A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other scripts as well as secretarial and administrative duties such as the taking of dictation and keeping of business, judicial, and historical records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities.
The profession of scribe first appears in Mesopotamia. Scribes contributed in fundamental ways to ancient and medieval cultures, including Egypt, China, India, Persia, the Roman Empire, and medieval Europe. Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam have important scribal traditions. Scribes have been essential in these cultures for the preservation of legal codes, religious texts, and artistic and didactic literature. In some cultures, social functions of the scribe and of the calligrapher overlap, but the emphasis in scribal writing is on exactitude, whereas calligraphy aims to express the aesthetic qualities of writing apart from its content.Cory MacPherson, Inventions in Reading and Writing: From Calligraphy to E-readers (Cavendish Square, 2017), pp. 22–23.
Previously a prominent fixture in literary cultures, scribes lost most of their prominence and status with the advent of the printing press. The generally less prestigious profession of scrivener continued to be important for copying and writing out legal documents and the like. In societies with low literacy rates, street-corner letter-writers (and readers) may still be found providing scribe service.
Mesopotamia
The Sumerians developed one of the earliest writing systems (cuneiform), the first body of written literature, and an extensive scribal profession to further these activities. The work of Near Eastern scribes primarily exists on clay tablets and stone monuments written in cuneiform, though later in the period of cuneiform writing they begin to use papyrus, parchment, and writing tablets.Roger Matthews, "Writing (and Reading) as Material Practice: The World of Cuneiform Culture as an Arena for Investigation," in Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium (Ubiquity, 2013), p. 72. The body of knowledge that scribes possessed belonged to an elite urban culture, and few had access to it.Massimo Maoicchi, "Writing in Early Mesopotamia: The Historical Interplay of Technology, Cognition, and Environment," in Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), p. 408. Traveling scribes played a vital role in the dissemination of literary culture.Daniel Arnaud, "Scribes and Literature," Near Eastern Archaeology 63:4, The Mysteries of Ugarit: History, Daily Life, Cult (2000), p. 199
During the middle to late 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian literature in the form of disputations proliferated, such as the Debate between bird and fish; the Debate between Summer and Winter, in which Winter wins; and others between the cattle and grain, the tree and the reed, silver and copper, the pickaxe and the plough, and the millstone and the gul-gul stone. Nearly all known Sumerian literary works were preserved as a result of young scribes apprenticing for their profession.Paul Delnero, "Memorization and the Transmission of Sumerian Literary Compositions," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 71:2 (October 2012), p. 189. In addition to literary works, the contents of the tablets they produced include word lists, syllabaries, grammar forms, and lists of personal names.Delnero, "Memorization and Transmission," p. 189.
To the extent that the curriculum in scribal schools can be reconstructed, it appears that they would have begun by studying lists and syllabaries and learning metrology, the formulas for writing legal contracts, and proverbs. They then might have advanced to praise poems and finally to copying more sophisticated works of literature.Delnero, "Memorization and Transmission," p. 190. Some scholars have thought that apprentice scribes listened to literary compositions read aloud and took dictation; others, that they copied directly from master copies. A combination of dictation, copying, and memorization for reproduction has also been proposed.As reviewed by Delnero, "Memorization and Transmission," p. 191.
Ancient Egypt
One of the most important professionals in ancient Egypt was a person educated in the arts of writing (both hieroglyphics and hieratic scripts, as well as the demotic script from the second half of the first millennium BCE, which was mainly used as shorthand and for commerce) and arithmetic. Sons of scribes were brought up in the same scribal tradition, sent to school, and inherited their fathers' positions upon entering the civil service.
Much of what is known about ancient Egypt is due to the activities of its scribes and the officials. But because of their ability to study in the vast Egyptian libraries, they were entrusted with jobs bigger than just copyists. Monumental buildings were erected under their supervision, administrative and economic activities were documented by them, and stories from Egypt's lower classes and foreign lands survive due to scribes putting them in writing.
Scribes were considered part of the royal court, were not conscripted into the army, did not have to pay taxes, and were exempt from the heavy manual labor required of the lower classes (corvée labor). The scribal profession worked with painters and artisans who decorated reliefs and other building works with scenes, personages, or hieroglyphic text. However, the physical aspect of their work sometimes took a toll on their joints, with ancient bones showing some signs of arthritis that might be attributable to their profession.
The hieroglyph used to signify the scribe, to write and writings, etc., is Gardiner sign Y3, Y3 from the category of 'writings, & music'. The hieroglyph contains the scribe's ink-mixing palette, a vertical case to hold writing-reeds, and a leather pouch to hold the black and red ink blocks.
