Why did the ancient Egyptians write on walls?

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Well... perhaps people were wiser than we're willing to give them credit. There was a university study awhile back, in Michigan or Minnesota, that showed how people working in offices did much better with pictures of nature on the walls. They had less depression and production levels were higher. Think of the alternative; flat, blank walls.

Back before fire, people spent the long Winter months penned up in caves. They probably needed to find ways to battle depression, etc...

Fire was controlled long before man began to paint on cave walls. But your point is still an interesting one.

Because people like to spread messages and share things?

That ^, and the fact that stone would last forever (the Egyptians were into long lastingness) and stone was the best surface available, and papyrus was expensive and only a few could afford it, and they didnt have newspapers, books, TV, and the internet.

I wonder what the walls of Egyptian toilets looked like.

The words of the Prophets are written on the toilet walls.

ruveyn

The egyptians are saying

"The Bangles are coming in 1986 with a smash hit about us"

Sheb Wooley posed that profound musical question - is a "purple people eater" - a purple creature that eats people? Or is a "purple people eater" a creature that specializes in eating people who happened to be purple- and refuses to devour humans of other hues?


When they finally caught the notorius gangster they asked him "why do you rob banks"?

His reply was "thats where the money is."

The interviewers were asking why he choose a life of a crime, not why he singled out banks-- so it wasnt the answer they were they were looking for. Except .. maybe it WAS the answer they were looking for.

So when the OP asks "why did Egyptians write on walls?" is it becasue he is puzzled by the fact that Egyptians wrote things at all?
Or is he puzzled by the fact that Egyptians choose walls as their medium for writing on ?

Or is he puzzled by both?

Willie Sutton.

ruveyn

Thats it!
Couldnt think of his name.

A horizontal flat surface. That accounts for writing on paper. It also accounts for hop-scotch grids, written in chalk.

ruveyn

y'all just don't get it.

ancient aliens taught us to write on walls. obvi.

Oh Im sorry! I didnt connect every single dot for the litereal minded!

The best kinda surface to write on-WHEN YOU WANT IT PUBLICLY DISPLAYED- is on a vertical surface!

How often do you see a horizontal bill board (not attached to the tail of an airplane which the Egyptians didnt have)?

And wtf is this stuff about "hopscotch"?

You draw hopscotch squares horizontally to accomodate the players of the game-not to accomidate you the drawer of the squares!

Do you expect kids to defy gravity and hover in the air and hop sideways across a wall?

And BTW- if you're trying to quote Simon and Garfunkel- its "the words of the prophets are written on the SUBWAY walls...and tenement halls." Not quite as nasty as you're phrasing it- but the same general idea.