The tools of writing History: The Scribe's toolkit

We aren’t exaggerating when we say that most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt is owed to the hard work of the scribes. It is a fact. Scribes used to work for the Pharaohs or temple priests. They wrote everything down starting from the procedures in courts, magic spells, legal contracts, all the way to tax records for the government. They wrote on different mediums like obelisks, pyramids, tombs, sarcophagi, statues, and papyrus scrolls.

The scribe’s equipment

The scribes used specific equipment to help them write easily.
This kit is called "sesh" in hieroglyphics. The term is more accurately translated as “to draw” or “to create” rather than “to write”. The most common equipment was a rectangular palette or a case with a very small leather bag to hold pigments and a long pen case to hold reed pens. The scribes also used a pot of water to wet the pigments and the reed pens. We can also see small circular cavities to hold the pigment on the palette itself.

We found many other examples of palettes merely containing the circular cavities cut into the palette and a long central hole for the reed pens instead of the pen case. Very efficient!

Most palettes were made of wood. The pen was made from a thin-stemmed reed that grew on the banks of the Nile River and the end of the reed was sharpened and shaped according to the scribe’s desire. The most common pigments were black and red. The black ink was for the majority of writings and the red ink was typically used to highlight the date and subject headings.

It is noteworthy to mention that the ability to write guaranteed a high rank in the ancient society that’s why the scribes were honoured and highly respected in society.

The traditional scribe's tool as opposed to the multipurpose palette.
Photo attribution: Alensha / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)