Abstract
Proverb production was a common phenomenon in ancient Egyptian and Greek cultures. In Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, proverbs (by ‘proverb’ here I conventionally refer to all the freestanding sentences in the texts I examine, the majority of which, as is the case with the Greek proverb in the title of this paper, were short statements or precepts discussing general truths or practical matters of life) were collected in texts that continued the tradition of earlier Instructions (Jasnow 1999; Houser-Wegner 2001). These texts were often attributed to a sage and their wisdom material was presented as an instruction from a father