Brussels Copitc database

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Centre de Papyrologie et d'Épigraphie grecque

Brussels Coptic Database

Alain Delattre

This work, started early in 2000, was conceived on the model of the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der Griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens , which had to be adapted to the specificities of the Coptic material.

The database regroups all the documentary Coptic texts published, i.e. approximately 6700 documents. This database will be updated periodically.

A card is devoted to each text. The information is recorded in the following fields : sigla, inventory number, support, origin, date, dialect, content, bibliography and remarks.


ABZU

Alain DELATTRE, Papyrus coptes et grecs du monastère d'apa Apollô de Baouît

Alain Delattre, Papyrus coptes et grecs du monastère d'apa Apollô de Baouît conservés aux Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles. (Académie royale de Belgique. Mémoires de la Classe des Lettres. Collection in-8°. 3e série. Tome XLIII, No. 2045.)

Bruxelles, Académie royale de Belgique. Classe des Lettres, 2007, 8°, 351 pp. ISBN 978-2-8031-0236-5. Prix: EUR 30.

Le monastère copte d'apa Apollô, situé près du village moderne de Baouît en Moyenne-Égypte, a livré des centaines de textes grecs et coptes sur papyrus et ostraca. Le présent ouvrage est consacré à l'édition, à la traduction et au commentaire d'une cinquantaine de documents grecs et coptes de Baouît, conservés aux Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire à Bruxelles. Ces documents apportent de précieux renseignements sur l'histoire et l'économie du monastère aux VIIe et VIIIe siècles et, plus généralement, sur la vie monastique en Égypte au début de l'époque arabe.

Diffusion: Académie royale de Belgique . Prière d'adresser les commandes à M. Luc Moreau, par fax < +32 2 550 22 05 > ou par courriel arb@cfwb.be.


* * *

Table des matières
Avant-propos ... 7

Liste des textes ... 9

Introduction ... 13

1. Le lot "Demulling" ... 14
Albert Henri Demulling (1884-1941) ... 15
Les dons de papyrus ... 17
2. L'identification du lot au sein des collection ... 21
3. Composition du lot Demulling ... 25

PARTIE I

Chapitre 1. Le monastère d'apa Apollô de Baouît ... 29
1. Les sources ... 29
2. Le fondateur du monastère ... 36
3. Le monastère d'apa Apollô à Baouît ... 41
3.1. Les monastères d'apa Apollô ... 41
3.2. Le problème du monastère de Titkooh ... 42
3.3. Description du monastère ... 45
3.4. Aperçu historique ... 54
3.5. L'organisation du monastère ... 58
Le type d'organisation monastique ... 58
Une congrégation? ... 64
Organisation et hiérarchies ... 65
3.6. Les activités économiques du monastère ... 74
Le patrimoine du monastère ... 77
Les activités économiques du monastère ... 80
Les revenus du monastère ... 93
Les dépenses du monastère ... 99
3.7. Aperçu de la vie religieuse du monastère ... 104
3.8. Baouît et le monachisme de Moyenne-Égypte ... 108

Chapitre 2. Les textes documentaires du monastère de Baouît ... 111
1. Les critères d'attribution ... 111
Critères internes ... 112
Critères externes ... 114
2. Liste des textes de Baouît ... 117
3. Matériaux ... 125
4. Paléographie ... 127
Les scribes du monastère ... 130
"Orthographe" ... 132
5. L'usage de langues ... 133
6. Aspects linguistiques ... 140

PARTIE II
Chapitre 1. Ordres administratifs (1-3) ... 147
Chapitre 2. Ordres de paiement (4-27) ... 159

A. Présentation matérielle des documents ... 162

1. Dimensions ... 162
2. Paléographie ... 163
3. Langues ... 163
4. Sceaux ... 164
5. Réutilisation ... 165
B. Structure des documents ... 167
1. Bénéficiaire(s) ... 168
2. Denrée(s) ... 171
3. Responsable ... 174

Liste des différents responsables ... 175
4. Date ... 176
5. Scribe ... 178
6. Annotations ... 179
7. Sceau ... 180

C. Signification des documents ... 183
1. Les acteurs ... 183
2. Les modalités pratiques ... 184
3. Les rémunérations en nature ... 185
Chapitre 3. Comptes et listes (28-33) ... 227
Chapitre 4. Contrats de prêt (34-35) ... 241

A. Présentation matérielle ... 242
B. Structure du contrat et formulaires ... 243
1. Présentation des parties ... 244
2. Formule d'emprunt ... 245
3. Objet du prêt ... 245
4. Promesse de remboursement ... 246
5. Clause de bonne foi ... 246
6. Serment ... 247
7. "Signature" du débiteur ... 247
8. Témoins ... 247
9. Mention du scribe ... 247
10. Date ... 248
11. Résumé ... 248

