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The Egyptian Of Ancient Egyptian Society

Decent Essays

Ancient Egyptian society reflected many things like the pyramids that it built. They placed the pharaoh at the top, but he relied on a group of officials, priests, and nobles to administer his kingdom. All of these people were assisted with scribes, which is a writing system that was used, perhaps adapted from Mesopotamia or created independently. The eldest known hieroglyphic writings date back to the 3rd millennium B.C. though the script must have been created way before that. Egyptian scribes created two different writing systems: they created what is known today as hieroglyphs to use as a way to communicate and record things through engraving important political and religious texts on stones or writing them on papyrus that was made from reeds growing along the Nile, and a more simple system called hieratic which allowed scribes to be written more quickly and was used for documentation of daily life. Students would learn how to write hieratic first, and those who had families with high aspirations or who were well-off took the time to continue and learn hieroglyphics. It underwent no major change until 390 A.D. when Egypt was dominated by Rome, although over the centuries the number of signs dramatically increased from approximately seven hundred to around five thousand. How was hieroglyphics developed? According to the Ancient Egyptians, it was the God Thoth who created writing and then bestowed it as a gift on humankind. The Egyptians needed a way to communicate,

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