Scribes. Les Artisans du Textes en Egypte Ancienne.

Résumé En

Did the Egyptians invent bureaucracy? The question is not an easy one since rituals, orality and patronage networks must have played a role that was at least as important as formal written procedures. What is however certain is that during the New Kingdom period, between 1500 and 1070 before Christ, Egypt achieved the size of an Empire. From Nubia to Syria, there were huge resources to explore and to exploit. It is therefore no surprise that this age was also the age of a revolution in the status of the Egyptian writing. As agents of the institutional control of activities, scribes played a prominent role and formed a social category which had its own values and language. In order to trace the entire history of this environment and of these men, Chloé Ragazolli uses archeological and textual sources that has been so far largely unexploited : the manuscripts of miscellanea, called florilegia, in which scribes showed their skills and literary knowledge. The investigation begins looking at the scribe’s hand on the manuscript, his writing, ink on papyrus, where variation and compilation from memory play an important role. Scribes take hold of the literate archive of their time and indulge in thousands of variations in order to produce new literary genres which have led us to consider them as masters covered with honour. Scribes are therefore an intermediary elite which is the only instance capable of initiating and operating the political and state machinery. In a word: how a literate knowledge holds an Empire, and even more, its memory.