Scribe

Did You Know?

• In Sumer, nearly all known literary works were preserved as a result of young scribes apprenticing for their profession.
• Sumerian disputations from the middle to late 3rd millennium BCE include the Debate between bird and fish and the Debate between Summer and Winter, in which Winter wins.
• In ancient Egypt, monumental buildings were erected under the supervision of scribes, and stories from lower classes and foreign lands survive due to scribes putting them in writing.

Japan

By the 5th century CE, written Chinese was being adapted in Japan to represent spoken Japanese, a complex process that made literacy time-consuming. Phonetic syllabaries (kana) developed by the 8th century were used for private writing alongside kanji, the logographic system for official records. Kana came to be seen as more feminine and kanji as masculine, though women of the court knew kanji and men also wrote in kana. The earliest surviving writings include mokkan (wooden slips) for official memoranda, short communications, and writing practice, as well as inscriptions on metal and stone, and manuscripts of sutras and commentaries. Manuscripts initially took the form of rolls made from cloth or paper; later, bound books coexisted with handscrolls (makimono). Chinese influence made writing immensely important in the early Japanese court. The earliest surviving Japanese writing dates from the late Asuka and Nara periods (550–794), when Buddhist texts were copied and disseminated. Monks, skilled in writing and Chinese culture, were employed in scribal and bureaucratic work. In portraits of Buddhist clerics, a handscroll symbolizes scribal authority and knowledge. Government offices and Buddhist centers employed copyists on a wide scale, requiring paper, glue, ink, brushes, exemplars, an organizational structure, and technicians for assembly (sōkō or sō’ō). More than 10,000 Nara documents are preserved in the Shōsōin archives of the Tōdai-ji temple complex. The ritsuryō legal state (8th–10th centuries) generated a mountain of paperwork, employing hundreds of bureaucratic scribes. The average sutra copyist produced 3,800–4,000 characters per day, paid by the page; the fastest completed thirteen or more sheets daily, working on a low table and seated on the floor. Proofreaders checked copies against exemplars, and scribes were docked pay for errors.

Judaism

In ancient Israel, scribes were a small group of literate people living in a culture that relied mostly on spoken words. Some scribes came from priestly families, while others worked in royal palaces and government offices, keeping records and writing letters. They were part of groups that acted like early professional guilds. During the early Iron Age, from around 1200 to 800 BCE, there were no schools for scribes. The Hebrew alphabet as we know it did not yet exist between the 13th and 8th centuries BCE. Scribal schools started to appear only after the Kingdom of Israel was established, especially under King Omri, and they reached their peak during the reign of Jeroboam II, influenced by Mesopotamian practices. The Hebrew writing system became standardized between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, which led to set rules and principles that scribes had to learn. The state paid for scribal education, though some families may have passed down scribal skills on their own. Copying documents was not always a required part of a scribe’s job.

Jewish scribes followed very strict procedures when copying the Torah and other books of the Hebrew Bible. They could only use clean animal skins for writing and for binding the manuscripts. Each column of text had to have between 48 and 60 lines. The ink had to be black and made from a special recipe. While writing, they had to say every word out loud. Before writing the most holy name of God, YHVH, they would wipe their pen and wash their whole body each time, and they would also wash their hands seven times. A review had to happen within thirty days; if as many as three pages needed fixing, the entire manuscript had to be started over. They counted every letter, word, and paragraph, and if two letters touched, the document was considered invalid. The middle paragraph, word, and letter had to match the original exactly. These documents could only be kept in sacred places like synagogues. Because no document containing God’s word could be destroyed, they were stored or buried in a genizah, which means “storage.” Today, sofers—Jewish scribes—are among the few who still do this work by hand on parchment, creating Torah scrolls and other holy texts.

Ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, several occupations required accurate and clear writing. The English word 'scribe' derives from the Latin scriba, a public notary or clerk. The public scribae were the highest in rank among the four prestigious occupational grades (decuriae) of attendants to Roman magistrates. In Rome, scribae worked out of the state treasury and government archive and received a good salary. They were often former slaves and their sons, other educated men who advanced through patronage, or even members of the equestrian order. Duties included recording sworn oaths on public tablets. The office provided knowledge of Roman law, traditionally a privilege of the elite. People with low literacy could use a public scribe for legal documents. A scriba might also be a private secretary. A tabellio (Greek agoraios) was a lower rank of scribe or notary in civil service. A notarius was a stenographer. An amanuensis took dictation and might offer compositional polish; amanuenses were typically Greek and could be male or female. Upper-class Romans used dictation extensively; Julius Caesar reportedly employed as many as four secretaries at once on different projects. The Apostle Paul, a Roman citizen literate in Greek, used an amanuensis for his epistles. It was considered impolite to use a scribe for personal letters to friends; these were to be written by one's own hand. The Vindolanda tablets (early 2nd century CE) from a fort in Roman Britain contain several hundred examples of handwriting, with a few tablets written by professional scribes. Some Roman households had libraries requiring specialized staff including librarii (copyists or scribes, often slaves or freedmen) and librarians (librarioli). Public libraries existed under imperial sponsorship, and bookshops sold books and employed independent librarii and other specialists. A copyist (librarius or libraria) was said to need an 'irrational knack' for copying accurately without slowing down to comprehend it. Some literary slaves specialized in proofreading.

Europe in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, every book was made by hand. Specially trained monks, or scribes, cut sheets of parchment, made ink, wrote the script, bound pages, and created covers. This work took place in a monastic writing room called a scriptorium, kept very quiet for concentration; a large scriptorium might have up to 40 scribes. Scribes woke before dawn and worked until evening, with a lunch break, every day except the Sabbath. Their primary purpose was to promote Christian Church ideas, so they mostly copied classical and religious works. They copied in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew whether or not they understood the language. These re-creations were often written in calligraphy with rich illustrations, making the process time-consuming. Scribes had to ensure straight lines and uniform letter sizes. It typically took fifteen months to copy a Bible. Books were written on parchment or vellum made from treated hides of sheep, goats, or calves, often from the monastery's own animals, as monasteries were self-sufficient in raising animals, growing crops, and brewing beer. The process was too extensive and costly for books to become widespread. Scribes worked only in daylight due to the expense of candles and poor lighting, yet produced three to four pages per day. The average scribe could copy two books per year and was expected to make at least one mistake per page. During the 12th and 13th centuries, copying became more specialized and was increasingly performed by specialists. To meet demand, the pecia system was introduced, assigning different parts of the same text to hired copiers working both in and out of monasteries. Women also served as scribes in Anglo-Saxon England, as religious women in convents and schools were literate. Excavations at medieval convents have uncovered styli, indicating writing and copying occurred there. Female pronouns appear in prayers in manuscripts from the late 8th century, suggesting those manuscripts were originally written by and for female scribes.