The Ancient Egyptian Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures:
The Scribe in Ancient Egypt
by Ilene Springer
How do we know so much about the ancient lives of the Egyptian
people? True, we have statues and also artwork covering the walls
of tombs. This gives us a pretty close idea of what ancient
Egyptian lives were like. But the best picture comes from
the words they wrote. The ancient Egyptians wrote down
everything-from magic spells and curses to medical procedures and
lists of food supplies given to the pyramid builders.
Actually, there weren't many writers or readers.
Archaeologists estimate that maybe only one out of a hundred
ancient Egyptians were  literate. This may seem quite unusual
considering that writing was all around on temples, statues and
other public buildings. But the fact that so few people
could read and write gave the individual who could-the scribe-very
high prestige in ancient Egyptian society. It was, in fact,
one of the most important occupations in ancient Egypt.
Most scribes performed clerical tasks for high priests and
officials. They also drew up marriage contracts among common
people and property agreements between buyer and seller. But
the knowledge of writing was essential for anyone who aspired to
leadership or administrative careers.
Tough training
Scribes had to learn more than 700 hieroglyphic signs-some
representing ideas and objects; others representing sounds.
Because the language was so complex, young scribes-almost always
boys from wealthy or royal families-would attend school for years
to become adept at writing and reading. And the training was
rigorous. Boys as young as six or seven would practice
writing on ostraca-flat stones or broken pieces of clay pottery.
Archaeologists have found many ostraca with texts of amusing
animal tales or stern moral tracts that were dictated by the
scribal teachers. Students also had to learn mathematics so
that a number of high-level professions would be
open to them: tax collector, treasurer, quartermaster or
architect.
 There is evidence that unruly students were handled with the
teacher's stick. Although most scribes were male,
archeologists have found some proof that a number of women were
literate; they were mostly priestesses or daughters of royalty.
It took many years for a scribe to reach the point that he
could be trusted to work on his own. But successful scribes
enjoyed an enviable life free of manual labor. We see them
depicted in statues (commonly, the seated scribe with crossed legs
and linen kilt and writing materials in his lap) which show the
prestige and power achieved by these ancient Egyptian writers.
Tools of the trade
In ancient Egypt, you would recognize a scribe immediately.
He would be the upright man with soft hands-no calluses from
manual labor--carrying a wooden palette with brushes and reed pens
and a roll of papyrus under his arm. The palettes were used
as writing boards which were equipped with a slot to hold pens.
Scribes wrote in two primary colors--black and red-for most
records.
Papyrus (the first paper in the world) was the other essential
for the scribe. Papyrus was made by cutting long slices from the
inner white  pith of the of papyrus reed stalks (which was the
sacred plant of northern Egypt) and laying them out crosswise to
form a mat. This was then pounded with a mallet into a
sticky sheet and left to dry under a weight. In modern Egypt
today, there are papyrus institutes you can visit which use almost
the exact method to produce papyrus, mostly for paintings and
decorative items.
Once the plant's juices had evaporated, the sheet was light and
pliable. You could bend it and roll it and pull it-and it
would remain intact. It also absorbed the ancient Egyptian
pigment very well. To begin using it, the scribe had only to
burnish the papyrus sheet with a piece of wood or ivory.
Then he could begin to write the words that truly revealed the
genius and magic of ancient Egypt.
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Source:
What Life Was Like On the Banks of the Nile
(Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1996)
Ilene Springer just returned from her second trip to Egypt.
She is a student of museum studies at Harvard University in
Boston.
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