scribe (noun): A person whose profession was doing record-keeping for others, particularly for kings and tax collectors. Scribes existed at a time when handwriting was difficult enough that it required doing it as a full-time job to be able to master. (hey, you try limiting yourself to clay, fragile papyrus, woodblocks, wax, or animal skins, and see how easy it is)

Fundamentally, a scribe is someone dedicated to using memory-aid devices. Humans have been doing this in some form or another, long before writing was invented. Tally sticks and message sticks were bones/sticks that had notches scratched into them to encode important information. Quipus and arithmetic rope were strings that were knotted to encode numbers. And proto-writing (e.g. cave paintings) was when people used a series of pictures, in a sentence-like way, to convey ideas.