The Scribal Education In Ancient Egypt

The scribe, referring to the man who can read and write, played a very important role in ancient Egypt. As an indispensable accessory in the operation of the government, how the scribe that was skilled and had good culture was turned out? What's the importance of the scribal education? This thesis is planned to set forth these questions from three aspects. The first part is the intellectual education of scribes in ancient Egypt.This chapter expatiates it from six aspects respectively, including teaching site, teaching content, teaching method, teaching tools, check, and professional training.(1) Teaching site. From the historical process of ancient Egypt, we can see the types bellows: â‘ Private school. It points to the training of the children that the private teachers and some ministers gave. Because in the early time, the enterprise of the education in ancient Egypt was quite underdeveloped, some people trained scribes in their own home.â‘¡Royal school. In the period of the Old Kingdom, the king assigned the persons specially for the teaching of the royal children, and permitted some noble children to join, so the royal school came into being.â‘¢Scribal school. In the period of the Middle Kingdom, the country reunited, full-scale construction was under way, the government need numbers of scribes fulfill the busy affairs. So, the special school for scribes emerged as the times required. Most of them adhered to the national organizations and the temples. â‘£Rural school. In some rural areas of ancient Egypt, it also existed the schools for training scribes. In these rural schools, the teachers were mostly scribes that had teachers' genius, the children of rich families learned some basic knowledge and skills relating to reading and writing. (2) Teaching content. Because what a scribal school trained was the persons with ability of each levels for the class of slave owners, and their work's diversity, these need him have abundant knowledge. So, the teaching contents were very abroad, including the basic training of reading, writing and calculating, learning religious information and foreign language, through copying out different literatures, the students also learned history, geography, rhetoric, ethnics, painting and so on. (3) Teaching method. For the methods the teachers adopted were relatively dogmatic and rigescent, facing the majority of the knowledge, the students " knew its result but not knew its reason", they had to learn by mechanical memory. In avoiding the students' weariness, the teachers adopted all kinds of methods to obtain the scheduled aims. First, they made the students understand the superiority of scribes by inducement, so as to inspire their interest in learning. Second, they laid out the nice foreground of scribes before the students. Again, they restricted those wouldn't leave alone by strict discipline. At the same time, some teachers would warn the students that didn't attend to their proper works.(4) Teaching tools. It consists of the teachers' tools and that of the students. First, the teachers' tools consist of the board daubed with limestone and ferule. Second, the students' tools consist of the stuff such as limestone, the fragment of the pottery, shell, etc. When they were skilled, they were permitted to use the papyrus. The common writing tools they use consist of palette, a container for brushes and pigment and pen.(5) Check. Whether a kind of teaching is in effect, the key is that whether it attains the scheduled aim. We don't have the special exams of ancient Egypt, the forms of check consist of checking schoolwork, quizzing in letters and oral test.(6) Professional training. Graduated from the schools, these students would go on to learn professional knowledge. The aim of this phase is comparatively clear, most of them would become the apprentices of the professional scribes. Some of them that would work in the government would enter certain branch to be an "apprentice". Those would work in other sections need the similar training. In a wo...