![]() ![]() Most students started their studies in a temple school at the age of five, but their formal scribal education would begin when they were around nine years old. As a result, scribal training could take up to a decade to complete. The Egyptian’s hieroglyphic language is very complex, comprising of over seven hundred unique signs which could be combined to give layers of meaning. It is, however, likely that the worker’s village was not typical of ancient Egyptian villages of the time, but this evidence certainly challenges suggestions that as little as one percent of the population could write. Jars with re-usable labels would have been pointless if the residents could not read and write, and there were a number of notes written to the wives of the villagers which again would have been of limited use if these women were unable to read. The evidence from Deir el-Medina also suggests that a large number of the inhabitants could read. The fragments also confirm that the students included children from the lower ranks (such as the children of a stonecutter) and at least one woman. ![]() Instead, the teachers included a number of draughtsman, a chief workman, and a deputy. The fragments suggest that while the teachers were of course literate, many of them did not hold the specific occupation of scribe. Djedkhonsuefankh, Scribe and Prophet of Montu, Late Period, METĪ large number of ostraca and papyrus dated to the New Kingdom were discovered in a pit close to the worker’s village at Deir el-Medina and many more fragments were scattered around the village itself.
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