DEMOTIC CONGRESS: TITLES AND ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS RECEIVED AS OF 8 JUNE 2011
Priestly Allowances in the Temple of Jeme
Maha AKEEL (Helwan)
A demotic ostracon in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum dates to the early Roman Period. It includes a list of amounts of wheat representing the allowances distributed to the priests in the temple of Jeme. The points of interest in this list are: (a) the appearance of women (priestesses) as recipients of wheat allowances, giving another dimension to the role played by Egyptian priestesses; (b) olyra (emmer wheat) is the usual crop used for priestly stipends not wheat as mentioned in this list; and (c) one of the allowances was received by an agent in the name of a priest.
The Griffith Papyri in Oxford
Carolin ARLT (Würzburg)
The Ashmolean Museum houses the collection of the Griffith papyri, which were found in Soknopaiou Nesos and date to the Ptolemaic Period. 75 documentary texts were published by Edda Bresciani in 1975. The announced publication of the remainder of the papyri was never realized. Part of the project ‘Dime im Fayum – ein Tempel im Spannungsfeld von Tradition und Multikulturalität im hellenistisch-römischen Ägypten’, which is based at Würzburg University, is the publication and analysis of this ‘new’ material as well as a re-edition of the papyri already published by Bresciani. This paper will give an overview of the unpublished documentary material.
Demotic Texts from the Embalmer’s Cache of Menekhibnekau
Ladislav BAREŠ, Jiří JANÁK and Renata LANDGRÁFOVÁ (Prague)
The burial complex of Menekhibnekau belongs to a group of large Late Period shaft tombs that were built in the south-western part of the Abusir necropolis between approximately 530 and 525 B.C.E. While the superstructure of the tomb was almost completely destroyed by later stone quarrying, its underground parts were much better preserved, including the burial chamber of this dignitary who held more than twenty titles, including those of the highest rank. Inside the area of his tomb (but separated from its underground parts), a large embalmers’ cache was found, consisting of a shaft and an underground corridor with three large niches.
Within the embalmers’ cache, over 300 large amphorae were discovered. About a tenth of these bore hieratic and demotic texts, and within some of the amphorae, smaller vessels were found, again often inscribed with hieratic and demotic texts.
The hieratic texts identify materials used for mummification and days of the mummification process on which they were to be used. The demotic inscriptions are more varied, even though they are less numerous. They identify materials used for mummification – sometimes even exactly the same materials as the hieratic texts, but also record data completely unrelated to the process of mummification, such as the date of import of wine on an amphora originally from Samos.
Our paper offers an analysis and evaluation of these demotic inscriptions and addresses the issue of why the embalmers’ workshop would contain vessels inscribed in two scripts (as well as, in part, a mixture of these two scripts).
The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Demotic Legal Terminology
Alejandro F. BOTTA (Boston)
Building upon the previous research of Muffs (1969); Porten (1968, 1992); Ritner (2002), and others, and my own ongoing research project, “A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Legal Terms and Formulae”, this paper surveys Demotic legal terms and formulae placing them in their wider ancient Near Eastern context. The resulting data provide clearer and quantifiable evidence of both continuity and innovation within the Demotic-Egyptian and other ancient Near Eastern legal traditions. At the same time, they offer the necessary material for the comparative study of ancient Near Eastern formulae, and for the investigation of interaction and influence of legal traditions within the ancient Near East.
Deux papyrus inédits de Dime conservés à la Sorbonne
Marie-Pierre CHAUFRAY (Paris)
En 2008, deux rouleaux de papyrus ont été déroulés à l’Institut de Papyrologie de la Sorbonne. L’un d’entre eux (P. Sorb. Inv. 1447) est un contrat de mariage démotique avec une souscription grecque, provenant de Dime et datant de la fin de l’époque ptolémaïque. Le second papyrus (P. Sorb. Inv. 1148) est un extrait de la comptabilité du temple de Soknopaios contenant deux reçus de l’époque romaine, dont l’un est un versement de la part d’un collège de lésônis d’Isis. Ces documents inédits viennent compléter le corpus récemment publié par S. Lippert et M. Schentuleit dans les Demotische Dokumente aus Dime (Volume II: Quittungen, Wiesbaden, 2006 ; Volume III: Urkunden, Wiesbaden, 2010).
