Complaints of Khakheperraseneb

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The "Complaints of Khakheperraseneb", also called the "Lamentations of Khakheperraseneb", is an ancient Egyptian text. Our earliest extant copy of the work is likely dated between 1800 and 1650 BCE. Its outer bound is 1250 since writing tablets of this sort disappear from the archaeological record by that time but the style of script suggests a date much earlier by a margin of at least several centuries. It pairs with other literature of the second Egyptian Dark Age, and shows a particular affinity with the Ipuwer Papyrus. “My surprise and pleasure were great when many of the rare words known to me from the Admonitions [of Ipuwer] made their appearance one by one, as I advanced with the transcription; it seemed almost as though this new text had been written for the express purpose of illustrating my Leiden papyrus! Nor were the resemblances confined to the vocabular)' alone: the latter parts contain a pessimistic description of the world that vividly recalled the descriptive portions of the Admonitions. At the same time I noted differences both in the form and in the matter which made a comparison with the Admonitions particularly instructive; and I soon became aware of an especially important point about the writing board, namely that its date can be fixed with certainty. From every point of view therefore it seemed advisable to publish this new document as an Appendix to my work on Pap. Leiden 344. ” It begins: Would that I had phrases unknown, sayings unused, new words not yet set down, free of repetitions, devoid of the phrases in that familiar language which the ancestors spoke. And continues: A speaker has not spoken who says what remains unspoken. At length, the author explains the cause of this strange new desire: I contemplate what has happened, the conditions which have come about throughout the land. Transformations are taking place; it is not like last year...The Lords of Silence (i.e. the dead) are disturbed. (When) morning comes each day, the face recoils at what has happened. Regardless of whether K.’s document is reflective of the actual words of this figure, Khakheperrasedeb, whose shadow is so long that it stretches (thinly but distinctly) over records spaced out across two milliena, or if it is otherwise the pseudepigraphic production of a student working during the years in which the Middle Kingdom collapsed (which would be equally unique and without other distinct examples in the inventory of contemporaneous artifacts available to compare it with) then this text may be regarded as the earliest verbally articulated expression of the desire to think differently—to rise above traditional norms and break out beyond the frontiers of accustomed knowledge.

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Khakheperreseneb