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Review of Biblical Literature Blog

The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change
Porten, Bezalel

Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011 pp. xxiii + 620 + 11 plates.2nd Edition. $79.95

Series Information
Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Anitqui, 22

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Description: This important volume contains 170 documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of the Elephantine and Syene (Aswan), which yielded hundreds of papyri in Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 3000 years. The documents include letters from legal documents and accounts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge of epistolography, law, society, religion, language and onomastic in this unique site and over this long period of time to scholars of varied disciplines. The volume contains five sections, each containing carefully translated and extensively annotated documents of one language group. Excellent cross-referencing allows the user to trace forerunners and successors. Each section is preceded by an introduction, and the book closes with a glossary of technical terms in five languages.

Subjects: Ancient Near East, Egyptian Literature, Literature