The Scribe & the Prestige of Writing

In a society where few could read, the scribe held remarkable status. Literacy opened the way to office in the administration, the temples, and the royal court, and exempted one from hard manual labor. School texts such as 'The Satire of the Trades' praise the scribe's life by mocking the misery of every other occupation. To 'be a scribe' was, for Egyptians, to secure both livelihood and a kind of immortality through writing.