EDUCATION IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 777 



ment is : All animals — horses, lions, dogs, hawks — can be tamed, 

 and a certain animal from Ethiopia can be taught to speak and 

 sing ; why can not a young scribe be tamed in like manner ? But 

 since men and animals are not exactly one and the same thing, 

 the teachers also used "moral suasion," as we would say. The 

 pupil is constantly pursued with moral precepts and good advice. 

 He is continually admonished to be diligent and obedient, lest he 

 be beaten, for " a boy's ears are situated on his back." 



Another principle of Egyptian pedagogics was that the pupils 

 should be but scantily fed. Three rolls and two mugs of beer 

 must suffice for a day, and these the boy's mother brings him 

 every day, and she certainly never forgot to add some slight gift 

 for the teacher. When in the times of the new empire (1530 to 

 1000 B. c.) Egypt became a military nation, she needed trained 

 officers to lead her troops. These officers were looked upon as 

 officials, as scribes, and their official title was "army-scribes." 

 They were educated in a special school attached to one of the de- 

 partments, which one we do not know, nor do we know what spe- 

 cial course of training they went through. 



These schools were maintained by the government for its own 

 purposes ; but there was also a large number of theological schools 

 connected with the various temples, and each temple trained up 

 its priests in its own peculiar doctrines. These temple schools 

 seem to have held in ancient Egypt much the same position that 

 the various theological seminaries hold here. There are cases on 

 record showing that young men first graduated from one of the 

 department schools before entering the temple school, and this may 

 have been the regular course. 



The ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the sciences of 

 medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, and were good practical 

 engineers and miners. Medicine was, of course, in a very crude 

 and primitive state, though the " Papyrus Ebers " shows some 

 knowledge of anatomy and pathology. Astronomy had been some- 

 what further advanced. The ancient Egyptians had discovered 

 the zodiac, grouped the stars in constellations, and had devised a 

 means, although crude, of determining the position of the various 

 stars in the heavens ; but they seem not to have distinguished the 

 stars from the planets. Their mathematical knowledge was ex- 

 tremely crude and primitive. They could add and subtract, but 

 multiplication and division were very cumbersome, owing to the 

 fact that they could multiply only by 2, and that division resolved 

 itself into the problem of finding by what number the divisor 

 must be multiplied in order to produce the dividend. Of frac- 

 tions they only knew those whose numerator is 1, except the frac- 

 tion f . Geometry and mensuration were also practiced. In their 

 surveys they based their operations on the right-angled triangle. 



