“I bequeath to Arethæus my mother to support; and I pray him to have a tender care of her declining years.
“I bequeath to Charixenes my daughter to marry, and to give her to that end the best portion he can afford.
“Should either happen to die I beg the other to undertake both charges.”
When this will, continues the narrator, was read in the public square (this being the accepted mode of proceeding at that time), all those who were aware of the poor circumstances of the testator, but were incapable of recognizing the ties which linked him to his friends, turned these unusual clauses into a joke; and there was not one who did not go away laughing and observing: “Arethæus and Charixenes will be lucky fellows if they accept their legacies, and he’s no fool to have made himself their heir, though he be dead and they living.”
But these honest legatees no sooner learned what was expected of them by their deceased friend than they hastened to put his wishes into execution.
Charixenes, however, only survived Eudamidas five days; and then Arethæus, acting in exact conformity with the will he had undertaken to execute, assumed the share bequeathed to his co-executor. He supported the mother of Eudamidas; and in due time found a suitable husband for his daughter. Of five talents of which his fortune consisted, he gave her two, and two others to his own daughter, and celebrated the two marriages on the same day.
The Oldest Written Will
William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the famous English Egyptologist, unearthed not many years ago at Kahun a will which was forty-five hundred years old; there seems no reason to question either the authenticity or antiquity of the document. The will therefore antedates all other known written wills by nearly two thousand years. That excellent authority, the Irish Law Times, speaks of the will so entertainingly that its comments are here reproduced:
“The document is so curiously modern in form that it might almost be granted probate to-day. But, in any case, it may be assumed that it marks one of the earliest epochs of legal history, and curiously illustrates the continuity of legal methods. The value, socially, legally and historically, of a will that dates back to patriarchal times is evident.
“It consists of a settlement made by one Sekhenren in the year 44, second month of Pert, day 19,—that is, it is estimated, the 44th of Amenemhat III., or 2550 B.C., in favor of his brother, a priest of Osiris, of all his property and goods; and of another document, which bears date from the time of Amenemhat IV., or 2548 B.C. This latter instrument is, in form, nothing more nor less than a will, by which, in phraseology that might well be used to-day, the testator settles upon his wife, Teta, all the property given him by his brother, for life, but forbids in categorical terms to pull down the houses ‘which my brother built for me,’ although it empowers her to give them to any of her children that she pleases. A ‘lieutenant’ Siou is to act as guardian of the infant children.