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Archaeologists are making new and incredible discoveries all the time, but their latest find was really special, as it gives us an insight into the daily life of the ancient Egyptians, ranging from their shopping lists to the type of the homework they were doing.
According to a report in the Smithsonian magazine, excavating the city of Athribis, an ancient settlement in lower Egypt, scientists discovered more than 18,000 painted ceramic pieces. Painted pottery is known as “ostracus”, an alternative affordable than papyrus. Among them were receipts, food lists, market registers, and assignments for students on how to write and draw.
A large number of the fragments appear to have originated from an ancient school.
In fact, more than a hundred of the oysters are covered with repetitive writing exercises, which is thought to be a form of punishment for students who misbehaved. “There are numbers, arithmetic exercises, grammar exercises and a ‘bird alphabet’ — each letter is assigned a bird whose name begins with that letter,” said Christian Leitz, a professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany who led the excavations. together with employees of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt.
Almost 80% of these pottery fragments are in demotic, an administrative script used during the reign of Cleopatra’s father’s father, Ptolemy. Greek is the second most common script, but hieroglyphs, Arabic, and the Coptic language also appear, highlighting once again the powerful multicultural history of the time.
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