ANCIENT EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS

The most intriguing texts are perhaps the personal letters, which take the reader straight into the world of New Kingdom Egypt. In one such missive, a father, Pay, writes to his son about his eye disease—apparently one of the hazards of tomb building because of the dust, bad lighting and flying splinters of stone associated with the task: The draftsman Pay says to his son the draftsman Pre[emhab?]: Do not turn your back on me; I am not well. Do notc[ease] weeping for me, because I am in the [darkness(?) since] my lord Amon [has turned] his back on me.

May you bring me some honey for my eyes, and also some ocher which is made into bricks again, and real black eye paint. [Hurry!] Look to it! Am I not your father? Now, I am wretched; I am searching for my sight and it is not there. Pay’s lament is not surprising: blindness would have completely incapacitated a draftsman, who painted the figures and hieroglyphs inside the tombs. Descriptions of the mixture of honey,ocher and black eye-paint that Pay requestedappear in specialized medical papyri, suggesting that it was a common remedy. Indeed, honey does have antiseptic properties, and ocher, an ingredien in many other prescriptions of the day, feels cool on the eyelids and was thought to reduce swelling. Because so many workmen suffered from this type of eye disease, this treatment may have been well known, and Pay was ordering it for himself. Alternatively, Pay could have been asking his son to fill a doctor’s prescription.

Roughly half the texts found at Deirel-Medina are religious or literary pieces. Copies of most of the “classics” from ancient Egyptian literature have been found at the site; in some cases, ostraca from the village provide the only surviving example of a work. These classics were a fundamental part of a student’seducation: thousands of school texts bear extracts from the masterpiec es of Middle Kingdom (roughly 2000–1640 B.C.E.) literature, composed in a language as remote from the vernacular of the students as the English of Chaucer is from ours. Furthermore, many of the villagers were authors in their own right, composing instruction texts, hymns and letters. For example, the scribe Amennakhte wrote a poem in praise of the cosmopolitan city of Thebes, located just across the Nile: What do they say to themselves in their hearts every day, those who are far from Thebes?

The rather informal sketch of the stonecutter with his chisel and mallet shows a bulbous nose, stubbled chin and open mouth, no doubt exaggerated for comic effect. The selfportrait of the scribe Amenhotep adoring the god Thoth adheres to the formal canons of Egyptian art. In short, the writer appeals to the great Egyptian aspiration for immortality: As for the learned scribes from the time that came after the gods—those who foretold the things to come—their names endure forever, although they have gone, having completed their lifetimes, and their relatives are forgotten. They did not make for themselve pyramids of copper with tombstones of iron. They were unable to leave an heir in the form of children [who would] pronounce their name, but they made for
themselves an heir of the writings and instructions they had made.

Importance of Education the exceptional rate of literacy among the workmen at Deir el-Me dina no doubt developed because the many skilled artisans needed an understanding of hieroglyphs for their job in the royal tombs. Early in the history of the village, the pharaohs’ tombs contained only simple copies of the guides to the afterworld, written in cursive script with accompanying vignettes drawn in stick figures. But at the end of the 14th
century B.C.E., elaborately carved and painted scenes began to appear in tombs. At the same time, the literacy rate in the town rose sharply, as evidenced by the increase in the number of texts written after this period. The king Horemheb, who ruled from 1319 to 1292 B.C.E., introduced these painted reliefs to the Valley of the Kings. The more elaborate projects of Horem heb and later kings required a team of draftsmen to do the initial drawings and the final paint job; becausethe tomb paintings included large amounts of hieroglyphic texts, these workers had to be literate.