The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change.

• Author: Lindenberger, James M.
• Position: Review

By BEZALEL PORTEN et al. Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui; Studies in Near Eastern Archaeology and Civilizations, vol. 22. Leiden: E. J. BRILL. Pp. x + 621, 11 plates. HFl 402, $259.50.

This work gathers together into one volume 175 translated hieratic, demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Latin documents from the Upper Egyptian fortress cities of Elephantine and Syrene, dating from the late Old Kingdom to the Abbassid period. The project, executed by an international team of specialists, was carried out under the supervision of Bezalel Porten of the Hebrew University, for many years the preeminent scholar in Elephantine Aramaic studies.

All of the texts have been previously published, but never in a single collection or in a consistent format, and many not in English. A hint of the book's scope is given by a listing of its contents: ten hieratic texts (twenty-second through third centuries B.C.E.), translated by Gunter Vittmann; fifty-two Aramaic papyri (late sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.), translated by Porten; thirty-seven demotic papyri (sixth century B.C.E. through first century C.E.), translated by Cary J. Martin; fifty-two Greek papyri (late fourth century B.C.E. through seventh century C.E.), translated by J. Joel Farber; twenty Coptic texts (three papyri and seventeen ostraca), translated by Leslie S. B. MacCoull and Sarah J. Clackson; two in Arabic (ninth-tenth centuries C.E.), translated by Simon Hopkins; and two fragments in Latin (third century C.E.), translated by Ranon Katzoff.

Generically, the texts are extremely diverse. A great many are legal: documents recording the disposition of marital property, real estate transactions, loans, and other contracts, including several family archives in Aramaic, demotic, Greek, and Coptic. Of particular interest are the famous hieratic "Turin Indictment" (A5) and an Arabic nuptial gift agreement whose parties are Coptic Christians, but whose legal conventions are Islamic. Among the numerous letters are included the Aramaic "Passover Letter" (B13) and the well-known petition for rebuilding the Jewish temple in Elephantine (B19-20), as well as a wide variety of personal, commercial, and administrative correspondence. There are also military dispatches, a Greek drinking-song (D1), a medical fragment (A10), oracular reports, and so on.

A general introduction by Porten includes a brief but comprehensive history of the discovery and publication of the texts. The Aramaic...