More than 3,200 years ago at a workshop near Thebes in Egypt, a man called Nakhtamun grabbed a broken piece of pottery and scribbled on it an urgent order for a craftsman to make him four windows.
“It’s a job to do four of this type exactly. Exactly!” he wrote in hieratic characters, a form of writing derived from hieroglyphics. “But hurry, hurry, by tomorrow. I will let you know!” Beneath his demanding message, Nakhtamun sketched the windows he wanted, with their precise dimensions – the character for “height” is a figure of a tiny person with their arms raised aloft.
