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Egypt · Literature · Hard

What is the name of the didactic text from the late New Kingdom (c. 1100 BCE), a series of laments on the chaos of society, written in the persona of a sage named Ipuwer, often misread as a historical account of the biblical Exodus?

The Admonitions of Ipuwer (Papyrus Leiden I 344) is a literary work of lamentation that depicts social collapse — rich and poor reversed, foreigners in the Delta, the Nile turned to blood — and while it is a poetic genre piece, not a chronicle, its imagery has fuelled persistent (and academically untenable) theories linking it to the biblical plagues.

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