Two Eighteenth Dynasty Letters. Papyrus Louvre 3230

7/30/2019 Two Eighteenth Dynasty Letters. Papyrus Louvre 3230

1/7

Egypt Exploration Society

Two Eighteenth Dynasty Letters. Papyrus Louvre 3230Author(s): T. Eric PeetSource: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 12, No. 1/2 (Apr., 1926), pp. 70-74Published by: Egypt Exploration SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3854183 .

Accessed: 02/09/2013 21:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Egypt Exploration Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal

of Egyptian Archaeology.

http://www.jstor.org

Thi d l d d f 169 229 32 136 M 2 S 2013 21 49 57 PM
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=eeshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3854183?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3854183?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ees


2/7

70

TWO EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY LETTERSPAPYRUS LOUVRE 3230BY T. ERIC PEETWith Plate XVII.

The papyrus numbered 3230 in the Louvre consists of two pieces gummed down on tomummy wrapping and therefore presumably uninscribed on the verso. The larger piecemeasures 16'6 cm. in breadth by 13'3 in height, and the smaller 15'5 by 10'0. In bothcases the fibres run horizontally on the inscribed face.

The papyrus was published no fewer than 43 years ago by Masperol, whose geniusenabled him to produce not only an amazingly clever transcription for that time, but alsoa very fair translation of the lower piece, though, as will be seen later, an incorrect readingmisled him as to the bearing of the document. This lower piece has lately been republishedby Spiegelberg2, who, however,worked at a disadvantage, not having the original documentbefore him and being forced to depend on the very bad facsimile published by Maspero.In the summer of 1925 I made a very careful collation of the whole papyrus in theLouvre. Its main interest lies in its date. The grammar and phraseology are distinctlytinged with the idiom of Late Egyptian, and point clearly to the Eighteenth Dynasty.This dating is borne out by the neat script with its strong reminiscences of MiddleKingdom forms and its entire lack of the abbreviations and almost senseless strokes andligatures of a Nineteenth or Twentieth Dynasty letter hand. The two pieces are bydifferent hands, or by the same hand at different periods in life, for despite a superficialsimilarity there are very marked divergences, as may be seen, for instance, in the forms of? and ~: even in Maspero'sfacsimile.

Spiegelberg has fixed the date even further by pointing out that by the scribe"Aahmose of Peniati" must be meant the man described on a Louvre palette (E. 3212) as"The scribe Aahm6se, lieutenant of Peniati, director of works of Hermonthis." ThisPeniati lived during the reigns of Amenophis I, Tuthmosis I and II, Hatshepsut andTuthmosis III. The letters may therefore be ascribed to the first half of the EighteenthDynasty. See P1. XVII.TRANSLATION.

............... (1) Teti greets his brother,his beloved,his friend of the desire of his heart, thescribe (2) Aahmose, in life, prosperity and health, in the favour of AmenreC,King of theGods, thy august god: (3) may Thoth,Lord of the Gods, and Ptah, the Great, South of hisWall, Lord of Ankh-taui, love [thee]3: may they grant theefavour and love (4) and skill in1 Memoire sur quelques papyrus du Louvre in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la BibliothequeNationale, tome xxiv, premibrepartie, 1 if., with two unnumberedplates bearinga poor facsimile.2 Zeitschr. f. ag. Spr., Lv, 84-6.3 There seems to be a trace of something on the torn edge of the sheet after the oddly made , perhaps

[t]: not ::.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.136 on Mon, 2 Sep 2013 21:49:57 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/7

4 4=1 a -I SIC-, 15__,. [L.,

I ?uoaII -C=- Ci:-1 p PP{ C. -- ^s ri

n Sce

I II

m zRt L\f A/~

4

^ X tPi4-T oi_fi 4|O? C T APiTCx :^'??- ( W i < - ? ;

I LI V , 9PP |ne4=h.Z-P^ PJ^-T^ S^^=

rPyil-^ I''^^Cl

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Papyrus Louvre 3,230 transcribed into hieroglyphs.

Plate XVII.

