Only a small percentage of ancient Egypt population was literate, namely the pharaoh, the members of the royal family, officials, and scribes. The scribe’s profession was transmitted from father to son, and it was very popular, very respected, and lucrative.
Scribes had careers in the government, army, accounting, and priesthood. They began their training at an early age. Their training took place inside of a building called the “House of life” attached to temples under their fathers supervision. Scribes wrote on stone or clay sherds, wooden boards, linen, papyrus and parchment.
Almost all our known knowledge about ancient Egyptians came from the work and art of the ancient Egyptian scribe
Toth was the ancient Egyptian God of the scribes and science. It was hard to learn the hieroglyphs and they were considered holy writing. For this reason, they didn’t share their knowledge and with time the ability to read hieroglyphs was lost. Scribes had the opportunity to take a high rank in the society and that brought them wealth and power. Horemheb was initially a scribe, and he became a pharaoh. Nebamun was a scribe who was very influential.
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