Die datierten und datierbaren Ostraka, Papyri, und Graffiti von Deir el-Medineh.

Darnell, John Coleman

Die datierten und datierbaren Ostraka, Papyri, und Graffiti von Deir el-Medineh. By WOLFGANG HELCK, edited by Adelheid Schlott. Agyptologische Abhandlungen, vol. 63. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2002. Pp. 573. [euro]146.

The rich epigraphic and archaeological material from Deir el-Medina, and the complex, intimate, and even voyeuristic view they often allow into the lives of the royal workmen of New Kingdom Thebes have long captivated both Egyptologists and the Egyptologically interested public. A number of scholars, such as Jaroslav Cerny (A Community of Workmen at Thebes in the Ramesside Period [Cairo, 1973]) and Dominique Valbelle ("Les ouvriers de la Tombe": Deir al-Medineh a l'epoque ramesside [Cairo, 1985]), have sought to provide an overview of the history of the Deir el-Medina community based on a chronological ordering of major documents. Probably most informative are the myriad of ostraca and papyri from the small city. A number of these documents are explicitly dated and many others allow themselves to be ordered chronologically on the basis of their content. An understanding of the various family genealogies and the succession of workmen and officials in the community have over time allowed for an at least rough dating of many of the surviving bits of textual material. Works such as that of Manfred Gutgesell (Die Datierung der Ostraka und Papyri aus Deir el-Medineh und ihre okonomische Interpretation [Hildesheim, 1983]) have demonstrated both the problems and the possibilities of this approach. The present work by Wolfgang Helck is the first published attempt to present a chronologically ordered framework of texts spanning the life of the Deir el-Medina community during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. For the Egyptologist who is not so intimately concerned with Deir el-Medina, Helck's book offers the ideal tool for acquiring the maximum amount of chronological information from the Deir el-Medina documents. Considering how widely scattered these documents are, through both the institutions in which they are housed and their various publications, Helck's chronological overview provides both an excellent index to the documents from Deir el-Medina for the regnal years of New Kingdom rulers and also creates a good starting point for any detailed investigation of issues concerning the Deir el-Medina community.

Adelheid Schlott prepared for publication the manuscript left by the late Wolfgang Helck in 1993. She augmented and expanded slightly upon Helck's work, at times following his own written indications of planned final improvements. Schlott undertook the painstaking task of checking all the documents and ensuring their proper chronological arrangement, while attempting to make only those changes where a clear error stood in the original manuscript. She expanded the list of texts cited and the bibliography, according to the plans of Professor Helck. Furthermore, Schlott prepared some very useful tables in the publication (e.g., pp. 154-58 and 219-24); she is to be applauded for her dedication to scholarship and to the memory of such a distinguished Egyptologist.

The texts that form the centerpiece of the present publication are administrative documents. These (for the most part) short texts appear as simplified lists in Helck's book. Lengthy texts, such as the tomb robbery papyri, are simply noted and the relevant information tabulated. Even in the short texts, however, the author emphasizes that one should regard his presentation of the texts as paraphrases rather than translations. When dating the texts from Deir el-Medina, Helck applies to the Nineteenth Dynasty the method already established by Gutgesell for Twentieth Dynasty texts, which uses prosopography and genealogy. Helck also notes the importance of the original find spot and temporal clusterings of documents for chronologically ordering the texts (note his remarks [pp. 35-36] on several groups of texts found together, with reference to C. N. Reeves, Valley of the Kings, the Decline of a Royal Necropolis [London, 1990]). Scattered throughout the book are interesting observations and opinions regarding Gutgesell's datings (e.g., pp. 209 and 341), Kitchen's Ramesside Inscriptions (e.g., pp. 83 and 125), Valbelle's Les ouvriers de la tombe (e.g., p. 35), and others.

The present manuscript has a straightforward organization. Each reign, beginning with Seti I and ending with Ramesses XI, has its own clearly demarcated section, which begins with an often very brief indication of the accession date. In some sections there follows a presentation of the texts considered for that reign, grouped chronologically with succinct indication of the reason for the date assigned. Again in some, but not all, regnal sections, a list of attested individual day dates for the reign follows. For some reigns, further tables provide additional evidence for the chronological ordering of texts: for the reign of Siptah a table illustrates the chronology of the texts on the basis of personal names mentioned; for the reigns of Ramesses III, IV, and V a table examines the order of the texts from the evidence of the lists of workmen on duty. The remaining part of each regnal section arranges the texts by regnal year.

In order to present the material in a clear and unencumbered fashion, footnotes, references, and discussions are kept to a minimum. This book is an essential tool for all Egyptologists concerned with texts from Deir el-Medina, and forms an excellent introduction to the chronology and documentation of that fascinating closed community of workmen. Although new and important works on Deir el-Medina appear continually, many thanks to the work of The Deir el-Medina Database in Leiden (http://www.leidenuniv.nl/nino/dmd/dmd.html), Helck's elaborate chronological structure for the Deir el-Medina documents is an important contribution to Egyptology. The presentation of this volume is a worthy tribute to the late Professor Helck.

JOHN COLEMAN DARNELL

YALE UNIVERSITY