Some Comments on Ancient Egyptian Literacy and Literati

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem of l-anguages, Literatures and Arts The Institute Department of Egypto logy STI]DIE,S IN T,GYPTOLOGY I)r'cscntcd to Miriam Lichtheim t'()t ltMt,'ll Edited by SARAH ISRAELIT-GROLL I I Nl I ()()o THE MAGNES PITTSS, lltt ilt tilit \\, Ii.tt\'t t(sil y .l lr ll. t lS,,\ LEONARD H. LESKO of one percent or less as literate, based primarlly on a totally unsecured estimate of the total population of Egypt compared to the number of individual bureeucrats who constructed tombs that have survived in one cemetery used during the OId Kingdom, can hardly be considered scientiflcally demonstrated. SOME COMMENTS ON ANCIENT EGYPTIAN LITERACY AND LITERATI The two lengthy articles of Baines and Baines/Eyre, embellished with a great deal of data, LEONARD H. I,ESKO little of which unequivocally supports their case, relies instead on an initial guess to make most of their case, and they sctually build on (or should I say subtract from) their initial hypothesis to argue a decrease in the rate of literacy in later periods. This guess at a Uteracy rate is misleading at For one who has done so much to further our understanding and appreciation of ancient Egyptian literature, however slight, in common in a it seems appropriate to offer a tribute, literary vein. The two topics that I touch on here have that they are both responses to what I have read and could be considered separate editorial pieces--the first a reaction to some articles of contemporary colleagues, the second a reaction to the praises heaped on four Middle Kingdorn scribes by an ancient Egyptian writer. best and at worst appears as &n unnecessary and uncalled for patronizing attempt to denigrate the substantial achievements of one of history's greatest civilizations and for that matter to impugn the importance that most civilized peoples attribute to literacy. If the ancient remained essentially a '?preliterate society", why did a biblical author speak so admiringly of the "wisdom of Egypt", and why did so many ancient Greek philosophers visit Egypt to study its should have been properly defined amazing that several colleagues have recenily attempted to arrive at a single rate of literaey for all of ancient Egyptian history. wisdom? In attempting to make the case that Baines et al. have made, literacy Literacy It is truly Egyptians were so illiterate and l A figu"u in the first place (not vaguely and ambiguously inserted twelve pages into the text). Next, after all the limitations of the surviving data had been explained, any data that could be shown to be representative of an adequate sampling of the population would have to be presented, with arguments made for the upper and lower limits 1. Cf. John Baines, "Literacy and Ancient Egyptian SocietyrrMan (N.S.) 18 (1983) 572-99; John Baines and C. J. Eyre, "Four Notes on Literacy" Cottinger Miszellen 61 (1983) 65-96; and Herman teVelde, nscribes and Literacy in Ancient Egypt" S:lipt, Sign" V""i. J. H. Hospers, Groningen, 1986, pp. 258-64. 656 possible for a specified level of literacy. A single flgure of one percent or less to cover all levels of literacy is unfounded and ridiculous on the face of it. Certainly there are great differences between those considered or labelled literate, even among'those who apparently earn their living by reading and/or 657 LITERACY AND LITERATI writing. Even LEONARD H. LESKO in the present day many who can read newspapers and zines are not able to write maga- or construct a proper sentence much less a pare- Ita thousand and such a small percentage of these would have been able to read? graph, and others who read voraciously are seldom called upon to write more than to sign their own names. Of the small minority who read and write for a living, are actors, news-anchorpersons, accountants and stenographers more a literate than novelists, playwrights, or poets, who might earn much less living with their creative works? Surely, the scribes that the author of Papyrus Chester Beatty IV sought to immortalize were not petty bureaucrats. bread, beer, oxen and fowlrtif so few would have passed by Arguing that a somewhat larger percentage may have been able to read and write a little does not was well read mean that any great percentage of the population or even bothered to read most of the texts available to them on the outsides of buildings. It would also not show that people generally would have been able to understand the subtleties of the propagandistic texts in their anthologies. Perhaps most significant would be the faet that very few They were supposed to be genuine writers/authors. But apart from true creative writers would have been available or for that matter necessary to authors, professional scribes in anqient Egypt surely did handle some ofthe preserve their past and instruct for the future, as well as to record complaints correspondence between individuals, the preparation of religious guidebooks, and as well as the execration texts, and even some so-called autobiographical