CURRENT RESEARCH

IN EGYPTOLOGY 2011
Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Symposium

which took place at

Durham University, United Kingdom

March 2011

edited by

Heba Abd El Gawad, Nathalie Andrews, Maria Correas-Amador,

Veronica Tamorri and James Taylor

ISBN 978-1-84217-498-2

OXBOW BOOKS
Oxford and Oakville
 Contents

Symposium papers not included in this volume ........................................................................ v

Introduction ............................................................................................................................... vii
Tell me your name and I can tell you how your kingship was: The royal names
of the irst three Ptolemies (323–222 BC) (Heba Abd El-Gawad)....................................... 1
The Old Kingdom tomb of Pehenuka and the attribution of fragments
from the offering scene (Keith R. Amery) ............................................................................ 15
Figured ostraca from Deir el-Medina (Joanne Backhouse) ..................................................... 25
The Egyptian ascension mythology of the Old Kingdom and the phenomenon
of star phases (Bernardette Brady) ...................................................................................... 40
Goddesses Gone Wild: the Seven Hathors in the New Kingdom (Asha Chauhan Field) .......48
The early precursors of tomb security (Reg Clark) .................................................................. 55
‘Living in a material world’: understanding and interpreting life in an
Egyptian mud house (Maria Correas-Amador) ................................................................... 75
Wood exploitation in ancient Egypt: where, who and how? (Flavie Deglin) ..........................85
Antonio Bernal de O’Reilly and the discovery of ancient Egypt
in Spain (Javier Fernández Negro)...................................................................................... 97
The inluence of Christianity on burial practices in Middle Egypt
from the fourth to the sixth centuries (Deanna Heikkinen) ............................................... 107
Legitimation and ontological changes in the royal igure of
Queen Hatshepsut (c. 1479–1458 BC) (Virginia Laporta) ................................................ 117
The Phenomenon of “personal religion” in the Ramesside Period, from the “Poem”
of Ramses II through to the Prayers of Ramses III (Diana Liesegang) ............................ 127
The Encircling Protection of Horus (David Ian Lightbody) .................................................. 133
Visual and written evidence for mourning in New Kingdom Egypt (Emily Millward) .........141
The Welshpool Mummy (Pauline Norris) .............................................................................. 147
More ways of analysis: the differences faces of a stela (Stefania Pignattari) ....................... 152
Classifying dreams, classifying the world: ancient Egyptian oneiromancy
and demotic dream books (Luigi Prada) ........................................................................... 167
Aspects of trading with New Kingdom Egypt (Birgit Schiller) ............................................. 178
On deining myth: comparisons of myth theory from an egyptological
viewpoint (David Stewart) ................................................................................................ 189
iv Contents

Manipulated corpses in Predynastic Egyptian tombs: deviant or normative

practices? (Veronica Tamorri) ............................................................................................ 200
Hippo goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon (Aroa Velasco Pírez) ......................................... 210
 Papers presented at Current Research
in Egyptology XII and not included in this volume
(in alphabetical order)

ANDREWS, Nathalie (Durham University) Threats, identity and personhood in the Papyrus of
Ani.
ATHERTON, Stephanie (University of Manchester) Rearing sacred birds in Ancient Egypt.
BORTOLANI, Ljuba Merlina (University College London) The snake, the lion and the scarab:
Egyptian images of the primordial/creator god in a Greek magical hymn.
BRyAN, Cathie (The British Egyptian Society) A new slant on Egyptianising architecture in
England 1837–1935.
COOpER, Julien (Macquarie University) The cosmographic expression “god’s-land:” a textual
study in Egyptian geographic phraseology.
FIGUEIREDO, Alvaro (National Museum of Lisbon/IMI) The Lisbon mummy project: preliminary
results of the radiographic study (CT multi-Detector / 64) of the human mummies in the collection
of Egyptian antiquities in the National Museum of Archaeology, Lisbon.
FIRST, Grzegorz (Jagiellonian University) The icon of Pantheos: research on the phenomenon
of polymorphic deities in late Egyptian religion and iconography.
FRANzMEIER, Henning (Freie Universität Berlin) News from the Vizier (Pa-)Rahotep: Sedment
tomb 201 revisited.
GAUTSCHy, Rita (University of Basel) Chronology of the second millennium BC.
GREGORy, Stephen (University of Birmingham) Roman Egypt or Egyptian Rome: the signiicance
of Egyptian obelisks in the diffusion of ideology.
HUANG, Tzu-Hsuan Maxime (Chinese University of Hong Kong) Memory album of life course:
a tentative study on elite tomb decorations of Old Kingdom Egypt and Han China.
KESHK, Fatma (Leiden University) Origins and development of early urbanism in Egypt: research
questions.
LANKESTER, Francis (Durham University) Egypt’s central eastern desert rock art: distribution,
dating and interpretation.
MCGARRITy, Luke (University of Birmingham) The Tale of Woe: problems and reception.
MONTGOMERIE, Roger (University of Manchester) The characterisation of ancient lung
particles.
RIDEALGH, Kim (Swansea University) Talking to God: the Role of Amun in the Late Ramesside
letters.
vi Symposium papers not included in this volume

