Document Prom The Archive At Dura-Europus (first half of third century A.D.). The numerous papyri from the archive include legal documents and
contracts, a calendar of military festivals, records of the purchase of horses, lists of soldiers, and so forth. This particular document is a letter of one
Marius Maximus concerning the reception and entertainment of a Parthian envoy.
Even the ability to write documents such as the papyri which survive was not common in antiquity. We even hear in Egypt of illiterate scribes. Not so
absurd: to be a scribe was a significant status, worth aspiring to through fraud. Of Pharaonic Egypt we know that scribes were men of very great
importance in the state, and the pairing of Scribe with Pharisee is a still more familiar example of the way in which the skills conferred status. In China the
skills of scholar and scribe, regulated by an amazing system of public examinations, defined the governmental class. In neither Greece nor Rome does the
scribe have this status. At Rome the scribes played a role of their own in the political and social life of the city. The Emperor's service employed numerous
clerks and secretaries. But it was not the handlers of documents, the men with the skills, who rose high. It was much more the cubicularii, the personal
servants, the confidants of the Emperor or of powerful men. And they rose not through skill, dedication, or inside information, but through the patronage
which came from social contacts. None of this speaks of a bureaucracy.
The scribe of ancient Egypt is portrayed cross-legged, his writing equipment on his lap, ready to move wherever he may be required. The classical scribe