and 30 B.C. Revered as gods by their subjects, they ruled over large extended families and were responsible for maintaining harmony in their expansive kingdom. The life of a pharaoh was marked by pampering, procreation, power and prestige. According to the book about Ancients in Their Own Words: Egyptians, the pharaohs had huge palaces and pyramids built for them. Most of the people worked on the land and paid taxes to the pharaoh in the form of grain. To keep track of his revenues and to make sure everything was in order, the pharaoh had an army of scribes. They wrote using a script called hieroglyphics. The script was made up of little pictures, sometimes of the things they represented, or they were visual jokes of other words that simply sounded like those things. It took years to master the script sort of writing and it also took a long time to write anything down, so hieroglyphics were reserved for the most formal inscriptions. Eventually, a more fluent version of writing was also developed which was known as hieratic script. Even though the script was based on hieroglyphics, and experienced scribe could write it more
and 30 B.C. Revered as gods by their subjects, they ruled over large extended families and were responsible for maintaining harmony in their expansive kingdom. The life of a pharaoh was marked by pampering, procreation, power and prestige. According to the book about Ancients in Their Own Words: Egyptians, the pharaohs had huge palaces and pyramids built for them. Most of the people worked on the land and paid taxes to the pharaoh in the form of grain. To keep track of his revenues and to make sure everything was in order, the pharaoh had an army of scribes. They wrote using a script called hieroglyphics. The script was made up of little pictures, sometimes of the things they represented, or they were visual jokes of other words that simply sounded like those things. It took years to master the script sort of writing and it also took a long time to write anything down, so hieroglyphics were reserved for the most formal inscriptions. Eventually, a more fluent version of writing was also developed which was known as hieratic script. Even though the script was based on hieroglyphics, and experienced scribe could write it more