C. Le prêt dans le monastère de Baouît ... 249
Les intérêts ... 250
Un service de prêt sans intérêt offert par le monastère? ... 251
Les moines comme débiteurs ... 251
Les moines comme créanciers ... 252 ...
Chapitre 5. Lettres (36-42) ... 261
Chapitre 6. Varia (43-47) ... 273
Chapitre 7. Fragments de provenance incertaine (48-54) ... 281
Chapitre 8. Protocoles (55-60) ... 289
Bibliographie ... 297
Concordances ... 323
Textes édités ... 323
Textes réédités ... 324
Textes corrigés ... 324

Index ... 325

Source Papy-L (A. Martin)

"KINGSTON LACY RELICS OFFER INSIGHT INTO ANCIENT EGYPT"

The ostraca mentioned in the articles below are being prepared for publication by Klaas Worp (Greek ostraca), Brian Muhs (Demotic), Jacques van der Vliet (Coptic), Rob Demaree (Hieratic), and Tasha Vorderstrasse (Arabic).

A crate of ancient Egyptian relics discovered at a National Trust property has turned out to be a large collection of inscribed pottery sherds known as 'ostraka', used by scribes to write a variety of notes and messages.

Among the pieces, found during work in the cellars of Kingston Lacy in Dorset are over one hundred tax receipts given by officials for poll tax, mortgages and income tax, providing a fascinating glimpse into everyday life in ancient Egypt.

The ancient sherds form part of a considerable collection of Egyptian artefacts brought to Kingston Lacy in the 19th century by its owner, pioneer Egyptologist William John Bankes. more at 24 hour museum.org



Same news item from the Guardian

Egyptians' ancient tax burden revealed

A dusty crate of broken bits of pottery discovered at a stately home in Dorset has given a fresh insight into the life of the ancient Egyptians - and it turns out that concerns over mortgages, taxes and simply making ends meet were as important then as they are now.
More than 200 "ostraka" - potsherds inscribed with notes - were found in the cellar of the National Trust property Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne Minster
Revealing the find yesterday, experts said some of the ostraka featured lists of temple priests who "stood before the god", but most were concerned with the minutiae of everyday life.
Among the messages translated are receipts for a poll tax bill paid by a farmer, tax paid on handicrafts, income tax from a crop of dates and tax for the maintenance of public utilities.

At least 16 of the tax receipts were issued to the same taxpayer, Patsibtis, son of Petorzmethis. He is also a taxpayer on more than 20 ostraka in the British Museum and other collections.

Brian Muhs, who oversaw the translations, said: "Because there are a lot of ostraka, and many relate to the same people, we are able to build up a picture of what life was like. It is possible to build up a picture of income, jobs, family makeup.

"Some show that the lives of farmers were very hard and they ended each year in debt and had to sell their harvest of dates to pay their taxes," added Mr Muhs. "It was a perpetual cycle of hardship.: more at the Guardian

Source: Chuck Jones and Brian Muhs (thanks).

G. GABRA; M. EATON-KRAUSS, The Illustrated Guide to the Coptic Museum and Churches of Old Cairo

The Illustrated Guide to the Coptic Museum and Churches of Old Cairo
Gawdat Gabra
and Marianne Eaton-Krauss
Apr 2007
240pp. Paperback
16.50 x 22.00 cm
$29.95
LE 120.00
ISBN 978 977 416 007 3
For sale worldwide


Egypt’s Coptic Church is one of the oldest in the world, encompassing two millennia of history tradition, and culture. The Coptic Museum, founded in Old Cairo in 1908, houses the world’ largest and most exquisite collection of Coptic artifacts, representing every historical era, fro the earliest Christian period to the nineteenth century. After undergoing extensive renovation and repair, the Coptic Museum is open to the public again, making this richly informative an illustrated book very timely for anyone interested in this rich artistic heritage. Structured as guide, but fully illustrated with superb color photographs, this book suggests a simple bu comprehensive itinerary through one of Egypt’s most fascinating museums. Taking reader through the various exhibits, this useful guidebook explains and illuminates the aesthetic an religious importance of each of the museum’s works on display, such as icons, stelae sculptures, wall paintings, wooden altar screens, liturgical implements, and vestments and bibl caskets. Textiles, ceramics and documents (including the Nag Hammadi Gnostic library from th fourth century, one of the most important collections of papyri in the world) provide valuabl insights into the economic and social life of Egypt’s Copts over the last two thousand years
GAWDAT GABRA, a former director of the Coptic Museum, is the author or editor of numerous books related to the literary and material culture of Egyptian Christianity, including Christianity and Monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis (AUC Press 2005) and, most recently, The Treasures of Coptic Art (AUC Press 2006.) MARIANNE EATON-KRAUSS is a specialist on the art and archaeology of pharaonic Egypt. She is the author of The Representations of Statuary in Private Tombs of the Old Kingdom.

