FROM ORAL PRACTICE TO WRITTEN RECORD IN

The thousands of hieratic ostraca and papyri from the Ramesside settlement of necropolis workmen at Deir el-Medina include many texts about private business and legal matters. The majority of standard formulas in these records did not develop before the first half of the 20th dynasty, whereas most of the formulas current in administrative texts of the necropolis already existed in the 19th dynasty. The later increase in and formalization of private and legal texts suggest that writing became only gradually popular in village life. Studies of similar processes in anthropological and historical literature help to explain this development in an exceptionally literate village community.