The Horhotep Letters from North Saqqara
Sue DAVIES (London) and H.S. SMITH (Huntingdon)
In this paper we will present four damaged demotic letters on papyrus mentioning a man named Horhotep found at the Sacred Animal Necropolis site in 1971/2.
Trismegistos People: A New Prosopographic and Onomastic Tool
Mark DEPAUW (Leuven)
The project Creating Identities in Graeco-Roman Egypt (K.U.Leuven, 2008-2012) studies the way people constructed identities through personal names in Egypt, 800 BC – AD 800. This paper introduces the various related databases which were developed for this purpose and which will be made available online in the summer of 2011. Currently some 60,000 Demotic references to people are included (some 15% of the total), as well as some 8,000 names which are attested in Egyptian. Some preliminary results of regional variation and chronological evolution of the anthroponyms will be presented.
Demotic Grammar in the Twenty-first Century: Propensities, Problems, Prospects
Leo DEPUYDT (Providence)
At the Seventh International Conference (1999) and in the contribution to its acts, I listed 19 studies on Demotic grammar published in the decade before, trying to show how the grammar of Demotic is less often studied than that of the other stages of Egyptian. Since then, 24 more studies have come to my attention. This paper aims to, (1) discuss recent trends, (2) address obstinate problems, and (3) discern topics in need of investigation. Special attention will be paid to sentence patterns as a critical principle of organization for the grammar of all stages of Egyptian.
The study of Demotic grammar benefits not only Demotists. Demotic is a stage of Egyptian, whose history is the longest attested of any language, making it an extraordinary laboratory for the study of language evolution. Middle Egyptian receives disproportionate attention because of its status as classical idiom imitated down to the end of Egyptian history. But the second half of the history of Egyptian, encompassing Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic, is much more transparently and amply documented than the first, Old and Middle Egyptian, hence offering superior conditions for studying language evolution.
Inevitably, the road from Late Egyptian to Coptic passes through Demotic.
De l’emploi du démotique sur les stèles du Sérapéum de Memphis
Didier DEVAUCHELLE (Lille)
À partir d’un corpus délimité, celui des stèles du Sérapéum de Memphis, peut-on comprendre pourquoi les scribes ont recours à telle ou telle écriture, voire à deux écritures pour une même stèle ? Pour tenter de répondre à cette question, je m’intéresserai à la place occupée par la cursive démotique dans ce corpus et à son emploi en regard des écritures hiéroglyphiques et hiératiques. Je présenterai aussi les différentes formes attestées de cette cursive dans le corpus, ainsi que quelques traits particuliers de langue démotique.
The Demotic Rubrics in the Artemis Liturgical Papyrus
Jacco DIELEMAN (Los Angeles)
The Artemis Liturgical Papyrus (P. Louvre N 3135 + P. Vienna ÄS 3871) is an unpublished Egyptian manuscript preserving a selection of ritual texts used in the cult of Sokar- Osiris. These temple liturgies were adapted for the burial of a private individual named Artemis, daughter of Herais. She likely lived in Thebes around the time Egypt became a Roman province. The liturgies are written in Classical Egyptian in hieratic cursive and, uniquely, alternate with rubrics in Demotic, prescribing when and where the priest and choir recite the incantations. The liturgies are thus combined into a meaningful ritual, progressing from embalming hall to the burial chamber. In this presentation I will discuss the Demotic rubrics and propose identifications of the various stages in the ritual proceedings.
Statistics and the Structure of Demotic
John GEE (Provo)
Large databases such as the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae provide an opportunity to examine and quantifiably describe Demotic in ways that are not possible working through individual texts. Statistical analysis can be either informative or not depending on the type of questions asked. In this paper I will examine how statistical patterns of words can make certain aspects of Demotic more understandable. These aspects include when alphabetic spellings are used, and the advantages and disadvantages of the current textbook of Demotic.
Who Was Who and What He Did in Demotic and Greco-Roman “Historical” Literature.
