NOVELA ARGENTINA

On a quantitative basis, one could easily argue that Demotic is the base script of P. London-Leiden and of the six columns that precede and fol-low the thirteen Greek columns of P. Leiden I384 verso. It has already been said that a detailed analysis of the orthography and palaeography of both manuscripts has revealed that the hands resemble each other in closest detail.²The similarity is the more conspicuous as both hands make use of a particular and intricate mixing of Demotic and hieratic signs throughout the manuscripts. The idiosyncratic form of mixing certainly betrays an individual hand, so that it is warranted to assume that both manuscripts were written by the same scribe. This mixing of hieratic and Demotic script deserves close attention as an extraordi-nary phenomenon, because Egyptian texts are usually characterised by a concern for clear generic divisions as regards content, script and lan-guage variant, the specific combination of which is mainly determined by a text’s function.³

From the end of the Ptolemaic period onwards, Demotic became gradually accepted as a language and script suitable to write texts of a more traditional and religious nature. Texts that would earlier have been written in Classical Egyptian with the hieratic script, such as ritual handbooks, funerary spells, mortuary liturgies, hymns, scientific works,

2 Johnson, ‘The Demotic Magical Spells of Leiden I384’, 29–64, 51.

3 One could roughly make the following distinctions for the pharaonic period:

hieroglyphs were used for carving religious or royal texts on a stone surface (tem-ple wall or stele) or for inscribing wooden or metal luxury objects for ornamenta-tion. These texts were written in Classical Egyptian. Hieratic, the cursive handwriting, was written with a brush on papyrus and initially developed for documentary pur-poses (receipts, letters, inventory lists, etc.). From the Late Period onwards, hieratic had become restricted to the priestly domain as a medium for writing texts containing tradi-tional sacred knowledge (rituals, hymns, scientific works). Hieratic texts could be written in Classical Egyptian as well as Late Egyptian, although Classical Egyptian predomi-nated because of its sacred character. From the Late Period onwards, administrative and legal texts were written in Demotic, a distinctive language phase and script. Note that these generic boundaries were never rigidly fixed, so that transgressions occurred, albeit limited.

were now also composed in Demotic.⁴ This development was due to a general decline in proficiency in hieratic among the native priesthood whose authority and training was gradually weakened by a decrease in, and eventual lack of, state subsidies.⁵ Hieratic and the Classical Egyptian language were undoubtedly perceived by the priesthood as prestigious and well suited for priestly literature out of tradition, but daily reality was such that the Hellenistic administration forced them increasingly to adopt Greek at the expense of the native languages and scripts. It is likely that Classical Egyptian fell the first victim to this development because it had existed only as an artificial language, requiring extensive training, for about two thousand years. As Demotic was closer to spoken language and therefore less difficult to learn, it became inevitably used where hieratic had previously been obligatory.

In certain cases, hieratic texts were merely translated and reworked into Demotic, but the introduction of Demotic into the religious domain also gave a stimulating impetus for new compositions.⁶ In the light of these developments, it comes as no surprise that the two scripts were occasionally combined.

In certain manuscripts, Demotic phrases serve merely as reading aides or explanatory glosses to the main text in hieratic without inter-fering substantially with the hieratic text. The insertion of explana-tory glosses in Demotic proves that a thorough knowledge of the tra-ditional languages and scripts was no longer self-evident in Greco-Roman Egypt. In a well-preserved Greco-Roman manuscript of the Book of the Fayum, for example, Demotic numbers are written in the vignettes, probably intended as an aid for a scribe to facilitate copying the hiero-glyphic texts of each vignette in correct sequential order.⁷ In one case,

4 For a general overview, see, Friedhelm Hoffmann, Ägypten: Kultur und Lebenswelt in griechisch-römischer Zeit. Eine Darstellung nach den demotischen Quellen (Studienbücher Ge-schichte und Kultur der Alten Welt; Berlin2000) 101–175 and Mark Depauw, A Com-panion to Demotic Studies (Papyrologica28; Brussels 1997) 85ff.