pRICE, Campbell (University of Liverpool) Archaism and ilial piety: an unusual Ptolemaic pair
statue from the Karnak cachette.
ROWLAND, Megan (University of Cambridge) Hoarding Heritage?: searching for the philosophy
behind Egypt’s ‘retentionist’ antiquity regulations and legislation.
SOLIMAN, Daniel (Leiden University) Reconsidering statues: the three-dimensional sculpture of
Amenemhat IV and Neferusobek.
STARING, Nico (Leiden University) Memory sites: on the use and re-use of the New Kingdom
necropolis at Saqqara.
TAyLOR, James (Durham University) Describing religious landscapes: pilgrimage accounts and
monastic landscapes in Egypt.
WEBER, Anke (Freie Universität, Berlin) Dinner for one: the food of the deceased in New Kingdom
offering table scenes at Deir el-Medina
 Introduction
After a successful eleventh conference being held in Leiden University (The Netherlands), the
twelfth Current Research in Egyptology conference returned to the United Kingdom to be hosted
by Durham University in March 2011. The conference gathered both speakers and attendees from
all corners of the world. The aim of the 2011 conference was to highlight the multidisciplinary
nature of the ield of Egyptology. Papers in these proceedings relect this multidisciplinarity,
with research based on Archaeology, Linguistics, Cultural Astronomy, Historiography, Botany,
Religion and Law, amongst others. By means of one or several of these disciplines, contributors
to this volume approach a broad range of subjects spanning from Prehistory to modern Egypt,
including: self-presentation, identity, provenance and museum studies, funerary art and practices,
domestic architecture, material culture, mythology, religion, commerce, economy, dream
interpretation and the birth of Egyptology as a discipline.

ABD EL GAWAD is approaching the royal names of the irst three Ptolemies as one of the various
modes of presentation used by the royal igures. The paper offers an insight on the issue of royal
image management and the actual audience of the archaeological evidence.
AMERy relects on how the current means of assessing antiquities at the point of export is not
suficient for determining the value of archaeological artefacts. This is done through an analysis
of fragments of offering scenes attributed to the Old Kingdom tomb of Pehenuka.
BACKHOuSE is examining the images of women on beds and in pavilions at the tombs of Deir El
Medina. These scenes are created by the workmen for their own purposes and do not normally
appear in the formal repertoire of Egyptian art.
BRADy offers an approach towards the study of the divine myths from the perspective of cultural
astronomy. The paper focuses on a particular star phase type showing the sequence of its
observed movements and how it bears a strong parallel to the narrative of the ascension of the
king in the Pyramid Text.
CHAuHAN FIELD investigates the role of the Seven Hathors during the New Kingdom, whom seem
to have a more particular role and function within the Egyptian pantheon than the many other
deities who exist in groups of seven or hebdomads.
CLARK is tracing the early development of tomb security in Ancient Egypt from the Late
Palaeolithic (c. 21000–12000 BC) until the end of the Naqada IIIA period (c. 3300–3150 BC).
The main aim of Clark’s paper is to examine, by tracing the development of tomb architecture
from the Predynastic Period onwards, whether many of the architectural elements that were
incorporated in Egyptian tombs were a consequence of the need to protect the burial, rather
than the result of monumental or religious considerations.
CORREAS-AMADOR explains the manner in which an ethnoarchaeological study of modern mudbrick
houses can help re-establish the link between material and context, an essential connection to
achieve a holistic understanding of ancient Egyptian domestic architecture.
DEGLIN presents a status report on the possibility of the existence of wood exploitation in ancient
Egypt through our current botanical knowledge and a re-examination of particular textual and
iconographic sources.
viii Introduction

FERNáNDEz NEGRO is following the steps of Antonio Bernal de O’Reilly in Egypt in order to
highlight the legacy he left in his book In Egypt where he provided his own outlook on the
history of ancient Egypt, a historical contribution that silenced the echoes of European inluences
in Spain.
HEIKKINEN is exploring the inluence of Christianity on burial practices in Middle Egypt through
archaeological evidence. The paper discusses in detail the various shifts in burial practices during
the period from 400 to 640 AD.
LAPORTA is discussing why Hatshepsut was crowned as king, providing a re-examination of the
usurpation of Tuthmosis III and attempting to ind some answers to the confusing question of
why Tuthmosis III retained Hatshepsut’s courtiers and followed her building programme.
LIESEGANG is exploring the phenomenon of personal religion in the Ramesside Period, from the
“Poem” of Ramses II through to the Prayers of Ramses III. This is done through examining
the related literary evidence in an attempt to shed some light on the relationship between the
king and the god.
LIGHTBODy is looking into the use of Egyptian royal encircling symbolism, represented by the shen
ring. The paper describes how and why this symbolism was incorporated into royal artworks,
architecture, decoration and rituals.
MILLWARD is addressing the mechanism of mourning in New Kingdom Egypt. The paper focuses
on the New Kingdom tombs of the Theban elite, more speciically, on the wall decoration
contained within these superstructures.
NORRIS is giving an account of a project to trace the provenance of one cartonnage and how it
came to be found at the Welshpool Museum in Wales.
PIGNATTARI is reporting on her current research on an organic group of Middle Kingdom stelae
(1987–1759 BC), forming the main part of a corpus of documents belonging to a functionary
called Djaf-Horemsaf, chief of at least three expeditions to the turquoise mines of Serabit el-
Khadim, in Sinai, in the years 6, 8 and 9 of Amenemhat IV(1772–1763 BC).
PRADA is providing an insight on ancient Egyptian oneiromancy and demotic dream books. The
paper reveals the wealth of unpublished sources on this topic which clearly show strong links
between the demotic and the earlier oneirocritica.
SCHILLER is following the activities of the merchants and their trade in an Egyptian harbour as
well outlining possible problems encountered in the trade connections of New Kingdom Egypt
with the Eastern Mediterranean area.
STEWART is seeking to frame the problem of myth in Ancient Egypt by surveying the deinitions
and approaches of more general myth studies, attempting to provide mediation between the
divergent opinions in Egyptology concerning myth.
TAMORRI suggests that deviant burials in Predynastic Egypt do not necessarily relect social
exclusion or rejection, but are likely to be merely another burial type in a wide repertoire of
burial practices.
VELASCO PíREz is looking into female hippos, whose form was adopted by several goddesses in
the Egyptian pantheon. Some of these gods have two names while others remain anonymous;
the paper attempts to resolve the question of how many hippo goddesses the Egyptian pantheon
had.
 Introduction ix

