Ramesseum papyri

As Ramesseum Papyri are greatly decayed and barely legible papyri called, the end of the 19th century in a grave shaft below the warehouses of the Ramesseum , the mortuary temple of Ramses II. , In Egyptian -West Thebes were found. Most are now in the British Museum in London , some also in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin . Due to their poor state of preservation, the papyri, which are mostly magical texts, have so far hardly been examined.

Find description

Coordinates of the place of discovery: 25 ° 43 ′ 44.4 ″ N , 32 ° 36 ′ 36.5 ″ E25729 32.610138888889

Temple plan according to Quibell

During the excavations of the Ramesseum, which originated in the New Kingdom , the Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and James Quibell came across a grave shaft under the northern warehouses of the mortuary temple in 1895 and 1896. The temple complex of Ramses II was built on graves from the time of the Middle Kingdom . The unadorned grave shaft from the 18th century BC BC contained many small finds such as a wooden naked woman with a lion's head holding snakes in her hands, four magic knives made from hippo teeth , an ivory staff with depictions of lions, protective deities armed with knives, a sistrum and a bronze cobra in a mass of hair was found, possibly remains of a wig.

Temple grounds with warehouses

Ramesseum storehouses

Among the finds was a white plastered wooden box (45.75 × 30.5 × 30.5 cm) with a lid on which a rough representation of a jackal was drawn in black ink . The box mentioned by James Quibell in 1898 is now considered lost. In addition to a bundle of 118 rushes , usually 39 to 41 cm long , which were used as writing implements, about a third was filled with papyri. As a result of the rise in groundwater during the flooding of the Nile , the papyri were likely exposed to constant fluctuations in humidity, resulting in the loss of about three-quarters of their substance, their fragility and their dark color. When the wooden box was opened, the rolls of extremely fine papyrus of high quality were only present in fragments.

The papyri first came to the Edwards Library at University College London , until Percy Newberry tried around 1900 to unroll two of them ( Papyrus Ramesseum 3 and 1 ) and apply them to a beeswax-coated glass surface, which he then covered with another pane of glass. Many fragments were lost or destroyed in the process. Flinders Petrie then commissioned the young Alan Gardiner to edit the papyri, who suggested Hugo Ibscher , whom he had met in Berlin, as restorer. There Gardiner Ibscher handed over the Papyri Ramesseum 4, 5 and 9 for conservation in 1903 . In the following years Ibscher drew most of the Ramesseum papyri in Berlin and London onto gelatine film under glass. The last manuscripts were not preserved until 1937. Two parts of the Papyrus Ramesseum 18 , probably experimentally mounted on celluloid film , spontaneously decomposed some time before 1955. The papyri Ramesseum A and D , preserved in 1906 and 1907 , came as financial compensation for a publication in 1907 and sold in 1910 to the papyrus collection in Berlin. They are registered there as Papyrus Berlin 10499 and Papyrus Berlin 10495 .

Papyrus Ramesseum B

The Ramesseum papyri consist of various manuscripts that were created over a period of up to 100 years, i.e. over several generations. Most of the papyri are written in hieratic script . The Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus published by Kurt Sethe in 1928 differs from these and was written in italic hieroglyphs , an intermediate stage in the development of the Egyptian hieroglyphs used on temple and grave walls to the hieratic on the traditional documents. Sethe was interested in the religious texts in the papyri, especially dialogues between deities, which he called "drama". The Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus (after Gardiner Papyrus Ramesseum B ) works heavily with phonetic analogies . The other papyri passed on partly literary , partly medical and magical content such as love and defense spells as well as administrative information from Nubia . All the outstanding manuscripts were published by Alan Gardiner in his 1955 book The Ramesseum Papyri. Plates. published.

Due to the lack of inscriptions, the grave owner can only be inferred from the contents of the papyri and the grave goods. In contrast to other documents in grave inventories, which mostly contain information about the journey to the land of the dead or existence in the afterlife, the Ramesseum papyri were probably only of value to their owner during their lifetime. The grave goods are in the context of magical acts with a focus on the protection of women and children, especially in the area of childbirth. In connection with the descriptions of healing methods and magical protective actions in the scriptures, one can infer a ritualist as the former owner of the finds. This is also indicated by the representation of the jackal on the lid of the box in which the papyri were located. The hieroglyph of a lying jackal means Heri-Seschta (Ḥrj-sšt3) and is the ancient Egyptian word for a privy councilor ("He who is above the secret"). The deceased should probably be given objects that he used during his lifetime to indicate for eternity what role he played in the society of his time.

