From Scribe of Recruits, during the reign of Akhenaten (1353-1336 BC), Horemheb rose through the military ranks and, by the rule of Tutankhamun (1332-1323 BC), he was commander in chief of the Egyptian forces. Born of middle-ranking parents, his scribal training led to an army career. Scraps of ancient hieratic writing, mostly penned by student scribes on limestone flakes called ostraca, suggest that no matter how humble his origins, an educated Egyptian could achieve almost anything. The two writings existed side by side for at least 2,500 years. For everyday purposes, however, scribes used a shorthand version of the hieroglyphic script known as hieratic, which was quicker to write and more economical of space. Including both ideograms (which convey a whole word or idea, either concrete or abstract, in a single sign) and phonograms (representing either an alphabetic sound or a group of consonants), it was used in formal inscriptions on tomb and temple walls as well as on elaborate funerary papyri. Hieroglyphs – ‘the Words of God’ – compose a writing system with more than 1,000 distinct characters, the meaning of which was lost for 1,500 years before they were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1823. Many relied instead on the simpler hieratic script for the multitude of everyday documents generated by the Egyptian bureaucracy.

However, contrary to popular belief, not all Egyptian scribes understood hieroglyphs. In ancient Egypt, literacy was the key to success.

Egyptian scribe clothing diy