L’ideale del ‘silenzioso’ nel componimento egiziano ‘L’insegnamento di Amenemope’

The Teaching of Amenemope, an ancient Egyptian wisdom text dated to the end of the II mill. b.C. brings to completion one of the central ideals of Egyptian ethics: the ‘silent man’, embodiment of moderation, self-control and moral superiority, also laden, in Amenemope, with a strong religious connotation. Furthermore, the author stigmatises its opposite, the ‘fiery one’, whose ‘sins of the tongue’ – quarrelling, aggression, mendacity – disrupt civil coexistence, as based on a fair use of the powerful means of discourse. Amenemope dramatises the contrast with innovative stylistic devices, and some of its notions have been later subsumed by the Book of Proverbs. The paper proposes an outline of the cultural codification of silence in Egyptian ethics and an investigation into the renewal of the model of the ‘silent’. Set against the backdrop of historical-religious phenomena as the ‘personal piety’ of the New Kingdom, silence emerges as a multifaceted concept, from a construct of social negotiation to a way of life that ‘balances heart and tongue’, averting conflict on earth, and pursuing the will of god.