Karl Jaspers quoting from an acnient Egyption papyrus, in his: Man in the Modern Age, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), Introduction, p. 24:
‘Robbers abound. . . . No one ploughs the land. People are saying: “We do not know what will happen from day to day.” . . . Dirt prevails everywhere, and no longer does any one wear clean raiment. . . . The country is spinning round and round like a potter’s wheel. . . . Slave-women are wearing necklaces of gold and lapis lazuli. . . . No more do we hear any one laugh. . . Great men and small agree in saying: “Would that I had never been born.” . . . Well-to-do persons are set to turn millstones. . . . Ladies have to demean themselves to the tasks of serving-women. . . . People are so famished that they snatch what falls from the mouths of swine. . . . The offices where records are kept have been broken into and plundered . . . and the documents of the scribes have been destroyed. . . . Moreover, certain foolish persons have bereft the country of the monarchy; . . . the officials have been driven hither and thither; . . . no public office stands open where it should, and the masses are like timid sheep without a shepherd. . . . Artists have ceased to ply their art. . . . The few slay the many. . . . One who yesterday was indigent is now wealthy, and the sometime rich overwhelm him with adulation. . . . Impudence is rife. . . . Oh that man could cease to be, that women should no longer conceive and give birth. Then, at length, the world would find peace.’
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