The twelfth meeting of the Current Research in Egyptology conference not only witnessed
the gathering of the future names of Egyptology but also a reunion of Durham University’s
Egyptologists. This was relected in the conference’s keynote speakers Dr Toby Wilkinson,
Dr Penny Wilson and Dr Karen Exell who presented the past, the present and the future of
Egyptology tradition at Durham University. Dr Wilkinson’s arrival at a complex time within
the Department of Archaeology helped ensure the successful continuation of Egyptology at
Durham. As well as a renowned Egyptologist in her own right, Dr Penny Wilson has supervised
a number of students that have gone on to become curators and lecturers at United Kingdom
and overseas universities such as Dr Karen Exell, who was at the time of the conference the
curator of Egypt and the Sudan at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. Through
their work, it has been possible for many postgraduate students to undertake research on a wide
range of Egyptological subjects.
The editors would like to thank the following institutions who kindly supported the Current
Research in Egyptology XII conference: The Department of Archaeology at Durham University,
Durham University’s Graduate School, the Durham Centre for the Study of the Ancient
Mediterranean and Near East, The Egypt Exploration Society, the North East Ancient Egypt
Society, Oxbow Books, Durham Tourist Information Ofice and Durham Oriental Museum.
The editors would also like to thank Dr Penny Wilson, Dr Toby Wilkinson, Dr Kathryn
Piquette, Dr Karen Exell, Ms Lyn Gatland, Mr Nico Staring, Dr Gillian Scott, Dr Stuart Weeks,
Ms Rachel Grocke, Dr Campbell Price and Dr Angus Graham for chairing the conference sessions
and stimulating vibrant discussions which will certainly boost current and future research in
Egyptology.

The Editors
Heba Abd El Gawad, Nathalie Andrews, Maria Correas-Amador,
Veronica Tamorri and James Taylor
October 2011
 Classifying dreams, classifying the world:
ancient Egyptian oneiromancy
and demotic dream books

Luigi Prada

Introduction
Dreams in ancient Egypt are not a topic reserved only for specialists within the field of Egyptology,
but have raised the interest of scholars in many different fields, including ancient Near Eastern
studies, classics, social and religious studies, and have even been the object of comparative
cultural and psychological analyses (see e.g. Quack 2010, 110 fn. 43; for a comparative cultural
approach, see Shushan 2006).
A recent awakening of interest in the field has led to a new wave of research and to the
publication of new studies on the topic (Szpakowska 2003 is the most complete available
monograph), both on the phenomenon of dreams and dreaming in ancient Egypt and on the more
specific issue of dream interpretation (most recently, see Szpakowska 2011). Nevertheless, despite
substantial progress, particularly in the study of the textual evidence in its main manifestations
(that is, papyrological and epigraphic), the topic is still not as well known and understood as
it would seem to be. This is the case not only for the study of dreams in ancient Egypt as a
whole, but also for ancient Egyptian oneiromancy, i.e. dream interpretation (bearing in mind
that ancient dream interpretation looks at dreams as a means of divination to foretell the future,
and is thus radically different from western modern dream interpretation, intended as a part of
psychoanalysis: cf. Zauzich 1980, 92).

Dreams in the dynastic and in the Graeco-Roman Period: separation or

continuity?
One of the chief issues is the stress that most studies have continuously placed on the evidence
dating to the dynastic period, and in particular to the New Kingdom: consequently, attempts
at a wider diachronic approach to the topic have been rare, and the view of the phenomenon
given by most studies is heavily skewed, favouring the New Kingdom evidence over all that
dating to later times. Such a situation would be somewhat understandable if we were faced
with a scenario where most of the evidence dates to the New Kingdom and, more generally, to
Pharaonic times, but this is not at all the case. As far as dreams are concerned, the Ptolemaic
and the Roman Periods offer a body of evidence which is comparable and probably larger in size
than the one available for the entire dynastic period, whilst the surviving evidence specifically
for oneiromancy is undeniably much more abundant for the Graeco-Roman Period than for any
168 Luigi Prada

