Brooklyn Museum: Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art: Scribe's Exercise Board with Hieratic Text

Want to add this object to a set? Please join the Posse, or log in.

Scribe's Exercise Board with Hieratic Text

Hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphs, was used most commonly for writing literature, business and personal letters, and record keeping. It was the first form of writing that Egyptian students learned. A youthful scribe wrote a hieratic inscription on this exercise board in the early New Kingdom. The text is an extract from "The Instructions of King Amunemhat" composed in Dynasty 12, nearly 400 years before the board was inscribed. The king urges his son: "Be on on your guard against all who are subordinate to you . . . trust no brother, know no friend, make no intimates." This "teaching" belonged to a common literary genre of classical texts often used to practice writing.

Medium: Wood, pigment
Place Made: Egypt
Dates: ca. 1514-1493 B.C.E.
Dynasty: XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom
Dimensions: 5 x 10 15/16 x 3/16 in. (12.7 x 27.8 x 0.4 cm)
Collections: Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Egyptian Orientation Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 16.119
Credit Line: Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour
Image: Group, CUR.16.119_view1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008