A Scribe's Advice and a King's Border: Sources from Egypt and Kush

Egypt's Middle Kingdom and Its Southern Neighbor

1Historians divide ancient Egypt's long history into periods. During the Middle Kingdom, from about 2050 to 1650 BCE, Egypt was united under strong kings after a time of division. These kings built temples and forts, sent expeditions to bring back stone and gold, and had new farmland cleared and watered. Writers of the period produced stories and teachings that later Egyptians treated as classics.

2Most Egyptians were farmers who worked the land along the Nile. Many others were craftspeople, such as potters, metalworkers, weavers and builders. A much smaller group were scribes, people trained to read and write. Historians estimate that only a small share of Egyptians could read. Scribes kept tax records, wrote letters and copied religious texts, and many held well-paid posts working for temples or the king. Egyptians believed that the god Thoth had given writing to people, and scribes honored him as their protector.

3South of Egypt, past rocky rapids in the Nile called cataracts, lay the land the Egyptians came to call Kush. Its early kingdom had its capital at Kerma, near the Third Cataract. Kerma's rulers controlled trade in gold, ivory and ebony, and their builders raised a huge mud-brick temple whose remains still stand.

4Middle Kingdom kings wanted Kush's gold and other goods, and they also feared its power. Around the Second Cataract they built a chain of large mud-brick forts, such as Buhen and Semna, many of them on cliffs and islands where the rapids forced boats to slow down or be dragged past. Near one fort, at a place called Iken, archaeologists have found signs of a trading post where goods changed hands.

Document A (adapted from a translation of "The Satire of the Trades")

I have seen the metalworker at the mouth of his furnace. His fingers are rough like the skin of a crocodile, and he smells worse than fish eggs.

The potter is caked with mud. He digs in the field more than a pig does, just to get clay for his pots.

The washerman washes clothes on the riverbank, close to the crocodiles.

The weaver sits in the workshop all day with his knees against his chest. He cannot breathe fresh air.

Set your heart on writing, my son, so that you may escape hard labor of every kind. No job is free of a boss, except the scribe's, for the scribe is the boss.

Document B (adapted from a translation of the Semna boundary stela)

This is the southern boundary, set in Year 8 under the Majesty of King Senusret III, may he live forever. No Nubian shall pass it going downstream, by land or by boat, and no herds of the Nubians shall pass it, except a Nubian who comes to trade at Iken or who comes on an official errand. Every good thing shall be done for such people. But no boat of the Nubians shall be allowed to pass Semna going downstream, forever.