Third edition, revised October 10, 1995.
By D.N.E. Magee, E. Miles and J. Malek.
This publication developed out of a project undertaken several years ago and is its logical continuation. The archive of the Griffith Institute in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford contains papers of several outstanding hieratic scholars of the past, in particular those of Jaroslav Cerný (1898-1970), and in 1988 we compiled A checklist of transcribed hieratic documents in the papers of the late Professor Jaroslav Cerný at the Griffith Institute. To quote from its Introduction, its purpose was "to indicate which hieratic texts, mostly on papyri and ostraca, are transcribed in [his] papers ... and to provide an easy way of locating them."
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.
Individual characteristics of the papers of various scholars to which we refer in this publication are listed in the section on The Sources. The method of referring to the important collection of papyri and ostraca in the Museo Egizio in Turin, however, needs further explanation. For the papyri the references are either to the Cat. numbers (= A. Fabretti, F. Rossi and R.V. Lanzone, Regio Museo di Torino. Antichita egizie, i and ii, Turin 1882 and 1888), or to the plates of W. Pleyte and F. Rossi, Papyrus de Turin, Leiden 1869-76. Useful concordances of the latter can be found in Oriens Antiquus, 14(1975), 252-3 (by A. Roccati) and in Lexikon der Agyptologie, iv. 742-3, and we have adopted some of the numbers given in these articles in our Checklist. The ostraca in Turin are quoted by their Cat., Provv. or Suppl. numbers, all of which are given by Jesus Lopez in Ostraca ieratici (Catalogo del Museo Egizio di Torino, iii, fasc.1-4), Milan 1978-84.
Copies and transcriptions of hieratic graffiti, e.g. in Theban tombs or in the Valley of the Kings, have not been included, although many can be found in the papers of Cerný (and also Howard Carter, not quoted here at all). We have felt that this is a special category of inscriptions which deserves a list of its own, but we do not propose to compile one in the near future.
Some texts have been omitted in this list because they seem to have been copied for teaching purposes rather than in order to concentrate on their transcription from hieratic. Such cases can be found in the papers of T.E. Peet and the Revd. J.W.B. Barns.
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.
Much of the cost of preparation of this Checklist has been met by the Griffith Institute from its Gardiner Fund for Egyptological Purposes.
Finally, this is a workmanlike publication which hardly makes a handsome present, but we should like to dedicate it to Helen Murray. Without her meticulous cataloguing of the material on which it is based this Checklist would probably never have been produced.
This new version of the Checklist takes into account comments and corrections provided by several Egyptologists, in particular Professor J.J. Janssen in his review in Discussions in Egyptology 24 (1992), 51-7, Dr D. Sweeney, and Dr. R. Demaree. The electronic form has required some re-arrangement of the material but the reasons for it will be easily understood.
This is the first step towards making the material available on the Internet.
As before, any corrections, additions and comments are very welcome.
(October 10, 1995)