How are you? And your wife? And what has become of XY? The private letters written in Egypt over 2,000 years ago are not very different from today’s. Official documents also show few differences, as they address topics such as land purchases or a wife’s possessions in the event of separation.

Carolin Arlt holds a doctorate in Egyptology. After studying Egyptology, Ancient History, and Classical Archaeology at the Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg (JMU), she earned her doctorate at the same institution. She later worked at universities in Cologne, Berkeley, and Jerusalem before returning to JMU in 2009 as a researcher on a project focused on a temple in Egypt’s Fayum region.

She is now starting a new research project based on another temple in Fayum, a Ptolemaic archive from the temple of Soknopaiu Nesos. Her research will focus on 75 documents from this temple, written on papyrus in Demotic over 2,200 years ago by Tesenuphis, son of Marres, who referred to himself as the “scribe of the priests.”

Soknopaiu Nesos was an Egyptian settlement in the Fayum basin, where a lake fed by a branch of the Nile served as a focal point. Today, the area is about a two-hour drive from Cairo. In its temple, Soknopaios, a crocodile god, was worshiped as the lord of water and a symbol of fertility.

Sonokpaius Nesos temple archive
Sonokpaiu Nesos temple ruins. Credit: Martin Stadler / Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg

What makes this temple special is that its archive has survived. It is one of the few known Egyptian temple archives from this period, says Arlt. She refers to the period between 180 and 120 BCE, within the Ptolemaic era, which lasted from 323 to 30 BCE. During this time, Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemies, a Macedonian dynasty named after Ptolemy, a general of Alexander the Great who became Egypt’s first Ptolemaic monarch.

It is possible that these texts were part of the private archive of a temple scribe, who may have stored them in a chamber upon his retirement, where they were later forgotten. However, this cannot be determined with certainty. We do not know where the papyri were found. They came from a looting and were purchased in the second half of the 19th century by two British papyrologists, explains Carolin Arlt. As a result, it remains unknown whether the documents were taken from the temple or belonged to the scribe’s house.

Additionally, the buyers were only interested in the Greek papyri, so they gave the Demotic texts to a colleague in Oxford, who never studied them. These documents are currently stored in the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford, and most of them have yet to be analyzed.

Among these papyri, there are fragments, but also many complete texts. They mainly consist of administrative documents: letters sent to or written from the temple, questions addressed to the oracle, certificates, accounts, lists, and receipts, explains the Egyptologist.

Sonokpaius Nesos temple archive
Carolin Arlt works with texts like this one. In this case, it is an incomplete application for a lease to the temple. Credit: P.Oxf. Griffith C 10

These texts provide key information about life in the temple over 2,000 years ago, both in terms of religious practices and economic management. We know that the temple had certain monopolies and leased them periodically, says Carolin Arlt. These monopolies included a ferry service across the lake, a laundry, a brewery, and various agricultural lands.

Among the papyri already studied, Arlt has identified 15 lease offers, in which applicants described their financial proposals to obtain temple concessions. Receipts confirming these payments have also been found. This type of documentation is extremely rare elsewhere, she notes.

Carolin Arlt will be responsible for transliterating these 75 selected texts—that is, transcribing them into a modern system, translating, analyzing, commenting on, and publishing them along with photographs. However, many of these papyri require restoration before they can be studied. After being buried in the sand for 2,000 years and spending over a century between sheets of paper in Oxford, their condition is dire.

“Demotic” is both a linguistic term and a writing system of Ancient Egypt, used from the 7th century BCE to the 3rd century CE. I love deciphering Demotic, confesses Carolin Arlt. However, her work is not simply about reading and translating linearly. Some papyri are only a few centimeters wide, with text extending between 10 and 25 lines, yet it can take between 30 and 60 minutes to decipher a single word. Sometimes, even after all that effort, its meaning remains elusive.

Occasionally, unknown words appear, requiring deductive skills. Fortunately, we have references from Ancient Egyptian and can infer how the word might have sounded in earlier times or how it evolved into Coptic. It is also possible that the word was borrowed from Greek, she explains. Thanks to this process, she often manages to solve the mystery of previously unknown words—though not always successfully.

SOURCES

Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg

  • Share on:

Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Follow LBV Magazine on Google News