Recently, archaeologists from the University of Tübingen in Germany announced that more than 18,000 pottery pieces about 2,000 years old were excavated at an archaeological site on the west bank of the Nile River in Egypt.

According to reports, archaeologists from the University of Tübingen cooperated with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to carry out archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Asribis, during which they found these pottery pieces. Among them, about 80% are written in the popular script used by the civilians of ancient Egypt, and the rest of the pottery pieces are written in Greek, Arabic and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, etc. These words show that this ancient city once integrated various cultures.

The ancient Egyptians once used fragments of pots and other containers as cheap substitutes for papyrus, using pens made of reed stalks and the like dipped in ink to make notes on them. This batch of unearthed pottery pieces recorded transaction information, school texts, lists and other contents.

Christian Leitz, a professor at the University of Tübingen, who led the excavation, said at the release that archaeologists speculated that many of the pottery pieces originated from a school that contained "month lists, numbers, arithmetic problems, grammar exercises and 'birds'. type alphabet'—each letter corresponds to a bird name that begins with that letter".

In addition, since hundreds of pottery pieces have the same symbols written on both sides, archaeologists speculate that this is evidence that students were punished for copying after being disobedient. Some pottery pieces are also painted with naive human figures, geometric figures and animal patterns resembling scorpions and swallows.

Archaeologists said that the number of pottery pieces unearthed this time is relatively rare, and the number of pottery pieces unearthed only once before is comparable to this time. That archaeological dig was located near the Valley of the Kings in the ancient city of Luxor in southern Egypt. Editor/He Yuting