Early World Civilizations: Supplemental Guide 6A | Writing in Ancient Egypt 121 Show image 6A-3: Messenger
“Sometimes messages need to be carried by messengers over
very long distances,” Meret’s mother explained, “and in the time it
took to travel great distances, the messengers sometimes forgot
the messages, or got some of the words mixed up when they tried
to repeat them.”
“That is not so good!” Meret exclaimed. “Then the person could
get the wrong message!”
“Exactly,” Meret’s mother continued. “However, when the
message is written down, there is no chance that the messenger
will forget the message or get it mixed up. This is one reason why
reading and writing are so important. We Egyptians decided it was
important to write things down accurately.”^3
“That seems like a good idea.” Meret agreed. “So writing
things down using symbols helps messengers deliver the correct
message, but are there other things that writing is used for?”
Show image 6A-4: More hieroglyphs^4
“Many things,” Meret’s mother said. “Writing is used so that
the important things that happen will be remembered for a long,
long time. It is how we can look back and remember things that
happened before you and I were even alive!”
“Wow!” Meret said in amazement.
Her mother continued, “So we write to record our history, but
we also use it to write down laws that everyone should follow.^5
We use these symbols to write down stories, poems, and even
songs.”
“Like the beautiful song you always sing to me, Mother?” Meret
inquired.
“Yes, the song I sing to you every night has been written down
so that it will be remembered forever,” Meret’s mother answered,
smiling.3 or correctly without any mistakes
5 How is this like the
Mesopotamians? What was the
set of laws called? (the Code of
Hammurabi) The word history
refers to things that happened in
the past.
4 What are these symbols called?
[Pause for students’ responses.]