Orality and literacy in ancient Egypt

Abstract

Ancient Egypt has long been recognized for its importance as one of the world’s earliest ‘literate’ societies. However, it is only relatively recently that modern scholarship has begun to emphasize pharaonic Egypt’s ties to its pre-literate, prehistoric past and the many ways in which oral modes of behaviour continued to influence Egyptian society throughout the Pharaonic period and beyond. The educational process through which individuals were trained to read and write was itself heavily dependent upon oral recitation. Ritual and literary texts were intended for oral performance, and legal and business documents served to record an oral act. Over time, however, we do find a movement towards the independent use of such documentary texts as binding in their own right. The Ptolemaic and Roman periods witnessed particularly significant change, with writing being mobilized in new ways to support the foreign government’s control of a conquered population.