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The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of CrossCultural Continuity and Change. By BEZALEL PORTEN et al. Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui; Studies in Near Eastern Archaeology and Civilizations, vol. 22. Leiden: E. J. BRILL. Pp. x + 621, 11 plates. HF1402, $259.50.
This work gathers together into one volume 175 translated hieratic, demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Latin documents from the Upper Egyptian fortress cities of Elephantine and Syrene, dating from the late Old Kingdom to the Abbassid period. The project, executed by an international team of specialists, was carried out under the supervision of Bezalel Porten of the Hebrew University, for many years the preeminent scholar in Elephantine Aramaic studies.
All of the texts have been previously published, but never in a single collection or in a consistent format, and many not in English. A hint of the book's scope is given by a listing of its contents: ten hieratic texts (twenty-second through third centuries B.C.E.), translated by Gunter Vittmann; fifty-two Aramaic papyri (late sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.), translated by Porten; thirty-seven demotic papyri (sixth century B.C.E. through first century C.E.), translated by Cary J. Martin; fifty-two Greek papyri (late fourth century B.C.E. through seventh century C.E.), translated by J. Joel Farber; twenty Coptic texts (three papyri and seventeen ostraca), translated by Leslie S. B. MacCoull and Sarah J. Clackson; two in Arabic (ninth-tenth centuries c.E.), translated by Simon Hopkins; and two fragments in Latin (third century c.E.), translated by Ranon Katzoff.
Generically, the texts are extremely diverse. A great many are legal: documents recording the disposition of marital property, real estate transactions, loans, and other contracts, including several family archives in Aramaic, demotic, Greek, and Coptic....