Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses II's Scribes: The Men Who Wrote an Empire
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about Ramses' monuments, his wives, his armies, his gold. But today I want to look at the people who made it all possible on paper. The scribes. Luna: The guys with the reed pens and the papyrus? Lucas: Exactly. And they were more than just copyists. They were the backbone of the state. Every grain of wheat, every jar of beer, every soldier's pay, every treaty—it all went through their hands. Lucas: Being a scribe in Kemet was one of the most coveted positions you could get. It meant you didn't have to work in the fields, you didn't have to carry stones. You sat in the shade, you wore clean linen, and you had real power. The Satire of the Trades, a famous text from the Middle Kingdom but still read in Ramses' day, literally says that a scribe is the one who's in charge of everyone's work. It compares the life of a farmer, who's bitten by insects and has a sore throat from the dust, to a scribe who just gives orders. Luna: So it was like a cushy government job, but with serious influence. Lucas: Right. And to get there, you had to go through intense training. Most scribes started as young boys, often as young as five or six, and spent years in what we call the House of Life. That was both a school and a library attached to temples. They'd copy texts over and over, memorizing signs, learning grammar, practicing on ostraca—those are potsherds or limestone flakes—before they were allowed to touch papyrus. Luna: And they wrote in hieroglyphs, right? Lucas: That's a common misconception. Hieroglyphs were for monuments and religious texts. For everyday business, they used a cursive script we call hieratic. It's faster to write, and you can dash it off with a reed brush. So the grain receipts, the tax lists, the letters between officials—all in hieratic. The scribes were trained in both, but hieratic was their daily working script. Lucas: And their work was enormously important. Think about the scale of Ramses' empire. You had to feed an army, pay workers, collect taxes from every nome, and manage the temples' vast estates. All that required meticulous record-keeping. There's a famous document from the time, the Wilbour Papyrus, that's essentially a land survey and tax register. It lists thousands of parcels of land, who owned them, and what they owed. That kind of thing was the scribes' bread and butter. Luna: So they were the accountants of the ancient world. Lucas: Pretty much. But they were also the diplomats, the archivists, the letter-writers. When Ramses corresponded with the Hittite king Hattusili III, it was scribes who drafted those cuneiform tablets in Akkadian, the diplomatic lingua franca of the day. And they kept copies. So they were the memory of the state. Lucas: One of the most fascinating figures in this world is a man named Userrenput-aanehktu. He was a high-ranking official under Ramses II, and we know quite a bit about him from inscriptions and papyri. He started as a scribe, but he rose to become the mayor of Per-Ramesses, the new capital city. That was a huge job—managing the city's administration, its granaries, its treasuries, its temples. He was like the CEO of a major corporation. Luna: Wow, so from scribe to city boss. That's a career path. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the thing—being a scribe was often the gateway to the highest offices in the land. The vizier, the treasurer, even the high priests—many of them started as scribes. Literacy was power. And they knew it. There are texts that literally say, 'Be a scribe, that your limbs may be smooth, and your hands become soft.' Lucas: But there was a darker side to this too. Because part of a scribe's job was collecting taxes. They'd go village to village with their rolls and their reed pens, and they were feared. There are texts where farmers say a scribe is like a crocodile in the river—you can't escape him. And they had the authority to seize property or beat people who couldn't pay. So they weren't universally beloved. Luna: That must have made them some enemies. Lucas: Probably, but they also had protections. They were exempt from manual labor, they could accumulate wealth, and they were part of a tight-knit community. We have letters between scribes, sometimes on ostraca, that show their daily concerns—work assignments, requests for favors, complaints about a colleague. It feels very human. Lucas: Now, when we talk about scribes, we often think of men, but there's evidence of female scribes too. Not as many, but they existed. In the workmen's village at Deir el-Medina, we've found ostraca written by women—some of them seem to be letters, others are records. So literacy wasn't strictly male, even if it was rare. Luna: What about the scribes who worked on Ramses' building projects? Like at Abu Simbel? Lucas: Oh, absolutely. They were essential. They had to record the number of workmen, the supplies, the wages, and they also kept track of the projects' progress. And then they'd carve the official inscriptions, like the ones at Abu Simbel, which are in hieroglyphs. Those were composed by scribes, often in the royal court, to glorify Ramses and record his deeds. So they were the propaganda machine as well. Lucas: And here's a connection to something we've talked about before. At the Battle of Kadesh, Ramses claimed a great victory, and that account was written down by scribes. The so-called 'Bulletin' text and the 'Poem of Pentaur' were both composed by court scribes. They may have exaggerated the numbers and the heroics, but without them, we wouldn't have any record of that battle at all. Luna: So they were the ones shaping the narrative. Lucas: Exactly. For better or worse. And that's one of the reasons why studying Ramses' reign is so tricky—so much of what we know comes from these scribal records, and they had a vested interest in making the king look good. But that's also what makes it fascinating. You have to read between the lines. Lucas: Let's talk about the actual mechanics of being a scribe. These guys carried a little kit—a wooden palette with slots for reed brushes, a pot of black ink, and a pot of red ink for emphasis. They'd also have a small stone for smoothing the papyrus and a wet rag. And they sat cross-legged, with the papyrus spread on their laps. That's how you see them in statues and reliefs—that iconic pose. Luna: It's funny to think of them like that—like ancient office workers. Lucas: Ha, exactly. And they even had something like office politics. We have records of scribes being promoted, transferred, or demoted. There's a famous letter from a scribe complaining that he's been stuck in a boring post while his rival got a better one. So the human drama was there too. Lucas: Now, I mentioned Deir el-Medina earlier. That's a really important site because it was the village of the craftsmen who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. And because they were a literate community, they left behind thousands of ostraca, letters, and documents. It gives us an incredibly detailed look at daily life. And there, we see scribes as intermediaries between the workmen and the administration. They recorded attendance, paid wages in grain, and even settled disputes. Luna: So they were like HR and payroll combined. Lucas: Pretty much. And they were also the ones who wrote the love poems and the wisdom literature that we have from that period. So they weren't just bureaucrats; they were the keepers of culture. Lucas: But let's not forget that the vast majority of Egyptians couldn't read or write. The scribes were a tiny, elite group. And they knew it. They often ended their letters with phrases like 'I have written to you as a friend,' which implies that the receiver could read. It was a closed club. Luna: It's kind of like being part of an exclusive club that runs the world. Lucas: And that's the note I want to leave on. Because when we think of Ramses the Great, we think of his statues and his temples. But behind every monument, every campaign, every treaty, there was a scribe with a reed pen, making sure it was all recorded, managed, and remembered. They were the silent engine of the empire. Lucas: And it's worth remembering, if you've been getting something out of these conversations, that a couple of dollars a month on buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is what keeps this going. That's genuinely it, nothing grand. Every little bit helps keep the ad-free episodes coming. Luna: Yeah, and it makes a real difference. We appreciate it. Lucas: Alright, back to the scribes. So when we look at the legacy of Ramses II, we have to credit the scribes who wrote his story. Without them, his name might have faded like so many other kings. But they made sure he would be remembered for eternity. Luna: So the scribes were the ones who gave him immortality. Lucas: In a very real sense, yes. They carved his name on stone, they wrote his prayers, they recorded his victories. And in doing so, they ensured that we, three thousand years later, would still be talking about him.