other time of Egyptian history. Studies that propose to discuss ancient Egyptian dreams and
oneiromancy therefore tend to arbitrarily omit from their analysis half, if not even more, of
the evidence on the topic, and to focus on a relatively short, albeit crucial, period of time: it is
worthwhile looking at the reasons why this happens (despite the apparently all-encompassing
title of her monograph, even Szpakowska 2003, 2, points out that her study stops with the end
of the New Kingdom, yet adds that the evidence from later times is by no means “unimportant,
irrelevant, or any less Egyptian”).
On the one hand, the New Kingdom and, within it, the Ramesside age star amidst all other
dynasties because this is the time from which a large and important part of the Pharaonic
evidence on dreams stems. Not only do we have several important biographical texts narrating
dreams from both royal and non-royal individuals (for a handy overview, see the anthology in
Szpakowska 2003, 185–201), but the only (until recently) known Pharaonic dream interpretation
handbook, the hieratic pChester Beatty 3 ro, was also copied in the XIX dynasty (the reference
edition remains Gardiner 1935, 9–23, pls. 5a–8a, 12a). Earlier periods offer much less material
on the topic, while from the Third Intermediate and the Late Period more evidence is preserved,
although this has perhaps not yet received as much attention as the New Kingdom one, in part
on account of it being scattered over a longer time span. As non-royal specimens, there are for
instance the so-called oracular amuletic decrees from the Third Intermediate Period and, from
the very transition from the dynastic to the Ptolemaic Period, the biography of Somtutefnakht
(on the former, from a dream perspective, see Renberg and Naether 2010, 62–63; on the latter,
Perdu 1985, 108–109). Further, fragments of two other hieratic dream books also survive from
the Late Period (see below), although these have received a full publication only very recently,
and are therefore absent from earlier scholarly papers on the subject.
On the other hand, the relatively small attention paid by Egyptologists to the wealth of
sources we have for the Graeco-Roman Period can be ascribed to many factors. One is certainly
a problem in accessing the original textual evidence: whilst all the texts from earlier periods are
in Middle or Late Egyptian, in hieroglyphic or hieratic scripts, Ptolemaic and Roman Period texts
are instead mainly in demotic, whose study tends to be the prerogative of a smaller group within
the Egyptological community. Moreover, since at least part of Egyptian society was by this time
bilingual, one often also has to deal with texts written in Greek, which requires further scholarly
specialisation, or the collaboration between Egyptologists and classical scholars: a phenomenon, that
of the cooperation between Egyptologists/demotists and Greek papyrologists, which is still not very
common. Sometimes, even the study of a single document requires such a level of collaboration,
as in the case of a Ptolemaic letter, part in Greek and part in demotic, containing a dream account
(edition in Renberg and Naether 2010, 50–59). Besides the language factor, another reason for the
lesser degree of interest in dreams and oneiromancy in the later phases of ancient Egypt’s history is
undeniably connected to the long-lived bias that sees the Graeco-Roman Period, in the worst case
scenario, as a time of decline and agony of the ancient Egyptian civilization, or, in the best case, as
a completely new social and cultural reality where the indigenous Egyptian element plays a minor
part, and which has no or very few features of continuity with earlier dynastic times. This skewed
view, which sometimes seems to operate even at an unconscious level amongst Egyptologists,
has been weakening in recent years through the publishing activity of many scholars, but it still
survives (the words of Johnson 1992, xxiii, are still valid today). As a result of all this, we witness
the paradoxical situation described above in the studies of dreams and their interpretation in ancient
Egypt: the later period, for which we have more evidence, has received much less attention than
the earlier one, for which the amount of evidence is less extensive.
 Ancient Egyptian oneiromancy and demotic dream books 169

With regard to the tradition of oneiromancy as witnessed in the demotic textual sources,
an aspect of strong continuity with the earlier hieratic Pharaonic texts is evident, as will be
shown in the next section. On account of this continuity, future studies on the topic of dreams
in ancient Egypt should therefore take into consideration not only the evidence from either the
earlier or the later period, but encompass them both as a continuum, albeit also accounting for
their individual peculiarities.

Ancient Egyptian dream books: the published evidence

This section will offer a quick chronological overview of the known available evidence for
oneirocritica, i.e. dream interpretation handbooks, which has been published at present, paving the
way for a discussion of the most typical features of the demotic dream books and a comparison
with their Pharaonic ancestors later on in this paper. For more thorough information about each
text, the interested reader can see the discussion and the additional bibliographical references
given in Prada (in press).

Hieratic dream books

The first oneirocriticon we encounter is the already mentioned pChester Beatty 3 ro, copied
under the reign of Ramses II. The beginning and the end parts of the papyrus are lost, but a
good number of columns of text survive. Apart from a section with an incantation to protect the
dreamer (col. x+10/10–19) and a following one describing the characteristic of a category of
men, certainly the imy.w-xt %tX ‘followers of Seth’ (col. x+11/1–18) whose dreams are treated
later on, the rest of the papyrus contains a list of possible dream scenarios, each followed by
their interpretation: the dreams starting with col. x+11/19 (only four of which survive before
the papyrus breaks up) are said to pertain to the ‘followers of Seth’, whilst it is plausible that
those discussed from col. x+1 to x+10/9 were those pertaining to another group of men, the
‘followers of Horus’. A heading written vertically between the columns of text reads ir mAA sw
s m rsw.t ‘if a man sees himself in a dream’, and has to be understood before each of the rows
of the main text. These are divided into three elements: first, the description of the dream; then,
its overall mantic significance, either auspicious or ominous, which is specified by the word
nfr ‘good’ or Dw ‘bad’; and finally, its specific interpretation, that is, the prediction of what is
bound to happen to the dreamer. All positive dreams are listed together, and are followed by the
ominous ones (starting from col. x+7/1; one dream in this section, at x+7/5, is actually marked
with nfr, but this has probably to be attributed to a scribal mistake). To give an example, in
col. x+3/5 we read: Hr swri irp nfr anx pw m mAa.t ‘drinking wine – good: it means living with
equanimity’. What is surprising about this Ramesside dream book is that, while the layout of
the text is extremely accurate and clearly aims at being user-friendly, with the vertically written
protasis, and the tripartite structure of each line carefully aligned even in the writing (dream +
‘good’ / ‘bad’ + interpretation), the actual use of the text, if it needed to be consulted as a work
of reference by someone interested in finding out the meaning of a specific dream, must not
have been that easy, at all. Dreams are in fact listed without a thematic ordering criterion, so
that, if one dreamt of, say, burying an old man, it must have taken him (or whoever else was
consulting this papyrus) some time before finding the relevant entry in col. x+6/1, surrounded
as it is by a dream about sawing wood and another about cultivating herbs.
170 Luigi Prada

