These were intended to be equal to the great original foundations of priestly learning at Heliopolis and Memphis; they were regulated on the same pattern, and with the object of raising the new royal residence of Upper Egypt, namely Thebes, above the capitals of Lower Egypt in regard to philosophical distinction.
One of the most important of these foundations was a very celebrated school of learning.
[Every detail of this description of an Egyptian school is derived from sources dating from the reign of Rameses II.

and his successor, Merneptah.] First there was the high-school, in which priests, physicians, judges, mathematicians, astronomers, grammarians, and other learned men, not only had the benefit of instruction, but, subsequently, when they had won admission to the highest ranks of learning, and attained the dignity of "Scribes," were maintained at the cost of the king, and enabled to pursue their philosophical speculations and researches, in freedom from all care, and in the society of fellow-workers of equal birth and identical interests.
An extensive library, in which thousands of papyrus-rolls were preserved, and to which a manufactory of papyrus was attached, was at the disposal of the learned; and some of them were intrusted with the education of the younger disciples, who had been prepared in the elementary school, which was also dependent on the House--or university--of Seti.

The lower school was open to every son of a free citizen, and was often frequented by several hundred boys, who also found night-quarters there.

The parents were of course required either to pay for their maintenance, or to send due supplies of provisions for the keep of their children at school.
In a separate building lived the temple-boarders, a few sons of the noblest families, who were brought up by the priests at a great expense to their parents.
Seti I., the founder of this establishment, had had his own sons, not excepting Rameses, his successor, educated here.
The elementary schools were strictly ruled, and the rod played so large a part in them, that a pedagogue could record this saying: "The scholar's ears are at his back: when he is flogged then he hears." Those youths who wished to pass up from the lower to the high-school had to undergo an examination.

The student, when he had passed it, could choose a master from among the learned of the higher grades, who undertook to be his philosophical guide, and to whom he remained attached all his life through, as a client to his patron.