The script in ancient Egypt
The scribes painted, rather than wrote, holding their hand high in order not to stain the surface. Their tools consisted of reed pens, pigment cases and grinders.
The inventor and patron of writing and sciences was Thoth, the god of the moon and master of time. He is depicted either as a dog-headed baboon or with the head of the ibis bird. The ibis, as it searches for snails, resembles a scribe dipping his pen into his ink. Thus such birds, who were assigned the divine attribute of the power of knowledge, symbolized Thoth.
Contacts with regions such as Sumer are thought to have contributed towards the invention of hieroglyphs, which were employed in the organization of the agrarian Egyptian society under the central control of the Pharaoh. Hieroglyphic Egyptian was closely related to art, religious beliefs and funerary customs. It was used in the decoration of slabs (stelai), coffins (sarcophagi) and statues. The writing of persons’ names attained a transcendent dimension, since it averted the danger of their ceasing to exist. Erasure of a person’s name from the texts was one of the most severe punishments possible. Almost contemporaneously a less time-consuming, cursive version of hieroglyphic developed, known as 'hieratic'. Initially this was used for religious texts. Later, it was employed in administration, science and literature. The demotic script, a variation of hieratic, was invented at the end of the 7th century BC to cover the needs of everyday life.
