It is instructive to compare this ancient code, both in its contents and in its omissions, with the moral codes of other peoples and other ages. The similarity of the morality of the Negative Confession to that of the Hebrew Decalogue forces itself at once upon the attention.[86] The Egyptian code, however, lays less emphasis than the Hebrew upon religious duties. In the forty-two duties named only seven are duties toward the gods, while of the Ten Commandments five concern religious duties. As we have already observed, the duties of the Egyptian code are those due from man to man; that is, they are social as opposed to religious duties.
In striking contrast to the Confucian code of the Chinese, the Egyptian code gives very little place to the duties of children to their parents. These duties are noticed, it is true, by the Egyptian moralists, but no emphasis is laid upon them. They are mentioned only once in the Negative Confession before Osiris. As the stress laid by Chinese moralists upon filial piety came about largely through the supposed need of the spirits of the dead for regular offerings at the grave, so it may be that the neglect of this virtue by the Egyptian teachers is to be explained, as Flinders Petrie suggests, by the circumstance that “the provision of offerings in semblance by the Egyptians in the tomb left little place for the urgency of filial duties in maintaining continual supplies for the deceased.”[87]
Another defect of Egyptian morality is its lack of depth and seriousness. There is no hungering and thirsting after righteousness, no passionate yearning for holiness. There is no call to lofty self-sacrifice. It is a calm, prudent, worldly-wise, practical morality. Its spirit and temper are well set forth by Petrie when, in speaking of its virtues and vices, he says that “these belong far more to the tone of Chesterfield and Gibbon than to that of Kingsley and Carlyle.”[88]
But in spite of the limitations and defects of the code, it was one of the purest and loftiest framed by the moral consciousness of the races of antiquity. The Negative Confession shows that Egypt had early learned the lesson that blessedness in the hereafter is conditioned on the practice of justice, truth, and righteousness in the present life on earth.[89]
The moral precepts of Ptah-hotep; an ethical conception of kinship
After the Negative Confession the most valuable memorial of the character of the Egyptian conscience is found in the precepts of the moralist Ptah-hotep,[90] who lived probably in the time of the Twelfth Dynasty. This moralist laid particular emphasis upon the duties of rulers and of the rich and great. His maxims are intended as a sort of “Manual of the Perfect Official.” “If, having been of no account, thou hast become great, and if, having been poor, thou hast become rich, and if thou hast become governor of the city, be not hard-hearted on account of thy advancement, because thou hast become merely the guardian of the things which God has provided.”[91] In like words emphasis is laid upon the duties of gentleness and considerateness on the part of the administrator and the judge. In truth the doctrine of trusteeship of wealth and of office has never been more zealously taught than in these precepts of the early Egyptian moralist.[92]
The teachings of Ptah-hotep respecting the duties of rulers would seem to have made effective appeal to the heart and conscience of even the holders of the royal office. In any event we find these lofty conceptions of the duties of kingship incarnated in the lives and deeds of several of the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. The view held by these monarchs respecting the nature of the royal office was almost exactly like that entertained by the so-called benevolent despots of the eighteenth century of our era. The inscriptions on the royal tomb boast not alone of exploits and triumphs in war, but the prince vaunts himself for having put no ward in mourning, for having made no distinction between the great and the humble, for having been the protector of the widow and the asylum of the orphan, and for having laid no unjust taxes.[93]
Slavery approved by the Egyptian conscience
The Egyptian conscience, like the conscience of the ancient world in general, did not condemn the institution of slavery. The relation of master and slave was looked upon by the Egyptians as perfectly natural and legitimate.
The slave class, which included both whites and blacks, was recruited not only from the prisoners of war brought back by the Pharaohs from their numerous foreign conquests, but also from captives secured on regular man-hunting expeditions into the negro regions of the Upper Nile.