Scribes in the Egyptian expeditions of the 3rd millennium BC

At the dawn of the 3rd millennium BC, seals or short inscriptions mention scribes controlling products or registering important data. From the 4th dynasty onwards, the administration tends to a diversification of functions, and scribes with specific skills and hierarchically organised become more and more frequent (see P. Piacentini, Les scribes dans la société égyptienne de l’Ancien Empire, Paris 2002). Scribes were regularly employed in human resources management, and participated in missions to the peripheral regions. They assisted the chiefs of the expeditions and were charged of the logistics, organising the movement of products and materials, as well as their inventory, transportation from the point of origin to the point of use, etc. During the expeditions, they were also in charge of the general management and sustainment of the participants. These were duties that they accomplished also, for example, in construction sites, at the Giza Pyramids city or in temples. Higher level officials, with titles connected with literacy, could be themselves chiefs of expeditions. This is the case, for example, of the officials Weni of Abydos and Ikhi of Saqqara. Many proofs of the presence of scribes in the expeditions have been and continue to be discovered, from Nubia to the Western and Eastern deserts, from Sinai to the recent excavated harbour site of Wadi el-Jarf. In addition to graffiti, sealings or monumental inscriptions recording this scribesʼ activity, they are also shown in the middle of running troops, on an interesting relief dating back to Userkare and reused in the Pyramid Temple of Amenemhat I at Lisht North. The material and documentary evidence, the analysis of the titles, and the inferred role of these very active scribes will be presented in the communication.