Roberto B. GOZZOLI (Bangkok)
Historic or pseudo-historic literature includes a miscellany of different texts: the Pe-dubastis cycle, the Demotic Chronicle, the Prophecy of the Lamb, the Oracle of the Potter, Papyrus Vandier, and the Setne II story are some examples. To this group, some texts from the Archive of Hor relative to the political history of Alexandria should be added. As many of them have been previously studied by the present writer, dealing in particular with the reasons why a particular historical character was chosen in the context of when the particular textual version was written, the discussion now will focus on the historicity of events as given in the narrative of some of these texts. The names of the protagonists and their actions therefore will be the subject of such investigation.
The level of historicity for some of them is certainly open to discussion, and the concept of historical flavouring can be more acceptable (Thutmose III in Setne II, Merneptah in the Vandier papyrus). But the analysis of historical accuracy and consciousness in the Demotic Chronicle and the other prophetic literature, as well as the Sesostris image as present in Greek literature (Herodotus and Sesonchis Romance) can be reviewed in the light of the events as actually known from the historical and other contemporary sources.
Le vocabulaire des associations dans les sources grecques et démotiques
Cassandre HARTENSTEIN (Strasbourg)
Dans un article publié peu de temps avant sa mort, Michel Muzynski s’est intéressé aux associations religieuses égyptiennes, et notamment à la terminologie employée pour les nommer dans la documentation papyrologique et épigraphique : swn.t en démotique (la lecture Xny.t n’avait pas encore été adoptée) et ἡ σύνοδος en grec. Si l’on étend cette étude aux textes de l’époque hellénistique, romaine et byzantine, concernant ou mentionnant une association tous types confondus, il apparaît qu’il existe d’autres termes et constructions, dont les attestations évoluent dans le temps.
Numbers and Nouns in Demotic: Recent Work from the Chicago Demotic Dictionary
Brittany HAYDEN and Janet JOHNSON (Chicago)
Numbers tend not to be discussed in much detail in Demotic grammars, beyond the simple observation that numbers usually follow the nouns they are counting. However, recent work at the Chicago Demotic Dictionary Project has shown that there is much greater variation in the ways numbers and nouns interact.
For example, the common understanding that feminine numbers are used to count feminine nouns is made more complicated when feminine units are involved. One such complication is found in Camel Bone Pisa 2, B2/2, where we find bnv.(t) mw 1.t "1 banatos- measure of water." In this case and others like it, the feminine number agrees with the feminine unit as opposed to the masculine noun. Where we have a masculine noun followed by a feminine number, we can therefore understand that a feminine unit must be missing.
This paper will present an overview of the variation we have observed in areas including the gender of numbers, numbers in association with genitival constructions, and word order. We will also demonstrate how this new information can help demotists to fill in lacunae and to better understand texts.
Relative Drogenquantitierungen mit Dnf im Wiener medizinischen Papyrus (P. Wien D 6257)
Friedhelm HOFFMANN (Munich)
Der große Wiener medizinische Papyrus D 6257, dessen Neubearbeitung ich vorbereite, ist das römerzeitliche Manuskript einer umfangreichen Rezeptsammlung. An mehreren Stellen wird in den Angaben, wieviel von einer Droge zu verwenden ist, das Wort Dnf verwendet. Es ist nicht offensichtlich, wie diese Einträge zu verstehen sind. Mein Lösungsansatz ist im Titel meines Vortrags angedeutet – aber das ist erst die halbe Wahrheit.
Light from Obscurity? Fragments of a Setne Story in Copenhagen and Florence
Richard JASNOW (Baltimore)
A few years ago, Kim Ryholt kindly suggested to me that I work on fragments of a Setne tale preserved in both Copenhagen and Florence. Once I had also generously received the permission of Prof. Guido Bastianini, Director of the Instituto Papirologico “G. Vitelli,” to study the pieces in that collection, I began to examine the material. I offer here an interim report on my progress. The chief obstacle to the research is the sad condition of the fragments; few are large enough to yield connected sense. It may, unfortunately, be impossible ever to recover the gist of the narrative. Still, as we Demoticists know, even fragmentary texts can be significant, and fragments must be published if parallels or addi- tional pieces of the papyrus are to be identified. In that spirit I present this material. I have been preparing digital “facsimiles” to expedite study of the fragments, and will use these as the basis for my talk.
