Scribe

A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.

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• At new year, on the day of rites, the lady libates water on the holy. [...] On the day when the bowls of rations are inspected, Nance also inspects the servants during the appointments. Her chief scribe Nisaba places the precious tablets on her knees and takes a golden stylus in her hand. She arranges the servants in single file for Nance and then it will be decided whether or not a leather-clad servant can enter before her in his leather, whether or not a linen-clad servant can pass before her in his linen. Any registered and [...] hired person about whom observers and witnesses claim to witness his fleeing from the house will be terminated in his position. [...] The king who always cares for the faithful servants, Haia, the man in charge of registration, registers on a tablet him who is said to be a faithful servant of his lady but deletes from the tablet her who is said not to be the maidservant of her lady.
  • Anonymous, A hymn to Nanshe, late 3rd millennium BCE, at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

• Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live.
  • Hori in Death Comes as the End (1945), written by Agatha Christie.

• The wisdom of a scribe cometh by his time of leisure: and he that is less in action, shall receive wisdom.
  • Sirach 38:25, written by Ben Sira, ca. 180–175 BC, Douay-Rheims Bible.

• If a scribe knows only a single line but his handwriting is good, he is indeed a scribe!
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• What kind of a scribe is a scribe who does not know Sumerian?
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• The scribe trained in counting is deficient on clay. The scribe skilled with clay is deficient in counting.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• A chattering scribe's guilt is great.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• A scribe who does not know how to grasp the meaning -- from where will he produce a translation?
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• The pencil that once freely traced the line
  Along the ruler’s straight and even side—
  The blade that shaped the reed-pen’s edges fine—
  The ruler too, the hand’s unswerving guide—
  The rugged pumice-stone, whose rasping kiss
  Sharpened the blunted reed-pen’s double lip—
  The sponge, uptorn from Neptune’s deep abyss,
  To cleanse the text from accidental slip—
  The desk of many cells, that did contain
  His ink, and all materials of his trade—
  The scribe to Hermes gives. After long strain,
  Palsied by age, his hand to rest is laid.
  • Paulus Silentiarius (AG vi. 64, 65), translated by Herbert Kynaston

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• Catholic Encyclopedia. newadvent.org.