[3] In the poem, Ipuwer – a name typical of the period 1850–1450 BCE – complains that the world has been turned upside-down: a woman who had not a single box now owns furniture, a girl who used to look at her face in the water now has a mirror, while the once-rich man is now in rags.

[2] The Admonitions is considered the world's earliest known treatise on political ethics, suggesting that a good king is one who controls unjust officials, thus carrying out the will of the gods.

[10] Ian Shaw does not consider the Admonitions to be a reliable account of early Egyptian history, because of the long time interval between its original composition and the writing of the Leiden Papyrus.

[6] Ipuwer has often been put forward in popular literature as confirmation of the biblical account of the Exodus, most notably because of its statement that "the river is blood" and its frequent references to servants running away.

The papyrus' statement that the "river is blood" phrase may refer to the red sediment colouring the Nile during disastrous floods, or simply be a poetic image of turmoil.