Writing Knowledge explores how ancient students and scholars learned to write and become expert in the Egyptian language during the last millennium of native script use (c. 700 BCE - 300 CE). This study analyzes late "technical" texts from two different writing contexts: grammatical paradigms and alphabetic texts produced within scribal schools and word and sign handbooks produced within elite priestly circles. These case studies, each paired with a close cultural analysis of the contexts of their production, provide new insights into writing as a field of knowledge, one whose parameters are defined by ancient Egyptian concepts, rather than one circumscribed by either the Greek grammatical tradition or by modern disciplines like linguistics.
Writing Knowledge : Grammar, Words, and Signs As Scholarship in Ancient Egypt (700 BCE to 300 CE)