As already mentioned above, we now know of two more hieratic oneirocritica from the
Pharaonic period: of both of them only a few fragments survive, but these are yet of the utmost
importance, as they provide us with evidence proving the survival of the tradition of dream
books in the Late Period, before (and contemporary to) their earliest demotic counterparts. Both
papyri are in Berlin and are published in Quack (2010). The first text is pBerlin P 29009, dated
to the XXVI dynasty. Its layout is not as fancy as that of pChester Beatty 3 ro, so that there is no
vertically written protasis, nor nfr or Dw sign stating the value of the dream (elements which are
absent also from all other oneirocritica that will be discussed later), but each line is introduced
by a phrase of the type s iw=f nw r=f ‘a man, who dreams of himself’ (the underlined text is
in red ink in the original; cf. e.g. frag. a, col. x+1/x+7), which is then followed by the dream’s
description, and finally by the prediction. Two points are of particular interest here, and concern
the ordering of the text. In the first place, we notice that one of the criteria governing the
Ramesside dream book, i.e. the main division between auspicious dreams and ominous dreams,
is not found here anymore, as it will not be found in any of the later oneirocritica: here, good
and bad dreams are mixed together, so that a prediction announcing a bad illness is followed
by two favourable ones concerning joy and having a long lifetime, and, two lines later, another
ominous prediction foretells instead the dreamer’s death (frag. a, col. x+1/x+5–7, 9). Secondly,
even if an ordering criterion concerning the overall mantic value of the dream is missing, a
thematic structure seems instead to be appearing, at least in nuce: for instance, in frag. a, col.
x+1/x+4–8, all dreams clearly concern being in or coming to a city or place. And a thematic
structure, as will be seen, is what characterises all later dream books.
The other hieratic text is pBerlin P 23058, dated to the XXX dynasty (and possibly roughly
contemporary to the earliest demotic dream book specimen, for which see below), which
shows even clearer signs of a thematic ordering according to the subject of the dream. In the
surviving lines of frag. a, col. x+2, Pharaoh plays an important role, so this may possibly have
been a section describing dreams about the king. More importantly, in frag. b, l. x+4, a rubric
survives from a heading, which probably started off a section about dreams concerning Nubians.
Thematic headings are typical of the layout of demotic oneirocritica, and are thus here attested
for the very first time. It has to be said that a heading introducing a list of dreams is also found
once in pChester Beatty 3 ro, col. x+11/19, but this introduces the following list as that of the
dreams of the ‘followers of Seth’, and is thus connected with the nature of the dreamers, and
not of the dreams.

Demotic dream books

A quick overview of our sources for dream interpretation manuals in demotic will now show
how dominating in quantity and variety the evidence in this phase and writing of the ancient
Egyptian language is.
The earliest such text is pJena 1209, which dates to the IV–III century BC (original
publication in Zauzich 1980, 96–98, pl. 8; correct re-dating in Quack 2006, 185 fn. 6), and of
which additional fragments have been recently identified in the Jena collection, being currently
prepared for publication by T. Sebastian Richter of Leipzig University and myself. At the
beginning of pJena 1209, in l. 1, is a chapter’s heading, nA X.v.w snoy ‘the manners of suckling’,
and all the following dreams concern suckling several creatures, including animals, people, and
one’s relatives. The structure of each dream-entry is similar to what we saw in the previous
texts: first, at the beginning of the line, comes the protasis, the description of the specific dream
 Ancient Egyptian oneiromancy and demotic dream books 171

