Lord of the Divine Words

Writing, in Egyptian tradition, is not a tool somebody invented but something handed over, and the hieroglyphic script was called medu-netjer — the god's words. Thoth is the one they belong to. Scribes worked under his name for three thousand years, and in the Papyrus of Ani the dead man greets him by offering himself as the equipment: I am your writing palette, and I have brought you your ink-jar. What this tradition picked out to make sacred is worth sitting with. Not a weapon, not a throne. A pen, and the habit of keeping records.