How Egyptian Writing Came to Be

Long, long ago the Egyptians like the Chinese drew pictures to
record everything their pharaohs did. Special scribes drew their
Pharaoh sitting on his fine throne with a whole lot of his slaves and
subjects in clean white loin cloths standing in a row all sideways as
the ancient ones had good easy to draw profiles. The woolly hair of the
Nubian slaves could be pressed down to the right shape for the profile.
Each slave carried something and the pictures looked very decorative
and pretty but they needed a lot of papyrus and a lot of paint, black
for the outlines and colours to fill in. The scribes took days to
finish each picture and sometimes months when they had to record the
week long festivals. Each animal, slave, each gift and every detail had
to be painted in besides each movement of the pharaoh meant another
scene. No one could be left out of any scene drawn. It was a mercy that
when the Pharaoh became Ra he took on a stiff pose and moved very
little. Scribes started young and spend all their time painting that
they ended up unable to sit up straight or tolerate the bright Egyptian
sunlight when they went to the banks of the Nile to bathe.
Now there was a little boy who lived very near banks of the Nile, just
as all the ancient Egyptians did. Like all children he loved drawing
pictures but his father was a sickly farmer with a dozen children and
so couldn't afford to barter farm products for papyrus rolls for him to
paint. He there fore spent all his spare time drawing pictures with a
stick for a stylus on the sandy banks of the Nile. The little boy being
the brightest of the brood was fondly called little Sun by his parents
and Sun he remained to all in the village.
Little Sun was one day drawing pictures on the banks of the river when
a royal boat with the princesses, sisters of the pharaoh and their
maids dropped anchor to enjoy the fresh breezes of the Nile and pluck
some of the tall papyrus to make toys with. They saw the boy drawing
pictures on the sandy bank of the river and were really
impressed.
"How beautifully he draws!" they declared, "even better than the court
artist. Why don't we take him back with us?"
They asked him to get into their boat and soon they were off to the
royal palace. They presented him to their brother who wasn't
particularly impressed but to keep the princesses happy he said the boy
could draw pictures to amuse the royal ladies when ever they felt in
the mood but at other times was to help the busy court artists. A
messenger was sent to his family lest they worry about his absence and
from then on the young Sun lived in the palace. Life in the palace was
very glamorous. He was given very fine almost 'see-through' Egyptian
cotton clothes to wear. They dressed exactly like the scribes depicted
on the inside walls in the insides of the pyramids. He feasted daily on
the best kind of ancient food imaginable. He no longer had to collect
firewood for his mother or help his father in the fields. All he had to
do from sun rise to sunset was to draw pictures and keep the royal
ladies amused. They were very interested and amused when he told them
of his life in the village. His life had certainly changed for the
better. It was fun at first but at times it did get rather tedious. He
was expected to draw all sorts of stupid messages for the princesses on
scraps of papyrus and they just passed them to each other laughed a
lot, tore it up and asked for more messages to be drawn. That's when he
thought of a kind of short cut pictures the ancient kind of short
hand.
Being a rather bright young fellow he knew that if he annoyed the
princesses he would loose his head so he went about it by pretending it
a great big game. Very cleverly he put it to them that they devise a
kind of secret writing and then told them that he would no longer draw
complete pictures but just kind of diagram s for sounds. It would also
mean they could write more.
He filled a papyrus with pictures like the following
?????????????????????????????????
The royal ladies found it all very amusing and certainly proud to have
a secret writing of their own which no body but they, the princesses
and their teacher Sun would know how to read. They being clever
princesses learned quickly. Young Sun found it fun teaching them his
inventions. They enjoyed writing on the scraps of papyrus paper all by
themselves which meant he did not have to spend all his time drawing
messages to be thrown away. He kept inventing easier symbols for
everything he could think of. He devised and taught them little
symbolic pictures for sounds too. Things like stars were easy * looked
like a star and it remained a word. A star* and a ring '0' would become
the word -starring-*0. Words like belief were complicated but a 'bee'
and a 'leaf' did the trick-a bee and leaf together meant 'belief'. For
animals they just drew diagrammatic versions of the animals. For
numbers they just put slashes. As the numbers increased the number of
slashes grew but it certainly was easier than drawing s a 100 cows or
people or a 100 people kissing if you wanted to send a 100 kisses. It
was fun and the young man spent so much time teaching the ladies to
read and write that he did not have to help the royal scribes who had
no mercy when it came to making the young man draw while they rested.
Thus dear readers the first literate people came to be and they were
the little group of Egyptian princesses and their trusted maids. The
new kind of phonetic picture writing, which they called hieroglyphics,
remained a secret until one of the princesses fell in love with the
handsome son of the general. Princesses were not supposed to fall in
love with anyone but a prince. Some generals were princes but this one
wasn't and so the situation wasn't exactly a happy one. Seeing each
other alone wasn't easy. They could send letters but any messages sent
would be read someone and the secret discovered. The only way they
could communicate in secret was to teach him the new secret writing.
Sun being very fond of the pretty Princess Yasmine agreed to teach the
general's son the new writing and soon messages were sent to and fro; a
secret to all but the three.
Such happy situations don't last forever. The message fell into the
wrong hands. The squibles were illegible and thinking it some stupid
scrap of nonsense just threw it away but then more such papyrus bits
with squibles were intercepted. There certainly was some meaning to all
these stupid meaningless looking pictures! The matter certainly had to
be investigated. The palace spies being very efficient it didn't take
long to uncover the whole truth. The lovers were brought before the
pharaoh who the whole court felt was sure to would order their heads
cut off. The pharaoh asked the story of the lovers be retold -he
couldn't understand why no one had read the romantic missiles. The
secret of the hieroglyphics simply had to be told. A very frightened
Sun was brought in chains and presented to the pharaoh to be punished
as he saw meet. The proud ruler was not above curiosity and he asked
the script be explained. The young man was very frightened but he was
also brave. Death faced him and that made him reckless. He demanded
that the princess and her lover be set free before he spoke. Kill the
three of them and the secret of the writing would die with them. (The
king wasn't told that all the princesses were literate.) The wise king
sensed the new writing would be a useful tool and agreed since after
all it didn't matter if one more was added to the many in his court. He
could make the general's son a prince and perhaps gain a loyal subject
by doing so. He was both wise and shrewd.
The whole idea of writing with symbols seemed rather complicated to the
pharaoh at first but he sensed that it was a good useful invention. The
scribes could write more and express ideas too. His name would be
remembered as the creator of hieroglyphics. The real inventor would be
forgotten but not his own name as it would be written that he, the
pharaoh, was the inventor. Ancient pharaohs always behaved this
way-they took the credit for all the inventions of their subjects.
Thus, dear reader, it came about that picture writing came about and
finally led to the discovery of the alphabet as we know it today. The
Egyptian picture writing was certainly more colourful and interesting
than our present day writing. Just look on the pictures of the walls of
the ancient pyramids if you don't believe me.