(i.e. the mention of the recipient of the suckling, the action being here described by means of a
circumstantial present clause), which is then followed by the apodosis, the prediction, in the third
future. To give an example of this standard set up of the demotic dream books, l. 2 reads: iw=f
snoy n msH r rmT aA Hry gr r ti n=f nkt ‘when he suckles a crocodile: a great man or a superior
will give him property’. The additional fragments that are now being studied do not belong to
this chapter about suckling, but to other sections of this manuscript.
All the other known demotic oneirocritica date to the Roman Period, and stem from the
Fayum. Small fragments probably belonging to two different texts, although roughly contemporary
and both from Tebtunis, are pTebt. Tait 16 and 17 (publication in Tait 1977, 56–61, pl. 4).
Unfortunately, so little text survives with regard to the description of the dreams, that virtually
nothing can be said about their topic and the structuring of these compositions.
On a similar note, further papyrus fragments, pCairo 50138–50141 (cf. Spiegelberg 1932,
98–103, pl. 59), belong to two or possibly three different original manuscripts, but their present
condition is such that no single entire line of text survives in any of them, and, while it is certain
that they all belong to the genre of divinatory writings, it is disputable whether or not they are
specifically dream books. Only the final parts of the lines of some columns survive, which
means that many predictions are preserved, but none of the entries which would allow us to say
whether the omina described were dream-related or of another kind (dream books show in fact
strong analogies and a phraseology very close to that of other divination texts, on which see
for instance Quack 2006 and, with focus on astrological handbooks, Winkler 2009). Two of the
fragments actually preserve traces from the beginning of some lines, but the surviving amount
of text is not enough to solve the uncertainty about the specific texts’ genre.
Much different is the situation with two manuscripts now in Copenhagen, pCarlsberg 13 and
14 vo, which, although also fragmentary, do bear a large amount of text, and have been, to the
present day, the main and most extensive known specimens of demotic oneirocritica (edition in
Volten 1942). Given their prominence within the other demotic evidence for dream interpretation,
these papyri have often been mentioned in general studies on ancient Egyptian oneiromancy:
yet, some misunderstandings have arisen concerning them, which have been repeated in several
of these publications, first of all the idea that we here have an alleged ‘Demotic Dream Manual’
(see, most recently, Szpakowska 2011, 510–511, 515), which is not really the case. The two
papyri belong in fact to two different manuscripts (besides the radical difference between the
two scribal hands, pCarlsberg 13 is written on the papyrological recto of a papyrus whose
back is blank, whilst pCarlsberg 14 vo is copied on the verso of a papyrus originally bearing a
Greek text on the front; cf. Volten 1942, 3–4), and there is no reason to suggest that they might
be two different copies of the same handbook. Other commonly repeated misunderstandings
concern the topic of some of the manuals’ sections, such as one about dreams where animals
suckle the dreamer (in pCarlsberg 14 vo f), unlike the Jena text discussed above, where it was
a person suckling animals (thus, the remarks in Szpakowska 2011, 511, need to be emended
accordingly).
A detailed discussion concerning the topics of the thematic chapters found in pCarlsberg
13 and 14 vo is beyond the aims of the current paper: for this, I refer the reader to the original
publication and to the discussion in Prada (in press, fn. 68 in particular). What has to be noted
here is that the thematic ordering emerges perfectly clear throughout both Carlsberg texts. As
for their layout, both manuscripts introduce new chapters with a heading, in the same way
seen for pJena 1209. And the phrasing of the texts is also the same as for the Jena papyrus,
showing a bipartite structure: first the dream, mainly described with a circumstantial present
172 Luigi Prada

clause (the section on dreams about numbers, in pCarlsberg 13a, col. x+2, is exceptional,
inasmuch as the numbers are listed by themselves, not within a circumstantial or any other
type of clause), and then the prediction, in the third future. Particularly remarkable, from the
point of view of the information we can extrapolate about the classification system followed
by these texts in listing dreams, is the fact that in a few instances the Carlsberg fragments
preserve parts of text before a new chapter heading is introduced. This is also true in the case
of the newly discovered and still unpublished section of the Jena manuscript. As a result, in
parts of these texts one can see what topic followed which one in the original sequence of
the chapters.
One more fragment of a demotic oneirocriticon is published, pBerlin P 15683 (edition
in Zauzich 1980, 92–96, pl. 7), but I will discuss this in the next section, as it belongs to a
composition of which more unpublished fragments have been recently identified.
Finally, it is worth mentioning here that fragments of more oneirocritica of Roman date
from Tebtunis (and additional fragments of pCarlsberg 13 and 14 vo) are about to be published
by Joachim F. Quack and Kim Ryholt (see Quack 2010, 103 fn. 12, 108).

A new demotic dream book

Another text has to be added to the list of demotic dream manuals given above, and this is an
oneirocriticon, for the most part unpublished, of which several fragments survive, and which
I am reconstructing as part of my doctoral research, in view of its eventual publication. I have
not yet completed my survey of the main European and American papyrus collections holding
demotic literary items of Roman age from the Faiyum, and thus the following survey has to be
considered a preliminary one, subject to change and additions in the near future. For reasons of
space, this overview will be kept short (for more information, see Prada in press).
Most of the fragments of this text belong to one manuscript, although a couple of
others come from different copies, thus proving the survival of multiple manuscripts (all
Roman in date, and all stemming from the Faiyum) of this handbook. At this stage of my
research, the copy for which the most fragments are attested includes items from the papyrus
collections of Berlin and Vienna, which are: pBerlin P 8769, P 15796a+b, pVienna D 6104,
D 6633+6634+6635+6636, D 6644, D 6668. None of these is published, although an image
of pBerlin P 8769, accompanied by some observations on the text (whose exact nature as a
dream book was not recognised), was printed in Spiegelberg (1902, 29, pl. 98). As for the
Vienna items, most of them were simply listed in Reymond (1983, 53–54), and in one case,
that of D 6668, not specifically as a specimen of a dream book, but more generally as a
divinatory composition.
Another fragment of this text is pBerlin P 15683, which, as mentioned in the preceding
section, is the only one to have been already published. The scribal hand of this text is extremely
similar to that of the Berlin/Vienna manuscript presented above, yet some peculiarities in its
orthography and differences in the writing of specific words (cf. Prada in press, fn. 72) suggest
that this fragment was written by a different scribe from the one who wrote the other copy,
although both must have been trained in the same scriptorium, given the overall resemblance
of the two hands. Further, what I believe must be a case of pagination (i.e. column numbering)
in pBerlin P 15683 should also prove that this papyrus belongs to a different copy, since no
pagination is found in the Berlin/Vienna manuscript.
 Ancient Egyptian oneiromancy and demotic dream books 173

