Edfou VII.

• Author: Depuydy, Leo
• Position: Book review

Edfou VII. By DIETER KURTH. Die Inschriften des Tempels von Edfu. Abteilung I, Ubersetzungen, vol. 2. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2004. Pp. xviii + 861. [euro]128.

The term "Edfou" in the title of the book under review is the common French spelling of Edfu. The reference is to Emile Chassinat's Le temple d'Edfou, his multi-volume monumental edition of the hieroglyphic texts inscribed on the Horus temple at Edfu in southern Egypt, antiquity's best preserved architectural monument. The roman capital VII in the title refers to volume 7 of Chassinat's Le temple d'Edfou, published in 1932 by the French Institute of Archaeology in Cairo as volume 24 of the Memoires publies par les Membres de la Mission archeologique francaise au Caire.

The book at hand presents full transliterations and translations of Chassinat's Edfou VII, along with copious explanatory footnotes. The first volume in this series, published in 1998, does the same for Chassinat's Edfou VIII of 1933. J. F. Quack reviewed the first volume in Welt des Orients 31 (2000/2001): 196-201, as did Arno Egberts in Bibliotheca Orientalis 59 (2002): 271-72. The present volume is accompanied by a CD-rom inserted in a sleeve attached to the inside to the inside of the back cover and holding the "light" version of a search program along with databases and analytical indices pertaining to both Edfou VII (2004) and Edfou VIII (1998). Readers interested in the professional version are encouraged to contact the home base of this project at Hamburg (for more information on all facets of the project, go to www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/Edfu-Projekt/Edfu.html).

Transliteration, translation, and explanatory footnotes make up the bulk of the book at hand as its chapter four (pp. 1-635). This is preceded by a preface, technical notes, and abbreviations as the first three, very short chapters. It is followed by sixteen essays on various facets of the text as chapter five (pp. 637-75). Chapter six (pp. 677-772) is an extensive analytical index facilitating the search for information on a wide variety of topics represented in the texts. The seventh chapter (pp. 773-809) lists parallels in many other texts. Chapter eight (pp. 811-58) is a list of corrections to Chassinat's edition of the hieroglyphic text, as derived from careful inspections of the original text on site and on photographs. In note 1 on page 1, chapter nine is described as "Plans and figures," but these appear to be missing in my copy. I presume that they will be included in one of the later volumes of the project. Instead, chapter nine (pp. 859-61) contains additions and corrections to the first volume in the series, including suggestions by reviewers...