The people that did all of the writing in ancient Egypt were called ‘scribes’. We can give credit to the scribes for giving us so much important information about what life was like in ancient Egypt. In the days of the pharaohs, the scribes kept track of everything, even the smallest detail,
Most of the children that went to school to learn to become a scribe were male and middle class, because it cost money for the school. Children who went to school to learn to become a scribe would sit on the floor, cross legged, with a wooden board on their lap to do their lessons. This is the standard position that we see most scribes in throughout Egypt.
It is believed that most scribes were boys, however, there is evidence of female doctors. This means they had to be trained as scribes in order to read medical charts and make notes.
Scribes were also hired to monitor and keep records for all of the other social levels. Some were teachers, others kept records of crops, the farmers and other people that did manual labor. Archeologists have found storage jars used in everyday life of the lower classes that had reusable labels. This means that many of the people of all class levels could read. http://www.historyforkids.net/egyptian-scribes.html
Questions: Title: Scribes 1. What was the job of a scribe? 2. Since it cost so much money to go to school, not everyone was able to. How does this hurt society? 3. You pay to go to school. Does this impact how hard you work? Why or why not? 4. Why should we care about crop records, tax collections, and speeches from 2,000 years ago?