, the result is hatred; for the truth is not understood, and every protest is resented.  The only words which any man will now listen to are his own.  Every one believes in his own....  Truth hath forsaken speech altogether.”

Whether the copy of the work from which the above extracts is taken be complete or not cannot be said, but in any case there is no suggestion on the board in the British Museum that the author of the work had any remedy in his mind for the lamentable state of things which he describes.  Another Egyptian writer, called Apuur, who probably flourished a little before the rule of the kings of the twelfth dynasty, depicts the terrible state of misery and corruption into which Egypt had fallen in his time, but his despair is not so deep as that of the man who was tired of his life or that of the priest Khakhepersenb.  On the contrary, he has sufficient hope of his country to believe that the day will come when society shall be reformed, and when wickedness and corruption shall be done away, and when the land shall be ruled by a just ruler.  It is difficult to say, but it seems as if he thought this ruler would be a king who would govern Egypt with righteousness, as did Ra in the remote ages, and that his advent was not far off.  The Papyrus in which the text on which these observations are based is preserved in Leyden, No. 1344.  It has been discussed carefully by several scholars, some of whom