5 For a detailed historical overview, see, László Kákosy, ‘Probleme der Religion im römerzeitlichen Ägypten’ ANRW 18.5 (1995) 2894–3049, 2898–2948. See also Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton 1993) 261–273 and Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt,27–30.

6 Examples of Demotic texts that are (free) translations from hieratic texts are the alternative version on the verso side of the Apis Embalming Ritual, the abbreviated version of the Book of Traversing Eternity, certain spells of the Book of the Dead and the Amun hymn on O. BM50601 (formerly known as O. Hess). The Book of the Temple is attested in both hieratic and Demotic versions. A new composition is, for example, the Liturgy of Opening the Mouth for Breathing.

7 This is the Boulaq/Hood/Amherst manuscript: Horst Beinlich, Das Buch vom

a hieratic phrase is inserted to explain a cryptographic group, while the name ‘Osiris’ is once written in Demotic to clarify the crypto-graphic spelling of the name.⁸ Something similar is found in another mythical-topographical manuscript from the Ptolemaic period in which the hieroglyphic text is accompanied at certain places by a hieratic or Demotic explanatory gloss written above and below the carefully drawn framework.⁹ Some of the pictures are explained by a short Demotic note describing who is depicted.¹⁰ The Tebtunis Onomasticon of the Roman period is entirely written in hieratic, but amply provided with Demotic glosses that give parallel or alternative words to the hieratic wordlists.¹¹ In the funerary compositions P. Rhind 1 and 2, from the reign of Augustus, interference is more substantial and of a different kind, because the funerary text is given in hieratic on the upper half of the column, while a parallel version is written in Demotic on the lower half.¹²It is difficult to discern which version is the translation of the other, as earlier versions of the funerary text are not known and neither the hieratic nor the Demotic version shows clearly identifiable misunderstandings that might have come about in the process of trans-lation. The main difference between the two versions lies therefore not in an explicit hierarchy between a prestigious and a secondary redac-tion, but is solely of a grammatical and idiomatic nature. The hier-atic version, written in Classical Egyptian, contains a fair amount of archaic religious terminology, whereas the Demotic version conforms grammatically and idiomatically more or less to contemporary writ-ten language.¹³However, the act of translation is indeed discernable in

Fayum. Zum religiösen Eigenverständnis einer ägyptischen Landschaft (Wiesbaden1991) 46. The Book of the Fayum is known from several Roman period versions of which the most elaborate contain detailed vignettes accompanied by carefully drawn hieroglyphic texts.

The versions without illustrations are solely written in hieratic. See for a full discussion and plates of the hieroglyphic version, Beinlich (1991), 15–26; for photos of the hieratic version, see, Guiseppe Botti, La glorificazione di Sobk e del Fayyum in un papiro ieratico da Tebtynis (AnAe VIII; Copenhagen1959).

8 Hieratic phrase: line40; B/H/A 189/24,5. Demotic word: line 187; B/H/A 385/

14,7.

9 Plates are published in Jacques Vandier, Le Papyrus Jumilhac (Paris1961).

10 See plates6 (bottom), 7 (bottom), 11 (bottom), 19 (in frame).

11 Jürgen Osing, The Carlsberg papyri 2: Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I, Text (CNI Publications17; Copenhagen 1998).

12 G. Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind des Museums zu Edinburg (Leipzig1913).

13 In this respect, the main difference between hieratic and Demotic is a matter of archaizing and innovative tendencies. Epithets and geographical names are rendered in a less traditional and elaborate form in Demotic than in hieratic. On a lexical

P. Carlsberg 1 and 1a (first century CE), which is a copy of a cosmo-logical treatise already known from the New Kingdom.¹⁴As a possible help for readers less proficient in hieratic, each hieratic sentence is fol-lowed by a translation into Demotic.¹⁵The text is thus made accessible to a Greco-Roman period readership without discarding the ancient, and probably highly prestigious, format. In all of these cases, hier-atic and Demotic are juxtaposed to the extent that they correspond without merging into a syntactic and semantic unit. Differently, a thor-ough and unusual movement of merging can be observed in the unique case of the Apis Embalming Ritual¹⁶ and the Demotic Magical Papyri. In these manuscripts, hieratic and Demotic are integrated to form a sin-gle and coherent text, thereby obliterating the clear-cut generic divi-sions so characteristic of Egyptian textual practice. The following pages will deal in more detail with the particular form of mixing in the two manuscripts under discussion.

