Miscellanies

Miscellanies are texts which were used in advanced scribal education during the Ramesside period (Gardiner 1937; Caminos 1954; Tacke 2001; Fischer-Elfert 1986b, 1997). This education was not so much a matter of schooling in the conventional sense as a system for the perfection of already existing basic skills (McDowell 1999: 127-64; Goelet 2008). Along with the copying of‘‘classical’’ teachings from the Middle Kingdom, e. g. Teaching of Amenemhet or Teaching ofKhety, onto ostraca and papyri, this education also involved the production of an extensive para-literary papyrus as a graduation piece in which the young professional could demonstrate his familiarity with various styles of written Hieratic and all the text types which would be important for his future career (Erman 1925). Miscellanies, compiled by real individuals, have been obtained from Thebes and Memphis in great quantities and prove that in the Ramesside period there was a fairly standardized textual syllabus for the higher levels of an official’s education (Quirke 1996: 382-3). The text types that were imported into the Miscellanies range from Middle Kingdom classics to records, lists of articles, and technical manuals, as well as laus urbis, hymns, and prayers. Especially frequently used are two types of text which complemented each other: the pieces known as ‘‘Be a Scribe,’’ which emphasize the prestige and economic advantages of life as an official and caution disobedient pupils, are complemented by pieces which mock other occupational groups - the military above all (‘‘Satire of Trades’’; ‘‘Hardships of a Soldiers Life’’). Many of these text types are incorporated in the Miscellanies by means of an epistolary formula; other parts consist wholly of reused real or fictitious letters (so-called ‘‘model-letters,’’ Caminos 1982), which were meant to instruct young professionals in the writing of business letters. The formal integration of the most varied textual types in the Miscellanies, organized by means of epistolary formulae, proves the fundamental significance of the epistolary genre as a possible ‘‘basic model’’ for the formation of literary texts (Moers 2001: 169-73; Schad 2006; for the Middle Kingdom see Quirke 1996: 381; Horvath 2007: 81-5).