Africa is not only the cradle of humanity, but it is also the birthplace for serious and sustained philosophical reflections on life. The Instructions of Ptahhotep, one of the most important wisdom texts in world history, is one of the earliest testaments of these reflections. Most Egyptologists who translate the Instructions of Ptahhotep utilize the most complete version of this text commonly labeled Papyrus Prisse (PP). The original hieratic text was published by Gustave Jequier in 1911. In the twentieth century, there were two major hieroglyphic transcriptions of the Instructions of Ptahhotep, one done by Eugene Devaud in 1916 and the other by Zybnek Zaba in 1956.

Today, most Egyptologists rely primarily upon the accuracy of the hieroglyphic transcription presented by Zybnek Zaba. Because of the importance of this text, the author systematically looks at the original hieratic version of the text published by Gustave Jequier and follows Zybnek Zaba's hieroglyphic transcription line by line. Dr. Beatty found a number of scribal errors in Zaba's hieroglyphic transcription which, in a few cases, could even significantly impact the translation of the text. This brief paper focuses on amending some of these scribal errors in Zaba's hieroglyphic transcription of the version of the Instructions of Ptahhotep labeled Papyrus Prisse (PP). He concludes by providing a number of suggestions toward publishing a new edition and hieroglyphic transcription of this seminal text.

The translation and interpretation of Maxim 21 in the Instructions of Ptahhotep has historically been a very difficult passage for Egyptologists. This difficulty manifests in both problems of grammatical analysis and cultural interpretation. Dr. Beatty begins by providing a transcription and transliteration of Maxim 21 from the egyptian text. Following this, he submits his own original translation of the passage compared to the translations of other Egyptologists and then proceed to grammatical and cultural commentary. Through a close grammatical analysis of this maxim, this article shows that the image of women in this maxim is overwhelmingly positive without any traces of a negative view. The article concludes by suggesting that Ancient Egyptian women should be analyzed inside their own cultural paradigm of Maat which is fundamentally and deeply African in both essence and scope.