Scribe's palette

The ancient Egyptian Scribe equipment hieroglyph, Gardiner sign listed no. Y3, (or reversed, Y4), portrays the equipment of the scribe. Numerous scribes used the hieroglyph in stating their name, either on papyrus documents, but especially on statuary or tomb reliefs.

The hieroglyph depicts the 3 major components of a scribe's equipment:

Often the transliteration "sesh" appears, derived from the mistaken reading sš propagated in the dictionary and books of E. A. W. Budge. This reading is found as a phonetic complement using the signs for z and š, leading to the misunderstanding. However, Old Kingdom Egyptian lacked a distinct sign for the ẖ sound and the Coptic descendant shows that the original second consonant was indeed the palatalized fricative ẖ not the (alveolo-)palatal sibilant š, (š being the pool-lake-basin (hieroglyph) in the Egyptian language).

Meryre, a Scribe, and his wife
(hieroglyph on his pants, w/ his name)

Block statue of a scribe
(with his name)

Wood panel of scribe Hesy-Ra
(1 of 7 panels, Old Kingdom)

Seated scribe with part of scribe equipment on shoulders
(2-basin mixing palette over left shoulder)

Artifact

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Wikipedia