Demotic and hieratic are combined in three different ways in the two manuscripts.¹⁷ First, hieratic signs may occur as an independent

level, the hieratic version uses traditional religious vocabulary, whereas the Demotic version adopts consistently a modernizing lexicon (for example, traditional kA, ‘soul’, is rendered in Demotic by rn, ‘name’; the epithet mA#.t.y, ‘the righteous’, is given in Demotic as .hs.y, ‘the praised one’). It is tempting to assume that the Demotic version is a modernizing translation of an older and more traditional hieratic text that is unfortunately preserved in a single copy. However, the hieratic version displays instances of demoticism and several passages in the Demotic version are structured according to alliteration, which is completely lost in the hieratic parallel. See also Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind,8–11.

14 H.O. Lange and O. Neugebauer, Papyrus Carlsberg No.1, ein hieratisch-demotischer kos-mologischer Text (Copenhagen1940) and O. Neugebauer and R.A. Parker, Egyptian Astro-nomical Texts3 Vols. (London 1960–1969) vol. 1, 43–94. See also J.F. Quack, ‘Kollationen und Korrekturvorschläge zum Papyrus Carlsberg1’, in: P.J. Frandsen and K. Ryholt (eds.), The Carlsberg Papyri3: A Miscellany of Demotic Texts and Studies (CNI Publications 22;

Copenhagen2000) 165–171. The earliest version of the cosmological treatise, known as the Book of Nut, is found on the ceiling of the burial chamber in the cenotaph of Sethos I in Abydos. Abridged versions are in the tomb of Ramesses IV and Mutirdis (TT410, unfinished).

15 An early example of a similar Classical Egyptian-Demotic text is P. BM EA69574 from the Saite or Persian period: J.F. Quack, ‘A New Bilingual Fragment from the British Museum (Papyrus BM EA 69574)’ JEA 85 (1999) 153–164. Each Classical Egyptian sentence is followed by its Demotic translation as in P. Carlsberg1 and 1a.

A crucial distinction between the two manuscripts is that the Saite papyrus is entirely written in the hieratic script, which was still widely in use during the Saite period.

16 R.L. Vos, The Apis Embalming Ritual. P. Vindob.3873 (OLA 50; Leuven 1993).

17 For a careful study of the palaeography of the Demotic and hieratic script in

scriptural and lexical cluster within a larger demotic unit. This means that a Demotic sentence incorporates a hieratic word or phrase without breaking up the sentential and semantic order of the Demotic unit. In these cases, the hieratic elements are mainly archaic, religious terms or traditional divine epithets. Second, a word can be made up of hieratic signs used in combination with demotic characters to form a hybrid unit. Again, in this case, the treatment is mostly limited to religious vocabulary. Third, hieratic is occasionally used for transcribing and glossing secret magical names, the so-called voces magicae. Principally, these voces magicae are transcribed and glossed in respectively alphabetic demotic and Old Coptic, but, in one case, a hieratic gloss is added above an epithet in Demotic.

The first above-mentioned type, interference of Demotic and hier-atic script on a sentential level, can be illustrated with the help of a few examples. Egyptian magical spells or medicinal recipes are frequently accompanied by the standard closing phrase nfr.wy pw ‘it is very good’, which was added to spells as some sort of proof of efficacy or adver-tisement from as early as the Middle Kingdom.¹⁸In P. London-Leiden, the phrase occurs occasionally likewise as an addition to a recipe. In the majority of these cases, the clause is markedly written in hieratic in spite of the fact that the foregoing recipe is otherwise in Demotic.¹⁹ For example, a spell to make a woman desire a man closes with the following prescription:

(Recite it) seven times. You must do it on the fourteenth (day) of the lunar month. (It is) very good! [P. London-Leiden25/37]

P. London-Leiden, see, B.H. Stricker, ‘Het grafisch systeem van de Magische Papyrus Londen & Leiden’ OMRO31 (1950) 64–71; OMRO 36 (1955) 92–132; OMRO 39 (1958) 80–103; OMRO 42 (1961) 25–52; OMRO 45 (1964) 25–55.

