Literacy

Education in ancient Egypt consisted primarily of instruction in writing (and by extension, reading). Literacy was, therefore, restricted to the educated, who have been estimated at one to ten percent of the population (see Parkinson 2002: 66-7). Egyptian texts speak exclusively of male students, although there is some sparse evidence for female literacy (Janssen 1992: 89-90).

Schools seem to have been primarily attached to temple libraries, in an area known as the ‘‘instruction room.’’ Before the advent of Demotic, scribes were evidently taught to write in Hieratic, the script of nearly all surviving exercises. Examples of schoolboys’ writing boards and ostraca indicate that instruction took the form of dictation from works of Middle Egyptian literature, at least in the New Kingdom. Passages were dictated to pupils in short phrases or sentences; these are often marked at their end by a red dot, commonly called a ‘‘verse point.’’

As might be expected, such exercises abound with errors - so much so that it is often impossible to be sure of the original text when a literary work survives only in this form. In some cases, the errors clearly derive from a student’s mishearing of the dictated phrase, revealing something of the vocalization of the language: for example, ajiA. k r mdt ntt rs ‘‘you should fight against a matter that is against it’’ was misheard as kmt nt r. s ‘‘Egypt should stand (against) that which is against it,’’ suggesting an original *aah’ak amada ntarasreinterpreted as aahaakumat antaras (Fecht 1960: 194 n. 546; vocalization reconstructed from Coptic). Some schoolboy exercises show the teacher’s corrections in red ink.

School texts included not only works of literature but also more practical genres. One of a scribe’s primary responsibilities was the drafting of letters from dictation, even for literate superiors. Epistolary form was taught from a long model letter known as kmyt ‘‘Compilation,’’ which has survived in schoolboy copies. Reflecting the circumstance of their composition, letters often refer to the sender and recipient obliquely, as ‘‘the servant there’’ and ‘‘your scribe,’’ respectively. Once instructed in the essentials of writing, scribes appear to have specialized in areas such as accounts, military records, and temple texts, as reflected in their titles. Presumably instruction in Hieroglyphic was also part of this higher education.

Despite its apparent rarity, literacy was highly prized. Egyptian literary texts routinely encourage young men to become scribes, both as a necessary prerequisite to higher office and as a profession valued in itself:

You should give your mind only to writing, and you will see what will save you from labor... Recite from the end of the Compilation and you will find this sentence in it:

‘‘As for the scribe in any place of the capital, he cannot become poor in it.’’

He makes wisdom for another,

And there is no one more content than him. . .

I will make you love writing more than your mother,

I will bring its perfection to your attention.

Moreover, it is greater than any office:

There is nothing like it on earth. (Khety lia-IIId; author’s translation)

FURTHER READING

For a general survey of Egyptian phonology and grammar in all phases of the language, the best book is Loprieno 1995; this will be complemented in the near future by Allen (forthcoming). The final lesson of Allen’s Middle Egyptian contains a discussion of the various theories and approaches to Egyptian syntax (a second edition is projected for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2010). An accessible survey of Coptic dialects, phonology, writing, and grammar can be found in vol. 8 of Satzinger 1991. For writing, the reader is referred to Senner (ed.) 1989, which contains essays on the origin of Egyptian hieroglyphs (without, however, the recent discoveries from Tomb U-j at Abydos) and the invention and development of the alphabet. Parkinson 2002 contains an excellent overview of the scribal tradition and literacy.