K. A. (ed.). 2004. Greek Ostraca from Kellis: O.Kellis, Nos. 1–293. Oxford.
PREFACE
This is the second volume of ostraka from the excavations conducted at the site of Amheida, the modern name for what was called Trimithis in the Roman period. The first volume (O.Trim. 1) contained ostraka from the excavation seasons 2004–2007, the present volume from the following seasons through 2013. It does not contain Demotic and hieratic ostraka, which we intend to be edited by Günter Vittmann in volume 3.
The preface to volume 1 described the history of the excavations at Amheida down to 2007. As it indicated, after the 2008 season the responsibility for the excavations passed from Columbia University to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. Columbia has, however, continued to maintain the excavation house library, for which we thank former Vice President and University Librarian James Neal and the librarian responsible for the ancient world, Karen Green. Many Columbia students have also been part of the team over the intervening years. We are grateful to the NYU administration for its support of many kinds since 2009, particularly former Provost David W. McLaughlin.
Our other expressions of gratitude in the preface to the previous volume need not be repeated here; we continue to owe much to our colleagues in the field, above all Paola Davoli, the field director, on whose extraordinary skill at untangling and interpreting stratigraphy we depend throughout this volume. We are also grateful to Clementina Caputo and Raffaella Cribiore for their contributions to this volume. Bruno Bazzani has taken the photographs and processed the infrared images throughout these years, as well as helping with a host of technical issues in the field; the contribution made by these labors to our texts is to be found on every page. We thank also the referees for their valuable comments.
PART I
INTRODUCTION
1. INTRODUCTION
The ostraka published in this volume come from the excavations of the seasons from 2008 to 2013. Two of those seasons were disrupted by external causes: in 2009, a delay in the issuance of military security clearances, which shortened the season by nearly three weeks; and in 2011, the evacuation of the team during the Egyptian revolution, after only a few days of excavation. The richest finds of ostraka came from the even-numbered years of 2008, 2010, and 2012. The decision to cut off the present volume after the 2013 season reflects not only the considerable quantity of material in hand but the arrival, if not at a conclusion of work in and around Area 2.2 (Building 6) and 2.3 (Building 7), at least at a point beyond which they seem unlikely to yield texts that would significantly change the picture derived from the first two volumes. (The 2014 season in fact found few ostraka.) In addition, work in Area 4.1 (the Temple of Thoth) is essentially complete, at least for the present, with the 2013 season. The 2014 season there yielded more decorated blocks and some Demotic and hieratic ostraka, but few Greek texts. The texts in the present volume have helped to add coherence to our understanding of the texts in volume 1, to which some improvements are given in an appendix at the end of this volume; perhaps more significantly, the analysis of their archaeological contexts has helped sharpen the distinctions between types of material and the contexts that produced them and has improved our grasp of chronology. Although the introduction to volume 1 described the contexts of the ostraka in some detail, and subsequent discoveries have only confirmed the correctness of most of the analysis given there, we now can see the particulars laid out there in a more coherent general framework. We have for this reason organized volume 2 to give priority to categories of archaeological contexts, ordering the texts by type within these categories. We have particularly come to see that our body of texts is dominated by ostraka that found their way to their findspots through ancient processes of dumping and reusing waste.
2. ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS
In volume 1, the archaeological contexts have been described under the headings of the three areas of the site from which the ostraka have come: Area 1 (mainly Area 1.3, i.e., House B2), a house with adjacent street and courtyard in the north part of the site, located on the widest street of the city (S1);1 Area 2 (mainly Area 2.1, House B1, the “House of Serenos”), the central area of the site as we see it today, located to the east of the temple area; and Area 4 (mainly Area 4.1, the temple area), the highest hill of the site, on which was located the precinct of the Temple of Thoth (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Plan of Amheida.
The ostraka in Area 1 came predominantly from levels connected with the occupation of B2, although some of the contexts are not very secure, as a result of severe deflation caused by wind erosion. There was no excavation in Area 1 since 2007 until the initial seasons of work by the team from the University of Reading (now CUNY), led by Anna L. Boozer, in spring 2012 and 2013. The small groups of ostraka from those seasons are reserved for later publication.
The ostraka from Area 4 come entirely from insecure contexts, because of the extreme degree of mixing of material from different levels that has occurred as a result of treasure-hunting, stone-robbing, sebbakh-digging, and wind erosion. It can in general be said that although in a few places specific contexts with stratigraphy of the Old Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, and the Late Period have survived, the characterization of find contexts as insecure remains true for the parts of Area 4 excavated in 2008–2013. As a result, all ostraka from Area 4 are presented in a single section of this volume, without attention to the stratigraphic units in which they were found. It may be assumed that none came from a secure context capable of providing useful information.
In Area 2, the situation is far more complex. Already in volume 1 it was possible to distinguish material located under floor levels and thus presumably in place at the time of construction from that accumulated during the period of occupation, particularly during the phase after the partial renovation of B1 around 350. The stratigraphy of B1 and of the courtyard area of Rooms 9 and 10 immediately to its north is described in detail in volume 1. There are just a few texts from this area included in the present volume, as they were found in sorting pottery in years after 2007. As work continued to the north of this zone and in the adjacent streets, and then in Areas 2.2 (Building 6) and 2.3 (the church, B7), it has become increasingly possible to see that the stratigraphic pattern is in large part common to the entire area and to distinguish the ostraka by broad categories of contexts. At the same time, further distinctions can be introduced to take account of the building histories of the individual structures and streets (Fig. 2). This more nuanced picture allows us to describe these contexts under four broad categories:
(1) Windblown sand in the uppermost layers excavated. This sand is not a secure context in any instance, but it is our observation that the material found in such layers is almost always from the period of occupation, and we have therefore included such layers in the broad category of occupational debris. These ostraka have in many cases probably come to their location at the time of excavation as a result of being left on rooftops or other surface levels, although it is not excluded that some sherds used for wall or vault chinking could turn up in such levels. We have in particular kept the possibility of chinking sherds in mind when dealing with apparently anomalous texts in this group.
Figure 2. Plan of the House of Serenos (Building 1).
(2) Identifiable occupation levels, with materials accumulated during the period in which the buildings were lived in or actively used. Here again, there is often the possibility that chinking
