10/01/2022
Upper part of the painted limestone sculpture of an anonymous seated scribe. It dates to the 4th Dynasty (circa 2575-2465 BCE). This piece (E 3023) is now in the Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum), Paris, France. Photo: Musée du Louvre / Christian Décamps.
"Every visitor to the Louvre has seen the statue of the Egyptian scribe, squatting on his haunches, almost completely n**e... He keeps record of work done and goods paid, of prices and costs, of profits and loss; he counts the cattle as they move to the slaughter, or corn as it is measured out in sale; he draws up contracts and wills, and makes out his master's income-tax; verily there is nothing new under the sun.
He is sedulously attentive and mechanically industrious; he has just enough intelligence not to be dangerous. His life is monotonous, but he consoles himself by writing essays on the hardships of the manual worker's existence, and the princely dignity of those whose food is paper and whose blood is ink."
― Durant, Will, The Story of Civilization: Part 1, Simon and Schuster, New York, USA, 1954.
