Scribes were the protectors and developers of ancient Egyptian culture and central to academic research and the smooth running of the state apparatus. The hieroglyphic language of the ancient Egyptians was complex and beautiful and those who mastered it held a valued position in society. There are depictions of scribes (identified by the traditional scribal crossed legged pose and their scribal equipment) dating back to as early as the Old Kingdom. The occupation of scribe is also one of the earliest jobs. The terms is more properly translated as “to draw” or “to create” rather than simply “to write” or “to read”. It is perhaps no surprise then that one of the most respected titles in ancient Egypt was “sesh” – “scribe”. In truth, very little happened in ancient Egypt which did not involve a scribe in some manner. Scribes were central to the functioning of the centralised administration, the army, and the priesthood. Photo: CC The Seated Egyptian Scribe from the Louvre Museum.Henka, Scribe and overseer of the pyramids of Sneferu, Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Statue of the Old Kingdom preserved in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: Carme Mayans, National Geographic The seated scribe. The sculpture is placed on a plinth, so it could be that it was intended to be placed in a niche or possibly in the cult chapel of a tomb. The inlaid eyes give the statue great liveliness, and are framed by thin, defined eyebrows. His chin and cheekbones are very marked, and his lips are thin. The man is depicted as obviously overweight, as manifested through the “love handles” on his torso (possibly a sign of his high social status) and is ready to write on the papyrus he holds in his lap.īut without a doubt, what attracts the most attention to the scribe is his face. The sculpture has several inlays, highlighting those of the eyes-made of polished quartz framed in copper-and the two nipples, made of wood. The posture is typical of a scribe: Seated and cross-legged. The seated scribe in the Louvre is a piece of exceptional realism despite its small size the original polychrome is practically intact.īefore painting it, the piece was first covered with a thin layer of plaster. This would have contributed to his right to have a tomb and receive offerings, as well as the cult statue that represents him proudly performing his tasks for all eternity. However, although we do not know who this small sculpture represents, it is clear that its owner must have held a position of high importance in the pharaonic administration. It was created sometime between the Fourth (2543–2436 BC) and Fifth (2435–2306 BC) dynasties, but we do not know the name of the owner of the tomb in which it appeared, or who it represents. There is much we do not know about this statue, but what we do know is that the Egyptologist took the statue of the scribe to Paris, where it became part of the Egyptian collection at the Louvre Museum. This 53-centimeter-high limestone sculpture was discovered during excavations carried out by Mariette’s team at the Saqqara necropolis, about twenty kilometers from Cairo, in 1850. We are talking about one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Egypt: The seated scribe, which today is exhibited in the Parisian Louvre Museum. Perhaps he was glad to see the light of Ra again after so many millennia hidden in the darkness of a tomb… Who was this scribe? On his clean-shaven face, his thin lips pressed together into a half smile. The ancient scribe stared at him with his rock-crystal blue eyes, which had watched impassively on over the centuries. “My God, he seems to be alive!” the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Frenchman Auguste Mariette, must have thought when he came face to face with the statue of a seated man dressed in a short skirt and holding a scroll of papyrus on his lap. It was discovered under mysterious circumstances by Auguste Mariette in 1850. This small, realistic limestone statue is over 4,000 years old and depicts an Egyptian scribe about to write on a sheet of papyrus.
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