The archive of Thotsutmis, son of Panouphis : early Ptolemaic ostraca from Deir el Bahari (O. Edgerton)

Abstract

Through the publication and close examination of an archive of texts, the following volume attempts to reconstruct a microhistory of one man and his family working on the west bank of Thebes in the mortuary industry during the early Ptolemaic Period. Although only a rather rough micronarrative can be reconstructed for their activities, the integrity of the archive is essential to expanding and nuancing our view of these individuals and the associated events. Rarely have such collections been found in situ. 1 The forty-two ostraca published in this volume provide a rare opportunity to explore the intersections between an “intact” ancient archive of private administrative documents and the larger social and legal contexts into which they fit. A note is in order about the references throughout this volume. When referring to individual texts, cita tions follow the practice common in papyrology by using an accepted siglum, abbreviation, and number from the publication in which the text was published, e.g., O. Med. Habu, no. 63. Established sigla have been used where available. In certain cases, a siglum has been created because the authors thought it would prove useful to readers. Festschriften in which texts are consecutively numbered have been assigned sigla, e.g., FsZauzich 1. For texts found in publications without convenient sigla, they have been cited according to an author-date format followed by the number assigned by the original editor, e.g., Wångstedt 1968, no. 13, or by museum inventory number followed by an author-date reference, e.g., P. Berlin P. 3089 (Vittmann 1982, pp. 166–71). However, when a citation is made to the particular comments of the editor of the text, references follow the author-date format, e.g., Lichtheim 1957, p. 32. All bibliographic information for sigla and citations can be found in the list of abbreviations and sigla along with the bibliography. Line numbers to text are separated from their respective number by a period, so that O. Med. Habu, no. 63.1, signifies line 1 of the text assigned the catalog number sixty-three in Lichtheim 1957