Toponyms in Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic texts from the 8th century BC till the 5th century AD

719 Pages·2011·9.82 MB·English

by  Herbert Verreth

TRISMEGISTOS ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
- 5 -

Toponyms in Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic texts
from the 8th century BC till the 5th century AD

Version 1.0
August 2011

compiled by
Herbert Verreth

Department of Ancient History, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Köln / Leuven
© 2011 Trismegistos
2

Trismegistos Online Publications
http://www.trismegistos.org/top.php

Edited by
Willy Clarysse, Mark Depauw & Heinz-Jozef Thissen
3

TRISMEGISTOS ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
- 5 -

Toponyms in Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic texts
from the 8th century BC till the 5th century AD

Version 1.0
August 2011

compiled by
Herbert Verreth

Department of Ancient History, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Köln / Leuven
© 2011 Trismegistos
4

The series Trismegistos Online Publications, edited by Willy Clarysse (K.U.Leuven),
Mark Depauw (K.U.Leuven) and Heinz-Josef Thissen (Universität zu Köln), aims to
provide freely downloadable PDF-documents with scholarly tools based upon or
providing links to the Trismegistos database.

Contributors can send in manuscripts in Word format to
[email protected]. The editors will decide whether the manuscript fits in
the series and can be accepted for reviewing. An anonymous version of the
manuscript will then be sent to two or more peers for evaluation. On the basis of their
report the editors will take a decision whether to publish it in the series or not. Authors
will be given the anonymous notes of the reviewers and can be asked to implement
changes to their manuscript.

August, 2011: Version 1.0
ISBN: 00
5

Table of contents

Introduction 6
Searching for toponyms in Trismegistos online 18
The sigla for the Egyptian nomes in the following lists 23

Toponyms mentioned in Abnormal Hieratic texts
Geographical distribution of the Abnormal Hieratic texts 24
Geographical distribution of the toponyms in Abnormal Hieratic texts 26
Alphabetical survey of the toponyms in Abnormal Hieratic texts 27

Toponyms mentioned in Demotic texts
Geographical distribution of the Demotic texts 42
Geographical distribution of the toponyms in Demotic texts 51
Alphabetical survey of the toponyms in Demotic texts 72

Survey of the most important constituent elements of the toponyms
Adjectival forms 688
Districts, regions and countries 690
Divine names in toponyms 692
Geographical elements in toponyms 699
Introduction 6

INTRODUCTION

We have gathered in this survey most of the toponyms and other 'geographica'
occurring in the published corpus of Abnormal Hieratic and Demotic texts from
Egypt. We only took into account texts that have already been fully or partially
transliterated or translated, and no attempt has been made to gather toponyms in the
many documents that are not yet published or for which only a photograph or
facsimile exists. The references to each toponym have been listed in chronological
order, but it has to be stressed that the toponyms themselves have not been fully
studied or analyzed. We hope, however, that this survey will be a useful tool for the
further study of the geography of ancient Egypt.
The Trismegistos database actually contains 64 Abnormal Hieratic and 14741
Demotic texts, both documentary and literary. The Abnormal Hieratic texts cover a
chronological range between 900 and 486 BC, with the precisely dated documents
ranging between 726 and 544 BC. Most of these texts are papyri (and some tablets)
from the Theban area. The Demotic texts, written on all kinds of material (papyrus,
pottery, stone, wood, metal, linen, ...), range between 700 BC and 600 AD, with the
precisely dated documents ranging between 672 BC and 452 AD. They come from all
over Egypt, but a large part of them (ca. 66 %) originates from Upper Egypt. More
details about the geographical distribution of the Abnormal Hieratic and Demotic
texts will be given further1.
The core of the Trismegistos geographical database is the file called Places or
Geo. For the moment it contains the basic information for some 10782 toponyms in
Egypt, some 2274 toponyms outside of Egypt, and some 419 ghost names. The last
group contains obsolete toponyms that are now identified with one of the other
toponyms or for which a new reading was proposed. The 45 Demotic ghost names will
not be included in this survey and have to be checked in the online database itself.