The demotic scribes used rush pens which had stems thinner than that of a reed (2 mm). The end of the rush was cut obliquely and then chewed so that the fibers became separated. The result was a short, stiff brush which was handled in the same manner as that of a calligrapher.
Thoth was the god credited with the invention of writing by the ancient Egyptians. He was the scribe of the gods who held knowledge of scientific and moral laws.
China
The earliest known examples of writing in China are a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the late Shang dynasty (), with the very oldest dated to . It was originally used for divination, with characters etched onto turtle shells to interpret cracks caused by exposure to heat. By the sixth century BCE, scribes were producing books using bamboo and wooden slips. Each strip contained a single column of script, and the books were bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. China is well-known as being the place where paper was originally invented, likely by an imperial eunuch named Cai Lun in 105 CE. The invention of paper allowed for the later invention of woodblock printing, where paper was rubbed onto an inked slab to copy the characters. Despite this invention, calligraphy remained a prized skill due to the belief that "the best way to absorb the contents of a book was to copy it by hand".
Chinese scribes played an instrumental role in the imperial government's civil service. During the Tang dynasty, private collections of Confucian classics began to grow. Young men hoping to join the civil service would need to pass an exam based on Confucian doctrine, and these collections, which became known as "academy libraries" were places of study. Within this merit system, owning books was a sign of status. Despite the later importance of Confucian manuscripts, they were initially heavily resisted by the Qin dynasty. Though their accounts are likely exaggerated, later scholars describe a period of book burning and scholarly suppression. This exaggeration likely stems from Han dynasty historians being steeped in Confucianism as state orthodoxy.
Similarly to the west, religious texts, particularly Buddhist, were transcribed in monasteries and hidden during "times of persecution". In fact, the earliest known copy of a printed book is of the Diamond Sutra dating to 868 CE, which was found alongside other manuscripts within a walled-in cave called Dunhuang.
As professionals, scribes would undergo three years of training before becoming novices. The title of "scribe" was inherited from father to son. Early in their careers, they would work with local and regional governments and did not enjoy an official rank. A young scribe needed to hone their writing skills before specializing in an area like public administration or law. Archaeological evidence even points to scribes being buried with marks of their trade such as brushes, "administrative, legal, divinatory, mathematical, and medicinal texts", thus displaying a personal embodiment of their profession.
Already throughout the Zhou period, scribes appear to have enjoyed a reputation as trustworthy and steadfast recorders of events—individuals who would risk their lives to preserve an accurate account of the truth. They frequently appear in historiography as reliable witnesses whose very presence authenticates an episode; in some cases, they may even have been invented to lend a particular story greater credibility.
India
The Buddhist Tripiṭaka emerged at the beginning of the first century. Buddhist texts were treasured and sacred throughout Asia and were written in different languages. Buddhist scribes believed that, “The act of copying them could bring a scribe closer to perfection and earn him merit.”
Rather later, Hindu texts were written, although the most sacred, especially the Vedas, were not written down until much later, and were learnt by heart by the priestly Brahmins. Writing in the several scripts of Indic languages was generally not regarded as a distinct artistic form, in a situation similar to Europe, but different from East Asian traditions of calligraphy.
Japan
By the 5th century CE, written Chinese was being adapted in Japan to represent spoken Japanese. The complexity of reconciling Japanese with a system of writing not meant to express it meant that acquiring literacy was a long process.Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche, "The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan: The State of the Discipline," Book History 14 (2011), p. 270. Phonetic syllabaries (kana), used for private writing, were developed by the 8th century and were in use along with kanji, the logographic system, used for official records.Kamei-Dyche, "The History of Books and Print Culture," pp. 270–271. Gendering of the private and public spheres led to a characterization of kana as more feminine and kanji as masculine, but women of the court were educated and knew kanji, and men also wrote in kana, while works of literature were produced in both.Kamei-Dyche, "The History of Books and Print Culture," p. 271.
The earliest extant writings take the form of mokkan, wooden slips used for official memoranda and short communications and for practical purposes such as shipping tags;Joan R. Piggott, "Mokkan: Wooden Documents from the Nara Period," Monumenta Nipponica 45:4 (1990), pp. 449–450. inscriptions on metal and stone; and manuscripts of sutras and commentaries. Mokkan were often used for writing practice.Kamei-Dyche, "The History of Books and Print Culture," p. 293, n. 8. Manuscripts first took the form of rolls made from cloth or sheets of paper,Kamei-Dyche, "The History of Books and Print Culture," p. 272. but when manuscripts began to appear as bound books, they coexisted with handscrolls (makimono).