The Old Nubian Texts from Attiri

106 Pages·2016·22.636 MB·English; Old Nubian

by  Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Vincent Pierre-Michel Laisney, Giovanni Ruffini, Alexandros Tsakos, Kerstin Weber-Thum, Petra Weschenfelder

The Old Nubian Texts from Attiri

Dotawo ▶
Monographs

1
Dotawo ▶ Monographs
Series Editors Giovanni Ruffini
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
Design Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
Typeset in 10/12 Skolar pe, Lucida Sans Unicode, and Antinoou.
Cover image Attiri Island, 1964–9 (photo assn F/366-3)

Dotawo ▶ is an imprint of punctum books, co-hosted by
DigitalCommons@Fairfield
the old nubian texts from attiri. Copyright © 2016 Vincent
W.J. van Gerven Oei, Vincent Pierre-Michel Laisney, Giovanni
Ruffini, Alexandros Tsakos, Kerstin Weber-Thum, and Petra
Weschenfelder. This work carries a Creative Commons by-nc-sa
4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy
and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you
may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long
as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way
that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your
work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form
whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you
distribute your rebuild under the same license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

First published in 2016 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way.
https://punctumbooks.com/
isbn-13: 978-0-9982375-7-2
isbn-10: 0-9982375-7-4
Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library
of Congress
The Old Nubian Texts from Attiri
Edited by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei,
Vincent Pierre-Michel Laisney,
Giovanni Ruffini, Alexandros Tsakos,
Kerstin Weber-Thum, and
Petra Weschenfelder

Contents
Preface ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ix
List of Tables ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ x
List of Figures ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪xi
General Introduction ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 13
P. Attiri 1–2 : The Attiri Book of Michael ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 31
P. Attiri 3–4: Lectionary ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 59
P. Attiri 5: Unidentified fragment ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 75
P. Attiri 6: Fragment ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 79
P. Attiri 7: Fragments ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 81
P. Attiri 8: The Head ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 83
P. Attiri 9: Sale ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 85
P. Attiri 10: Unidentified document ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 89
P. Attiri 11: Letter ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 93
Bibliography ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ 97

ix
Preface
The Old Nubian Texts from Attiri, the first publication in the Dotawo▶
Monographs series, presents the first fruits of a new approach to the
study of Old Nubian. The Attiri Collaborative, comprising all the
scholars who worked on this publication, was born out of the Old
Nubian panel at the Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Conference in Cologne
in 2013, and took advantage of the generosity of Alexandros Tsakos,
who shared with the group the possibility of editing and translating
the Old Nubian texts found at Attiri. This collaboration – electroni-
cally in 2014 and 2015, in person in Bergen during a workshop from
June 1–6, 2015, and finally at the International Medieval Congress in
Leeds, July 5, 2016 – demonstrated that the group as a whole, work-
ing together, could learn far more from the Attiri texts than any
individual scholar working in isolation. This methodology and the
results it yielded are a potential model for the editing and transla-
tion of any unpublished Old Nubian texts, and present a significant
contribution to the study of medieval Nubia.
The Attiri Collaborative would like to thank the Sudan National
Museum in Khartoum for granting access to the manuscripts exhib-
ited and stored in its premises so as to procure the photographs with
which the work was accomplished and which are published here;
David Edwards for supporting Alexandros Tsakos’s initial idea for
a collective approach to the study of these manuscripts, as well as
for material retrieved from A.J. Mills’s archive during the process of
preparing this publication; the Research Group for Middle Eastern
and African Studies at the Institute of Archaeology, History, Cul-
tural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen for funding
the workshop that brought the Attiri collaborators together in June
2015; and finally, Angelika Jakobi, El-Shafie El-Guzuuli, and the Lin-
guistics Department of the University of Khartoum for facilitating
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei’s visit to Khartoum and the Sudan Na-
tional Museum in February 2016.