What was a shaduf used for?

Lifting water from the river into fields

In Egyptology, what are ostraca?

Flakes of pottery or limestone used for writing and sketching

Clay tablets sealed inside jars

Rolls of leather kept in archives

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Ancient Egypt Medium ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~7 Mins +100 XP

Writing, Work & Daily Life

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Away from the kings and the gods, Egypt left an unusually detailed record of ordinary life. Ten questions on how people wrote, worked, drank and passed the time.

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About this topic

Egypt is one of the few ancient societies where you can read the complaints. Dry conditions preserved not just monuments but shopping lists, court records, love poems, school exercises and letters from workmen arguing about pay. The village of Deir el-Medina, home to the men who cut the royal tombs, has given up thousands of these scraps. What they show is a working society with a calendar built around the river, a diet built around bread and beer, and a bureaucracy that wrote everything down. The questions here lean on that everyday material rather than the tomb treasures.

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Writing, Work & Daily Life: all 10 questions and answers

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1Egyptian writing sheets were made from what?
- A Stretched animal skin
- B Woven flax cloth
- C Pounded palm bark
- D The stem of the papyrus plant Correct
Answer: D. The stem of the papyrus plant

Why: Strips cut from the papyrus stem were laid in two crossed layers and pressed together into a sheet. The English word paper comes from papyrus, although true paper is made in a completely different way.
2Who announced the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822?
- A Giovanni Belzoni
- B Flinders Petrie
- C Jean-François Champollion Correct
- D Howard Carter
Answer: C. Jean-François Champollion

Why: Champollion showed that the script mixed signs standing for sounds with signs standing for meanings, which had defeated earlier attempts. The Englishman Thomas Young had made real progress on the same problem shortly before him, and the two are often credited together.
3Which flowing script did Egyptian scribes use for everyday documents in the Old and Middle Kingdoms?
- A Cuneiform
- B Hieratic Correct
- C Demotic
- D Coptic
Answer: B. Hieratic

Why: Hieratic is a rapid brush-written shorthand of hieroglyphs, used for letters, accounts and literature. Demotic replaced it for daily business from around 650 BC, and Coptic, written mostly in Greek letters, came later again.
4What was the everyday drink of Egyptians at every level of society?
- A Beer Correct
- B Wine
- C Milk
- D Tea
Answer: A. Beer

Why: Barley beer was drunk daily by labourers, scribes and priests alike, and bread and beer were standard components of wage rations. It was thick and only lightly alcoholic, closer to a liquid food than a modern pint.
5Which village housed the workmen who cut the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings?
- A Amarna
- B Abydos
- C Bubastis
- D Deir el-Medina Correct
Answer: D. Deir el-Medina

Why: The village was lived in for roughly four centuries and its rubbish heaps preserved thousands of written scraps. They include court cases, sick notes and a record of workers downing tools over late rations under Ramesses III.
6Which board game, played on thirty squares, was popular in Egypt for thousands of years?
- A Go
- B Mancala
- C Senet Correct
- D Backgammon
Answer: C. Senet

Why: Senet boards appear in tombs from the Old Kingdom onwards and were sometimes buried with the dead. Over time the game picked up a religious meaning as a journey through the afterlife, though the exact rules have not survived.
7Egyptian eye paint was mainly ground from which materials?
- A Burnt cork
- B Galena and malachite Correct
- C Powdered pearl
- D Crushed lapis lazuli
Answer: B. Galena and malachite

Why: Black kohl came from galena, a lead ore, and green eye paint from the copper ore malachite. As well as looking striking it cut the glare of the sun, and some researchers think it may have helped against eye infections.
8How was the ancient Egyptian civil year divided?
- A Three seasons of four months Correct
- B Four seasons of three months
- C Two seasons of six months
- D Six seasons of two months
Answer: A. Three seasons of four months

Why: The three seasons were named for the river: inundation, the emergence of the fields, and harvest. Twelve months of thirty days gave 360, and five extra days were added at the end to reach 365.
9What was a shaduf used for?
- A Grinding grain into flour
- B Weighing gold
- C Levelling foundations
- D Lifting water from the river into fields Correct
Answer: D. Lifting water from the river into fields

Why: A shaduf is a pivoted pole with a bucket at one end and a counterweight at the other, worked by one person. It was still in everyday use along the Nile within living memory.
10In Egyptology, what are ostraca?
- A Wooden boards coated in wax
- B Rolls of leather kept in archives
- C Flakes of pottery or limestone used for writing and sketching Correct
- D Clay tablets sealed inside jars
Answer: C. Flakes of pottery or limestone used for writing and sketching

Why: Papyrus was expensive, so receipts, letters, drafts and doodles were scratched onto broken pottery and chips of stone. Thousands survive from Deir el-Medina alone, including artists' sketches that never made it onto a tomb wall.

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