The
first challenge every scribe had to overcome was learning the skills of
the trade. Young boys destined to enter the ranks of scribes typically
began their schooling around the age of five, and then faced lengthy
apprenticeships before they were allowed to practice independently. Most
students learned in formal schools associated with temples,
administrative offices or the pharaoh's court, although boys of noble
lineage might have the luxury of private tutoring.
Tough Text
Scribes-in-training
had to memorize and cleanly reproduce the more than 700 pictograms and
symbols that made up the hieroglyphics-based written language of ancient
Egypt. Students also had to learn cursive script versions of these
characters, which were quicker to reproduce and better suited to writing
on papyrus, the paper of the era. Adding to the complexity of such
extensive memorization, the same symbol could often be used to mean
different things, such as a pair of legs which could indicate movement,
directions or related concepts.
Tough Teachers
Students
also had to become adept at mathematics, memorize proverbs and stories,
mix their own pigments and make their own brushes from reeds. With so
much to learn, there was no time for carelessness or bad behavior.
Teachers did not respond kindly in either circumstance, as indicated by
the ancient Egyptian word, “seba,” which means both “teach” and “beat.”
Criminal Conspiracies
Life
as a scribe had prestige -- it also introduced dangers. Royal scribes
might be called upon to record dangerous political secrets. The art of
cryptography or coding secret messages can even be traced back to an
Egyptian scribe working for Khnumhotep II 4000 years ago, who inscribed
non-standard hieroglyphs on the nobleman's tomb. Legal records show
scribes named among lists of the accused in political scandals, tomb
robberies and conspiracies, and those found guilty could face execution
or disfigurement by having their noses and ears cut off.
Fighting Fraud
Scribes
who worked as accountants might not be privy to political games, but
they encountered dangers of their own. Temptation and greed led some
scribal accountants to fix numbers, allowing them to steal from the
pharaoh's inventories and build inventories of their own. To prevent
this type of fraud, two scribes were assigned to perform the same counts
and calculations, independently. If the results failed to match, the
punishment meant death for both.
Toting Tools
Early
scribes did not use desks – they either worked while standing or
kneeling. It wasn’t until the second millennium B.C. that desks came
into common use. Scribes carried their own writing surfaces wherever
they went. The primary tools of a typical scribe included a writing
board that doubled as a palette, a series of brushes or pens, two cakes
of ink, rolls of papyrus and a pot or bag filled with water. Not all
scribes, however, carried these tools. Draftsmen were scribes who
painted hieroglyphs on tomb walls.
Hope this helps!!
