Ancient Egypt

Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Writing

The Life of a Scribe in Ancient Egypt

A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian scribe — training in the House of Life, daily tasks, the perquisites of office, and the afterlife rewards of a literate career.

The Life of a Scribe in Ancient Egypt

A scribe in ancient Egypt lived a life that was at once privileged and demanding. He was trained from childhood in a tough system of education, apprenticed to a senior official or temple priest, and then, if he passed the tests, absorbed into a small but powerful class that ran the state. For those who made it to the top, the rewards were substantial: a share of the royal granaries, exemption from certain taxes, and, in the afterlife, a place among the blessed. For those who failed, life was harder, but the skills of literacy still gave them options that the illiterate peasantry did not have. The wider administrative context is laid out in Scribes and Administration.

A Position on Literacy Rates

Before the biographical material, I want to take a position on a number that appears in every introductory book: the “1 percent literate” figure. I do not think the 1 percent number is right, and I think it is doing more harm than good in popular writing. The number is a simplification of John Baines’s 1983 article “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society” in Man, and Baines himself was the first to say it was an estimate with wide error bars. The figure of 1 percent, repeated as gospel in textbooks, comes from the upper end of Baines’s range of plausible values for the New Kingdom, and it flattens what was almost certainly a multi-tier reality: a tiny core of fully literate professionals (the scribes proper), a much larger group of functionally literate people (estate managers, foremen, temple personnel, certain classes of women), and an enormous illiterate majority. The Deir el-Medina ostraca, the Wilbour Papyrus, and the Wadi al-Jarf papyri all suggest more readers and writers in practice than the 1 percent figure implies. The most honest statement, in my view, is “low single digits, but never as low as 1 percent of the population in any period for which we have evidence.” For the original argument, see Baines’s Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (2007).

Boyhood: Entering the House of Life

The training of a scribe began in childhood, often at the age of five or six. Boys (and, very rarely, girls) of suitable background were sent to a school attached to one of the great temples, sometimes called a House of Life (per-ankh). The first years were spent learning the hieroglyphic and hieratic signs, the basic alphabet of the system: and the proper form of the hundreds of individual signs that made up the Egyptian writing system. Students copied the same model texts over and over, often from a teacher’s exemplar, and were required to produce pages of writing that were perfectly proportioned and flawlessly executed.

The most famous of the scribal training texts is the Satire of the Trades, a Middle Kingdom dialogue in which a teacher lectures an idle pupil on the miseries of every other profession: the soldier, the barber, the farmer, the fisherman, the priest, the embalmer, and concludes that the scribe’s lot is by far the most enviable. The text is part propaganda, part self-justification, and part genuine wisdom; it was copied and reused for centuries. The best English edition is that of Miriam Lichtheim in Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1 (1973), though for the school texts in general the older Battiscombe Gunn volume is still useful.

Tools of the Trade

The basic equipment of a scribe was a wooden palette with two circular depressions for ink, a slot for reed brushes, a water pot, and a roll of papyrus. Palettes were often passed from father to son, and the highest-quality palettes were made of precious woods, inlaid with ivory, and inscribed with the name and titles of the owner. The brushes were made of reed, with a slightly squared tip that could be cut to varying widths for different kinds of strokes. The ink was made of carbon (for black) and red ochre (for red), mixed with water and a binding agent such as gum arabic.

A scribe’s work was portable. He could carry his palette, brushes, and papyrus on his travels, and most senior officials kept a small leather or cloth satchel for their materials. A scribe on campaign, for example, would take his tools with him and record the proceedings in a portable papyrus roll.

A Day in the Life

The daily work of a scribe varied with his rank and his office. A junior scribe in a district treasury might spend his days:

  • Dawn: Awaiting the arrival of his superior; checking the previous day’s accounts.
  • Mid-morning: Recording the arrival of grain carts at the granary; checking the weights and measures of the deliveries; signing receipts.
  • Midday: Drafting letters to other district offices; copying out standard formulas for taxes and tithes.
  • Afternoon: Attending a court session to record the proceedings; signing documents with his name and title.
  • Evening: Returning home, eating with his family, and preparing for the next day’s work.

A senior scribe, a royal seal-bearer, a chancellor, a priestly official: had a different schedule. He might:

  • Attend the king’s morning audience.
  • Confer with colleagues and petitioners.
  • Inspect a granary, a temple, or a royal estate.
  • Draft and sign major documents: royal decrees, land grants, and temple endowments.
  • Represent the king at a religious festival, carrying the divine barque in procession.

In addition, all scribes were expected to participate in religious life. Senior scribes were often priests in their own right, and they served the god Thoth in various capacities. Junior scribes attended the major festivals of the Temple of Karnak and the Temple of Luxor and contributed to the temple cults as part of their duties.

The Privileges of Office

The perquisites of the scribal class were substantial. A senior scribe held an estate (land, granaries, servants) and was entitled to a share of the royal revenues. A junior scribe was paid in grain, cloth, and other goods, with rates that were standardized in the surviving Wilbour Papyrus, a land register of the late reign of Ramesses V. According to the Wilbour Papyrus, a scribe in the late New Kingdom was entitled to rations that were several times those of an ordinary laborer.

The scribe was also exempt from the corvée, the unpaid labor service that the state demanded of all free men for major public works. The exemption did not extend to the highest officials (who served the state in other capacities), but it gave the scribal class a significant degree of freedom to pursue their professional duties. A skilled scribe could also work his way up to a more lucrative position, and the careers of successful scribes sometimes stretched over several decades.

The Perils of Office

The life of a scribe was not without its dangers. The penalties for falsifying accounts, embezzling state property, or losing important documents could be severe, in extreme cases, death. A scribe who lost a major papyrus could be required to repay its value; one who accepted a bribe could be stripped of his office and his estate. Scribes also worked in close proximity to the king, and a misstep at court could lead to disgrace, exile, or worse. The careers of several New Kingdom chancellors, including the famous Bay, ended in disgrace or execution.

The Scribal Afterlife

The Egyptians believed that the deceased’s tomb and the inscriptions upon it would be essential for survival in the next world. The scribe, with his mastery of the script, was uniquely qualified to provide for his own afterlife. Scribes frequently had spells from the Book of the Dead inscribed on the walls of their tombs, and they often dedicated a statue of themselves in scribal pose, seated with palette and papyrus, that would serve as an eternal home for the ka, the spirit, of the deceased.

The Scribe Statue, a characteristic type of Egyptian funerary sculpture, depicts the deceased squatting with a papyrus roll across his lap, his brush in his hand, his gaze fixed in concentration. Many of these statues survive in the museums of Cairo, Paris, London, and New York. They are among the most vivid portraits of the scribal class that have come down to us.

The Scribe as the Voice of the King

The highest ideal of the scribal class was to serve the king as the king’s voice. The pharaoh was the sole legitimate source of authority in Egypt, and his decrees were issued in his name. Scribes, as the literal voice of the king, had to be worthy of the trust. The famous Hammamat inscriptions, ranging from the Old Kingdom through the Roman period, record the expeditions sent to the quarries of the Wadi Hammamat; they are signed by the scribes who led them, and the texts are at once official records and personal testimonials to the perquisites of office. The scribe was, in a real sense, the king’s hand, and the king’s hand was the god’s hand. To serve the king was to serve Ma’at: truth, order, and cosmic balance. Ann Rosalie David’s Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt (1999) is the most useful single social-history treatment; the Deir el-Medina scribal community is documented in detail by Jaromir Malek and Stephen Quirke.