Here is a new translation of a philosophical classic of the ancient world, ‘The Teaching of Ptahhatp’, written in Egypt 4000 years ago. ‘The Teaching of Ptahhatp’, composed two millennia before the birth of Plato, is the oldest surviving statement of philosophy in the ancient world and the earliest witness to the power of the written word. It ought to begin the list of the world’s philosophy classics, yet it has been largely forgotten since it was rediscovered in the nineteenth century. Egyptologist Bill Manley’s translation corrects this oversight, rendering into approachable modern English for the first time Ptahhatp’s profound yet practical account of ‘the meaning of life’, written many centuries before the supposed dawn of Western philosophy.