Demotisch: Recht und Mathematik
Birgit JORDAN (Munich)
In meiner Dissertation untersuche ich das Demotische als rechtliche und mathematische Fachsprache, primär anhand der Fragmente pCairo JE 89127–30 und JE 89137–43 (sog. legal code of Hermopolis). Dieser ungewöhnliche Textträger lädt aufgrund seiner Länge und dank der identischen Erhaltungschancen seiner beiden Texte zu einem solchen Vergleich ein: vom äußeren Aufbau der Texte auf dem Textträger über die Grammatik bis zur Semantik, die noch einige ungelöste Probleme bietet.
Dabei erweist sich der rechtliche Text als streng logisch aufgebaute Struktur, die wesentliche Forderungen an eine formale Sprache erfüllt, während der mathematische Text mit seinem rezeptartigen Aufbau eher in der wohl vorwiegend didaktischen Tradition älterer Vorbilder verbleibt. Erstaunlich ist, dass der Rechtstext in der neueren Rechtsgeschichte kaum oder nur ziemlich oberflächlich rezipiert wird, obwohl er interessantes Vergleichsmaterial zum römischen Recht bietet, dem zumindest in der kontinentaleuropäischen Tradition noch immer Referenzcharakter zugesprochen wird. Meine Arbeit ist inhaltlich und auch institutionell ägyptologisch (Betreuer: Friedhelm Hoffmann, LMU München) und rechtshistorisch (Rechtsgeschichte, Max Planck-Institut und Goethe- Universität Frankfurt,
http://www.jura.uni-frankfurt.de/imprs/kollegiat/jordan.html) verankert, und ich möchte in meinem Vortrag die Chancen und Probleme darstellen, die sich in einem solchen interdisziplinären Projekt zeigen.
ComplexEdition – A Web-Based Workbench for Digital Philology
Clemens LIEDTKE (Stuttgart)
Scientific edition of historic text sources in many cases faces fragmented material, and working with standard office tools has its own challenges if non-western writing systems or complex structures like synoptical text organization are required. Moreover, international cooperation results in groups of editors working at different institutions or places. As a completely web-based software solution currently under development, ComplexEdition’s aim is to combine best practices of philological editing procedures with an easy-to-use software interface, based on well established IT standards in digital philology. In close collaboration with the Myth of the Sun’s Eye Project, the development of ComplexEdition is focused on establishing a complete digital workflow starting from work- group management, placement and reconstruction of fragments and text editing as well as handling of word lists/dictionaries, comments, footnotes and critical apparatus up to preparing high quality editions ready for publication, either in print or online.
The Myth of the Sun’s Eye Project
Sandra L. LIPPERT (Tübingen)
In recent years, several new manuscripts of the text generally known as the ‘Myth of the Sun’s Eye’ have turned up. In 2009, holders of publication rights to these papyri joined in the Myth of the Sun’s Eye Study Group and a first meeting took place in Copenhagen in January 2010. The Myth of the Sun’s Eye Project –at present consisting of Frank Feder, Sandra Lippert, Jürgen Osing, Joachim Quack, Kim Ryholt, Mark Smith, and Ghislaine Widmer – aims at a complete synoptic (re-)edition of all published and unpublished manuscripts including the Greek translation. It is expected that the additional material will more than double the known amount of text; it might even allow us to compile the first complete running text of the Myth. In order to cope with the challenge of jointly editing and publishing ten different manuscripts in various degrees of fragmentary preservation, an online workbench is currently being created that will be applicable to other Egyptological and non-Egyptological edition projects as well.
Early Demotic Documents from Memphis
Cary MARTIN (London)
In 2005 a group of early demotic documents was sold in auction in Paris. The documents belonged to a private collector and had apparently been found near Cairo shortly after the Second World War. There were 14 documents in total and they date to the late Saite or early Persian period. This paper will give a preliminary overview of their contents and highlight some of the interesting information that they contain.
