unknown author of what is called the 'Negative Confession'[17] makes the deceased say, '_I have not scorned the {36} God of my town_.' And, indeed, so simply and purely does Ptah-hotep speak of the God that the modern reader can, without the least degradation of his ideals, consider the author as referring to the Deity of monotheism, and if he be of Christendom, read God; if of Islam, read Allah; if of Jewry, Jehovah.[18] No doubt the gulf fixed between teaching and practice was as great then as now. We have the teaching, we know that the teaching was current all over Egypt in various forms, but of the practice we know very little. Human nature being much the same at all times and places, we must beware of measuring the one by the other, the unknown by the known, and must be content to take such counsels as showing the Egyptian-- Not what he was, but what he should have been. It is established that they were a kindly, peace-loving people, genial and courtly; but whether law-abiding is another matter. We know nothing about their laws, but we know {37} that the law-courts were busy, and that legal officials were numerous; and we know, further, that their duplicity and lack of straightforwardness were proverbial among the Greeks and Romans, and persists to this day. I have noted above the resemblance of the Egyptian Instructions to the Jewish didactic books (_Proverbs and Ecclesiastes_ in the _Old Testament_, _Wisdom of Solomon_ and _Ecclesiasticus_ in the _Apocrypha_); this will be obvious to all readers. Compare, e.g., the opening of Ptah-hotep (Sec.B) with the opening of Proverbs. It is not necessary to point out all the parallels in detail.