Ancient Egypt was a complex society and it still fascinates many people to this day. There are always new discoveries being made. Egyptomania resulted from Napolean’s own Egyptian campaign (1798–1801.) With so much interest in Ancient Egypt, how was everything recorded down? How do we know the history, the language and so forth? Well, if weren’t for the scribes, we wouldn’t know much.
A scribe in Ancient Egypt had important duties to the whole of society. What are scribes? “According to their own writings, there was no better nor important job than that of a scribe.” (Ancient Egypt Encyclopedia). Scribes recorded and managed the labor force, building projects, finances, and legal matters. (Also interesting to note, is that poetry was written and that only a certain percentage of the Ancient Egyptian population was literate.) Being a scribe was a high honor in this society and it was usually passed down from father to son, although there are current speculations that there were female scribes as well, though that is extremely rare.
What is the language used by the scribes of Ancient Egypt? There are four different scripts used by the scribes. These scripts are as follows: hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic, and Coptic. Hieroglyphs covered the walls of temples, recording deeds of the pharaohs and gods. “The earliest known use of this particular script dates from around 3200 BCE. The last inscription around 394 ACE.” (Ancient Egypt Encyclopedia). Hieratic script was less elaborate than hieroglyphics. It was used to record business transactions and could be written rapidly. This script appeared around the end of the Early Dynastic Period (2686 BCE). It was replaced by demotic script in 7th century BCE. Out of hieratic came demotic “sekh shat” (writing for documents by Egyptians), demotic by Greeks. In the 26th Dynasty (664–525 BCE) it replaced hieratic script except in cases of sacred or funerary texts. During Egypt’s Christian phase, Coptic was created. Coptic was used to translate the bible and hieroglyphs were no longer used since it was considered Paganism. (Christianity has a bloody history with a no tolerance policy that prevails even to this day.) Anyway, “Coptic was not a single unified language. It was made of six dialects, the most common form being Sahidic, which originated from Upper Egypt.” (Ancient Egypt Encyclopedia).
The tools that scribes used would be a little complicated to most people today. Their tools consisted of an two ink pots; one for the color red and the other for the color black. Reed pens were used along with a palette. The paper they used was papyri. Papyrus was reserved for administrative texts, religious books, and literary works. Scribes carried these tools wherever they went. In Ancient Egypt, scribes could find work just about anywhere, including agriculture, crafts, trade, and so forth.
To better understand the scribes there was a poem written that made fun of all other occupations and put the scribe in the most positive light. Unfortunately, I can’t find the book the poem is in so you will just have to make do with your own imagination.
Sources
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
