Scribe

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This article is about the profession. For other uses, see Scribe (disambiguation).

Image:Escribano.jpg

A European scribe at work

A scribe (or scrivener) is a person who writes books or documents by hand. The profession lost most of its importance with the advent of printing.

1 Ancient Egyptian scribes
2 Mesopotamian scribes
3 Sofer
4 See also
5 References
- 5.1 Sources
- 5.2 Footnotes
6 External links

Ancient Egyptian scribes

Egyptian scribe with papyrus scroll

The Ancient Egyptian scribe (MdC transliteration zXA.w) ^[1] was a person educated in the arts of writing (using both hieroglyphics and hieratic scripts, and from the second half of the first millennium BCE also the demotic script) and arithmetics.^[2]^[3] He was generally male,^[4] belonged socially to what we would refer to as a Middle Class elite, and was employed in the bureaucratic administration of the pharaonic state, of its army, and of the temples.^[5] Sons of scribes were brought up in the same scribal tradition, sent to school and, upon entering the civil service, inherited their fathers' positions.^[6]

Much of what is known about ancient Egypt is due to the activities of its scribes. Monumental buildings were erected under their supervision, ^[7] administrative and economic activities were documented by them, and tales from the mouths of Egypt's lower classes or from foreign lands survive thanks to scribes putting them in writing.^[8]

The profession, first associated with the goddess Seshat, became restricted to males in the later dynasties.

The scribal profession had companion professions, the painters and artisans who decorated tombs, buildings, furniture, statuary, and other relics with pictures and hieroglyphic text.

Mesopotamian scribes

Writing in early Mesopotamia seems to have grown out of the need to document economic transactions, and consisted often in lists which scribes knowledgable in writing and arithmetics engraved in cuneiform letters into tablets of clay.^[9] Apart from administration and accountancy, Mesopotamian scribes observed the sky and wrote literary works. They wrote on papyrus paper.^[10]

Sofer

Main article: Sofer (scribe)

A Sofer (Hebrew: סופר סת”ם‎) are among the few scribes that still ply their trade by hand. Renowned calligraphers, they produce the Hebrew Torah scrolls and other holy texts by hand to this day.they wrote on papyrus which is a reed grown along the Nile river.

References

Sources

Barry J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, Routledge 2006, ISBN 0415235499, pp.166ff.
Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing, University of Chicago Press 1995, ISBN 0226508366
David McLain Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature, Oxford University Press collyn anderson2005, ISBN 0195172973

Footnotes

^ Ermann & Grapow, Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, vol.3, 479.14-481.4
^ Michael Rice, Who's Who in Ancient Egypt, Routledge 2001, ISBN 0415154480, p.lvi
^ Peter Damerow, Abstraction and Representation: Essays on the Cultural Evolution of Thinking, Springer 1996, ISBN 0792338162, pp.188ff.
^ The female form zXA.yt exists, (Ermann & Grapow, Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, vol.3, 481.6-7) but is rarely used. e.g. Elisabeth Meier Tetlow, Women, Crime, and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society, Continuum International Publishing Group 2005, ISBN 0826416292, p.265
^ Kemp, op.cit., p.163
^ David McLain Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature, Oxford University Press 2005, ISBN 0195172973, p.66
^ Kemp, op.cit., p.180
^ Kemp, op.cit., p.296
^ Martin, op.cit., p.88
^ Carr, op.cit., p.39