texts, entertain. But in this would the ancient Egyptians be so different from other more modern civilizations? but did such scribes handle all the letters to the dead, the notes on hundreds of thousands of ostraca, and the graffiti in so many out of the way places? Literati obviously, the fact that most of the great monuments of Egypt are covered with inscriptions cannot be used to argue that everyone should therefore The texts cited below are reasonably well known, but scholars have only have been able to read them, but surely a good percentage of the population just begun to examine these and other Egyptian writings as critically as most would have been able to recognize the cartouches of reigning pharaohs, other literary worke have been studied. Because authorship is so rare in well as those of some of as their ancestors, particularly the most famous, and pre-classical antiquity, and because abiding fame is one hallmark of greatness probably the names of many gods and locat officials, and perhaps even more than this, since the accompanyrng scenes would have made understanding in writers, it is significant that easier- And if greats--at least those whose works appear to have survived in part. some could work out the sounds of signs used in names, wouldn't they recogrrize a few of the words they used every day? How large a vocabulary is required for literacy? would threats against trespassers thought effective if less than one response could one have hoped in left at the entrance of a tomb be one hundred people could read? what for from a graffito asking passersby to say 658 and we know a number of ancient Egyptian authors, it is appropriate to begin to assess the merits of some of the Egyptian Satire is generally purposeful, often acerbic, but is seldom ranked as the greatest literary form. The following well known piece with all its gross exaggerations (perhaps not even a satire) has all the subtlety of a rhinoceros, but as the work of a teacher it must have elicited knowing smiles from students of his own and of succeeding generations. 659 I hawe seen a coppersmlth at his wolk at ure aloor ol his fumace, -'his flDg€ls like the ctaws of th€ crocodil€, hs was smellier than trove frshroe....2 trelore The.eed_cutter goes alot{nstr€am to the Delta to bring back arrows fo! hjmself. It is excessively acttvely that he carried on wofking. After the gnats stung him and the sand fli€s bir him is judged....3 as weU, There is nothing that surpasses t[!tdng3! , then (he) would was standing lament . One alid not say that in is e crccoalile on ealth.? Beaal at the end of the Book of Kemyet anal you v.i[ frnal thi6 it saying: ,'As ro! a scrit € in ary position of his in the residence, he will not be miserabte in it.'r8 Obviously, this teacheris instr.uction was intenaled to nouvate his stualents and rein{orce them in therr commitment to study in oraler to attarn a position in the Bgyptian buEauclacy. when he wrcte this, Khety woulal certainly aheady have been teaching ,,at the Residence...in the school of writings in the midst of the childrcn of the offlcials, the foremost men of the Reslatence.,,9 This is probabiy the schoot to which he pretenals to be taking his son at the beginning of the ,rlnstluctioD". Likely h€ would have haal students who weE there, aDd fe&I has blird€al hin....s Thele are no professions flee fmm mssters except the He is the master.6 it He haal also totd his son to: The merchant goes folth to a foreign lanal, after having leckoned you. It (the profession of scdbe) is g!€at€I than any profe6sion. statenent in than on€ ol any (other) prcfession. Thele is no one (else) 6t work the river, mingling with crocoaliles. If the totatlty of the situarion €har make you writings mors than your mothe!, and I shall rrrl(e beauty enter There is nothing llke rhen he handed over his pmpeItv to his children, being feadul of the tions anal th€ Asiatics. Be kBows hims€U again $hen heis (back) in Eg.ypt....{ I will teu you the like of the fisherDsn. He is mor€ miserable ... I scribe's. Eallier in this 'Instructionn to his son Pepl, the scdbe Dua xhety distracted by tife's pleasurcs snd attracteal away by the gtoIi€s oI the military or the proiits of tmale. sald: The idea of assigning cl€ver wriungs or copying assignnents was certainry not o.iginal to Khety, and he even cited here the earlier Book of 2' cf. Kemyet, which unfortunately has not Helrmut Brunner, Die Lehre des cheti, sohnes des Duauf (i{gyptorogische Forschungen, 13) cliickstadt, 1044, pp. 112-u; p. salier ll' 4'7-a' 3. 4. 5. 6. Ibid. pp. t20-21; p. Sailier II, Ibid. pp. 158-5?; p. Saltier Il, surviv€d. Lessons rrlnstructiontt by a father to his son were already a very old genre of literature in Egypt when Khety wrcte this so-calt€at ,,sati* on the Tlades, tn the 20th century B.c. Both th€ scribes of th€se instructions and thetr wolks as w€u 5,5_6. 7,6_7. Ibid. pp. 1?8-81; p. Sarrier II , 8,g_9,1. Ibid. pp. 182-88; p. Saltier II, 9,1_2. 660 ln the folE of 7. Ibid. pp. 99, 105-07; P. Sallier lI , 4,2 and 4,5. 8. Ibid. pp. 100-01; P. Sallier lI , 4,2-4. 