Fig. 16 Lady vomiting at a banquet
Do not indulge in drinking beer lest you utter evil speech and don’t know what you are saying.
Instructions of Scribe Any
Wine was very much the expensive pleasure of the upper classes. Poorer and less sophisticated drinkers drowned their sorrows in vast amounts of home-brewed beer, the favourite ‘soft’ drink of ancient Egypt which was sweetish, non-fizzy and thick, and unfortunately so full of floating impurities that it frequently had to be drunk through a special filtering straw. This beer was certainly nothing like the bottled ‘Stella’ sold in Egypt today, and was probably far more nutritious than alcoholic. However much an acquired taste, the beer was both cheap and easily available, and was apparently enjoyed by all who drank it, even winning praise from the discerning Diodorus Siculus as ‘in smell and sweetness of taste not much inferior to wine’. Beer was the usual drink offered to the gods and to the deceased, and it was a valued ingredient in medicine.
Brewing was a very important offshoot of baking, and as such was traditionally regarded as a female activity. The process was relatively simple. Ground flour was mixed with water, kneaded into a stiff dough with added yeast and given a light baking in the oven. The loaf was then crumbled and placed in a fermenting jar with extra damp flour and more beer added. When brewed, the beer was strained through a sieve into a jar and stoppered to prevent further fermentation which would make the drink too acidic to be enjoyable. A similar brewing technique is still used today in the manufacture of the home-made Nubian beer known as ‘booza’.
4
Work and Play
I’ll make you love the scribe’s job more than you love your own mother. I’ll make its beauties obvious to you, for it is the greatest of all professions, and there is none like it in all the land… See, there is no worker without an overseer except for the scribe, who is always his own boss. Therefore, if you can learn to write, it will be far better for you than all the other careers which I have listed before you, each one of which is more wretched than the last.
Middle Kingdom scribal propaganda
Education and literacy were the keys to professional advancement in Dynastic society. Writing developed in Egypt at about 3000 BC, and from this point onwards only those who could combine an ability to read and write with a basic grasp of arithmetic were eligible to compete for prestigious posts as administrators and accountants in the three major white-collar employment sectors: the civil service, the army and the priesthood. The rather vague title of ‘scribe’, which could be applied to anyone who was literate regardless of occupation, quickly became one of the most prestigious of Egyptian accolades, and many wealthy and influential men chose to stress their high status by being sculpted in the typical scribe’s pose: seated cross-legged with a reed brush poised to write on a roll of papyrus stretched across the knees. In addition to enhanced employment prospects, the literate received an enviable range of fringe benefits. Most importantly, the educated were exempt from the indignities of hard manual labour, always something to be avoided in ancient Egypt. Instead, they were able to reinforce their more elevated status by mingling with the equally refined upper classes rather than the uncouth peasants. In stark contrast, the illiterate and uneducated laboured under a severe social handicap, constantly banging their heads against an unpassable and unavoidable barrier to promotion. Quite simply, anyone who was anyone in ancient Egypt could read and write.
The basics of reading and writing were acquired either at home or at school before the trainee scribe, following the long-established custom of teaching via apprenticeship, progressed to working under the direct supervision of an older and more experienced professional. Often this supervisor was a close male relation such as a father or an uncle. During the Old Kingdom wealthy families employed tutors to equip their children with a primary education, and this tradition of private coaching for the upper classes continued well into the New Kingdom. However, during the prosperous Middle Kingdom, formal day-schools known as the ‘Houses of Instruction’ were established in association with the royal palaces and temples. Here, select bands of young boys received a good basic education designed to provide the ever-expanding state with a much needed supply of well-trained bureaucrats. These schools were not, unfortunately, noted for their imaginative or stimulating lessons, and the pupils studied very little beside reading, writing and, to a lesser extent, arithmetic. Every day the students, some as young as five years of age, attended alfresco morning classes where they passed their time endlessly chanting, copying and re-copying a series of classical texts which increased in complexity and dullness as the pupil advanced in proficiency.