This is the end,
in peace,
as it was found.
Translation of F. Ll. Griffith.
SONGS TO THE HARP
[Frequently in the tombs is figured a scene in which a harper plays before the deceased. His song is ever on the same theme: Enjoy life while it lasts, for all things pass away, and are succeeded by others which also perish in their turn. Such were the encouragements to conviviality which the Egyptians put into the mouths of their minstrels.
One of these songs was apparently engraved in front of the figure of a harper in the tomb or pyramid of King Antef (of the XIth or perhaps XIIIth Dynasty, not less than 2000 B.C.), and a copy of it has been handed down to us on a papyrus of the XVIIIth Dynasty: fragments of the same song are moreover preserved at Leyden on slabs from a tomb of the same period.
Part of another song of the same kind may be read on the walls of the fine tomb of Neferhetep at Thebes (temp. XVIIIth Dynasty). This song was a long one, but the latter part of it is now mutilated and hopelessly destroyed; yet enough of the sequel remains to show that it rose to a somewhat higher level of teaching than the first song, and counseled men to feed the poor and to win a good name to leave behind them after death.
The songs seem to fall naturally into stanzas of ten lines each, though the inscriptions and papyri on which they are preserved to us are not punctuated to indicate these divisions. In the first song the ten lines fall readily into pairs, thus producing five-line stanzas.]