Ptahhotep Maxim 29: Riches

Ptahhotep, a priest, is presuming to instruct the youth of elite how to behave. He's telling people at a higher station in Egyptian life how they're expected to act.

And instead of being all, "Hey, just slap that presumptuous bitch" they go, "Wow, these poems are actually solid. In fact they're so good let's keep them as classics. They can be useful in teaching our kids. This man knows us."

Ptahhotep's advice about riches:

If you become big after your smallness,
acquiring property after lack in the past,
in a town you know, through experience of what happened to you before,
don't rely on your riches:
they happened to you from the god's giving.
You are no better than another like you
to whom the same has happened.

How ungenerous. How so not-woke. Ptahhotep the priest should know nouveau riche are no better than any one else. And if God means cunning, hard work, ambition and luck, then yeah, success is a gift from God.

This maxim is straightforward. There is no unfathomable archaic phrasing.