Every reader of the New Testament has observed how important and influential a body the scribes were in Israel; and every attentive reader of the Old Testament has observed that the "scribe" was one of the most honored officers of every king. The monumental [133] inscriptions in Egypt throw a flood of light on the education and the labors of this class; for they abounded in Egypt precisely as they did in Palestine. The Bible writers nowhere enter into these details. They take it for granted, when they speak of the scribes, that everybody knew who and what they were. It is only in an incidental way that we learn anything of their private life from what is there said of them. But the Egyptian inscriptions, especially those on the inner walls of tombs, unlike the Bible records, are largely concerned with the minute details of private life, and here we find a most instructive account of the scribes. Maspero, in his "Life in Ancient Egypt," tells what he has thus learned, putting it partly in his own words, and partly in those of the inscriptions. I quoted from him last week in regard to the various occupations of artisans in the time of the Pharaohs, and it is in this connection that he speaks of the superior advantages enjoyed by the scribes.

      "There is nothing like being a scribe," the wise say; "the scribe gets all that is upon the earth." But we must not be dazzled by this assertion, or always expect those who boast of learning to be skillful authors in verse or prose--wealthy, influential personages. No doubt there are some scribes of very high rank. Prince Amenhiounamif, the oldest son of Pharaoh, the designated successor to the throne, and his brothers are all scribes. Nakhiminou, the hereditary lord of Akhmin, is a scribe; so also is Baknikhonsou, the high priest of Theban Amen, and the greatest religious dignitary of the kingdom. But so are Totimhabi, whom the architect Amenmosou employs to register the workmen in the building-yard every morning; Hori, who passes his days in counting heads of cattle and entering the numbers in his books; Masirou, the keeper of accounts to the master carpenter Tinro; Noffronpit, who runs about drawing up petitions or writing notes for illiterate people, who require such aid--these are all scribes, and they bear the same title as the son of the sovereign or the most powerful barons of the kingdom. The scribe is simply a man who knows how to read [134] and write, to draw up administrative formulas, and to calculate interest. The instruction which he has received is a necessary complement to his position, if he belongs to a good family, whilst if he be poor it enables him to obtain a lucrative situation in the administration or at the house of a wealthy personage (pp. 8, 9).

      The existence of such an industrial class, embracing in its membership ambitious men from the lower walks of life, and not thought unworthy of the sons of kings, indicates a very advanced state of civilization, and the wide diffusion of such intelligence among the people as to call for the services of this class. And this was in the time of the Pharaohs to whom the people of Israel were under bondage--the age in which destructive critics, now living, were recently wont to say that the art of writing was not sufficiently developed to enable Moses to write the Pentateuch. Furthermore, the account of all the sons of the king being scribes, connected with the statement of Exodus that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that of Stephen, that he was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," leaves nothing wanting in the proof that he possessed all the requirements for the composition of both the prose and the poetry of those wonderful documents.

[SEBC 133-135]