Collection of papyri

Alan Gardiner listed the preserved papyri as follows in 1955:

Beginning of the Papyrus Berlin 10499

Lines 13 to 30 of the story of Sinuhe on the Papyrus Berlin 10499

Papyrus Ramesseum A: The peasant's complaints on the one hand, The story of Sinuhe on the other (Berlin 10499)
Papyrus Ramesseum B: "Dramatic Ramesseum papyrus", copy of a ritual for a statue of Sesostris I (British Museum)
Papyrus Ramesseum C: Copy of the administrative mailings from fortresses in Nubia (" Semna Depeschen") on one side, evocations for good health on the other (British Museum)
Papyrus Ramesseum D: " Onomastikon ", copy of a list of words (Berlin 10495)
Papyrus Ramesseum E: copy of a funeral ritual (British Museum)
- Papyrus Ramesseum 1: the only surviving copy of a "Teaching of Sasobek"
- Papyrus Ramesseum 2: Random (?) Didactic maxims
- Papyrus Ramesseum 3: Recipes and incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 4: Recipes for Good Health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 5: Recipes for Good Health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 6: Hymns to Sobek
- Papyrus Ramesseum 7: Burial Formulas
- Papyrus Ramesseum 8: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 9: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 10: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 11: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 12: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 13: Incantations for Good Health, with a list of 77 days for cleansing (for embalming?)
- Papyrus Ramesseum 14: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 15: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 16: Incantations for good health
- Papyrus Ramesseum 17: Incantations for good health on the five days at the end of the year
- Papyrus Ramesseum 18: Administrative mail from fortresses in Nubia (such as the "Semna Depeschen" on Papyrus C above)

The papyri, numbered from 1 to 18, are all in the British Museum in London. The divisions of incantations for good health require renewed investigation; it is possible that some fragments of the manuscript can be combined into longer papyri.

literature

Kurt Sethe : Dramatic texts on ancient Egyptian mystery games: The dramatic Ramesseum papyrus . tape 2 . Hinrichs, Leipzig 1928.
Alan H. Gardiner (Ed.): The Ramesseum Papyri. Plates . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1955 (English).
John WB Barns: Five Ramesseum Papyri . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1956 (English, digitized [accessed April 6, 2017]).
Richard B. Parkinson: Reading Ancient Egyptian Poetry among Other Histories . Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester / Malden 2009, ISBN 978-1-4051-2547-5 (English).
Melissa Downing, Richard B. Parkinson: The Tomb of the Ramesseum Papyri in the Newberry Papers, The Griffith Institute Oxford . In: British Museum studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (= ISSUE 23 ). 2016, ISSN 2049-5021 , p. 35–45 (English, digitized version [PDF; accessed April 6, 2017]).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Joachim Friedrich Quack : The grave of the magician . In: Spectrum Special: Archeology, History, Culture . No. 3.16 . Spectrum of Science , 2016, ISSN 0170-2971 , p. 22–27 ( partial view [accessed April 6, 2017]).
^ ^A ^b Richard B. Parkinson: The Ramesseum Papyri. The archaeological context. The British Museum, accessed April 6, 2017 .
^ ^A ^b Richard B. Parkinson: The Ramesseum Papyri. The modern history of the papyri. The British Museum, accessed April 6, 2017 .
↑ ^a ^b History of the Library: late Middle Kingdom manuscripts from a tomb under the Ramesseum. University College London, 2003, accessed April 6, 2017 .

Web links

Richard B. Parkinson: The Ramesseum Papyri. The British Museum, accessed April 6, 2017 .
Medical Cannabis: A short graphical history Egypt. Ramesseum III papyrus (1700 BC). antiquecannabisbook.com, accessed April 8, 2017 .

[Quack-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Joachim Friedrich Quack : The grave of the magician . In: Spectrum Special: Archeology, History, Culture . No. 3.16 . Spectrum of Science , 2016, ISSN 0170-2971 , p. 22–27 ( partial view [accessed April 6, 2017]).

[Context-2] A ^b Richard B. Parkinson: The Ramesseum Papyri. The archaeological context. The British Museum, accessed April 6, 2017 .

[History-3] A ^b Richard B. Parkinson: The Ramesseum Papyri. The modern history of the papyri. The British Museum, accessed April 6, 2017 .

[Manuscripts-4] History of the Library: late Middle Kingdom manuscripts from a tomb under the Ramesseum. University College London, 2003, accessed April 6, 2017 .