From the mid third to the late first century BC, funerary workshops often used papyrus cartonnage (painted plastered waste-paper) to produce head-covers and elements to lay upon the chest and legs of the mummified and wrapped body. By retrieving the papyrus paper manuscripts from the cartonnage mummy-covers, late nineteenth and twentieth century excavators brought to light a great range of ancient writing, documentary and literary, in both Greek and Egyptian scripts and language.

In 1906-7, near modern Deir Rifeh, Flinders Petrie excavated the cemeteries of the local provincial capital Shashotep (Upper Egyptian province 11), and he recorded the following find in his excavation report (Petrie 1907: 29-30):

'At Rifeh some cartonnages made up of papyri were found. I damped, opened, and cleaned them, and then the Greek were submitted to Drs.Mahaffy and Smyly, and the demotic to Sir Herbert Thompson.'

Part of the collection has been under study by Professors Dorothy Thompson and Willy Clarysse (segments E1 and E4+5 are items P.Count 53 and 54 respectively in their publication Counting the People: population registers from Ptolemaic Egypt, Cambridge). The description of the find given in 1907 will require revision from their research. However, the 1907 description provides from one archaeological find an example of the range of content in papyrus cartonnage.

The Greek papyri, now in Trinity College Dublin, contained the following, according to Smyly:

1. copy of a letter concerning a land survey, for conditions following 'the revolt of Chaonnophris' (the rebellion of kings Ankhwennefer and Horwennefer against Ptolemaic rule in 205-185 BC) - this has now been published by B McGing, Sammelbuch 24, 15972
2. a petition in a year 34
3. an oath in year 27 of Ptolemy VIII, the latest dated by both Macedonian and Egyptian months
4. a petition referring to Lycopolis (the Greek name for Asyut) and a 'village of the Arabs' - now published by B McGing, Archiv fur Papyrusforschung 48, 2002, 42-66
5. numerous fragments of public and private accounts

The demotic papyri from each head-cover were itemised by Thompson as about eighty pieces, most if not all now in the Petrie Museum (where the identity of an item is certain, its UC number is given in brackets after the description):

Headpiece A

• A1-A5 register of fields
• A6 uncertain content

Headpiece B

• B1 banker's account (UC 55851)
• B2 year 28 Ptolemy IV land documents (part = UC 55886, part in UC 55875)
• B3 year 28 embalming contract
• B4-5 land document
• B6 name list (land document)
• B7 account concerning sacred ibis birds (UC 55872)
• B8 documents
• B9 fragments (UC 55850)
• B10 land documents
• B11 temple accounts
• B12 fragments of contracts

Headpiece C+D

• CD1 contracts (UC 55852)
• CD2-3 documents including temple regulations for textiles (UC 55853)
• CD4-12 documents including name lists (UC 55854-55861 except CD7)

Headpiece E

• E1 list of persons attached to Khnum temple (UC 32223) = P.Count 53 demotic household list
• E2 name list (part of UC 32532)
• E3 name lists (UC 55863)
• E4+5+17+F2alpha+F3 name lists (UC 55871) = P.Count 54 demotic record of men
• E6a+E7part year 35 banker's accounts (UC 55865)
• E6b banker's accounts (UC 55864)
• (Note that E7A+B are in Greek)
• E7part+E12+E15+E16 name lists (UC 55867)
• E8 name lists (UC 55868)
• E9 name lists (UC 55881)
• E10 banker's accounts (UC 55873)
• E11 temple accounts (UC 55869)
• E13 land document (UC 55882)
• E14 uncertain content (part of UC 55870)

Headpiece F

• F1 land document (UC 55874)
• (F2 and F3 see above with E4)
• F4 name list (UC 55885)
• F5 contract and name list fragments (UC 55884)
• F6 accounts and letter fragment (UC 55883)

Headpiece G

• G1 business report (UC 55897?)
• G2 small fragment with numerals (UC 55898?)
• G3 name list fragments (UC 55899?)
• G4 fragments with numerals (UC 55900?)
• Note that UC 55901 also has a label 'G'; however, the labelling of all these items may be later than, and different to, that by Thompson

Headpiece H

• H1-5 fragments of literary narrative (UC 32423-7)
• H6-7 literary fragments (?) (UC 55887-8?)
• H8 legal document with four signatures
• H9 uncertain content (UC 55889)
• H10 uncertain content

Headpiece K

• K1 report fragment
• K2-3 literary fragments, with H1-5? (these two fragments framed at back of UC 55870)

Note that there are several fragments of Rifeh cartonnage in the Petrie Museum for which the Herbert Thompson number is no longer present: UC 55862, 55876-55880, and 55890-55895.

Copyright © 2003 University College London. All rights reserved.