Richard Jasnow - Böcker

This volume contains an edition of P. Brooklyn 47.218.135, a papyrus dated to the fifth or fourth century b.c. in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Despite the relatively poor state of preservation, the papyrus contains a wisdom text of considerable interest, as it is one of the few literary works written in the hieratic script known from the Late period. It displays similarities with both the earlier pharaonic and the later Demotic compositions. Classicists and biblical scholars will certainly also wish to consider possible connections with Hellenistic and biblical wisdom traditions. The volume contains a hieroglyphic transcription, consecutive translation, philological commentary, glossary, bibliography, plates, and a discussion by the author of the script, grammar, content, and significance of the text.

The papyri published here, chiefly in the collection of the Oriental Institute Museum, comprise part of a large family archive from the town of Hawara in the Egyptian Fayum. Written in Demotic and Greek, the documents (annuity contracts, donations, sales, mortgage agreements, loan repayments) are an excellent source of information about the Egypt of the fourth to third century b.c. Professor George R. Hughes had worked on the ten Oriental Institute Hawara papyri for a number of years, but sadly, it was not possible for him to finish the manuscript before his death in December 1992; he did, however, prepare preliminary transliterations and translations of the papyri, including the Rendell Papyrus published in the Appendix. Discussions, commentaries, and glossaries are included. Richard Jasnow completed the manuscript with the assistance of James Keenan, who prepared the Greek texts. The book is of interest to Egyptologists, Hellenists, and all of those concerned with the economic and social history of the Late period in Egypt.

The Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies is published annually on behalf of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies by Lockwood Press. The Canadian Society for Coptic Studies is a Toronto-based nonprofit organization whose purpose is to bring together individuals interested in Coptic studies and to promote the dissemination of scholarly information on Coptic Studies through the organization of meetings and conferences and through the preparation of scholarly works for publication.

This book contains approximately fifty late Egyptian texts, published for the first time. The texts represent an interesting range of document types, a range of demotic handwriting, and include a rare word list and a new mythological narrative. There is also one late hieratic text concerned with temple land, and some Greek fragments from the Byzantine period. The texts were purchased by Professor Suzuki in the early 1960s from various dealers in Cairo. The bulk of the collection, now housed in the Department of Asian Civilization, School of Letters at Tokai University as part of the Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection (AENET), consists of early demotic texts. This book is a result of a five-year collaboration between Tokai University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Michigan, and the Staatliche Museum,  Berlin.

Illuminating Osiris contains twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues in honour of Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. Professor Smith is especially renowned as a Demoticist and specialist in Ancient Egyptian religion. His numerous Demotic text editions and translations of Egyptian funerary and religious compositions have been enormously influential in the field. The contributions in this volume naturally reflect his particular interests in the religion and literature of Graeco-Roman period Egypt, dealing with cult, rituals, astronomy, and divination, among other subjects. The book includes many editions or reeditions of texts written in Demotic, Hieratic, and Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs.   It is profusely illustrated in colour and b&w, and supplied with detailed indexes.

In this volume Christina Di Cerbo and Richard Jasnow publish 92 Demotic graffiti, along with several ostraca and mummy bandages, from Theban Tombs 11, 12, Tomb -399-, and environs recorded and studied under the aegis of the Spanish Mission at Dra Abu el-Naga directed by Jose Galan.These texts from the mid-second century BCE were inscribed on the tomb walls by workers of the Ibis and Falcon cult, who used the New Kingdom tombs as burial places for mummified birds dedicated to the gods Thoth and Horus. This varied corpus of texts includes not only votive formulae and lists of names, but, most unusually, labels for chambers and halls to guide the men depositing the mummies through the labyrinthine catacombs. The cult workers also recorded important burials and memorialized events of special significance, as when a massive conflagration broke out that consumed several mummies and damaged the tomb walls.The Mission's conservators recovered many hitherto virtually invisible graffiti. Numerous inscriptions posed daunting epigraphic challenges; the text editors employed computer applications, especially DStretch, in order to enhance the digital images forming the basis for decipherment.In an introductory chapter Galan discusses the work of the Spanish Mission at Dra Abu Naga and recounts the complicated history of this important area of the Theban Necropolis down to the Roman period. The graffiti illustrate how New Kingdom tombs were reused for the sacred animal cult in the Ptolemaic period. Francisco Bosch-Puche and Salima Ikram contribute a detailed chapter analysing the archaeological context of the graffiti and the material evidence for the animal cult in the site. The volume, a holistic study of this area at the twilight of Pharaonic history, represents a true collaboration between archaeologists and philologists.