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The ancient Egyptian Scribe equipment hieroglyph, Gardiner sign listed no. Y3, (or reversed, Y4), portrays the equipment of the scribe. Numerous scribes used the hieroglyph in stating their name, either on papyrus documents, but especially on statuary or tomb reliefs.
The hieroglyph depicts the 3 major components of a scribe's equipment:
tube case – for holding writing-reeds leather bag – for holding colored inks (the canonical colors, black and red, mixed with water and gum) wood scribal palette – with mixing pools; (not always made from wood)Language usage
Often the transliteration "sesh" appears, derived from the mistaken reading sš propagated in the dictionary and books of E. A. W. Budge. This reading is found as a phonetic complement using the signs for z and š, leading to the misunderstanding. However, Old Kingdom Egyptian lacked a distinct sign for the ẖ sound and the Coptic descendant shows that the original second consonant was indeed the palatalized fricative ẖ not the (alveolo-)palatal sibilant š, (š being the pool-lake-basin (hieroglyph) in the Egyptian language).