Source: worldcat

C.T. SCHROEDER, Monastic Bodies discipline and salvation in Shenoute of Atripe

Monastic Bodies
Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe
Caroline T. Schroeder
216 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3990-4 | $79.95s | £52.00 |
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series
View table of contents and excerpt
Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoute's letters, sermons, and treatises—one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery—provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism.

In Monastic Bodies, Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoute's arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk.

Shenoute's ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius.

"Caroline Schroeder presents the first analysis of the ascetic ideology of one of the most important figures in early Egyptian monasticism, Shenoute of Atripe."—David Brakke, Indiana University

Caroline T. Schroeder teaches humanities at Stanford University.

Source worldcat

Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic Texts [DAHT]

"The aim of this online database of metadata is to provide information
about all published (and semi-published) texts written in these two
scripts, currently some 13120 items. Data entry is of course a
continuous process, but we hope our current coverage is sufficient for
the tool to be useful.
In a first stage the number of fields shown is rather limited: only
the various editions, present and former whereabouts, writing surface,
type, and date are listed. Even fewer fields (publication, inventory,
material, and language) are searchable, so that the service currently
provided is mainly a converter between inventory and
publication numbers and a tool to find the most recent edition of a
text. This will change in the months to come, when more fields will
become available.

The new tool is fully linked to the online version of the
Demotistische Literaturübersicht (Enchoria) [DL] which we put online
in May. This means that all abbreviations of publications used in the
DAHT can be decoded by clicking on them, which will lead the user
to the corresponding full bibliographic entry as found in the DL. And, the
other way round, for each publication in the DL the related
publication entries in the DAHT metadata database are provided. To
this aim we have supplemented the online DL with many pre-1968 entries
and some more recent publications. The DL can still be consulted at
the following address:

http://www.trismegistos.org/dl

The new database is also a part of Trismegistos [TM], a platform
aiming to surmount barriers of language and discipline
in the study of Late Period Egypt (roughly BC 800 - 800 AD). Called
after the famous epithet of Hermes - Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom
and writing who also played a major role in Greek religion and
philosophy, it brings together a variety of projects dealing with
metadata of published documents, not only in Greek, Latin, and
Egyptian in its various scripts, but also in Aramaic, Carian, and
other languages.
Trismegistos contains some 93000 records.

Currently the following projects and institutions are partners in
Trismegistos:

Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden
Ägyptens [HGV]
http://aquila.papy.uni-heidelberg.de/gvzFM.html
Papyrus-Editionen (Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Institut für Papyrologie, Universität Heidelberg
D. Hagedorn / J. Cowey (Universität Heidelberg)

Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic Texts [DAHT]
http://www.trismegistos.org/daht
Multilingualism and multiculturalism in Graeco-Roman Egypt
Kovalevskaja Preis (Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung)
Seminar für Ägyptologie, Universität Köln
M. Depauw (K.U.Leuven / Uni Köln)

Leuven Database of Ancient Books [LDAB]
http://ldab.arts.kuleuven.be/
Onderzoekseenheid Oude Geschiedenis
K.U.Leuven
W. Clarysse (K.U.Leuven)

Banque de données des textes coptes documentaires [Copt]
http://dev.ulb.ac.be/philo/bad/copte/base.php?page=accueil.php
Centre de Papyrologie et d'Épigraphie grecque (CPEG)
Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
A. Delattre (FNRS / ULB)

Trismegistos also includes other sets of metadata for which
collaboration with other partners is forthcoming. For details please
consult the website.

The aim of Trismegistos, coordinated by the project Multilingualism
and Multiculturalism in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Cologne, Mark Depauw) in
cooperation with the Leuven Homepage of Papyrus Collections (Leuven,
Willy Clarysse and Katelijn Vandorpe), is to facilitate cross-cultural
and cross-linguistic research in a number of ways. First, we have
started establishing direct connections between projects. Bilingual
records included in both the HGV and the DAHT will be identified as
such in the two databases, and it will be possible to compare the two
sets of information. The same holds true for semi-literary texts,
magical papyri and school exercises that are found in both the LDAB
and the HGV.
Secondly, texts of any language or script can be sought for in a
central search engine. The number of fields is very limited right now
(again publication and inventory numbers, material and language), but
we plan to expand facilities in the near future. Trismegistos can be
consulted at the following address:

http://www.trismegistos.org


For the MMGRE-team

Mark Depauw
K.U. Leuven / Universität Köln


Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm"

Source Papy-L Nov. 2 2006