Ancient Lives: The Tebtunis Papyri in Context
The Bancroft Library Gallery offered an unusual sight during the last months of this millennium. From September through November, the cases were filled with objects that were, on average, two thousand years old, which is quite unexpected for a library so famous for its collections of Western Americana. Among other things, the Tebtunis exhibition served to highlight the immense variety and richness of Bancroft's collections. There was no mistaking that this was something different.
The nature of the objects shown varied considerably. There were many artifacts lent by the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, including a pair of beautiful statuettes and a (somewhat less beautiful) crocodile mummy; from Bancroft, there were papyrus documents ranging from part of a roll, to small fragments the size of a fingernail. The common denominator of all the exhibits, however, and the reason why they were together in the first place, is that they were all found at the same spot in Egypt, ancient Tebtunis, during the same excavation, one century ago last year.
Professor Arthur Verhoogt (University of Leiden) discusses the Tebtunis Papyri at the seminar in the Morrison Library. |
Surprisingly, the Bancroft exhibition marked the first time these objects had been brought together. Although both papyri and artifacts were found during the same excavation, they became separated within months after their discovery. Eventually, the papyrus documents ended up in The Bancroft Library and the artifacts in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, both on the Berkeley campus and separated by only about 500 yards.
The Tebtunis collections of the Bancroft Library (papyri) and the Hearst Museum (artifacts) are singular in many respects. First of all, the sheer number of objects should be emphasized. While the artifacts number 2,000, the papyrus fragments, for which a full count is still necessary, already amount to over 22,000, a number that may seem at first glance to be a barrier to research; but there is another aspect that is helpful: their context. Everything was found during the same excavation, and all the material can be related to one particular region in Egypt in one particular time span.
UC Berkeley Librarian Jerry Lowell welcomes the Egyptian Consul-General Hagar Abdel El Islambouly to the papyrus exhibit while Marie-Noëlle Bliss and Peter Hanff look on. |
In the last hundred years, it is the papyri that have received most of the scholarly attention. Some 1200 (only a tiny percentage of the total) have been published, most of them with translations and commentary in the four volumes of the series The Tebtunis Papyri (1902; 1907; 1933 and 1938; 1976). More recently, a large number of these published texts has been made available in digital format on the Internet (http:// sunsite.berkeley.edu/APIS; see also Bancroftiana no. 112, 1998) with catalogue records and images.
It is well-known among papyrological specialists and non-specialists alike that the documents from Tebtunis published to date have advanced our knowledge in various fields of study. In Greek philology, for example, the Tebtunis papyri have brought works to light that were thought to have been lost forever. Notable among these is a fragment of a play by the Greek playwright Sophocles (his Inachus ; P.Tebt. 692), which had not been copied in the medieval manuscript tradition and was hence only known in summary before the discovery of this fragment. In the field of ancient history, the Tebtunis papyri have provided the sources necessary to reconstruct the administrative, religious, and social history of Tebtunis and other neighboring villages in the Greek and Roman period. The remains of the official archive of Menches, clerk of the village of Kerkeosiris between 120 and 110 BC, are especially significant in this respect. Extracted from the crocodile mummies of Tebtunis, in which the documents were used as wrapping, they provide the only known source for this aspect of village administration for this period.
One of the mummified crocodiles was on display as part of the exhibit. |
We have learned so much from so little that it is tantalizing to consider what the remaining 95% of the collection will tell us, especially when combined with a study of the archaeological material, which has been rather neglected so far. While the papyri by themselves offer a wealth of documentation otherwise unknown for the world of antiquity, the artifacts add another dimension to them by providing the physical background for the documents. For example, when contracts mention loans of money, the archaeological finds can illustrate the coinage of the period, and the objects which actually changed hands. Painted portraits attached to some of the human mummies in the Roman period (one of which was on display in the Gallery) put a face on the people who are mentioned in the documents.
The centennial of Berkeley's Tebtunis excavation was certainly a moment to look back. It was also, however, a moment to look forward. The potential of the material is known; various snippets of life in Tebtunis have been revealed in the past century. There is, however, more to come if time, energy, and money are invested. The certain result of this investment will be a fairly detailed reconstruction of many aspects of daily life in one village in Egypt. By comparison we can then expand the picture arising for Tebtunis with the data known from texts and archaeological finds for other villages and thus arrive at a comprehensive social and economic history of Egypt in the Greco-Roman period.
An enthralled visitor examines a papyrus in the Tebtunis exhibit at Bancroft |
Several avenues of research will be worthwhile. The first is an integrated study of documents and artifacts as suggested above. Let artifacts shed light on documents and vice versa. Equally important will be the integrated study of literary texts and documents and the integrated study of Greek texts with their contemporary Egyptian (Demotic) texts. The latter approach will be especially worthwhile because this part of the collection (perhaps 30% of the total number of documents) has not yet been studied. This is the more regrettable, because Greco-Roman Egypt was, after all, a multi-cultural society (with Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, etc.). Perhaps the study of the interaction between these various groups, as depicted in the documents and artifacts, will lead to a better understanding of the social processes at work in this society. A better understanding of those processes then can possibly lead to a better understanding of similar processes in our own society. Thus the ancient lives of Tebtunis may be of more than academic interest for people today.
Professor Arthur Verhoogt,
University of Leiden
Volume 116
Spring 2000
Table of Contents
The Silent Multitude of Voices in the Reading Room
From the Director: Bancroft Goes Digital
Highlights from Bancroft's Web Resources
Paramount Theatre Archives at The Bancroft Library
Three Monuments in the History of Science Arrive at Bancroft
Ancient Lives: The Tebtunis Papyri in Context
From Mine to Natural Reserve: ROHO records the transition
Chemistry Symposium in Honor of Kenneth S. Pitzer Held January 9 to 13, 2000: Oral History Presented
