The earliest known abecedary

A flake of limestone (ostracon) inscribed with an ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BC turns out to be the world's oldest known abecedary. The words have been arranged according to their initial sounds, and the order followed here is one that is still known today. This discovery by Ben Haring (Leiden University) with funding from Free Competition Humanities has been published in the October issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

The order is not the ABC of modern western alphabets, but Halaḥam (HLḤM), the order known from the Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Arabian and Classical Ethiopian scripts. ABC and HLḤM were both used in Syria in the thirteenth century BC: cuneiform tablets found at site of ancient Ugarit show both sequences. Back then, ABC was still '-b-g ('aleph-beth-gimel). This sequence was favored by the Phoenicians who passed it on to the Greeks, together with the alphabet itself. Thus a-b-g found its way to the later alphabets inspired by the Greek and Latin ones.

The ostracon was found over twenty years ago by the British Egyptologist Nigel Strudwick in an Ancient Egyptian tomb near Luxor. The text has never been understood, however, until it was deciphered by Ben Haring, a Dutch Egyptologist working at Leiden University. Haring made his discovery in the context of a research project on Ancient Egyptian identity marks funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

The text is an incomplete list of words written in hieratic, the cursive script used in Ancient Egypt for some 3,000 years. To the left is a column of individual signs that appear to be abbreviations of the words. Very possibly they even render the initial consonants of the words, which would make them alphabetic signs.

The hieratic script and the related hieroglyphic script were not alphabetic themselves. Yet the Ancient Egyptian scripts had an important position in the earliest known stages of the alphabet. Inscriptions in the Sinai Desert and in Southern Egypt show signs that are thought to be the earliest known alphabetic characters, and the forms of many of these characters were clearly inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. Most of these inscriptions still resist decipherment. Some of their characters also figure in the left column of the word list deciphered by Haring. The list is therefore a key piece for the reconstruction of the earliest history of the alphabet.

This ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BC is the earliest known example of a list arranged according to their initial sounds. It gives a vital insight into the earliest known stages of the alphabet.

Source: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-earliest-abecedary.html

Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus; earliest mention of cancer

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: World Cancer Day, which falls every year on Feb. 4, has a link to ancient Egypt as The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, currently in the New York Academy of Medicine, is believed to contain the earliest written record of cancer in mankind history.

In addition to providing the earliest reference to suturing of non-infected wounds with a needle and thread along with preparing splints for bone fracture, the text, dating from 1,600 B.C., also contains diagnosis of eight cases of breast tumors along with treatment by cauterizing tools, ancient Egyptian history professor Sherif el-Sabban told The Cairo Post Wednesday.

“The papyrus, written in hieratic script, contains 48 case histories on head, thorax and spine injuries with each presentation divided into title, examination, diagnosis, and treatment,” said Sabban, adding that the breast cancer is mentioned in the papyrus but it was considered non-curable.

For example, in case 39, dealing with “tumors with prominent heads and have produced cysts of pus in a man’s breast,” the author recommended cauterizing tumors using a “fire drill” said Sabban.

“American archaeologist Edwin Smith purchased the papyrus from Luxor in 1862; it was donated by his daughter to Brooklyn Museum in 1906 before it was presented to the New York Academy of Medicine where it has resided since 1920,” former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Abdel Halim Noureddin told The Cairo Post Thursday.

The manuscript was first translated by former Director of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute American archaeologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935,) said Noureddin, adding that this surgical text is an incomplete copy of an original document that perhaps dates back to the pyramid age (2700B.C.–2200 B.C.)

“Unlike other civilizations in the Middle East, the ancient Egyptian understanding of traumatic injuries was based on scientific practices gained through observation and examination, rather than depending on magic or supernatural powers,” he added.

Source: http://www.thecairopost.com/news/136200/sticker/edwin-smith-surgical-papyrus-earliest-mention-of-cancer

Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.01.53

Sylvie Donnat Beauquier, Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique. Collection Horos​.   Grenoble:  Jérôme Millon Editions​, 2014.  Pp. 286.  ISBN 9782841372522.  €26.00 (pb). 

