Among the middle class that emerged during the Middle Kingdom were independent artisans, tradesmen, scribes, and professional soldiers. Most lived in towns or cities, in districts with other members of their profession. They formed informal guilds and tradesmen’s groups. They did not own land, but often had considerable personal wealth and many possessions. They were dependent on wealthy customers and clients, but were not tied to a wealthy landowner’s estate the way the mass of peasants were.
Only 2 to 5 percent of Egyptians could read and write. They were scribes, essential to Egypt’s diverse agricultural economy and bureaucratic government. When a government official visited an outlying district to inspect granaries, enforce tax collections, hold a criminal trial, open a new temple, supervise repair of a dam or canal, or oversee a building project, a team of scribes was there, writing everything down.
Ready to Write
This Eighteenth Dynasty stone relief shows scribes with their pens and papyrus ready.
Like modern technology workers, scribes traveled frequently for their jobs. Their equipment had to be as compact, lightweight, portable, and versatile as a modern business traveler’s laptop and personal organizer. A scribe carried his tools in a custom-made box decorated with colorful designs. He had a small palette (like a child’s watercolor box) with shallow pots of dry red and black ink. (He often carried blue, green, and yellow ink, too.) He packed small pots for gum (a binder for ink) and water, a mortar and pestle for grinding ink, lumps of raw pigments, extra pens and papyri, brushes made of rope or crushed twigs, tools for repairing his pens and brushes, and a clipboardlike writing surface. He was ready for any job.
The scribe moistened his reed pen in gum and drew it across one of the colors on his palette. In flowing hieratic script, he wrote on papyrus propped up on his writing surface. Many statues depict the typical posture of a scribe, sitting cross-legged, looking up alertly, pen raised, ready to write.
Scribes were always in demand and always busy. Scribes were the glue that held Egypt together. A talented, ambitious scribe had his choice of interesting jobs. He could work in the royal household, on the vizier’s staff, with a professional guild, or at the estate of a nobleman. He might work at a building site tracking labor, materials, and progress. He could work in a temple, copying religious texts, or teaching student scribes. He could provide sketches of hieroglyphic texts to stone carvers and painters working on decorating a tomb or temple.
Egypt’s professionals-engineers, architects, astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians-came from the ranks of scribes. Scribes could become civil engineers, in charge of harbors, irrigation systems, roads, canals, and public works. They might accompany trading or mining expeditions to Nubia, Lebanon, or Sinai to negotiate trades, record transactions, or carry out surveying tasks. They might join diplomatic missions to document treaties and trade agreements.
Scribes were almost always men. The job was often passed down from father to son, but a clever peasant boy might be selected to attend a temple school. A Middle Kingdom literary work called Satire of the Trades impressed upon students the advantages of being a scribe, and the miseries _ of every other occupation.
Random Access
The Egyptians were fanatical record-keepers. They produced millions of papyrus documents. Only a tiny, random selection has survived, mostly by chance. Papyrus is durable, but was never meant to last thousands of years. The papyrus records that survived were preserved by the hot, dry climate in airless tombs, or were stored in sealed clay jars. Grave robbers ignored papyri, or tossed them into trash heaps.
Many papyri that survived unharmed until the 1800s were damaged or destroyed by early explorers, who did not realize how fragile or valuable they were. Adventurers tore apart tombs looking for gold and treasure. Papyri could not be sold, so they were tossed aside. Papyrus often crumbles to pieces when exposed to air and moisture, so many ancient records vanished soon after they were uncovered. Others were lost in transit or damaged by rough handling. Only a few early explorers recognized the historical value of these papyrus documents.
Modern scholars, called papyrologists, piece together and study the surviving papyri. They treasure every scrap of information from these rare, random records. Egyptian scribes would be amazed to find their wine sales receipts and cattle counts, their tallies of beer jars and grain harvests, their inventory lists and memos, their notes from boring diplomatic meetings, preserved as treasures in libraries and museums.
Scribes generally did not pay taxes. They were supported generously by the government and by temples. They were fed, housed, and given fine clothes. They performed no heavy labor. A scribe was sometimes his own boss (although most were part of a hierarchy of administration), and often supervised important projects. He was honored and respected by all, held up as a role model for the young. The scribe’s exalted status also brought responsibilities. He was expected to be a man of uncommonly good character and to live up to the reputation of his profession. Scribes were held in such high esteem that wealthy men who were not scribes often had statues made depicting themselves as scribes.
Another way to raise one’s status was in the military. Before the Middle Kingdom, Egypt did not have a standing army. Military forces had been drafted as needed, with each nome sending a quota of men. Military leaders were citizen soldiers, not professionals.