1

2



4/7

TWO EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY LETTERS 71the sight of all men. Further:-Hail to thee. Hail to thee'. Is all well with thee?(5) Behold, my desire is to see thee, exceedingly. Further:-I haveplanted much barley forthee, (6) and it shall serve thee as ............... thy (?) barley which is in the corner of land(7) along with thy flax. It is ............... exceedingly. Moreover I will not let thee fail(8) for2 anything in respect of any of my duties so long as I live. Further:-Give thyattention to completing(?) thy(?) house3(9) which is on theriver-bank: let it bedoneproperlylike every successful undertaking of thine. (10) Grant that I may return to enter into it atmy coming. And let ............... (rest lost).

(1) What4Aahmose of Peniati says to his master, the treasurer5 Tai. (2) Why has thefemale slave who was with me been taken away and given6 to another? Am (3) I not thyservant,hearkening to thy commands by night as well as by day7? (4) Let her value8betaken

1 hi kdw.k. An uncommon form of salutation, the exact meaning of which is uncertain. For hi cf.SPIEGELBERG, Corresp.du tempsdesrois-prdtres, 1, and passages there quoted. Spiegelberg takes it to bean interrogative, "how." This meaning would suit the passages in letters, e.g. Pap. Sallier iv, verso, 1. 3and 2. 2 (Egyptian Hierat. Pap. in the Brit. Mus., second series, Plates CXII and CXIII), though in thefirst of these, hi kd.t, tw.tnVmh sp sn, it might be objected that if hi kd.t means "How are you"?t is futileto add tw.t mi ih twice over with precisely the same meaning. This, however, is hardly a fatal objection.More serious is the difficultythat this meaning will not fit at all in Sallier IIi, 6. 8 and 8. 1, where some-thing like " Hail" is required,c"Hail the happy chance of erecting a monument in Thebes owing to thegreat sin which my army has committed" (Ramesses means that the cowardice of his army will enablehim when setting up a memorial of the battle to claim the whole credit for himself) and again " Hail,noble warrior,etc." See also Zeitschr. . dg. Spr., LX,69.I cannot catch the sense of the word in the damaged passage Pap. Bibl. Nat. 237, carton 25, vs. 3(collated), but I feel that Spiegelberg's"Qu'est-ceque vous 8tes?" is impossibly harsh in the context.hi in GAJTHIER,InscriptiondedicatoirecPAbydos, 1.8, 54-55, 60, appearsto be a totally different word.

2 The first group in this line can hardly be read otherwise than as JL and in this case it must be thewriting of the preposition AWA studied by GUNN,Studies in Egyptian Syntax, 84-6. The next group is, the 'z being obscuredby the thick long tail of another :c6 in the line above. The Aww of nkt

would seem to have been omitted after -. The two more obvious solutions of the difficulty, to readfor JL. or for ,are both palaeographically mpossible.

3 There must be an error here. Is an attempt to write the verb r, "to complete"?The masculine rf in 1. 10 apparently referringto the feminine et adds to the confusion.

4 tZ could also perhaps be read, but my feeling in front of the original was that the scribeintended the ligature for . a : would be a neuter passive participlefollowedby its true subject,AAWA oS I I Iand the meaning in either case is precisely the same.

5 Maspero'sreading, I, followedby Spiegelberg,is impossible, and the reading here given is tomy mind quite certain.6 rdit. An interesting survival of the M. K. use of the pseudoparticiple in a clause of circumstance.Cf. ShipwreckedSailor, 73, 150.7 This sentiment is not uncommonin letters. Cf. Anastasi iv, 8. 8 and Pap. Turin, P. R. cxxx, 1.3.