A Palaeography of Demotic Epigraphy / Eine Paläographie der demotischen Epigraphik
Jan MOJE (Berlin)
Palaeographic studies are of major importance in Egyptology, not only for purposes of establishing date and provenance or deciphering words, but also for research on script development, local workshop contexts and socio-cultural embedding of the relevant script(s) in regional society. Palaeographies have been created for hieroglyphs and Hieratic, as well as recently for the Cairo corpus of Demotic papyri. On the other hand, the Demotic epigraphical sources, especially those carved in stone, have generally received less attention from the point of view of palaeography. The study in progress introduced here aims to supply this desideratum. The presentation will give priority to methods, problems and the expected goals of my current project on this topic.
More Papyri from the Archive of Panas son of Espemetis
Brian MUHS (Leiden)
In 1995, P.W. Pestman identified the archive of Panas son of Espemetis, a mortuary priest and moneylender in Thebes in the early Second Century BCE. He attributed to it eight Demotic loan contracts and quitclaims that the British Museum and the British Library purchased from Chauncey Murch in 1901 and 1903 (P. Lond. Gr. III 1200-2 + RecTrav 31, p. 92-98, and P. BM Andrews 5-7, 30-31).
In this paper I will argue that the archive also included two unpublished Demotic accounts in the British Museum (P. BM 10556 and 10557, the former described by Andrews, EVO 17, p. 35). I will also suggest that it may have included a group of mostly unpublished Demotic papyri formerly in the Nathan Elkan Adler collection, unrelated to the archive of Horos son of Nechutes (described by F.Ll. Griffith, The Adler Papyri, p. 65, one published by N.J. Reich, JAOS 56, p. 258-271). I would welcome information about the present location of the latter papyri.
Greek Loanwords in Egypt: the project “Database and Dictionary of Greek Loan-words in Coptic” (DDGLC) and its perspectives for Demotic Studies
Franziska NAETHER (Leipzig)
The “Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic” project (DDGLC), started in April 2010, is intended to address a major lacuna in Coptic studies by providing a systematic description and analysis of attested loanwords. The phonological, morphological, semantic, and stylistic/ rhetorical aspects of the loanwords in Greek are to be studied, word-class by word-class and for each dialect and sub-dialectal corpus. The intended outcome is an electronic database and a dictionary consisting of entries in alphabetic order. These project results will not only serve the lexicographical needs of Copticists, but will also provide a firm empirical basis upon which to assess questions of grammatical borrowing, on the one hand, and the sociolinguistic context of language contact, on the other. It is intended at a second stage from mid-2012 on to include as well Greek loanwords in older Egyptian languages, namely Demotic and Ptolemaic.
Homepage:
www.uni-leipzig.de/~ddglc
Visions of Gods: Some Remarks on pVienna D 6633-6636
Luigi PRADA (Oxford)
pVienna D 6633-6636 are four fragments from a demotic papyrus that probably originates from Soknopaiou Nesos, in the Fayum, and can be dated to the Roman Period, specifically the late second or early third century AD. These fragments belong to a dream interpretation handbook, and constitute a section of it dealing with gods: in each line, one or more deities are named, then a prediction of what will happen in the life of the man who will see them in his dreams follows. The interest of these fragments lies primarily in the divinities that they mention, and in the epithets that these are given.
This paper will offer an overview of the text (including a complete transliteration and translation), analyze the main reading problems, and discuss the religious significance of the gods and goddesses named in it, comparing similar texts (lists and onomastica).
A New Demotic Translation of (Excerpts of) a Chapter of the Book of the Dead
Joachim QUACK (Heidelberg)
This lecture will present a demotic funerary text which contains a translation of excerpts of a chapter of the Book of the Dead. The Middle Egyptian and the Demotic versions will be presented in parallel and questions of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical constructions in the translation will be addressed. The reasons for not translating the full text of the chapter, and the position of this section in the overall structure of the papyrus, will be discussed as well.
Various Renderings of πίναξ in Greek and Demotic in the Medînet Mâdi Ostraca
Micah ROSS (Kyoto) and Dorian Gieseler GREENBAUM (London)
The modalities by which the Greek word πίναξ entered Demotic texts reveal different strategies used by Demotic scribes for adopting loan words. The ostraca of Medînet Mâdi form a linguistically significant corpus. Comprised of both Greek and Demotic texts, these ostraca represent the compositions of a small group of people working in a limited area, within a generation of each other, and capable of communicating with each other. Despite this common ground, the scribes of Medînet Mâdi used different Greek renderings, employed different strategies for adopting the word, transliterated it differently, and possibly used the word in different technical senses.
