Word: ptahhotep
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Sometimes it seems that some ideal system of manners must be imprinted in the collective unconscious of the race; at any rate, men and women have been trying long enough to discover it. One of the earliest known books, the Instructions of Ptahhotep, was an Egyptian behavior manual written around 2350 B.C. (Among Ptahhotep's precepts: Never offend a self-made man, and "Be silent, for it is better than teftef flowers.") Ever since then, social thinkers have believed that in manners, even in the most frivolous gestures of a culture, they could detect its hidden tectonics and tendencies...
...From Ptahhotep to Castiglione to Erasmus to Emily Post, the manners manual has been a permanent fixture of practical...
...paintings are masterpieces which bear out a dictum of the sage Ptahhotep (see hieroglyphics below): "No limit may be set to art ..." The majority, however, for all their historical interest, are either stereotyped or clumsy, and illustrate the second half of Ptahhotep's saying: ". . . Neither is there any craftsman that is fully master of his craft...
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