Agypten und die Fremden im ersten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert.

• Author: Quack, Joachim Friedrich
• Position: Book Review

Agypten und die Fremden im ersten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert. By GUNTER VITTMANN. Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt, vol. 97. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 2003. Pp. x + 322, illus. [euro]45.

It is generally known that Egypt came into close contact with its neighbors, most especially during the Late Period. However, for that epoch, there has never been a comprehensive overview covering its relations with foreigners. The book reviewed here, written by a well-known leading specialist in the Late Period, happily closes this gap. The main focus is on those peoples who came into Egypt from outside, and the monuments they left behind, but there are also pertinent remarks on cases where Egyptians travelled abroad. The author organizes his material by ethnic groups and treats Libyans, Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Persians, Carians, Arabs, and Greeks, and concludes with some general remarks. The time-span covered here is from the twenty-first to the thirtieth dynasty, deliberately halting before the Hellenistic period. One important group has been purposely excluded, namely the Cushites, since the author felt that the topic was too complex for an introduction on the scale he had intended.

The author has managed to put a great deal of information into his pages without producing a text difficult to read. He not only provides a good overview for a general reader, but also has much to offer the specialist. Many of the textual passages he cites are hardly known even among Egyptologists, and he has obviously put much thought into translating and interpreting them, several times going beyond earlier studies. The annotations are rich and give a wealth of bibliographical information. To give one example I found most illuminating: Vittmann is able to point out leather fragments from Elephantine written in Aramaic script but obviously not representing a Semitic language (pp. 117-19). He proposes that it could be Egyptian, and he manages to make several highly convincing interpretations of words and expressions. I would add that the word ntr in that text (1. 1) is probably the Egyptian nTr.w "gods," pronounced something like nter at that time. The following 'tn t' might be 'iw=tn di "while you are here," rn (several times in 1. 3) could be rn "name," and 'byr' (1. 3) might be '[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]' "the offering to the sun-god." There is even one editio princeps in this book, an Egyptian stela with Aramaic inscription now at Hamm (p. 111, pl. 13a).

...