1
 The
 figures
 used
 here
 update
 the
 original
 tables
 published
 in
 VERRETH,
 Herbert,
 The

provenance
 of
 Egyptian
 documents
 from
 the
 8th
 century
 BC
 till
 the
 8th
 century
 AD

(Trismegistos
  Online
  Publications,
  3),
  Köln
  -­‐
  Leuven,
  2009
  (downloadable
  at

http://www.trismegistos.org/top.php).
Introduction 7

Since the Geo file has been explained more in detail elsewhere2, I will restrict myself
here to a brief presentation of its different fields.
Every toponym gets a single and unique number called 'Geo-id'. There is no
meaning whatsoever attached to that number, but it is a practical tool to identify the
place and to distinguish it from any homonyms. For every toponym we list the main
variant(s) in Greek, Latin, 'Egyptian', Coptic or other languages that can be found in
the sources. The label 'Egyptian' groups Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Abnormal Hieratic and
Demotic. For the Egyptian standard name we usually choose the Hieroglyphic variant
in its fullest form, with e.g. the genitive 'n' and the female '.t' written in full. Names or
variants not attested as such, but only inferred from e.g. their Greek parallels, are
preceded by an asterisk (*). Among all these names in different languages referring to
the same place, we choose one standard name, usually the Greek name transliterated
into the Latin alphabet. Where possible, we suggest an identification with a modern
Egyptian place name. Every toponym is tentatively ascribed to one of the Egyptian
nomes of Lower and Upper Egypt, numbered from L01 till L21 and from U01 till U22
and named after the Greek equivalent in use in the Ptolemaic period, e.g. L01
Memphites, U09 Panopolites. For practical reasons we use L00 to refer to the
Alexandria area, and 00 for the Arsinoites. The full list of these nome abbreviations
can be found at the end of the introduction. With these elements we form a 'full
name', which consists of the nome abbreviation, the standard name and possibly the
modern name, e.g. L13 Heliopolis (Tell Hisn). To make it easier for the user who is not
familiar with the Greek or the Egyptian alphabet, we gathered in the field Variants a
summary of the most important names and variants in Latin transliteration,
occasionally providing an etymological translation of the toponym.
For every toponym we further give the information - if available - about the
administrative (sub)divisions it might belong to, about its 'status' (e.g. dmỉ /demi,
'village, city'; tš / tesh, 'nomos, district'; ẖr / cher, 'street') and about its location. If the
toponym also has adjectival forms, these are listed in the field 'Ethnicon' (e.g.
Alexandreus, Wynn). In the field 'Identification' three kinds of information are listed.

2
 Cf.
 VERRETH, Herbert, A
 survey
 of
 toponyms
 in
 Egypt
 in
 the
 Graeco-­Roman
 period

(Trismegistos
  Online
  Publications,
  2),
  Köln
  -­‐
  Leuven,
  2008
  (available
  at

http://www.trismegistos.org/top.php).
Introduction 8

First, if the identification of two toponyms is not completely certain, in this field a
reference is made to the other toponym (e.g. for U13 Lykopolis (Assiut) (1271) a note
refers to Shena (11165), followed by a question mark, and vice versa). Secondly, a
toponym might contain in its own name a reference to another toponym, which is
usually the case for nomes and districts in general; e.g. U Thebais / pȝ tš n N ỉw.t
(2982) is based upon the name Thebai / Nỉw.t, so the reference is added 'cf. U04b Dios
Polis / Thebai (Thebes east) (576)'; on the other hand, for a place upon which another
toponym is based, a reference is made to that second place; e.g. for U04b Dios Polis /
Thebai (Thebes east) (576) the reference is added: 'cf. also U Thebais (2982)'. In the
field 'Note' all kinds of other information can be added.
There are, finally, three 'bibliographical' fields. The first contains references to
the major topographical repertories for the whole of Egypt, i.c. the Dizionario of
Calderini and Daris, the Dictionnaire of Gauthier and Das christlich-koptische
Ägypten of Timm, and to regional corpora such as Wessely (Topographie), P. Tebt. 2,
Drew-Bear (Hermopolite), Pruneti (Ossirinchite), Falivene (Herakleopolite nome) and
Benaissa (Oxyrhynchite nome). In the field 'Bibliography' all kinds of other
bibliographical references are added, without any attempt at exhaustivity, but with a
focus on articles discussing the Demotic writing of the toponym. The bibliographical
references to a nome or district are usually listed under the place after which it is
named (e.g. for L01 Memphites look under L01 Memphis). The field 'Maps' might
contain a reference to a map where the toponym is shown.
A basic problem is what to list as a toponym and what not. Of course names of
villages, cities and countries and their ethnics belong in the list, but the situation is less
clear for all kinds of districts, hamlets, plots of land, canals and toponyms on a micro
level such as town quarters, streets, official buildings, monuments, gates, temples,
chapels, houses, tombs, etc. For our database we followed the practical rule that if a
toponym is listed in one of the geographical corpora mentioned or in the geographical
index of the publications themselves, we also list it in Trismegistos. For Demotic
documents this implies that we usually do not list houses and plots of lands
enumerated in the many house descriptions, nor the names of tombs, chapels or
unidentified temples. Public 'institutions' such as thesauroi / storehouses, trapezai /
banks, ... have also been omitted. Personal names based on toponyms (such as
Harpekysis / Ḥr-pȝ-Ỉkš or Pȝ-rmt-Ỉwnw) are reserved for another phase of the project.
Introduction 9

