The Memphite Theology

The Shabaka Stone
Ancient Near East

The living Horus, who prospers the Two Lands; the Two Ladies, who prospers the Two Lands; the Golden Horus, who prospers the Two Lands; King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Neferkare; the Son of Re: Shabaka, beloved of Ptah-South-of-his-Wall, who lives like Re forever. This scroll was copied out anew by his majesty in the house of his father Ptah-South-of-his-Wall, for his majesty found it to be a work of the ancestors which was worm-eaten, so that it could not be understood from the beginning to end. His majesty copied it anew so that it became better than it had been before, in order that his name might endure and his monument last in the House of his father Ptah-South-of-his-Wall throughout eternity, as a work done by the son of Re Shabaka for his father Ptah-Tatenen, so that he might live forever.

2 Kings 22:8

Hebrew Bible

7 Do not audit the foremen who disburse the silver, for they are honest.” 8 Hilkiah the high priest informed Shaphan the scribe, “I found the scroll of the law in the Lord’s temple.” Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan and he read it. 9 Shaphan the scribe went to the king and reported, “Your servants melted down the silver in the temple and handed it over to the construction foremen assigned to the Lord’s temple.”

 Notes and References

"... Like Enuma Elish, the Egyptian Memphite Theology was linked to a specific locale—in this case the city of Memphis, just south of the Nile Delta. The only surviving copy of the text was made under the Twenty-fifth Egyptian dynasty, during the reign of the pharaoh Shabaka; it is found on a large slab of granite sometimes called the “Shabaka Stone.” Unfortunately, the slab was later reused as a millstone, which damaged some of the hieroglyphs, accounting for the gaps in the text above. The text opens with Shabaka’s claim that he found it in the temple of Ptah on a worm-eaten scroll (compare 2 Kings 22) and had it copied. The date of the text’s composition is not settled; if it was not composed in the time of the existing copy (the 8th century), then it may have been composed during the Nineteenth Dynasty (13th century) ..."

Hays, Christopher B. Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East (p. 65) Westminster John Knox Press, 2014

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