While the scribes themselves may not have made these inscriptions, they were done by skilled artisans working under the direction of the scribes. In addition to administrative duties, temple scribes were also responsible for the hieroglyphic texts on the walls of temples and tombs. This person was designated as first god’s servant, and the people who filled this position were chosen from the scribes. Within the temple bureaucracy, each temple needed a full-time person to manage its operations, which included temple-owned farms, fields, cattle, and orchards. “ They played an important role in the daily life of the temples, and their work involved the composition and copying of literary texts, as well as record-keeping on a grand scale, particularly in the larger complexes.” With regard to the work of the temple scribes, Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin, in their book Ancient Egypt, report: “Scribes were needed for the bureaucratic functions of all branches of the government and administration, including issuing the rations for governmental personnel and workers who depended on state resources for their livelihood.” “The scribe, undoubtedly a person of importance in Egyptian society, held a position that carried with it valuable privileges, including exemption from military service, from the corvée by which labour was recruited for great national building projects and other similar activities he was also spared the payment of taxes.”Īccording to the scribe Khety (Middle Kingdom), in addition to always having work, scribes did not wear the rough clothes of laborers, they bathed regularly, and they were empowered to give orders to others. With regard to the importance of scribes in ancient Egypt, T.G.H. Scribes had power and influence and presumably wanted to maintain their power. In the early written languages, such as Egyptian, writing was not meant to be read silently (this is a fairly recent innovation) but writing was meant to be spoken and the scribe thus became the voice of those who wrote to officials. Within the Egyptian bureaucracy, scribes were important, not just for writing but also for reading-meaning reading out loud-correspondence from others. “Although some members of the royal family and high status individuals, as well as officials, priests, and army officers were literate, scribes were needed for operations of the state at all levels.” In her book An Introduction to the Archaeology of Egypt, Kathryn Bard writes: In Egypt, from the very beginning of the written tradition, literacy was synonymous with power, since the ability to read and write opened up a career in the bureaucracy that ran the country.” “The most accurate estimates put the proportion of the population who could read and write at no more than 10 per cent, at any period of pharaonic history for many centuries, it was probably far smaller. Besides being crucial for the business of the country, written work provided the literate minority with both instruction and pleasure.”Īnother view of literacy in ancient Egypt is provided by Toby Wilkinson in his book Writings from Ancient Egypt: “Although probably less than 5 percent of Egypt ’s population was literate, Egypt, like any other great civilization, employed a large bureaucracy to collect taxes, record business transactions and preserve the country’s history-all tasks that required writing. In their book Ancient Egypt : Everyday Life in the Land of the Nile, Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs write: Literacy, although greatly prized by certain classes of Egyptian society, was not common, and probably not thought to be particularly useful for peasants, labourers, even possibly small tradesmen.” “It may be supposed that a very large part of the population of Egypt in antiquity was in a state of respectful ignorance as far as the hieroglyphic script was concerned. In his book The British Museum Concise Introduction to Ancient Egypt, T.G.H. We don’t know how many people in ancient Egypt could actually read and write one of the ancient scripts (hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic), but most scholars today report that reading and writing were skills obtained only by an elite. The flow of information required the work of scribes to both read the many communiques and to write them. “As in early Mesopotamia, writing seems to have been used as a means of political control, and scribes were present at all levels of government.”įor the early Egyptian state to function, given both the governmental bureaucracy and the many distant cities, towns, and villages that it encompassed, writing was necessary. In her chapter on Egypt in The Grammar of the Ancient World, Lucia Gahlin writes: Furthermore, this writing system helped to unify the Egyptian state-a state that was more than a city state, a state stretching along the Nile River. Egypt was one of the first places where a full writing system was developed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |