History of the Library: the Library
of Tebtunis Temple in the Roman Period?
In 1931 Carlo Anti discovered in a cellar of structures at the temple enclosure
wall at Tebtunis in the Fayum a great mass
of papyrus manuscripts; many from the same find were acquired by contemporary
collectors. The Anti excavated find is preserved in Florence, and the larger
part of the remainder is in Copenhagen; a joint project with an international
editorial board now oversees the publication of the documents.
The manuscripts are in Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic)
and in Greek, and date principally to the second century AD; they may have become
waste paper by the time of their deposition in the third century AD. They provide
a detailed impression of the contents of a temple library in the latest period
at which Egyptian scripts were still in regular use.
It is estimated that the find comprised remnants of around five hundred manuscripts:
- about three hundred demotic, mainly literary compositions and treatises
- about one hundred in hieratic, mainly relating to cult and religious knowledge
- about fifty hieroglyphic manuscripts, all in particularly fragmentary condition
- about fifty Greek papyri, principally private documents, with some temple
accounts, and giving a date range from about 27 BC to AD 210.
The painstaking task of editing and publishing these fragmentary manuscripts
is already transforming modern appreciation of ancient Egyptian writing and
knowledge in the Roman Period. The documents published or cited in preliminary
reports so far include the following extensive and important manuscripts:
- 1 hieratic and demotic astronomical treatise (Neugebauer and Parker I, pl.36-42)
- 1 hieratic copy of the 'Book of the Fayum' with hymns to Sobek (Botti
1959)
- 3 copies (2 hieratic, 1 hieroglyphic) of the same tabulation of religious
knowledge as in the 'Tanis Geographical Papyrus' (Osing
1998; Osing/Rosati
1998)
- 1 hieratic copy of an extended version of a word-list
(nouns and verbs) and parts of the tabulation of religious knowledge (Osing
1998)
- 1 hieratic copy of a related collection of sacred knowledge with sets of
words, dominated in its surviving condition by lists of deities (Osing
1998)
- 2 hieratic copies of the daily cult of Sobek lord of Bedenu (PSI I.70 and
Papyrus Carlsberg 307) (Osing/Rosati
1998)
- 2 hieroglyphic copies of inscriptions on the walls and facades of tomb-chapels
from 2000 BC at Asyut (OSI I.3 and PSI I.4) (Osing and Rosati 1998)
- 1 hieratic copy of a mythological manual of nomes in hieratic (PSI I.72)
(Osing/Rosati 1998)
- 1 hieratic copy of a manual of a 'pure-priest of Sekhmet' (PSI I.73) (Osing/Rosati
1998)
- 17 of the 40 or more extant copies of the 'Book of the Temple', a treatise
on the architecture of the ideal temple, and the titles and duties of its
staff (cited in Quack 2000)
References
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