roads of Babylon with Minea, and Merit’s lovely arms have been about my neck. I have wept with those who suffered and shared out my grain amongst the poor. I want to remember all this, but I don’t want to remember my evil deeds or the sadness of my loss.
I, Sinuhe the Egyptian, have written all this for my own sake; not for the sake of gods, nor for the sake of men, nor to preserve my name forever but only for the sake of my poor, sad self and for the sake of my heart who has got his cup full. I have no hope to save my name in writing, for I know that the guards will destroy all that I have written as soon as I am dead. They will destroy my writing and pull down the walls of my house by the command of Horemheb, and yet I don’t know whether I greatly care, for after everything I have lived through, I don’t greatly desire my name to live until eternity.
Nevertheless, I am carefully preserving these fifteen books I have written, and Muti has plaited a strong cover of palm fibre for each of them, and I close these covered books into a silver casket, and the silver casket I close into a casket of hard wood, and the wooden casket I close into a copper casket — just as the divine books of Thoth were once enclosed in caskets and sunk to the bed of the river. But whether my books will thus escape the guards and whether Muti will manage to hide them in my grave, I do not know, nor am I much concerned.
For I, Sinuhe, am a man, and as a man I have lived in everyone who existed before me, and as a man I will live in everyone who comes after me. I will live in the tears and laughter of man, I will live in his sorrow and fear, in his goodness and wickedness, in justice and injustice, in weakness and strength. As a man I will live eternally in men, and therefore I desire no offerings at my tomb and no immortality for my name. This was written by Sinuhe, the Egyptian, who lived alone all the days of his life.
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