Orientalia Suecana

Turkic languages present particularly rich sources of data for the study of language contact, given the number and diversity of languages with which they have been in contact. Many common, false generalisations are laid bare and the methodology used in evaluating particular instances of language contact can also be used with profit by students of languages other than the Turkic.

The Archive of Thotsutmis, Son of Panouphis presents for the first time one of the largest collections of Demotic ostraca to have been discovered intact by archaeologists in the twentieth century. Rarely have such deposits been found in situ. Excavated by Ambrose Lansing on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1915-16 at the site of Deir el-Bahari, the integrity and context of this find are critical to the proper understanding of the texts it contained. Through the publication and analysis of this archive of Demotic and Greek texts recorded on ostraca, Muhs, Scalf, and Jay reconstruct the microhistory of Thotsutmis, son of Panouphis, and his family, who worked in Egypt on the west bank of Thebes as priests in the mortuary industry during the early Ptolemaic Period in the third century BC. 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. What the reconstructed microhistory reveals is an ancient family striving to make it among the wealthy and connected social network of Theban choachytes and pastophoroi, while they simultaneously navigated the bureaucratic maze of taxes, fees, receipts, and legal procedures of the Ptolemaic state.

The Mind of Egypt presents an account of the mainsprings of Egyptian civilization - the ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems and aspirations that shaped the first territorial state in human history. Drawing on a range of literary, iconographic and archaeological sources, Jan Assmann reconstructs a world of unparalleled complexity, a culture that, long before others, possessed an extraordinary degree of awareness and self-reflection.

In Three Hundred Years of Death: The Egyptian Funerary Industry in the Ptolemaic Period, Maria Cannata discusses how necropolises and funerary priests, as well as the mummification, funeral, burial, and the deceased’s mortuary cult, were organised in Ptolemaic Egypt.

This bibliography - intended to be as complete as possible - provides information on written material in 22 languages about muwaššaḥ and zajal (poetical strophic forms in al-Andalus during the Middle Ages) and the kharja (final segment of muwaššaḥ and some zajals), and about their popularity in East and West.