The Egyptian script was made up of thousands of pictographs and engraved on cut stone. Writing was a ritual act. So Pharaoh's scribes were equivalent to priests and magicians. This conflation is retained or recalled as the literal meaning in the ancient Hebrew 'chartoome'im (stone-writers), which is inflated to mean "magicians" and "wisdom conjurers." It required the consecration of a lifetime to master the pictographs, to attain literacy, to attain this elevated form of idolatry, the worship of carved stone.