Acquired Myths Data From Google.com

1. Professional-Egyptian scribe story,
part 2 of 2
(scribe tools and symbols of one of the most important occupations of
ancient Egyptian times)
The Egyptian brush-pen was made from a thin-stemmed
rush, or reed, plant that was usually cut to a length of about
nine inches. When it was chewed or hammered soft at one
end, it easily frayed and, when trimmed, it held enough ink
to keep writing several letters, depending on their sizes,
before it needed re-inking.
While the small boys were trying to learn how to draw the
special symbols, older boys tutored the younger ones or
learned to take dictation on papyrus while the teacher recited
proverbs. One of the proverbs that was discovered says,
“Give thy heart to learning and love her like a mother, for
there is nothing as precious as learning.”
The first stage of Egyptian writing from the earliest days
of Egyptian literacy, was namedhieroglyphic (“sacred
engraved writing”) by the Greeks who first saw it about
2,000 years later. It has survived as the writing style
appropriate to religious and monumental inscriptions long
after the two later stages, known
as hieratic and demotic script had been developed from it.
All three styles have remained essentially picture-writing
systems, consisting of a combination of pictograms,
ideograms, and phonograms, even after the simpler principle
of alphabetic signs had evolved.

2. —Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.
The harvesting of the papyrus plant was an important
industry in Egypt and an essential product for the scribes
and their record keeping. This marsh and river-side plant
gave us the word “paper” and had other important uses.
Some stalks were harvested for fuel, others were tied in
bunches to make beams or supports for simple houses, and
some were smeared with a resinous material and made into
flat-bottomed boats. In addition, the bark from the stalks
were woven into baskets and hampers while the roots were
used for food. It was the yellowish, fibrous centers of papyri,
cut into thin slices, which gave Egyptians the writing
material they could use for keeping records, writing poetry,
stories, etc.

3. Reed pens were better than rush brushes for writing on
the papyrus sheets. Scribes made their own pens from reed
stalks and carried extras for the work they had to do.
The Egyptians didn’t have much in the way of trees to use
for extensive writing or construction purposes, such as bark
or a supply of wood. In the many marshes; however, they
had a common river plant which had branchless seed-stalks
that they called “gomeh”. The Greeks and Romans called the
plant “papyrus” from which our word paper came.
After the papyrus was cut and the internal fibers
flattened into strips, they were laid side by side on a flat
surface. They were then covered with another layer placed
crosswise. Next, some cooked vegetable gum would be
poured over the sheets thus filling up spaces in the pithy
centers as well as holding the strips together. Finally the
sheet would be pressed, pounded, and rubbed smoothly;
then made into rolls by pasting several sheets end to end.
The intellectual profession of Egyptian scribes was quite
different from the trades of such laborers as metal smiths or
stone masons. The scribes took great pride in the tools and
materials of their craft. In fact, the word for “scribe” in
hierogyphic writing combined pictures of the writer’s
implements—ink palette, water jar, and brushes—with the
pictograph of a man:
—Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.

4. —Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.
A 4,700-year-old wooden carving, that was discovered in
Egypt, shows Hesire, chief of the royal Egyptian scribes, with
his professional tools positioned over his right shoulder. The
writing kit included a slate palette with two depressions for
holding ink cakes (usually black and red), a wooden case to
hold a rush (reed) brush or two, and a small container for
water which was used to get the brush wet. The three
elements were tied together with twine made of flax fibers:
The hieroglyph for “writing” was this following image which
included the “tools” of the scribe and a pictograph of a
“bundle of papyrus sheets” tied together in a roll.
—Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.
The ink that the Egyptian scribes used was so stable that
it has kept its dense black color after thousands of years. The

5. black ink was made of carbon, usually fine soot, mixed with
water and a binding agent such as gum. The red ink was
made in the same way, prepared with pigment made from
one of the many red oxides that occur naturally in the earth.
Red ink was often used to indicate titles and headings and
the beginnings of new “paragraphs” or sections.
—Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.
A scribe is shown drawing Thoth, the divine patron of
scribes, carrying the traditional palette, water container, and
rush brushes or reed pens. This illustration is based on a
section from a 13th Century B.C. funerary (tomb or place of
burial) text written down on papyrus. Thoth was believed to

6. be the “inventor” of all arts and sciences including the
Egyptian system of hieroglyphics.<="" a=""
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—Word Info image © ALL rights reserved.
As the god of magic words and writing, Thoth was
identified with the Greek god, Hermes. His holy city became
Hermopolis (City of Hermes). The Book of Thoth was a
famous legendary work that was supposed to reveal the
secrets of manipulating matter with verbal charms.

7. Thoth is the Greek form of the name of the Egyptian god
Djhowtey, whose cult was centered in the town of Khmunu
(Latin, Hermopolis Magna; modern, Al Ashmunayn) in
Upper Egypt. At first he was probably the moon-god; as
such, he was called “reckoner of time,” and his name was
given to the first month of the Egyptian year. As a result, he
became the god of reckoning and of learning in general and
was held to be the inventor of writing, the founder of social
order, the creator of languages, the scribe, interpreter, and
adviser of the gods, and the representative of the sun-god,
Re, on earth.
His sacred animals, for reasons that are not quite clear,
were the ibis and the baboon. Numerous mummified bodies
of these two animals were found in cemeteries near
Hermopolis and Thebes. Thoth himself was sometimes
represented as an ibis or as a baboon; but more often, he was
in human form with an ibis’ head. The Greeks identified
Thoth with their god Hermes and traced back to “Thoth, the
thrice great” (Hermes Trismegistos) the authorship of
powerful magical books.
As the god of magic words and writing and the Book of
Thoth was a famous legendary work that was supposed to
reveal the secrets of manipulating matter with verbal
charms.
Hieroglyphs were written up, down, or across.
The word hieroglyph refers to the characters used in the
writings of the ancient Egyptians, in fact it means “writing of
the gods” (from the Greek hieros, meaning “holy”,
and gluphein, “to engrave“). The earliest known hieroglyphic
inscriptions date back to the 3rd millennium B.C., but it is
believed by historians that the script must have originated
well before that. It underwent no major changes until A.D.
390, when Egypt was under the power of the Romans,

8. although over the centuries the number of signs increased
from approximately seven hundred to around five thousand.
Hieroglyphs could be written either right to left or left to
right, the lines being either vertical (reading down) or
horizontal (reading across). The hieroglyphic figures always
faced the beginning of the line. In an inscription that
read left to right, the signs faced to the left, or they faced to
the right to indicate that one should read right to left.
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Although hieroglyphs worked fine
In their Egyptian day,
It bothers me that in each line
The glyphs all face one way.
And looked they left or right, as it
Might suit the writer’s aim,
It didn’t matter, not a bit—
The meaning stayed the same.

9. — Willard R. Espy
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Reading from left to right.
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