8 sbt (myebo) is clearly a nominal formationfrom sbi, "to change," he Coptic gfi2e, "to change" or"exchange" (by way of trade). In Pap. Turin, P.R. LVII,1. 2 k 3 j (where sb ismasculine) clearly means "' o give in exchange," .e. to sell. But I am not at all sure that I have caughtthe exact sense of the phrase in the present passage. My translation assumes that Aahmose is offeringtodo extra work himself to represent the contribution of the girl, who is as yet incapable of doing it. Or is



5/7

T. ERIC PEETalong with mine, for truly she is a child, she cannot (5) work. Or let my lord command thatI should be made to deliver her tasks


6/7

TWO EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY LETTERSleft the home and become a scribe in the department of public works,while Teti, a youngerbrother, administers the family acres, in which Aahinose still has a financial interest. Theinvocation of Ptah suggests Memphis as the home of the brothers, Amun being invoked asthe state deity and Thoth as the god of writing.The lower piece of papyrus is of greater interest. Maspero and Spiegelberg have bothregarded it as a letter, and they are doubtless right. But, in the first place, what Egyptianletter ever began with the phrase or ? And in the second place, howcomes it that we have side by side, presumably from the same find, if not from the sameroll, two letters, one addressed to Aahmose and the other addressed by him to his master ?Neither of these objections is fatal. To the second it may be replied that we have anexact parallel in the correspondence of Hekanakht found by the Metropolitan Museum ofNew York in the tomb of Hesem at Thebes': quite possibly in matters of business thecorrespondence on both sides was eventually filed in some public office. To the firstobjection it may readily be replied that we know almost nothing as yet about the formulaeused in letters of the Middle Kingdomnand Eighteenth Dynasty, and that there is noreason whatsoever why a business letter in which the scribe really had something to sayshould not begin with the businesslike dd tn X, "What X said,"instead of the usual space-wasting empty salutations. If the reading dd tn be preferred we have the old neuterrelative form, used in the New Kingdom to introduce a deposition in a court of law. Thatthis is not its sense here is clear both from the general content of the document and bythe fact that it is followed by n nbf, "to his master." We must therefore give it itsstraightforward non-technical sense "What so-and-so said." The commonest formula forthe opening of a Middle Kingdom letter seems to have been X dd n Y, "X says to Y,"where dd is perhaps a sdmnf form with the subject suffix omitted as superfluous. We needtherefore feel no surprise at finding in the early Eighteenth Dynasty the same simpleformula varied by the use of the participle dd.t or the relative dd.tn2.Thus there is no reason for thinking that this letter is a model produced by a schoolboy,and we may take it to be a real historical document. It is addressed by "Aahmose ofPeniati" to "the treasurer Tai," who in virtue of his office would be the superior of thedirector of works Peniati, Aahm6se's immediate master. This Tai, now that he is divestedof his incorrect title of "chief weaver," may be recognizable as a historical personage,though up to the present I have been unable to trace him.An unfortunate error of transcription has led Maspero3to suppose that the slave girlwas engaged in a weaving factory, and with his ready pen he has evolved from thedocument an essay on the conditions of apprenticeship in such establishments. All thismust, however, go by the board. We have in reality no hint as to the kind of work onwhich Aahmose was engaged. It would seem that the girl's mother had allowed her toleave her home only on the definite understanding that she was to remain under the pro-

1 Bull. Metrop.Muts.,Part II, December 1922, 38-9.2 It is possible that we already have in the Middle Kingdom a use of the relative form: see GRIFFITH,Kahun Papyri, P1.XXX, 11.1 and 24, where can hardly be a sdm.f, for it would be hard to see whythe geminated imperfectiveform should be used, and may well be a relative, made masculine to agreewithsome word for "letter" understood.3 Followed by Spiegelberg.Journ. of Egypt. Arch. xII. 10

73



7/7

74 T. ERIC PEETtection of Aahmose. She has now been taken away from him and the mother writes toprotest, adding, however, that she has not complained direct to Tai since the girl is inAahmdse's charge and it is consequently his business to make the complaint. This heaccordingly does in the letter which we have before us.It is doubtful whether much of value is to be inferred from this letter as to socialconditions at this period, the more so since the whole subject of servitude and slavery inAncient Egypt still remains to be worked out.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.136 on Mon, 2 Sep 2013 21:49:57 PMAll bj t t JSTOR T m d C diti

Two Eighteenth Dynasty Letters. Papyrus Louvre 3230

Documents

Transcript of Two Eighteenth Dynasty Letters. Papyrus Louvre 3230