During Egypt’s imperial age, however, military service became a profitable career. Professional officers were rewarded with tax-free estates, livestock, serfs, gold, ceremonial weapons, and comfortable retirement jobs.
During the New Kingdom, Egypt maintained two large armies in four divisions, stationed permanently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The army included infantry, scouts, charioteers, marines, and archers. Officers successfully used strategies, tactics, and innovations introduced by the Hyksos, including horses and chariots.
New Kingdom soldiers were a privileged, prosperous class. During peacetime, they lived in military communities. Soldiers returning from campaigns were rewarded with land, livestock, and serfs, which they could keep as long as at least one member of their family remained on active duty.
A military career was one of the few paths to status and wealth for a poor young man. Even common soldiers shared in battle plunder: cattle, weapons, and other loot taken from defeated peoples. Ahmes Penekhbet, a soldier who distinguished himself in battle against the Hyksos and Asiatics, won armlets, bangles, rings, two golden axes, and two silver axes. He also received the “gold of valor”-six gold flies and three gold lions-from the king.
Most Egyptians were unwilling to go abroad for military expeditions. They were terrified that if they died outside Egypt, their bodies would not be properly mummified or buried, the proper prayers and spells would not be said at their funerals (if they even had funerals), and they would lose their chance at eternal life. So even at the height of empire, much of the army was composed of mercenaries (soldiers for hire) and troops from conquered lands, especially Nubians. Late Period armies were manned heavily by Asiatics and Greeks. Slaves and foreign captives often won their freedom by joining the army.
Egyptian artisans, another part of the middle class, created beautiful work, but not for personal artistic expression. Their statues, paintings, and carvings had specific religious, magical, or ritual purposes. In the early days, art primarily served the dead (especially kings), and the gods. As Egypt prospered, the skills artisans had developed and refined were turned toward creating beautiful and useful objects for the living.
Most artisans labored anonymously in workshops as members of efficient production teams. Their work was dedicated to the glory of the king, the dead, and the gods and goddesses. They had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate technical excellence and pride in their
Learning from Scrap Paper
Student scribes practiced their skills by copying texts their teachers thought were inspiring or educational: religious works, magic spells, popular legends, and proverbs. Papyrus was too valuable to use as "scrap paper," so beginners copied their lessons on ostraca, flat flakes of limestone or broken pieces of pottery left over from building projects. Schoolboys also wrote graffiti and made drawings on ostraca. These ostraca were tossed into trash heaps after school. Archaeologists love ancient trash heaps. Scholars consider these ostraca among the most valuable records of Egypt. There are many religious documents and literary works that are preserved only on schoolboy ostra-ca. Those long-ago students would probably be surprised to find their ancient homework, graffiti, and rude drawings displayed in museums.
Workmanship. Their work required talent, skill, patience, and discipline. Though it had to follow strict conventions and traditions, it was frequently witty and inventive, and almost always graceful and elegant.
Artisans apprenticed for years in workshops of master craftsmen. Most artisans did not know how to read or write. They copied plans and sketches provided by scribes or priests. While excavating the ruins of Akhetaten, king Akhenaten’s short-lived capital at Tell el-Amarna, archaeologists discovered the remains of the workshop of the sculptor Thut-mose. Buried under rubble and sand in his storeroom, they discovered several incomplete sculptures and models that Thutmose had probably used in training his apprentices.
One of these models was a painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s queen (on page 62). Now displayed in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Germany, it has become one of the most treasured icons of ancient Egypt. Because of that bust, and because his workshop had been abandoned quickly and remained undisturbed for thousands of years, modern scholars know more about the life of Thutmose the sculptor than they do about many of Egypt’s kings.
Another workers’ colony, at Deir el-Medina near Thebes, was occupied by generations of artisans and tradesmen who worked on tombs in the Valley of the Kings. They lived with their families in a walled village, enjoying a large measure of independence and self-government. They worked four hours in the morning, took a lunch-and-nap break, then worked another four hours. They enjoyed one day of rest every 10 days (an Egyptian week). They took frequent time off for festivals and religious holidays. In their off hours, they were free to cut and decorate tombs for themselves and their families in the nearby cliffs. Some worked part-time as priests.
They were paid in wheat and barley. The government supplied rations of fish, vegetables, oils, butter, salt, charcoal, wine and beer. They had servants to do laundry, haul water, grind grain, and catch fish. They employed cooks, butchers, rope-makers, weavers, and basket makers.
World History
