Tens of thousands of years ago, during a period in Egyptian history known as the Old Kingdom (around 2649-2130 BCE), literacy was rare. Of an estimated population of between 1 million and 1.5 million, only about 1% were literate and able to write hieroglyphs.
Their rare skills made writers highly valued by society and the state, and they belonged to the privileged classes. This can be seen in examples from the ancient Egyptian literary genre now called teaching. In Duakheti's Teaching (known as The Satire of the Trades), a father introduces his son to 20 different trades and says:
For the profession of writing is greater than any other profession; there is no other profession on earth like it.
Scribes (always men) recorded the business transactions and revenues of the pharaonic court and the powerful temples ruled by priests. If you've seen reliefs or statues from the period, you've probably seen a depiction of these scribes, usually sitting cross-legged or kneeling as they worked. They had no ergonomic chairs, adjustable desks, or high-quality writing implements to alleviate these awkward positions. But in Duakheti's Teaching , the father makes no mention of the potential physical toll of the craft.
As an anthropologist and an Egyptologist, we wanted to understand how their work affected the bodies of scribes. In a recent study with colleagues from both disciplines, we studied the skeletal remains of privileged men from the Abusir necropolis in Egypt and found that scribes developed many problems compared to other men living in the Old Kingdom. They were more likely than others in the study to develop degenerative changes in their skeletons, most commonly osteoarthritis in their jaws, cervical vertebrae, and knee joints.
Until now, no one has focused on how the occupational habits of scribes affected their skeletons, and how that compares to other occupational groups. Being able to identify specific skeletal changes and degeneration can also be useful when researchers are trying to identify whether the remains they are studying were those of scribes. There are not always situational clues or documents related to remains found in ancient Egyptian burial sites.
Identification of the remains
Abusir, located about 20 km south of Cairo, was one of the largest cemeteries of the Old Kingdom. Nearly 200 tombs from that period have been discovered there since the 1960s by archaeological teams from the Czech Institute of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague. The studied remains are now kept in a storage room in another necropolis, Saqqara.
In ancient Egypt, a person's social class depended on whether he held a high position in one of the branches of state administration or on the rank he had achieved in the royal court. His status also determined where he was buried. The position of a grave in the cemetery, its size, the way it was decorated, the size of the burial chamber, and the materials used for the burial equipment all tell us about an individual's social status.
This knowledge meant that we could concentrate our study on the skeletons of privileged males. We focused on well-preserved specimens, so that we could reliably estimate sex and age at death, and get a good picture of skeletal degeneration. We only evaluated dry bones, not mummies.
Of the 69 sets of remains we studied, 30 belonged to scribes. We know this from written sources found in their tombs. The ancient Egyptians considered it important to record in their tombs the positions, careers, and ranks of people in the royal court. "Our" scribes, as we like to call them, included a vizier (the head of the administration, who reported directly to the pharaoh), as well as a scribe of the king and someone who kept records of the royal children.
Problems throughout the body
We found that the writers' work resulted in a higher incidence of degenerative changes in their skeletons than in the other skeletal remains. The writers showed signs of osteoarthritis, particularly in the temporomandibular joint, cervical spine, right shoulder, right thumb, and knee joint. They also had more affected muscle and ligament attachments at the humerus and left hip, as well as a higher incidence of squatting facets on the right ankle; this condition is associated with prolonged squatting.
Read more: What following a tough journey in ancient Egypt reveals about osteoarthritisThe changes you find in your lower limbs may be due to sitting cross-legged or kneeling for long periods of time.
But the most dramatic (and perhaps most painful) changes occurred in the upper half of the writers' bodies.
In a typical working posture, the writer often wrote without the support of his hands. He sat on the floor with his head bent forward and his spine curved. This changed the center of gravity of the head and put pressure on the spine, which affected the cervical spine. It was probably also responsible for the fact that the men developed severe osteoarthritis in the jaw joint, since these two parts of the skeleton are functionally closely connected, as recent clinical studies have shown.
Another necessary habit of the writers certainly also contributed to the extreme overload of the jaw joint. They used pens made from the prickly rush plant ( Juncus rigidus) which they chewed on the end to form a brush-like head and then wrote with. When the brush became worn, they removed the end and chewed on the next part. They repeated this process many times.
The consequences of this activity can be similar to today's regular, excessive or even constant chewing of gum, which is strongly frowned upon by many dentists: it can lead to temporomandibular joint disorders, often resulting in dislocation of the joint from the socket.
New era, same old problems
Today we know a lot about the physical risks office workers face. These changes will be visible in their skeletons, if they are studied in the future: cervical strain from poor head posture, probably arthritis of the hand or wrist from excessive mouse use, and changes in the ischial bones and lumbar spine from sitting too much. But at least they don't have to chew on their pens to keep the ink flowing.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that brings you facts and reliable analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Petra Brukner Havelková, National Museum (Narodní muzeum) Prague and Veronika Dulíková, Charles University Read more: Petra Brukner Havelková receives funding from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic (DKRVO 2024-2028/7.Ia, National Museum, 00023272) and the Czech Science Foundation through the research project "Titles and Bones of Ancient Egyptian Officials: New Mathematical Approach to Analyzing Data from the Old Kingdom" (GACR 24-10275M). Veronika Dulíková receives funding from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Junior Star 2024-2028, Project No. 24-10275M, Titles and bones of ancient Egyptian officials: New mathematical approach to analysing Old Kingdom data. Her research is also supported by the Cooperatio Program of Charles University, implemented at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University (research area: Archaeology) and a non-investment grant from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (1-VEG 2024, MSMT 1232/2024-8).