Finally, another copy is witnessed by pCtYBR 1154b, a fragment from Tebtunis in the
collection of Yale University, which, by a random chance, preserves an exact textual parallel to
part of the text of pBerlin P 15683 (from its line x+2/19). Also, this Yale papyrus belongs to a
manuscript of which a few additional fragments are preserved in the Carlsberg collection, and
which will soon be published (cf. the end of the preceding section).
Another item, pMichigan Dem. 516a (in the collection of the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor), is also a demotic Roman fragment of a divinatory text, quite likely of a dream book. It
does not belong to any of the manuscripts described above, and there is no element to suggest
whether or not it may be an additional textual witness of this new oneirocriticon. I include
mention of it here for the sake of completeness: further study of this Michigan fragment will
hopefully shed more light on it.
The number of fragments and the multiple copies of this new dream book listed above can
already give an idea of the wealth of information that will come from this text once its complete
publication is achieved, with the hundreds of lines of text it preserves. Before discussing its
thematic chapters, the standard pattern of the text needs to be mentioned. As in the cases seen
above, here too we have a bipartite structure for each entry, with the subject of the dream at
the beginning of the line and then the prediction (again, mainly in the third future). What is
unusual, however, is the way the dream is described: by far the most frequent pattern includes
neither a circumstantial nor any other type of clause, but simply the mention of an entity (object,
animated creature, etc.) which stands for the main subject of the dream. To give an example, in
pBerlin P 8769, col. x+4/13, we read: [n]ny n bny.t i[w]=f ir nb n mt(.t) nfr.t ‘Date palm [r]oot:
he [w]ill be owner of goodness’. This feature, rarely attested in other oneirocritica (see e.g. the
section on numbers of pCarlsberg 13 previously mentioned), makes the structure of this new
dream book look distinctively ‘encyclopaedic’, with rows of text listing words one under the
other, each followed by its prediction.
With regard to the way dreams and their topics are divided in this text, this too is reminiscent
of an encyclopaedic approach to the world, and thus to the world as seen in one’s dreams.
In listing the main topics treated by this text, I will roughly follow the order of the list of
fragments I have given above: this order does not claim to be the one in which the chapters
followed one another in the original composition, since the papyrus fragments cannot generally
be joined or repositioned with respect to one another, but are unfortunately ‘floating’. Many
entries are preserved from a large section (which covered at least three columns of one of the
manuscripts) about stones, minerals, and metals one can dream of, and another contains trees,
fruits, and other botanical entries. There is a chapter that lists birds, whilst another focuses on
divinities that can be sighted in one’s dream. Other fragments include: a section possibly on
foodstuffs (only a few, damaged entries are still preserved for this group, which is the reason
for my uncertainty), a long list of animals (including mammals, reptiles, insects), a section on
herbs and plants (this is probably the case, although only one entry, the last one, survives for
this section), and one on metal implements (not common tools, but items apparently pertaining
to cult activities in temples, including incense-burners and sistra). Two headings introducing
their respective chapters (the one about animals and the one about metal implements) also
survive: one is in pVienna D 6644, col. x+2/6–7, and reads nA X.wt … [nt-iw] rmT nw r-r=f
| iw=f fy n-im=w ‘the manners of … [which] a man dreams of carrying out’ (on the word
following X.wt, for which I can offer no reading, see Prada in press, fn. 81). The other is in
pBerlin P 15683, col. x+2/2: k.t-X(.t) stbH nt-iw rmT nw [r-r=w] ‘Another (chapter): (metal)
implements which a man dreams [of]’.
174 Luigi Prada

Demotic oneirocritica: their taxonomical system in relation to the earlier

tradition of dream books
As seen above, what emerges from the demotic texts is a classification of the world, a taxonomy
that encompasses not only the view of dreams that was held by the authors and the intended
users of such texts, but also their view of the surrounding world. In the past as well as today,
dreams could concern any aspects of life and human experience: hence, oneirocritica can be
looked at as a sort of encyclopaedia, a most wealthy source of information on the reality of
their time.
Now that the available evidence for demotic dream books has been presented, it is worthwhile
to move back to the issue I touched upon earlier in this paper, that is, the relationship between
the textual documentation for the dynastic period and that for the Graeco-Roman one, and in
particular between pChester Beatty 3 ro and the demotic dream manuals (for the following
discussion, see also Quack 2010, 108–110, and the references therein). Certainly, the tradition
of demotic oneirocritica appears extremely compact, showing continuity in its structure and in
the way dreams are listed for a time span of approximately half a millennium: from as early as
the IV–III century BC, the date of pJena 1209, to the late II or even early III century AD, the
time to which the manuscripts I am studying can be dated. For the similarities between these
two texts, one can consider for instance the use of headings phrased in the same way in both,
and following the pattern ‘the manners of’ + the action being carried out in the dream. Nor
should this continuity be surprising: the dates given above are in fact those to which the papyri
can be dated on palaeographical basis, but this does not mean that the texts themselves were
composed at that time. We may well be dealing with manuals composed long before the earliest
surviving manuscript copies. This would not be unusual, since, in the case of demotic literary
compositions, we have direct evidence of instances of the same text having been copied for
centuries, with surviving papyri of the same composition having very different dates (cf. e.g.
Ryholt 1999, 88–91). The newly published hieratic dream books from Berlin also strengthen this
picture of continuity, in particular pBerlin P 23058, with its partially preserved heading, and its
date to the latest dynastic period, perhaps coinciding with that of pJena 1209. Also, this proves
that what were thought to be peculiarities of the demotic dream books have little to do with their
being in demotic, since they are also found in the hieratic counterparts of these texts.
When we look back at pChester Beatty 3 ro, the differences seem even more striking. But is
it true that this Ramesside text follows no classifying criterion for the dreams it treats? As seen
above, this papyrus does in fact have some form of ordering: but rather than a thematic one,
based on the dreams’ topic, it prefers two further-encompassing criteria. The first is the identity
of the dreamer, ‘followers of Seth’ vs., probably, ‘followers of Horus’; and this identity-based
criterion is not completely unknown even to the demotic dream books, as shown by sections from
both pCarlsberg 13 and 14 vo where dreams (still ordered thematically as well) and predictions
refer to women (cf. also Volten 1942, 8–9). The second criterion refers to the mantic quality
of the dreams, i.e. whether they are good or bad ones: this functions as a second-level division
within the identity-based one. In the first group of dreams (those of, probably, the ‘followers
of Horus’), the auspicious dreams precede the ominous ones, and so certainly happened in
the section concerning the dreams of the ‘followers of Seth’, of which only a handful of lines
survive, yet also starting with good dreams.
But there is perhaps even more to be observed about the Ramesside handbook, i.e. traces,
here and there, of a thematic ordering as well: these have been already noted and listed by Volten
 Ancient Egyptian oneiromancy and demotic dream books 175

