This is the hieroglyphic symbol for scribe.
This is a statue of a scribe.
This is a picture of a scribe's writing palette.
Hieroglyphs
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In ancient Egypt, people used hieroglyphs to write. Hieroglyphs are a form of picture writing that the Egyptians perfected throughout the centuries. On the left is a picture of columns of hieroglyphs. |
| Hieroglyphs were written everywhere on almost everything. The word 'hieroglyph' means sacred writing, and Egyptians thought that hieroglyphs would give the item special powers. |
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This is the hieroglyphic symbol for scribe. |
The people who wrote hieroglyphs were called scribes. Scribes were trained how to write hieroglyphs at a very young age. Being a scribe was a good occupation because they didn't have to work long hours in the fields like most of the population. |
| Scribes wrote hieroglyphs with a sharpened piece of papyrus dipped in either black or red ink . The more skilled scribes wrote on expensive papyrus paper while the less skilled scribes just worked on stone and clay. Papyrus scrolls were sometimes stored in scrolls, like the one shown below. |
This is a statue of a scribe. |
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This is a picture of a scribe's writing palette.
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When the Romans conquered Egypt, The Roman's language , Latin, became more popular than the hieroglyph writing system. Soon, both the language and the writing of the ancient Egyptians were forgotten. In 1820, a Frenchman named Jean-Francois Champollian used the Rosetta Stone, a stone with Greek, hieroglyphs, and a shorthand version of hieroglyphs, to translate the text from Greek into hieroglyphs. |
| Since then, many people have learned how to read and translate hieroglyphs. As we learn more about this system of writing, we learn more about the Egyptian culture and beliefs. |
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