774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDUCATION IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 



By F. C. H. WENDEL, A.M., Ph.D. 



THE first state to recognize the necessity of education was an- 

 cient Egypt. The period referred to here is from 4000 b. c. 

 to the time of Christ ; but it is only of about fifteen hundred years 

 of this period — 2530-1000 B. c. — that we know the educational con- 

 ditions. But education here was not popular education. The 

 ancient Egyptians had no care of the populace; they educated 

 only their officials. The government consisted of the departments 

 of state, treasury, and justice. Each of these departments had its 

 own schools, in which young men were trained for the work of the 

 department ; but it is only of the treasury schools that we know 

 anything, and of these we do not know any details. Besides these 

 department schools of the general government, there was a num- 

 ber of department schools in the various nomes into which 

 Egypt was divided.* These schools did not purpose to give their 

 pupils a liberal education, but merely to train up competent offi- 

 cials, and in this they succeeded admirably. The efficiency of the 

 various departments is traceable, to a great extent, to the excellent 

 training their officials received in these schools. 



It is a significant fact that all boys, rich or poor, of lofty or 

 humble birth, were received into these schools. In the earliest 

 times, boys born on the same day with the prince royal were edu- 

 cated together with him ; but in later times this custom was 

 stopped, possibly because the prince royal attended the same de- 

 partment schools as those of humbler parentage. No distinction 

 of castes existed, and no discrimination was made, either by the 

 teachers or the government, between scribes (i. e., students or offi- 

 cials) of lofty birth and those of humbler antecedents. It is true 

 that in ancient Egypt, as everywhere else, influence went a great 

 way after a young man had entered the actual service of the 

 government ; but it is equally true that specially efficient officials 

 of lowly birth advanced step by step to the highest offices in the 

 gift of the government. All, the rich as well as the poor, ad- 

 vanced step by step from the lower offices to the higher, the prince 

 royal being compelled to go through the same course of training 

 and to advance through the same offices as the laborer's son, 

 though, of course, his progress was more rapid, and in the end he 



* Egypt was not always what it appears in historic times, a political whole ; on the 

 contrary, we have abundant proof that it was for a long while divided into two uations, the 

 north and south countries, which were by Mena, about 4000 b. a, united under one scepter, 

 much as Sweden and Norway are to-day. Each of these two countries, again, was a com- 

 posite product, the resultant of the union of various small districts which we are accus- 

 tomed to call nomes. These nomes retained all through antiquity a certain autonomy, hav- 

 ing their own .governments modeled after the general government, and their hereditary rulers. 



