The pharaohs were certainly powerful rulers, but they could not have controlled their kingdoms without the help of scribes; nor would historians know the names of the pharaohs if there had been no one to write them down.
Though the scribes remained an exclusive and powerful class in the Middle Kingdom, writing itself became much easier owing to two developments. The first of these was papyrus (puh-PIE-russ). Papyrus is the name for a kind of reed, which the Egyptians cut into strips. They crisscrossed these strips and soaked them in water, then flattened them with a smooth shell or a piece of ivory. When it had dried, the papyrus became like paper, and indeed the English word “paper” comes from papyrus.
No longer did the scribes have to carve hieroglyphs into stone; nor did they have to painstakingly draw out each hieroglyph, thanks to the development of hieratic (high-RAT-ick) script. Hieratic was a simplified form of hieroglyphics that could be written much faster, just as it is easier to write in cursive lettering than it is to print. As is true of many modern lan-
Guages such as Arabic and Chinese, hieratic was written from right to left. For the next 1,300 years, hieratic would remain the system for everyday writing, including legal documents, letters, and stories; then, around 650b. c., the scribes would develop an even simpler form, called demotic (deh-MOTT-ick). During this time, however, hieroglyphics remained in use for types of writing intended to be more lasting—for example, on tombs—and were still often carved into stone.
Several other varieties of written communication developed around the time of the Middle Kingdom. There were seals, which like their modern equivalents carried something stamped on the bottom that could be transferred by rubbing the seal in ink, then placing an impression on a document. Scribes used labels, which may have assisted them in creating an early type of filing system: A label attached to a papyrus scroll identified its contents and the name of the pharaoh at the time of its writing.
On the doors of kings and other important figures were doorplates, which contained not only the name of the person who lived there but a message as well—for instance, “There shall always exist the son of Re [Ra] whom he loves, Amenhotep the god, ruler of Thebes.” The name of the pharaoh, either on a doorplate or elsewhere, would be contained within a cartouche (car-TOOSH), a vertical oval with hieroglyphs inside it.
World History
