Brice C. Jones
  • Home
  • Blog
  • CV
  • Publications
  • Papyrological Resources
  • Contact

New Link and a New Christian Documentary Papyrus

4/10/2013

0 Comments

 
I have added a new link to a very important online resource for the study of Coptic manuscripts — the Koptische Namensliste, short for Namen in Koptischen dokumentarischen Texten ("Names in Coptic Documentary Texts"). We are all indebted to Monika Hasitzka for making this PDF freely available online. 

On a related note, I take the opportunity to mention here that, several weeks ago, I offered an online edition of a Coptic Christian documentary papyrus that appeared on eBay in which the name "Didymos" (Didyme pap.) occurs. This papyrus has since disappeared and I have no knowledge of its current whereabouts. I originally posted the edition of this papyrus on my former blog (The Quaternion) but I repost it here on the hopes that news about this important papyrus will reach a wider audience. 

(Originally posted 17 December, 2012) A few weeks ago, I posted about an early Sahidic Coptic codex leaf of Galatians 2 that I identified in an eBay auction. Yesterday (December 17th, 2012), our eBay seller posted another papyrus auction, this time of a beautiful Coptic documentary text. Unfortunately, just about as soon as he posted it, he removed it from eBay. However, I saved the image to my computer and have managed to make a transcription and translation. It is a letter informing the addressee about payments of some sort and about a certain Didymos who came to a village and was given a date palm-tree. There is also mention of an old woman who tells (presumably) Didymos that it is her birthday. Here is the image posted by the seller on eBay, followed by my transcription and translation:
Picture
Picture
Unfortunately, the names of the sender and recipient are not mentioned. The thHllO ("old woman") in line 9 may be the equivalent to the ama ("mother"), head of a nunnery. The corresponding words in Coptic for "old man/elder" and "father," which are very commonly used in Coptic literature, are pHllo and apa, respectively. It is not altogether clear if Didymos is the same person to whom the writer gave money, came to the village, and received the date palm-tree, but that interpretation seems likely. In line 10, there is space between paH and oymice, but it works best, I think, to take these letters together: paHoymice ("birthday"). There is also space on line 10 between mice and pe; we could restore with mu here, which would create the reading mpeFi ("you took"). However, I think the verb Fi works best in the imperative and so I have taken the pe on the previous line as a personal subject pronoun. It appears that the fiber orientation is horizontal, which means that we are looking at the recto. The dialect is Sahidic and the script is a well-formed, bilinear example of the biblical majuscule or unimodular script. There were no other images and so we will probably never know anything else about this papyrus. It is not clear why the seller pulled the auction so early. Perhaps someone gave him the $14,000 that he was asking for! In any case, we now have record of a previously unknown Coptic document.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Brice Jones, New Testament, amulets, Greek
    Available at Amazon!

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Ancient History
    Book Reviews
    Ebay Antiquities
    Egypt
    Historical Jesus
    Name That NT MS
    New Discovery
    News
    Notes On Papyri
    Online Antiquities
    Online Resources
    Oxyrhynchus
    Palaeography
    Textual Criticism
    Varia

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

Blog
CV
Publications
Papyrological Resources
Contact
© Brice C. Jones 2020. All rights reserved.
  • Home
  • Blog
  • CV
  • Publications
  • Papyrological Resources
  • Contact