The autobiography of Weni

This is a typeset version of K. Sethe's original publication of the autobiography of Weni (Urkunden des alten Reichs, Leipzig, 1903). A marvellous text of an important official of the Old Kingdom (6th Dynasty c. 2345-2181 BCE). Weni served three pharaoh's in his long career, fought many battles, led armies, dragged monumental stonework, sat in judgement over treason charges against the queen. These are only the highlights of a very busy life!
For an english translation, see M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature v.1, p18-23 (Berkeley, 1973). Most university libraries should have it.

The reason I have typeset the published text is that students often have difficulty recognising the handwritten hieroglyphs of Sethe. His publication is also the most commonly quoted by modern authors, but is not easily accessible. Just to remind you how to look up a reference: Urk. I 100,7-9 would mean volume 1, page 100, lines 7 to 9 (see the line number guides at the right margin of every page; ie. 5, 10, 15). The line numbers are page lines only, nothing to do with the inscription. Sethe has divided the text into sections with headings (eg. '1. Introduction'), and put in gaps to emphasise certain phrases and show sentences. Of course the actual inscription has none of these: it has continuous hieroglyphs in vertical columns, mostly facing rightwards.

There are two different versions available: the typeset edition of Sethe's original publication, and a student version.

I have high quality postscript files of the pages but I couldn't find a format that I could distribute widely (ie. across IBM and Apple platforms) that retained their quality. I have settled for the Compuserve GIF format as it is widely recognised, easy to distribute and use. Most graphics programs will accept it and there are viewers (eg. JPEGview) that will view and print them (laserprinters are best). JPEGview is a widely available 'postcardware' program (Mac's).

The THREE sizes provided for each page are for different purposes. ONLY the LARGEST size will give a good quality page when printed. The smaller sizes are meant for ease of viewing on a computer screen. An example:

Sethe, Urkunden, I-101

view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels

view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels

If you open the files in JPEGview they will always be fitted to your screen, fitted to a page, and will print on a page (just make sure your page setup is OK for the paper you have, A4 or US). If your laserprinter only prints the top part of a page then you probably need to allocate more RAM to JPEGview or whatever program you use (go to 'Get Info' and increase the RAM allocation to 3100kb). To expand any section of a JPEGview page, just select a region by dragging the cursor across the image, then select 'crop & paste' from the menu. The selected region will be magnified.

If you open the files in a graphics program each page will look huge ! Don't panic. I had to do this to preserve printing quality. When you want to print, just set the print reduction to around 35%, so it prints on an A4 page (part of the 'Page Setup' dialog, found under the 'File' menu).#003# If you have a 'print preview' option then you can see if it is going to fit on a page properly. They should give a good quality prints, not quite up to postscript resolution, but acceptable for most uses.

Sethe, Urkunden, I-98		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-99		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-100		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-101		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-102		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-103		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-104		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-105		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-106		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-107		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-108		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-109		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels
Sethe, Urkunden, I-110		view medium 14 KB 512 x 764 pixels	view largest 57 KB 1758 x 2184 pixels

The following is a special format for teachers/students to use that has continuous lines of hieroglyphs and lines underneath for transliteration and translation:

The corresponding files can be found here:

While academic use in teaching is free (in fact, I encourage it), no commercial use of these texts is allowed unless prior agreement has been reached with me. You may wish to obtain the original postscript files (Canvas 3.5) for printing at high resolution.

Mike Dyall-Smith PO Box 4226, Melbourne University, 3052 Australia. Fax: [+613] 347 1540 email: mlds@unimelb.edu.au

Please feel free to send me any queries, comments, possible errors.

How I did it: All done on a PowerMac. The hieroglyphs were typed using MacScribe, a fantastic 'hieroglyph-processor' sold by the Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research (CCER), Netherlands. The Egyptian transliteration font from the CCER was also used. Page layout was done with Canvas 3.5 and can be printed at high resolution to postscript laser printers.

I hope to produce soon the Weni text as a HyperCard 'reader'; something a student can use at several levels. Perhaps to just read along with the transliteration and translation or be able to look up vocabulary items, and search for text.

Melbourne, February 1996

Copyright ©1996 Mike Dyall-Smith, Melbourne University, Australia

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