Ancient Egyptian Ostraca: Everyday Records Written on Pottery

When modern-day visitors walk through the world-famous museums, their eyes are attracted to such magnificent monuments as giant statues made of dark granite, golden burial masks, and papyrus scroll leaves with the hieroglyphic text. Yet, when examining the daily reality and the material culture of the ancient world, the Pharaohs’ stone temples and royal tombs are viewed through a prism of idealism, while the real, non-filtered history of the Nile Valley society is written on a different material – ostraca.

The word “ostraca” comes from the Greek word “ostrakon” meaning “shell” and in Egyptology, an ostracon (singular) is a broken piece of pottery used as a writing support or a drawing surface. Considering the fact that handmade papyrus paper was a prestige raw material in the ancient world (a natural crop needing special processing), the small pieces of broken pottery, ground limestone, or shells served as the primary cheap “everyday” writing material in Egypt, Demotic, and later – the Coptic language. Scores of thousands of ancient Egyptian ostraca made of stone and pottery have been discovered to date on the territory of Egypt, providing invaluable primary historical data about the social, economic, and everyday life of the ancient world.

1. Material Culture, Production, and Accessibility

To understand what material culture and historical significance the ostraca had, it is essential to explore the local environmental conditions and the economy of the time.

A. Availability of Writing Materials

The papyrus paper production process was complicated and time-consuming, which explains why blank papyrus scrolls were considered a luxury item available only to the state granaries, temple scriptoria (Per-Ankh), and royal departments of justice.

Meanwhile, local limestone, broken pieces of storage jars, cooking pots, or transport amphorae were abundant in the Nile Valley. Additionally, the natural limestone plateaus surrounding the Theban necropolis in Upper Egypt provided excellent opportunities for obtaining flat stone flakes suitable for writing with a brush. So, every person could collect the necessary raw materials for writing if they wanted to record something memorable. Be it an economic receipt, a letter to a relative, or a medical prescription – the ostraca served as the main “affordable” tool for the daily use of ordinary people.

B. Tools for Use

Scribes used special wooden palettes (gsti) with two round depressions (filled with carbon black ink and red ochre) and reed brushes (rt) to write on the ostraca. A red ink solution was used to indicate the dates of the document, highlight important notes, record mathematical calculations, and scratch out irrelevant information. Since limestone and broken pottery flakes were impervious to the ravages of insects, high humidity, and widespread mold, thousands of ostraca have been excavated from the sand of the Egyptian desert.

2. Deir el-Medina: The Treasure Trove of Non-Elite History

Although ostraca have been discovered at all of Egypt’s critical archaeological sites (Elephantine, Memphis, Amarna, Oxyrhynchus), the Deir el-Medina village is thought to have yielded the most valuable historical documents. This village was home to the royal craftsmen, stonecutters, painters, carpenters, sculptors, and scribes who worked on the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens during the New Kingdom period (c. 1550-1069 BCE). Since a significant part of the village’s population was literate, dozens of ostraca with various notes were made by the craftsmen:

Attendance sheets: Scribes assigned to a particular royal tomb group kept track of all employees who came to work each day. The scribes marked each absent worker indicating the reason for the absence – from a “biting scorpion” and an “eye infection” to helping a wife change “her menstrual pad.”

Economic receipts: Since there was no money in ancient Egypt (barter was the main method of currency exchange), citizens bought and sold goods according to the number of copper coins (debens) and bags of emmer wheat. For example, an ostraca contains the following note: “I have delivered to the woodcutter 1 bed for 12 debens of copper, and I have received 2 sacks of emmer wheat and 1 jar of oil.”

Personal letters: Short notes were often passed from hand to hand requesting something important: “Please send me copper chisel by the bearer of the note, as my work is at a standstill.” Other letters contained personal news: “I am sick; bring me some vegetables and fish.”

3. Legal Disputes, Judicial Ostraca, and the Status of Women

The ostraca contain vast amounts of vital information about the daily reality of the ancient Egyptian town, the legal system, and the social order. Most ordinary disputes in a village or a city were brought before the local Kenbet (council of elders, foreman, and scribes) who heard arguments and judged the cases.

Court documents were recorded directly on large limestone flakes:

Suspect interrogation notes, testimony of witnesses, house search records for stolen treasures, and court decisions were all recorded on ostraca. In more complex cases, when human judges could not decide a property dispute or a case of assault and battery, the villagers brought the written ostraca with alternative outcomes to the local deity (ex: deified Amenhotep I) to receive a supernatural sign from the gods.

Women in Ancient Egypt enjoyed one of the most considerable legal protections in the ancient world. According to archaeological finds recorded on ostraca, women could own, rent, buy, and sell movable and immovable property on their own without the guardianship of a male relative.

Women used to file for divorce and alimony claims and often demanded the return of their dowry. Disputes between business partners were also common, and one could see notes like “my son shall inherit my property, but my daughter has failed me in her old age, and I will leave her nothing.”

4. Literature, Art, and Scribal Education

Ostraca were also popular tools for storing literary texts and artistic images, and today, these primary sources provide scholars with invaluable data on the cultural and intellectual history of Ancient Egypt.

A. Learning Hieratic Language

In the “House of Life” (Per-Ankh) and village schools, student scribes learned to read and write Hieratic by exercising the repetitive copying of classical literary texts, exemplary letters, and governmental documents on limestone flakes. Modern Egyptologists can identify student ostraca by their thick, clumsy handwriting, spelling mistakes, and red ink marks indicating the corrections made by their Egyptian teachers. Thanks to the hard work of ancient Egyptian students, the world has an opportunity to read the Story of Sinuhe, the Instruction of Amenemope, and other masterpieces of Ancient Egyptian literature.

B. Artists’ Sketches and Trial Pieces

Before painting large-scale monumental compositions inside the royal tombs, the master painters (shes-qed) used to practice their skills drawing on ostraca. Thousands of discovered artistic flakes contain humorous sketches, anatomical dissections of animals as well as pharaohs, and preparatory sketches for the paintings:

Mice as pharaohs and cats serving them wine in banquets were popular subjects in the art of Ancient Egypt. Another ostraca contains a grid exercise, a dynamic study of hands, and the famous eighteen-square Canon of Proportions used by the master artists to design Egypt’s temple architecture.

Conclusion

The study of Ancient Egypt’s historical memory is one of the most fascinating spheres of human knowledge. While the Pharaohs’ colossal monuments of dark granite and white marble keep the memory of the ancient world’s ideals, the thin flakes of broken pottery and limestone record the real life of the ancient world’s people. Through the study of ostraca, modern historians have glimpsed the daily reality of the ancient Egyptian scribes, stonecutters, weavers, doctors, and farmers. The preserved notes on ostraca about attendance at work, economic barters, and personal letters of the citizens help to remember the world’s long-forgotten culture.