Corpus of transcribed hieratic documents in the Griffith Institute Archive | Acknowledgements

Practical use of the Checklist showed that the considerable time spent on its preparation had been fully justified and that a list containing references to other transcriptions from hieratic in the Griffith Institute archive would be of even greater value. The importance of this material has been recognized and acknowledged in several publications, such as Schafik Allam's Hieratische Ostraka und Papyri aus der Ramessidenzeit (Tubingen, 1973) and K. A. Kitchen's Ramesside Inscriptions Historical and Biographical (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell Ltd., 1975- ), where it is extensively used. Lexikon der Agyptologie, iv (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1982), edited by W. Helck and W. Westendorf, also refers to it often in its Papyri, hieratische section in columns 672-747. If anything, the continued lively interest in these transcriptions only strengthens our admiration for the scholarly achievement of these Egyptologists and suggests that much work on the publication of hieratic texts still remains to be done.

Other tasks have made it impossible for us to concentrate exclusively on this project and so it has taken longer than we had anticipated. We have received much practical help from many colleagues. Professor J.J. Janssen has pointed out a number of inaccuracies in the original Checklist and suggested various improvements. We are grateful for his help but we are also sorry that we have been unable to take up his suggestion and provide references to publications for at least some of the items. This would have taken us far away from the original scheme, and would have required much more time to complete than our commitments allowed. Nevertheless, our work has convinced us that a bibliography of hieratic ostraca is urgently needed and should be started. The other scholars and colleagues who have helped us, listed alphabetically and without their academic titles, are: R. Demaree, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, J. L. Foster, Elizabeth Goring, J. A. Larson, L. Limme, Andrea McDowell, Renate Muller-Wollermann, P. F. O'Rourke, S. Quirke, Vivien Raisman, M. J. Raven, H. Satzinger, B. Vachala, Helen Whitehouse, and D. Wildung. We wish to thank them for their assistance; to those whose names may have been inadvertently omitted we tender out apologies.

Jaromir Malek & Diana Magee
[A Checklist of transcribed hieratic documents in the archive of the Griffith Institute (1991)]