Dating late XIXth dynasty ostraca / Mark Collier.

Chapter 1. Janssen's Grouping of Late XIXth Dynasty Ostraca -- Chapter 2. O. Ashm. HO 57 (= O. Gardiner 57) and P. Greg -- Chapter 3. Group B Ostraca -- Chapter 4. Group C Ostraca -- Chapter 5. Group G Ostraca -- Chapter 6. The Watch Rota and Dating -- Chapter 7. Appendix : Ostraca with Less Certain Dating.

From the Valley of the Kings and the environs of the town-site of Deir el-Medina comes the most extensive body of documentation available for the study of a single ancient Egyptian community, illuminating the life-world of the workmen who carved out and decorated the royal tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs as well as the workmen's families and those who supported and administered them. Dating this material precisely is a tricky business, since most of the documents, particularly ostraca (limestone flakes or potsherds), lack specific regnal year dates (the standard dating system for ancient Egyptian documents) and few specify the reign of a particular king even when the regnal year date is present. Dating thus relies on a comparative methodology utilising prosopographical information on the workmen themselves. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Jac J. Janssen, this volume attempts to provide comparative datings for 78 ostraca (and papyri) from the late XIXth Dynasty. The method draws explicitly on the division of the gang into two sides and, crucially, makes full use (for the first time) of the specific ordering of workmen's names to be found in documentation from this period. A key document is O. Ashm. HO 57, which provides the single most comprehensive, and ordered, listing of the workgang during this period and which can be compared fruitfully with the fragmentary day-watch record from P. Greg. Datings are then suggested for all the documents dealt with in this volume and the basis for further elucidation of the careers of various workmen is provided, either by showing that the same individual lurks behind different versions of the same name, by limiting how many workmen share the same name, by tracking the transfer of workmen between the two sides of the gang, or by narrowing down their first attested appearance of a workman on the gang. The archaeological context of the important body of late XIXth Dynasty material from the Valley of the Kings is investigated and it is shown that the datings proposed here on comparative grounds correlate strongly with the grouping of the ostraca by excavation and find-site. More speculative work investigates the reconstruction of the day-watch rota for this period and tests this against the limited textual data currently available. The work is supported by a comprehensive index of the workmen by source and a concordance comparing the datings suggested here with those from other standard reference resources. Many of the ostraca dealt with in this book can also now be accessed via and cross-checked with the on-line Deir el-Medina database currently being developed at the University of Leiden.