Ptolemaic studies
The Ptolemaistik is a scientific discipline and a research field, which deals with the ancient Egypt of the Greco-Roman period concerned (about 4 to 1. Century v. Chr. ) The term Ptolemaistik derives from the dynasty of Ptolemies from which Egypt ruled that time. The main research areas are the temples and the philology of this era.
Ptolemaic studies does not appear as an independent subject, but is a sub-area of Egyptology .
philology
In Ptolemaic studies, research into the extensive text corpora is of particular importance. Ptolemaic forms one of the last language levels of Egyptian, which is to be placed after New Egyptian, but is based to a large extent on Middle Egyptian. In addition, there are peculiarities of the ancient and new Egyptian language level, just as the demotic language has left clear traces, which was colloquial language at the time those texts were written. Ptolemaic is therefore an artificial idiom which was not in use as a living language in Greco-Roman times, but was spoken by the priests and scribes as a "living dead language". A good knowledge of the writing system is also required for studying these texts. The hieroglyphic writing system of this epoch knows more than 7000 hieroglyphs , but only about 2000 of them are assessed as distinct.
Most important temples of the era
The temples of the Greco-Roman period were the most valuable sources for Ptolemaic studies.
- Edfu - See also the Edfu project
- Esna
- Dendera
- Philae
Study locations
- University of Cologne
- University of Hamburg
- University of Würzburg
- University of Tübingen
- Leiden University
literature
- Dieter Kurth : Introduction to Ptolemaic , Volume I, A grammar with a list of characters and exercises, Backe-Verlag 2007.
- Christian Leitz: Source texts of the Egyptian religion I, The inscriptions of the Greco-Roman times, Münster 2004.
Web links
- The Edfu Project ( Memento from May 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Olaf Kaper. Retrieved March 23, 2017 (American English).