Abstract
My interest in writing as a material practice was sparked in part during one of John Tait’s courses on ancient Egyptian scripts that I attended while studying for my Master’s degree at the UCL Institute of Archaeology during 2000–1. Using modern papyrus, ink and lengths of rush which we made into pens, John encouraged us to consider the importance of the scribal practices – the complex relationships between tools, materials for writing with and on, and the embodied actions and socio-cultural knowledge of the scribe – which lay behind the written documents we were learning to read. I continued to explore writing materiality and practice in my doctoral research on early Egyptian writing (Piquette 2007), in part under John’s guiding hand. His thought-provoking perspectives on scribal practice continue to inform my research (Piquette 2008; 2010; Piquette and Whitehouse [eds] forthcoming), as they do the following case study on a First Dynasty inscribed stone vessel fragment from the World Museum, Liverpool (1977.112.296).