On the other hand, toponyms occurring in divine epithets (such as Horos of Behdet or
Souchos lord of Pai / Soknopaios) are included. We do not distinguish between a
temple and its domain, even if this domain extends over several nomes; e.g. all
references to the main temple of Amon in Thebes and its domains are listed under
U04b Ammonieion / Pr-Ỉmn (2769).
For each of these toponyms we gather all references to the ancient texts in
which it is mentioned. Every time a toponym occurs, we create a separate card for it;
even if a toponym is mentioned three times in the same line, we make three separate
cards for it. A few publications could not be checked because they were not readily
available in Leuven (cf. the list below). Anyway, at this moment we listed 262
Abnormal Hieratic references for 24 different places in 35 texts, and 12672 Demotic
references for 1098 different toponyms in 4167 texts. This information is gathered in
the file 'Georef' that contains several fields that I now will briefly discuss. Every Georef
card is linked with a specific place in Geo through the unique Geo-id. In the Filemaker
version of the database it is possible to link one specific toponym to two different
places, which is useful e.g. to link pȝ tš n Nỉw.t both to U Thebais (2982) and to U04b
Dios Polis (576) at the same time. In the online version (and in the following lists), on
the other hand, this is technically not possible, and so in this example only the link to
Thebais will be shown.
Every Georef card is also provided with a unique Tex-id linking it to a specific
document in the Text file. In that file for every ancient text a default edition has been
chosen, which is supposed to be the best published transcription of that text (preferably
with translation), but does not necessarily contain the best published photo or
facsimile. These other editions, which are indispensable for Demotists, are indeed
shown on the Text card, but not as default edition, since also not-Demotists should be
directed to the best edition. It is, however, not always easy to find a 'simple' default
edition, since several parts of a text are often (re)published in different publications;
some texts, for instance, are republished without the witness list on the verso, so that
we have to refer to two (or more) editions to get the whole text, such as P. Eheverträge
36 (default for the main text on the recto) + P. Ryl. Dem. 16 (default for the witness
list on the verso).
When referring to a text, one therefore in some cases needs a cumbersome
enumeration of different editions, which might also cause problems to refer to the
Introduction 10

specific line number where the toponym occurs. With multiple editions one therefore
starts the field 'Line number' with the (abbreviated) reference to the exact part of the
edition that is meant. It is unfortunate for database related research that many
Demotic editions - contrary to the Greek papyrus editions - use line numbers as a kind
of system to explain the lay-out of the Demotic text to the reader; this creates
references such as 'fragment A, verso, column x+3*, line x+7', which are horrible to
put in a database or to use afterwards for sorting. In Greek editions it is common
practice to number every line on the papyrus continuously, while the information
about recto / verso, columns, etc. is inserted in the publication without influencing the
numbering. Anyway, we tried to work out a plausible reference system for these
complicated line numbers, so that on the one hand the user can find the exact spot in
the original edition without too many difficulties, but on the other hand all toponyms
occurring in a text may be sorted in their logical order. In most cases we therefore
changed all 'x+...' into simple line / column numbers. To distinguish several toponyms
on the same line, we added '[a]', '[b]' etc. behind the line number. Some
inconsistencies in the sorting, however, we were not able to solve, so it has
unfortunately not been possible in every instance to recreate the order of the
geographical references as they occur on the papyrus. Other problems in the line
numbering are caused by texts that have only been described or translated without
indication of the lines, and by parallel texts (such as witness copies) that are presented
in an 'intertwined' edition and have not been edited separately. In these cases we often
come up with ad hoc solutions.
In principle, the toponym itself is spelled in Demotic / Abnormal Hieratic as
found in the default edition of the document or in more recent corrections of that
text. Since, however, many transcription systems have been used the last 150 years to
render Demotic texts, it would not be user-friendly to mix up all these 'historical'
renderings in one and the same field. We therefore uniformized the spelling of the
toponyms to a certain extent, transferring obsolete transliterations into more modern
ones. Unfortunately, however, there is little consistency, even in recent publications,
in e.g. the use of 'y', 'j', 'ỉ' or 'e', or in the rendering of group writings. With regard to
the latter, we therefore choose for a historical transcription, following the model of
Hieroglyphic transcriptions, and so write e.g. Nỉw.t instead of Nw or Ne, or ḥw.t
instead of ḥ.t, etc. All these changes, however, bring along the risk that I might have