One of the most characteristic aspects of pharaonic culture is undoubtedly the funerary domain. Massive monuments like the pyramids, beautifully decorated royal and private tombs, extensive ritual texts carved on temples or inscribed in coffins, even contemporary popular icons of the Egyptian past like mummies or the Book of the Dead, attest to the importance of death and deceased people in Egyptian beliefs and in contemporary interpretations of pharaonic civilization. In fact Egyptology has devoted most of its archaeological and philological work to the study of texts and monuments related to the mortuary sphere, especially those belonging to members of the royalty and of the elite who ruled the country. Furthermore, these researches have been mainly focused on art and religious history, while the social aspects of death and its importance in cementing interpersonal ties among the living ones, especially among common people, have not received as much attention. In the last decades Egyptologists have become increasingly aware, however, of the existence of extensive kin networks in Egyptian society, a circumstance usually concealed behind the use of rather general and imprecise kinship terms like “brother”, “sister”, “son” or “child” to refer, in fact, to collateral or descendant members of one's family as well as to subordinates. The epigraphic and ritual sources of the end of the 3rd millennium suddenly contain a plethora of terms evoking extensive kin groups, but the precise meaning of many of them still eludes us and in many cases it is only possible to suggest approximate translations like “household” or “extended family”. Irrespective, the influence of these networks left their mark in the domain of funerary beliefs.

Did the pharaohs know hieroglyphics? - Polish Egyptologist explains

Could all the pharaohs read and write? Only 1-3 percent of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt mastered this exceptionally difficult art. Evidence of literacy of the rulers of Egypt are perhaps not numerous, but clear, argues Filip Taterka, Egyptologist, a doctoral student at the Institute of Prehistory, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

In ancient Egypt, there were several types of handwriting. Currently, the best known are classical hieroglyphics, carved in stone on the walls of temples and tombs.

"For administrative documents and literary texts, ancient Egiptians used mainly hieratic, which was a simplified form of writing used since the Old Kingdom, the time of the builders of the pyramids in the third millennium BC. In the middle of the first millennium BC, even more simplified demotic appeared" - explained Taterka.

As it turns out, Egyptian written sources tell us very little about the literacy of the kings of Egypt. Poznań scientist tried to trace the problem since the beginning of pharaonic civilization in Egyptian texts.

"Relatively late sources suggest that even one of the first rulers of Egypt - Aha - mastered the writing skill. He was believed to be an author of a few medical treaties, although the reliability of this report is, of course, debatable" - added Taterka.

According to the reasearcher, the oldest source directly referring to pharaonic literacy comes from the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the end of the 3d millennium BC. Royal dignitary Inti an inscription carved inside his tomb at Saqqara near the oldest pyramid in the world, which mentions receiving a letter personally written by Pharaoh Isesi. The researcher found numerous allusions to skills in writing by the rulers of the land of the Nile in the Texts of the Pyramids, the oldest religious inscriptions carved inside the 10 pyramids.

Library's papyrus leads to an ancient detective story

By Gwen Glazer

In 1889, Andrew Dickson White’s extensive travels found him in Cairo, where he purchased an 8-foot-long papyrus scroll found in an ancient tomb. A museum conservator told White it was Spell 125 from the “Book of the Dead,” a traditional Egyptian funeral text.

White shipped it to Ithaca and, trusting his account, no one translated the scroll after it arrived in the library’s archives – until now, when a collections assistant in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) examined it carefully.

A segment of the papyrus on display

Photocredit: Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

Fredrika Loew ’12, a Near Eastern studies and archaeology major who knows hieroglyphics and began as a student assistant in RMC, consulted with her colleagues and found something odd about the text.

“It’s written in hieratic, the hieroglyphic equivalent for papyrus, and it’s clear from the drawing that it has something to do with death and burials,” Loew said. “But when I looked at it carefully, the words didn't seem familiar.”

Loew's was right: The scroll turned out to be a unique funerary text. It quotes parts of the “Book of the Dead,” but, as far as scholars know, it is an original text from the Ptolemaic period and dates to around 330-320 B.C.

With Thomas Christiansen, a hieratic scholar in Denmark, Loew is working to understand the text. She, Christiansen and Caitlin Barrett, assistant professor of classics, are also co-authoring a book about the papyrus.

The papyrus belonged to a Ptolemaic priest named Usir-Wer, and it describes what will happen to his body and soul (or “ba”) after death. Part of it reads:

“They will take your ba to the sky and they will take your corpse to the Duat. They will place the cloth of the southern and northern house on your mummy like the follower of Sokar, whom you made into one of the vigilant ones who are watching over the lord, the great god. ... Your ba will appear in a chamber of white gold. Royal linen will descend on your mummy bandages.”

Loew created an RMC exhibition around the papyrus – and several other Egypt-related artifacts from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and the library, including its anthropology collections – that will be open until June 15 in the Kroch Library rotunda. The display includes mummified birds, an amulet, a kohl jar and an 1824 book deciphering hieratic and hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Also on display are White's photographs from his travels in Egypt, including the excavation of the Sphinx.

The exhibition is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Source: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/05/librarys-papyrus-leads-ancient-detective-story