(1942, 14–15), and should be taken into serious consideration. The reason why pChester Beatty
3 ro shows such traces may be a sign of it being an excerpt from a wider, original composition
which also included a thematic ordering, as already suggested by Volten (1942, 15–16). In the
end, as already pointed out before, it is hard to imagine the utility of a dream book, a text meant
to be used as a reference tool, if it lists the dreams without any thematic criterion. And it is
plausible to suppose that pChester Beatty 3 ro may be an abridged copy drawn up for personal
use also because of its provenance: it originally belonged to a scribe’s personal library, that
of Qenherkhopshef, whose collection of texts shows the interests not of a professional dream
interpreter or expert of divination, but of a scribe of great culture and wide-ranging interests
(on the owner of pChester Beatty 3, cf. Szpakowska 2011, 513–517).
Finally, to conclude this brief analysis of the taxonomy of demotic dream books, at least two
more questions need to be asked. The first one concerns the internal ordering of each thematic
chapter: is there any sub-ordering at this level, are there any sub-groups, or not? The answer
is not straightforward. In most cases, it is impossible to see any order: in pVienna D 6633, for
instance, the divinities are listed one after the other without any apparent sorting principle.
Yet, there are cases were a system can be spotted: this is the case for pBerlin P 8769, where
the section about stones, minerals, and metals tends to collect many of them in more or less
coherent groups, or for pVienna D 6644, where the animals are listed according to size, from
the larger to the smaller ones.
The second question is: can we discern any rational order in the way the thematic chapters
follow one another? Unfortunately, this question is even harder to answer, and in fact cannot be
answered for the time being. As pointed out before, in the description of pCarslberg 13 and 14
vo, we only have a few instances of fragments including consecutive parts of text from more than
one chapter. Hopefully, further study and the discovery of additional fragments to the new dream
book will shed more light on this issue. Also, the study of the Greek texts on the other side of a
couple of dream books (namely, pCarslberg 14 vo and pCtYBR 1154b with its complementary
fragments in Copenhagen) may perhaps provide further elements with which to reconstruct the
original respective position of the fragments. Moreover, in the case of another papyrus, pBerlin
P 15683, it is possible that the section on metal implements (and the preceding one on herbs)
which it preserves stood originally very close to the beginning of the text: on the right of col.
x+2/17, in the intercolumnium, is a sign which, although slightly damaged, seems to be quite
clearly that for the number ‘2’. This can only be interpreted as a pagination number, indicating
that this actually was the original second column in the papyrus roll. There are no known cases of
pagination numbers written between columns of text, and it is commonly believed that pagination
was written either in the top or in the bottom margin. However, in the papyrus collection of
Vienna I had the chance to observe an unpublished, well preserved divination text, written in
a hand very close to that of pBerlin P 15683, with a pagination number also included in the
intercolomnium: this proves that, at least in the scribal milieu that produced these manuscripts,
such a way of numbering columns was practiced.

Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to give an account of the wealth of evidence for the phenomenon
of oneiromancy that is available in demotic and that in good part still lies unpublished, and to
show how this is not unrelated from earlier such writings in hieratic. The ongoing studies on
176 Luigi Prada

the topic and the gradual publication of more such texts are showing more and more clearly the
strong link between the demotic and the earlier oneirocritica, and are making the study of either
corpus in isolation and independent from one another unjustifiable from a scholarly perspective.
No matter how late they might be, the demotic dream books appear to be rooted in a long-lived
indigenous Egyptian tradition, with its own view of the world and of the world of dreams.

Acknowledgements
I should like to acknowledge here my debt of gratitude to a few individuals and institutions. First,
to my supervisor, Prof. Mark Smith (Oxford), for continuous discussion and support throughout
my MPhil and these first years of my DPhil. Then, to Prof. Joachim F. Quack (Heidelberg),
who has always exchanged with me information about his research, and communicated to me
the inventory numbers of some of the unpublished papyri discussed above and which he first
identified. For similar generosity in sharing his research with me, I am also thankful to Prof.
Kim Ryholt (Copenhagen). All my research has been made possible by the award of a DPhil
scholarship from the AHRC in partnership with the Oxford University Scatcherd Scholarship
programme. The Governing Body of The Queen’s College has also awarded me continuous
grants to facilitate my study visits abroad. My gratitude also goes to the curators and staff of the
papyrus collections in which I have most often worked in the past couple of years, in particular
to Prof. Bernhard Palme (Vienna), Dr. Verena Lepper (Berlin), and Prof. Arthur Verhoogt (Ann
Arbor). Last but not least, thanks to Jenny Cromwell (Sydney) for proofreading this paper (and
more).

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