ANY AUTHOR OF A WISDOM TEXT

    The Instruction of Any is a Wisdom Text written as a late imitation of those that were produced in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. It is preserved on Papyrus Boulaq 4 in the Cairo Museum, which dates to the Twenty-first or Twenty-second Dynasty, and also in the form of school-boy copies in other sources; it was probably composed in the Eighteenth Dynasty.

    This text differs in two main respects from earlier examples: it reflects a livelier literary style, and is couched in terms of the advice which Any, a minor official, gives to his son, in comparison with the royal or aristocratic background of most of the earlier texts. Thus it illustrates the expansion of the middle classes during the New Kingdom and indicates the advice and training they received. Secondly, a new element is introduced in the Epilogue where the son, instead of accepting his father's advice without question, now disputes it; this introduces a debate between father and son, although the validity of the teachings is eventually accepted.