Scribe in ancient Egypt

Almost at the same time as the oldest writings in Mesopotamia and the Near East , it was written around 3000 BC. In Egypt, the hieroglyphic writing emerged from the necessity of being able to meet the requirements for recording administrative and economic processes through written records with the emergence of the central state. This inevitably led to the development of the profession of scribe, which was decisive for the proper continuation of state affairs and thus for the maintenance of the state and its administration. This profession opened up access to important positions in administration and business.

The concept of the writer has recently been heavily criticized. In fact, there are many officials who have a title formed with the word scribe , but the majority of ancient Egyptian officials do not have a title formed with the word scribe . The scribe as an independent class is therefore more of a modern fantasy creature and has little to do with social reality in ancient Egypt .

Egyptian scribe with papyrus scroll

Training of scribes in the Old Kingdom

In accordance with the requirements of administration and business, the training of the scribe primarily includes the knowledge of writing . In addition, they had special knowledge that was necessary for economic life, such as the drafting of documents and contracts. The basic rules of mathematics and the calculation of areas and volumes were also part of it. The Egyptian expression mtr (meter) - to teach someone something - could refer to very different areas of knowledge. In the Old Kingdom , the training of scribes was organized in such a way that one or more students went to a scribe and learned this profession. Often the children of writers took up this profession again.

Writing schools in the Middle and New Kingdom

The decline of the central state and its administration at the beginning of the First Intermediate Period resulted in a decline in the number of scribes over a period of almost 140 years, so that with the beginning of the Middle Kingdom a different, more rational method of training for the reconstruction of the central government urgently needed scribes had to be introduced in order to be able to provide a sufficiently large number of skilled workers for administration and economy as well as foreign trade: The individual training was replaced by group lessons in schools. Archeologically only a few school places are occupied ( Ramesseum near the magazines, Deir el-Medine and the Temple of Mut in Karnak).

From the time of the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th dynasty, the first " school book " Kemit is known, which was also used later in the New Kingdom. Fragments of it have been preserved as writing exercises by students on many ostraka . The content of the textbook is a compilation for the administration of important terms and formulations in order to allow the students to familiarize themselves with the appropriate templates for their later activities, including the usual greetings. The students learned how to write letters, formulate salutations, present facts and how to write careers (biographies).

Obviously there was no such thing as the “teacher” profession. The teaching scribes came from the state administration, from the temple administration and later in the New Kingdom also from the military administration . The students came from different strata of the population and began their training at the age of five to ten years.

The subject matter expanded steadily up to the New Kingdom and, in addition to writing and reading exercises, included the classic life lessons , self-created school texts (student manuscripts), sample letters and the learning of place names based on given lists. In addition, there was - at least in part - the training and further education of the writers to become interpreters. So there was at the time of Amenhotep III. and under Akhenaten also scribes who could write international correspondence in cuneiform . The hieroglyphic script was not suitable for fast writing , so that the hieratic italic script was used parallel to it ( history of writing ). Learning was done by writing down and repeatedly saying or asking. In a world of very limited clinging, memory training was the only way to have all important information quickly available later in professional life.

Late Period and Greek Epoch

With the beginning of the string period (26th to 31st dynasty) in the 7th century BC An even faster cursive script, the demotic , developed and quickly spread throughout Egypt. The scribes were forced to master both scripts.

The ancient Egyptian schools of writing were established in the 4th century BC. Replaced by the Greek schools that spread throughout the Mediterranean and thus by the Hellenistic culture and education. The classical Egyptian school withdrew into the temple areas as a priest school.

literature

Frank Müller-Römer : Mathematics Lessons in Ancient Egypt. In: Kemet. Vol. 20, Issue 4, 2011, ISSN 0943-5972 , pp. 26-30.
André Pichot : The birth of science. From the Babylonians to the early Greeks. Parkland-Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88059-978-5 .

Web links

Commons : Scribe in Ancient Egypt - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

^ Basically on this: Massimiliano Samuele Pinarello: An Archaeological Discussion of Writing Practice. Deconstruction of the Ancient Egyptian Scribe (= Egyptology. 23). GHP, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-906137-45-8 .
^ Rainer Hannig : Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German. The language of the pharaohs (2800–950 BC) (= cultural history of the ancient world . 64). 2nd Edition. von Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 375.
↑ school. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto , Wolfhart Westendorf (eds.): Lexicon of Egyptology. Volume 5: Building a pyramid - stone vessels. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-447-02489-5 , column 742.

[1] Basically on this: Massimiliano Samuele Pinarello: An Archaeological Discussion of Writing Practice. Deconstruction of the Ancient Egyptian Scribe (= Egyptology. 23). GHP, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-906137-45-8 .

[2] Rainer Hannig : Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German. The language of the pharaohs (2800–950 BC) (= cultural history of the ancient world . 64). 2nd Edition. von Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 375.

[3] school. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto , Wolfhart Westendorf (eds.): Lexicon of Egyptology. Volume 5: Building a pyramid - stone vessels. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-447-02489-5 , column 742.