9. Ibid . pp. 95- 96 ; P. Sallier II , 4, 1. 661 LEONARD H. LESKO LITERACY AND LITERATI writings cause them to be remembe"ed.10 continued to be revered for hundreds of years after the Middle Kingdom. Portions of the ?'Satirett alone survive on mole than two hundred and fifty Of the four Old Kingdom sages named in Chester Beatty documents. From about eight hundred years later we have a work, already mentioned above (P. Chester Beatty IV), that praises the greatest sages of IV, three are well known from other sources (two were authors of known instructions) and Kaires may well have been author of the Instruction for Kagemni part of which survives. Egypt, eight scribes of the Old and Middle Kingdoms who had written prophecies The four Middle Kingdom sages, sandwiched between the two Old Kingdom pairs, and particularly I'Instructionsrr, and Khety include Neferti and Khety, Ptahemdjedhuty and Khakheperre-seneb. At least is among them. As for the learned scribes since the time of those who came to be after the gods, the foretellers ofthings tocome, their names endure it has happened that forever, (although) they are gone, having completed their Uves, and (although) all their kin are forgotten.... They did not some and possibly the totality of the output of the Heliopolitan priest and scribe, Khakheperre-seneb, survives in the form of a lamentation in which he tries to unload all his misery onto his heart. His major complaint seems to be that he would like to have in new speech which has not yet been know how to leave heirs as children (who could) pronounce their names, unknown words, unusual phrases (but) they made used, free from repetition, not the phrases of familiar utterance which which they made..,. "Instructionstr heirs for themselves of the writings and "Instructionstl is their chiid.... are their pyramids, the reed brush Their Ka-servants are (gone), their stelae covered with dirt, their tombs forgotten, (but) their names are pronounced on account of their books which they made, since they were good.... More the ancesto"" "pok".11 As both Gardinerl2 and Kadishl3 noted, Khakhaperre-seneb wanted to avoid plagiarism in his own work. But he apparently speciflcally did not want to be accused of presenting beneficial is a book than an engraved stele, than a chapel-wal] (?) that was made firm.... A man has perished, is writing that causes him to be and his corpse remembered is dust.... It in the mouth of the story 10. Alan H . Gardiner London, 1935, Vol. 2, Plates 18-19; Chester Beatty teUer.... Is there one here like Hordedef? Is there another like Imhotep? There has not occurred among'our kindred one like Neferti or Khety, and Khakheperre-seneb. Is there another like Ptahhotep or Kaires 13. occurred.... They are gone, their names are forgotten, (but) 2V5-3V11. 1909, Plate 17; BM 5645, 1R2-3. 12. Gardiner, Admonitions. p . likewise? The sages who forstdd the future, what came forth from their IV, , 11. Alan H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage. Leipzig, the foremost of them. I cause you to know the names of Ptahemdjedhuty mouths 3rd Series , 99. Gerald Kadish, "British Museum Writing Board 5645: The Complaints of Kha-kheper-Rf -Seneburt JEA 59 (19?3) 85. For a rather different interpretation cf. Boyo G. Ockinga, "The Burden of Khackheperrecsonbu," JEA ( 1983) 88- 95. 69 H. LLSKO In P. Chester Beatty IV, below the section quoted fact: they did it long ago. Nor a tale whose telling they anticipate. This is seeking misfortune. It is falsehood. a taie of telling after the There is no one who shall remember such a oners name to others. It is interesting that this priest, prenomen, should have said above,15 We are told that Khety wae the real author of the Instruction of King Amenemhet 14 I. His satire isnrt even mentioned, Obviorrsly, this rrlnstruction" of Amenemhet I whose name contains senusert IIts to his son, Senusert this, since these words fairly accurately describe I, had to have a ghost writer, since the kingin whose mouth the words were placed, had been slain in the harim conspiracy that the major works of two of his famous predecessors of the Twelfth Dynasty, the work describes. This brief work may succeed at several levels, but is Neferti and Khety, who indeed were and are remembered in spite of hardly a great piece of literature. In Khakhepeme-seneb ts condemnation. successes, provided some details of his own assassination, clearly indicating Neferti's name is associated with an after-the-fact prophecy (set in the to follow and the eventual coming of the great saviour from the South, Ameny (or Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty) . The work glosses over the vizier, before it entered his head to usurp the throne for himself. Surely, Khakheperre-seneb's criticism of this blatant propagandist was justified, but what about Khety, rithe foremost of themrr, according to Chester Beatty future success. It incidentally provides an alibi for Senusert, whether required or not, by restating several times that the murder took place while fact that the trrte saviour from the South had been theTheban, Mentuhotep