The Instruction of Amenemhet as Propaganda

Abstract

The Instruction of Amenemhet has long been known to students of Egyptology, and varying theories of the socio-historical significance of the piece have been posited during the last century. Amidst the debates of authorship and semantics, scholars have been united in labelling the Instruction as a propagandistic creation of the Twelfth Dynasty, and most have accredited its composition not to its implied author Amenemhet I, but rather to his son and successor Senwosret I.2 Our understanding of the piece as a rhetorical vehicle has been impeded by our reluctance to admit to it the same standards of literary criticism that we generally apply to propagandistic texts.3 We have remained content in assuming that the text is propagandistic in nature and intent, yet we have not ventured to consider how. Indeed, we have not decisively determined if the piece satisfies the criteria for propaganda. If it fails to do so, and I suggest that it does fail, then we must recontextualize the Instruction, and reconsider the motives of the individual who stood to gain the most from the text's composition. The authorial intent and the persuasiveness of th text's ethical and emotional appeal cast a more favorable light on Amenemhet, not on Senwosret. As such, the text should not be construed as a propagandistic tool of Senwosret, but rather his father's rhetorical attempt to attain a higher order of truth.4 The emotional tone of the text suggests that the far more effective hermeneutic to employ is that which defines its rhetorical aspects the very essence of its verbal life force within a dramatistic en-