The jobs of the upper class are fairly well known.
The writer of the Satire, obviously a scribe himself, may have exaggerated somewhat for effect but his argument is basically sound: the occupation of scribe was among the most comfortable in ancient Egypt and certainly compared favorably with most jobs. Behold, there is nothing that surpasses writings!.I do not see an office to be compared with it, to which this maxim could relate: I shall make you love books more than your mother and I shall place their excellence before you. See for yourself, it saves one from work. It is to writings that you must set your mind. All of these jobs are described in great detail in order to impress on the boy that he should embrace the life of the scribe, the greatest job one could have, as he tells his son: The fisherman is "more miserable than any other profession" because he must count on his good catch in a day to make a living and must also contend with the dangers in the water which often catch him unawares as "no one told him that a crocodile was standing there" and he is swiftly taken (Simpson, 435). The washerman "launders at the riverbank in the vicinity of the crocodile" and his children want nothing to do with him because he is always covered in other people's filth. The arrow maker wears himself out trying to gather raw materials and the merchant has to leave home with no guarantee of returning and finding his family intact. The father characterizes the life of the carpenter as "miserable" and how the field hand on farms "cries out forever" while the weaver is "wretched" (Simpson, 434). The Trustees of the British Museum (Copyright)
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