The creation of the Library of Alexandria is widely regarded as one of the great achievements in the history of humankind - a giant endeavour to amass all known literature and scholarly texts in one central location, so as to preserve it and make it available for the public. In turn, this event has been viewed as a historical turning point that separates the ancient world from classical antiquity. Standard works on the library continue to present the idea behind the institution as novel and, at least implicitly, as a product of Greek thought. Yet, although the scale of the collection in Alexandria seems to have been unprecedented, the notion of creating central repositories of knowledge, while perhaps new to Greek tradition, was age-old in the Near East where the building was erected. Here the existence of libraries can be traced back another two millennia, from the twenty-seventh century BCE to the third century CE, and so the creation of the Library in Alexandria was not so much the beginning of an intellectual adventure as the impressive culmination of a very long tradition. This volume presents the first comprehensive study of these ancient libraries across the 'Cradle of Civilization' and traces their institutional and scholarly roots back to the early cities and states and the advent of writing itself. Leading specialists in the intellectual history of each individual period and region covered in the volume present and discuss the enormous textual and archaeological material available on the early collections, offering a uniquely readable account intended for a broad audience of the libraries in Egypt and Western Asia as centres of knowledge prior to the famous Library of Alexandria.

This book presents a complete edition of the three known versions of the ancient Egyptian narrative "The Story of Petese Son of Petetum and Seventy Other Good and Bad Stories", copied from the 4th century BC through the 2nd century AD. The narrative, written in Demotic, employs the literary device of a main story containing a series of brief stories presented to a specific character. In the main story, a prophet commits an act of blasphemy and is punished by the gods. Through magical means, the prophet learns from Osiris that he has only 40 more days to live. On the fifth day, the prophet creates a number of magical beings which he sends out to find 35 'good' stories and 35 'bad' stories, one pair of stories for each remaining day of his life. These stories are then presented to the prophet. In this respect it is remarkably similar to "Arabian Nights".

Presents an exhaustive catalogue of Egyptian funerary manuscripts in Danish collections. The volume includes sixteen papyrus manuscripts, two of which are preserved intact, and smaller pieces of inscribed linen from six mummies. The material spans a period of over a millennium, ranging from c. 1200 BC to AD 100. Most of the manuscripts are guides to the afterlife; eighteen of them contain texts and vignettes from the Book of the Dead, while a minor fragment preserves an illustration from the Book of Amduat. The three remaining manuscripts has previously been published.

The term canonicity implies the recognition that the domain of literature and of the library is also a cultural and political one, related to various forms of identity formation, maintenance, and change. Scribes and benefactors create canon in as much as they teach, analyse, preserve, promulgate and change canonical texts according to prevailing norms. From early on, texts from the written traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were accumulated, codified, and to some extent canonised, as various collections developed mainly in the environment of the temple and the palace. These written traditions represent sets of formal and informal cultures that all speak in their own ways of canonicity, normativity, and other forms of cultural expertise. Some forms of literature were used not only in scholarly contexts, but also in political ones, and they served purposes of identity formation. This volume addresses the interrelations between various forms of canon and identity formation in different time periods, genres, regions, and contexts, as well as the application of contemporary conceptions of canon to ancient texts.

"Lotus and Laurel" brings together a wealth of essays in celebration of Paul John Frandsen, who has led a distinguished career as a scholar of ancient Egyptian language and religion. The contributors are friends, colleagues, or former students, and all are leading authorities in Egyptology. Evoking his wide range of interests, they touch on a breadth of topics, including religious thought and representation; social questions of gender, kinship, and temple slavery; as well as studies of grammar and etymology. More than a tribute to this important scholar in Egyptology, "Lotus and Laurel" is a window into some of the most important work going on now in the field.

The Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies took place 23-27 August, 1999. Contributors to this volume include: S Allam, C A R Andrews, L Bares, F de Cenival, M Chauveau, P Collombert, S Davies, M Depauw, L Depuydt, D Devauchelle, T Dousa, A Farid, J Gee, F Hoffman, U Kaplony-Heckel, C A La'da, B Muhs, and others.

This book contains a selection of hieratic texts from the ancient town of Tebtunis hymns and litanies, rituals of protection, a mythological narrative, scholarly compositions, and documentary texts -- as well as a survey of illustrated papyri. Nearly all of the manuscripts are edited here for the first time, and many of the texts are hitherto unknown.

This book presents ten narrative texts written in the demotic script and preserved in papyri from the Tebtunis temple library (1st/2nd century AD). Eight of the texts are historical narratives which focus on the first millennium BC. Four concern prince Inaros, who rebelled against the Assyrian domination of Egypt in the 7th century, and his clan. One is about Inaros himself, while the other three take place after his death. Two other narratives mention Necho I and II of the Saite Period. The story about Necho II is particularly noteworthy, since it refers to the king as Nechepsos and, for the first time, provides us with the identity behind this name. Nechepsos is well supported as a sage king in Greek literary tradition, above all, in relation to astrology. Of the two final historical narratives, one belongs to the cycle of stories about the Heliopolitan priesthood and the other concerns the Persian occupation of Egypt in the 5th or 4th century. The volume further includes a prophecy

This volume six of the Carlsberg Papyri series contains the edition of a new manuscript with Petese Stories from the Tebtunis temple library, dating to the period around 100 AD. The Petese Stories is a compilation of seventy stories about the virtues and vices of women. The numerous stories were compiled on the orders of the prophet Petese of Heliopolis that they may serve as a literary testament by which he would be remembered. Petese was, according to literary tradition, Plato's Egyptian instructor in astrology. The composition seems to have been modeled on the fundamental Myth of the Sun's Eye. The overall structural pattern of the text is very similar to the Arabian Nights; a frame story forms the introduction as well as the fabric into which the long series of shorter tales are woven. Among the stories preserved in the new manuscript one is particularly remarkable in that it is known from a translation by Herodotus, the so-called Pheros Story.

The Tebtunis temple library is the only ancient Egyptian temple library of which substantial remains are preserved - by far the richest, single source of Egyptian literary texts. This volume contains a selection of demotic texts: a theological treatise, manuals on dream interpretation, a manual on birth prognosis, three lists of professions and plants, a list recording the titles of twenty cultic treatises, new fragments of the Great Demotic Book of Wisdom text and an astronomical text. It further includes an illustration from a manual on the pantheistic Bes and three fragments of demotic narrative of unknown origin. None of the papyri have previously been edited.

This seventh volume of The Carlsberg Papyri is dedicated to hieratic manuscripts from the Egyptian Tebtunis temple. The Tebtunis temple library is the only ancient temple library of which substantial remains are preserved, and the immense materialestimated at several hundred manuscriptsmakes it by far the richest, single source of Egyptian literary texts. This present volume is introduced by a survey of the hieratic and hieroglyphic manuscripts from the temple library. The survey is followed by full editions of a series of religious texts: an Osiris liturgy, the Ritual of Bringing Sokar out of the Shetit (previously known only from monumental hieroglyphic versions from temples and manuscripts for funerary use), the Votive Cubit (otherwise known essentially from fragments of the original stone cubits), the Nine-Headed Bes (a parallel to the famous illustrated Brooklyn papyrus but with a fuller description of how the practitioner should proceed), and the Ritual of Opening the Mouth (on