Storyline

Ancient Egyptian pseudo-script

This document was made by an ancient Egyptian royal necropolis workman around 1163 BCE. He is not a trained scribe, but he is clever enough to invent his own notation system. He borrows signs from different scripts and creates entirely new signs of his own. In addition, he employs the identity marks that he and his fellow workmen use. This unique repertoire of signs allows him to record the deliveries of commodities to the settlement in which he lives. The documents are important to him and his community, because he wants to ensure they receive the goods to which they are entitled. Only recently did Egyptologists figure out how to read his records. In this story, we will find out what this document says, why our writer made it, and who he may have been.

This story is also available in Nederlands (nl).
Credits

A story by Daniel Soliman. As part of Week of Ancient WritingTranslations by Frank van den Boom.