Similar is the obeservation in the Ancient Egyptian manuscript ‘Instructions of Merikare’ (~2025 BC): ‘Make offerings to your god, do not multiply your bread, and do not be miserly with your beer… A single day’s offerings can secure eternity.’

And much later Borges writes in ‘The Writing of the God’: ‘I remembered that one of the names of God is ‘The Fearless’ and that I had read that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’

In Mika Waltari’s interpretation of Egyptian culture – ‘The Egyptian’ – the physician Sinuhe reflects: ‘For when man humbles himself before the gods and makes his offerings with a pure heart, his life is measured differently than the lives of other men.’

* Sumerian text sourced from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature-over 400 literary works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennia BC.