Whereas Medînet Mâdi represents a socio-linguistically unified adoption of πίναξ, this use can be compared to other uses of πίναξ as a loan-word in Demotic and bilingual texts. Particularly relevant is the London-Leiden Magical Papyrus, which represents a compositional unity. The other texts, including the London-Leiden Magical Papyrus, were subject to different motives and employ different transliterations for πίναξ. However, the astrological context of these passages fits the astrological character of the Medînet Mâdi material.
A linguistic model for the adoption of technical loan-words may be borrowed from other area studies. This model demands modifications and refinements specific to Demotic.
Demotic Parallels for the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions on a Mummy Bed of the Roman Period in Berlin
Mark SMITH (Oxford)
Berlin Äg. Inv. 12442, a coffin in the form of a mummy bed dating to the Roman Period, is decorated with scenes and inscribed with hieroglyphic texts for the afterlife on all four sides. The most recent treatment of its scenes and texts is Dieter Kurth, Materialen zum Totenglauben im römerzeitlichen Ägypten (Hützel, 2010), pp. 138–94. This paper will demonstrate how problematic passages in the hieroglyphic inscriptions on this object can be elucidated with the aid of demotic parallels in an unpublished papyrus in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
A New Source Concerning the Theology of Sobek in Dime: Papyrus British Library 254 recto
Martin STADLER (Würzburg)
In 1898 the Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, F.G. Kenyon, mentioned on page XXV of the second volume of his catalogue of the Greek papyri in the British Museum a papyrus with the inventory number CCXIV: ‘List of names, for what purpose is uncertain. Written in fourteen narrow columns, in a very cursive and ill-formed hand of fair size. (...) The writing is on the verso of the papyrus. The recto is occupied by demotic writing, but there are traces of an underlying Greek writing, which has apparently been washed out.’ The papyrus has been transferred to the British Library, and thus, hidden among Greek texts, it may have escaped the notice of demotists. The demotic text is religious in nature and from Dime. Five columns are still preserved, three of them completely. This paper will present a preliminary overview of the text, which deals with Sobek/Sobek lord of Pai, his manifestations and his nature as a cosmic creator. The ancient scribe chose to write the text down using unetymological writings, a practice well-attested among religious compositions from Dime.
Demotic Studies and Enquiry into the Emotions
John TAIT (London)
Written sources in Demotic provide a stimulating if challenging resource for the study of the social and cultural construction of the emotions in Egypt during the period of the script’s currency, the greater part of a millennium. It would not be proper wholly to privi- lege Demotic—or indeed written sources—for this work. Nevertheless, the Demotic material that may be exploited includes a wide range of types, as these are conventionally categorised: documents of many kinds, letters, narratives and wisdom literature, and scientific literature. The present paper takes the converse approach, and sets out some of the rewards for the study of Demotic script and language that emerge from such enquiries into the emotions. The most fruitful areas are naturally in pragmatics, in how aspects of language relate to their context of use, although some issues of lexicography and straightforward grammar arise.
Demotic ‘Cessions’ in the British Museum Collection: A Legal and Historical Analysis
Siân THOMAS (Cambridge)
The British Museum collection includes more than 40 unpublished demotic papyri from the Gebelein area in Upper Egypt (ancient Pathyris and Crocodilopolis). Most are legal and business texts from private archives. They date to between 205 BCE and circa 88 BCE, with a concentration of papyri from the turn of the second to first centuries BCE.
This paper will look at the sX.w n wy (‘documents of being far’, often referred to as ‘cessions’) in the collection. Most Ptolemaic sX.w n wy were drawn up on sales of land and record the seller’s acknowledgement that he has relinquished his claim to the property sold. The British Museum examples are of a different, rarer, type: they confirm the release of rights and obligations created in earlier contracts.
