Description

With this volume of Short Texts the collection of epigraphical texts initiated in the first volume of our series reaches completion with the demotic funerary stelae, 247 in all. All those with known provenance are listed in geographical order from South to North resulting in sometimes bulky listings for several individual places: for example of 24 nos. for Dendara, 79 for Abydos (even two new, hitherto unpublished ones), 22 for Akhmim, 43 for Memphis, or 36 for the Delta, with, at the end, only 19 of unknown provenance. The chapter on Memphis notably presents the demotic parts of the stelae of the High Priests of Memphis, among which several are exceptionally long and renowned for their varied contents. In addition to all this there is also a sizeable chapter with 42 Serapeum stelae, even two previously unpublished ones. The small reproductions of the stelae collected towards the end of the volume provide a vivid illustration of the varying styles of all these different cultural centres. The second part of the volume presents Addenda to the first three volumes of Short Texts, covering some 200 more pages of text. These show what almost a full decade of Demotic Studies may produce in the fields of, e.g., mummy linen and graffiti. Among these are also nearly fifty pages with mummy labels including three previously unpublished ones, over ten published since our last volume, and notably thirty-eight labels from the Louvre, some published by Revillout as far back as the nineteenth century. We had left these out of our vol. II in view of the proposed Louvre Catalogue that was then expected to appear, but we now think they ought to be made readily accessible side by side with the other published mummy labels that we have gathered in these volumes from however Many Publications.