Agyptische Handschriften, pt. 4.

• Author: Ward, William

Compiled by Gunter Burkard and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, this is the fourth in a projected series of five volumes cataloguing Egyptian papyri and papyrus fragments in German collections. The initial volume dealt with the papyri of the Illahun archives in Berlin, the next two with Demotic papyri in various institutions. The present volume is a "miscellany" of texts of all genres dating from the Fifth Dynasty to Roman times, the majority of which are housed in the two main Berlin museums. Following the general pattern of the series, each of the 350 entries gives a physical description of the papyrus (or fragments), the date, the provenance (where known), previous publications, and a brief outline of the contents. This is accompanied by the beginning and final words of the text in transliteration and hieroglyphic transcription. While this and its companion volumes are catalogues and not reproductions of manuscripts, they are collectively a significant reference work in that Egyptologists now know what is available in German collections. Just as important, the published papyri and fragments catalogued in the present volume (about a quarter of the total) are fully documented, including publications where one would normally not look for Egyptian documents (see, e.g., no. 302).

Of the total papyri and fragments included here, half date to the twenty-first to thirtieth dynasties, one-fifth each to the New Kingdom and Ptolemaic-Roman times, the remaining tenth being of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. As with other large European collections of papyri, the origin of a substantial part of the material listed here (forty percent) is unknown since it was purchased in the nineteenth century prior to scientific excavations or comes from private collections (Reinhard, Ibscher, etc.). Some eighty-one items come from El-Hibeh, mostly of the late twentieth and twenty-first dynasties, fifty items of all periods were found at Elephantine, twenty-three can be ascribed to Thebes, nineteen to Abu Sir, a dozen to Deir el-Medineh, eight to Dimeh in the Fayum, and one or two items each from a few other sites.

The subject matter of the earlier material is quite limited. Most of the fragments are from the Abu Sir archives and are included in the publication of that collection. The only new item of interest is a group of one hundred fragments of Sixth Dynasty letters, accounts, and lists from the family archive of the nomarchs of Elephantine (no. 143). For the Middle...