Like most demotic contracts, these texts provide only limited contextual information. This paper will reconstruct the wider legal transactions that they reflect and explore the use of this document form to record the release of contractual obligations. It will touch on aspects of the practical workings of Egyptian law in the Ptolemaic period, including the interaction of demotic and Greek documents and the use of the arbv (‘trustee, document holder’).
Toponyms in Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic Texts
Herbert VERRETH (Leuven)
For the moment the Trismegistos database (
www.trismegistos.org) counts 62 Abnormal Hieratic and 14553 Demotic texts, both documentary and literary. For all these texts we are gathering the references to the toponyms and other 'geographica' they contain. We have already collected 160 Abnormal Hieratic references to 18 different places, and 11469 Demotic references to 998 different toponyms, information which is already available online and will soon be turned into a printed volume. This paper will discuss how we gathered the material, which problems we encountered doing so and which choices we had to make to present the data in a user-friendly way.
Demotic Graffiti in the Valley of the Kings
Steve VINSON (Bloomington)
Every visitor to the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings has noted that most of the tombs are full of ancient, medieval and modern graffiti. The Greek and (relatively few) Latin graffiti of the tombs was published in the 1920s by Jules Baillet. At the time, Baillet reported that the Demotic graffiti in the Valley of the Kings were to be published by George Bénédite, but no such publication ever appeared, and only a handful of the hundreds of Demotic graffiti from the royal tombs have ever been discussed in print. Beginning in 2005, Steve Vinson, Eugene Cruz-Uribe, and Jacqueline Jay have worked to comprehensively photograph, facsimile and study all of the post-Ramesside, pre-Coptic Egyptian graffiti from the Valley of the Kings, as well as ancient graffiti in the tombs that are neither in Egyptian nor in Greek. We have identified a total of 234 such graffiti, distributed very unequally in the following tombs: KV1 (Ramses VII), KV2 (Ramses IV), KV4 (Ramses XI), KV6 (Ramses IX), KV8 (Merneptah), KV9 (Ramses V/VI), KV11 (Ramses III), KV15 (Sety II). Of these, almost half (107) are in KV2. I will summarize our results so far, and particularly invite suggestions as to problematic graffiti.
Berichtigungsliste and Short Texts
Sven VLEEMING (Trier)
The role the Greek Berichtigungsliste and Sammelbuch play within Greek papyrology is perhaps still little known in demotic studies, so a brief exposé of the intended function of the Demotic Berichtigungsliste and our Short Texts, which are the beginning of an equivalent of the Sammelbuch, may be in order. A sketch of the beginnings of the Greek and demotic research tools in question will provide an opportunity to discuss the workings and the interdependence of the two projects.
Demotic Documentary Texts as Sources for Religious Practices
Alexandra VON LIEVEN (Berlin)
When thinking of textual sources for Ancient Egyptian religion, rituals, myths or hymns to deities come to mind. While these are certainly of great interest, documentary texts are also sometimes very useful, particularly as they do give different sorts of information from the other genres mentioned. While obviously religious texts are often centered on the state religion and its deities, documentary texts are especially valuable as sources for more popular practices.
Looking for Light in the Chamber of Darkness: Recent Work on the Book of Thoth
Karl-Theodor ZAUZICH (Würzburg) and Richard JASNOW (Baltimore)
(NB: This paper will be read by Richard Jasnow)
In this talk Zauzich and I report on recent progress in the study of the Book of Thoth, which was published in 2005. Most significantly perhaps, numerous new fragments have come to light, often brought to our attention by such colleagues as Joachim Quack and Kim Ryholt. Jasnow has also prepared digital handcopies of all the papyri witnesses, and used these as the basis for a greatly enhanced glossary, which will include facsimiles of all words. Several years ago we were able to collate these facsimiles against the originals, thanks to the kindness of those responsible for the individual papyrological collections where they are kept. There have also been extensive published discussions and reviews of the Book of Thoth; these have been naturally most helpful in our own study and restudy of the work. In the near future we hope to offer another volume of the Book of Thoth containing these new fragments, glossaries, and facsimiles of all papyri, as well as addenda on specific points. We are also preparing a “semi-popular” translation which will present a fresh rendering of virtually the entire composition.
