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Book Review: The Materiality of Texts from Ancient Egypt. New Approaches to the Study of Textual Material from the Early Pharaonic to the Late Antique Period

The volume The Materiality of Texts from Ancient Egypt discusses the material aspects of ancient writing through various methodologies and case studies from the early pharaonic to the Late Antique periods in Egypt. The articles are revised and extended versions of papers presented during the conference ‘Beyond Papyri: The Materiality of Ancient Texts’ in Leiden, 27–29 October 2016. The majority of the nine contributions discuss papyri, ostraca, and graffiti from the later phases of Egyptian history. If intentional, such chronological emphasis is a satisfactory approach. The materiality of texts has become a popular subject of research and is best discussed with focussed clusters of written material. Regardless of chronology, the papers can furthermore be grouped according to three themes: theoretical treatises (Eyre and Pinarello); focussed discussions of distinct collections of inscriptions (Ast, Töpfer, Haring, Lougovaya, and Caputo and Cowey); and experiments with modern imaging technologies (Prada and Wordsworth, and Piquette). In a publication that addresses the materiality of ancient writing, those articles using tangible examples are inevitably best placed to achieve the aim of the publication: to enhance understanding of the material context and history of Ancient Egyptian written sources. Most authors connect materiality to functionality, spatial and chronological distribution, literacy and audience, state of preservation and accessibility. The considerable overlap between the articles confirms the strength of such correlations, which can lead to new models of interpretation. Most text specialists probably agree that a written document is not just a record or an incidental carrier of communication, but an object used within a historical context and that its materiality is crucial to the power of its content. Discourses in favour of ‘a wider perspective that holds objects rather than language at the centre of analysis’ (Massimiliano S. Pinarello, p. 14) as ‘writings were as much, if not more objects than texts’ (Christopher Eyre, p. 1) illustrate the danger of overemphasizing (or overtheorising) the value of an approach – as if an appreciation of the materiality of the inscribed object should exclude linguistic or literary aspects. Surely it is the holistic consideration of text and matter that should be encouraged, as successfully illustrated by those contributions that have taken the inscribed object as their starting point. In ‘The Material Authority of Written Texts in Pharaonic Egypt’ (pp. 1–11), Christopher Eyre almost denies the phonetic character, the literary richness and performative nature of the pharaonic writing system. The acknowledgment of these, the author calls ‘a modern assumption’. Eyre considers literacy levels among an ancient population as indicators of the functionality of a script – the Egyptian writing system is too difficult. Only communication systems that are understandable to illiterate members of the community suggest ‘a sort of partial literacy’. It is hard to see how the creation of classic Egyptian literature such as the Story of Sinuhe or The Eloquent Peasant are the result of an educational approach that ‘did not promote the ordered acquisition of minimal, partial and eventually full and unrestricted literacy’ (p. 7).1 Consequently, the author denies the important role of individual agency in the development of writing and the creativity of reorganising parts of a composition into new compositions; yet acknowledges the long transmission of early texts into the Roman Period as ‘productive re-workings’ (p. 7).2 How are the latter not evidence of intellectual activity or the product of advanced literacy? As Töpfer indicates in her contribution (pp. 35–42), the Tebtunis texts are not coherent copies of older ritual compositions, but evidence of how a reinterpretation of tradition produced innovations. The reader may have high expectations of the second article as Massimiliano S. Pinarello promises to ‘propose a new agenda for social studies of the ancient world’ (p. 12) while ‘challenging our intellectual limits’ (p. 26). However,