II, whom Amenemhet had served as the king briefly recounted his his intention to hand over the throne to Senusert and prophesying Senusertrs Old Kingdom), about the terrible events of the First Intermediate Period that was it Senusert was not there to help--the same point strongly made at the beginning of the t?Story of Sinuhe't. The work can also be used to explain the misanthropy and xenophobia that seem to characterize the rest of the Twelfth Dynasty, with its scowling royal portraits, execration texts, and purges of officials. IV,--the author of the delightful satirical Returning to the scribe Khety, instruction with which this section began. it is clear that he would have been engaged by Senusert to write this last wil-l and testament in the name of his father, but again it would not have been a totally original concept. trlnstructionsfi from father to son were by now commonplace, and Khety, whose name probably 14. Gardiner, Admonitions. Plate indicated his Heracleopolitan origin, also certainly had available to him the irlnstruction for Merikare," another after-the-fact testament, though a much 1?, BM 5645, 1R5-6; Kadish's retrans- lation (JEA59 (19?g) 77-90) contains a number of improvements for this text as more pietistic a whole, but not his rendition of this interesting and difficult passage, 80- Tenth Dynasties as a result of the Kingrs allowing his soldiers to plunder an 81. Surely pp. work, explaining the demise of the Heracleopolitan Nineth and Simpsonts translation appears gramrmtically and logically much closer to what was intended here.. Cf. W. K. Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Eg'ypt, New Haven, 1973, p. 15. Gardiner, HPBM3 Plate 20; CB 231. 664 IV 6V13-14. 665 LEONARD H. LESKO LITERACY AND LITERATI ancient Early Dynastic cemetery. The structurs.l eimilarities between these mostcrities,however,hehadadifficulttimefindinganythingoriginaland two works, as well as Khetyrs reputation for greatness, and the fact that creativeofhisowntosay,andifheeverdidwritemore,itunfortunatelyhas the king instructing Merikare was also named Khety has led at least not survived. some Egyptologists to surmise that perhaps the scribe Khety had originally ghost written both t'Instructions'r, but the time span is surely too great and the differences in style and attitudes are Thereputationofthesefourthatcontinuedforatleasteighthundred in our anthologies of years among the Egyptians, and survives even today the fact that these scribes Egyptian literature, is apparently based largely on also .,r""t.16 Concerning the fourth and last Middle Kingdom scribe listed in P. Chester Beatty IV, i.e., Ptahemdjedhuty, it has been suggested that he could have taughtintheschoolsandtheirworkswererepeatedlycopiedbysucceeding having their names generations of young scribes ' It is also possible that been the author of the trloyalist Instruction" from the Sehetepibre stele.17 done intentionally to boost inserted among the known old Kingdom greats was This is the instruction to theirstatusbyanotherlaterteacherinthescribalschoolsystem' Adore the King...in the innermost part of your bodies. Be friendly with His [llajesty in your hearts. He is Perception, which is in hearts, and his eyes search out every body. He is Re, by whose rays one sees; he is one who illumines the Two Lands more than the sun disk. It seems clear enough from the above that at least three of the four famous Egyptian Middle Kingdom scribes listed on most P. Chester Beatty IV were blatant but apparently highly successful propagandists for the crown, who may have worked in the court schools. The fourth, who apparently eondemned the lack of originality, plagiarism, and false prophecies of his colleagues, may have come from a separate religious background and school, but most remarkable is perhaps for having been one of the worldrs first literary critics. Like of Itshouldalsobenotedthatwhiletheoriginalpropagandapurposeofsome forgotten' through these works would early have been accomplished and repeateduseofthis]iteraturetheSenusertsdidseemtoattainastateof the succese of deification greater than most oftheir royal peers. In Egypt that of Ramses the Great the Senuserts' propaganda efforts is rivaled only by even the Greek historiar: six centuries later, and it is interesting to observe that Herodotus, listed many of Ramses II's accomplishments under the name of sesostris, doubtless due to senusertts lingering literary reputation' If we now find the works of these particular Egyptian authors less than had, both satisfying to read, we still have to appreciate the effect that they reasonably good immediate and lasting, and we do at least have some of their frction antecedents for comparison, as welt as a great deal of anonymous probably writing, and a few good psychological and inspirational works, that 16. Hans Goedicke, The Report about the Dispute of a Man with His Ba never made the lists of best sellers. (Papyrus Berlin 3024). Baltimore, 1970, pp. 5-8. 17. Georges Posener, Litt6rature et Politique dans I'fg-ypte de la XIIe Dynastie, Paris, 1956, p. 119. 666 667