18 For the medical texts, see, W. Westendorf, Handbuch der altägyptischen Medizin I (Handbuch der Orientalistik1. Abt., Bd. 36; Leiden, Cologne, New York 1999) 98–

99. A helpful discussion on the use of the phrase in magical spells can be found in: Adhémar Massart, The Leiden Magical Papyrus I343+I 345 OMRO 34 (1954) 109, n.25 and Serge Sauneron, Un traité égyptien d’ophiologie. Papyrus du Brooklyn Museum nos.

47.218.48 et 85 (PIFAO, Bibliothèque Générale 11; Cairo 1989) 198 and 235 (nfr-nfr).

The nature of this phrase in the Demotic magical spells is discussed in more detail in chapter7.4, under the heading ‘proof of efficacy’.

19 P. London-Leiden:16/1, 17/1, 23/8, 24/17, 25/37, 27/30, V.11/7, V.25/8 (in hier-atic);3/26, 14/31, 24/14 (in Demotic script). The phrase is not attested in P. Leiden J.

384 verso. It occurs also in the other two Demotic magical papyri: P. Louvre E 3229:

1/18.27, 4/15.30, 5/22, 6/5 (hieratic). P. BM. 10588: 5/6, 6/16, 7/11 (hieratic).

It would thus seem that the copyists of the spells were very familiar with ritual texts in hieratic and added the standard clause in hieratic as they were accustomed to, even though the spell itself was actually in Demotic.

A more complex form of interference can be observed in a number of lengthy invocations that had to be recited in the course of a divina-tion ritual. The poetic structure of these invocadivina-tions conforms to the generic rules of traditional Egyptian hymns: each verse line consists of a divine name accompanied by a description of a deity’s cultic topog-raphy or attributes.²⁰It occurs frequently that a verse line is made up of a mixture of clauses in hieratic and Demotic script with the tradi-tional and age-old epithets usually rendered in hieratic. In this way, the invocations appear as a close-knit patchwork of phrases in Demotic and hieratic script. The following three examples are meant to illustrate this point.

A Hail Nut, mother²¹of water; Hail Opet, mother of fire ° Come to me, Nut, mother of water °

Come, Opet, mother of fire °

Come to meiaho ° [P. London-Leiden6/18–19]²²

B I am the face of the Ram ° Youth is my name °

I was born under the venerable Persea-tree ° in Abydos °²³ I am the soul of the great chief who is in Abydos °

I am the guardian of the great corpse which is in Wu-Poke °

I am the one whose eye is an eye of a hawk watching over Osiris by night °

I am ‘He-who-is-upon-his-mountain’ upon the necropolis of Abydos ° I am the one who watches over the great corpse which is in Busiris ° I am the one who watches for Re-Khepri-Atum °

Whose name is hidden in my heart °

‘Soul-of-souls’ is his name ° [P. London-Leiden6/22–26]²⁴

20 Jan Assmann, Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete (OBO, 2^nd ed.; Freiburg, Göttingen 1999) 17–30.

21 The word mw.t, ‘mother’ is written unetymologically with the hieratic group Mw.t,

‘(the goddess) Mut’ in this and the following three instances.

22 Tr. Janet H. Johnson, with minor modification.

23 The adverbial clause ‘in Abydos’ is set apart by two verse points. I assume that the preceding verse point is a typo caused by the fact that the scribe mistakenly took the end of the line with the word ˇsps, ‘venerable’, for the end of the verse. When he wrote

‘in Abydos’ in the following line he added the second and correct verse point.

24 Tr. Janet H. Johnson, with minor modifications.

C Hail the one whose form is of […] his great and mysterious²⁵form from whose begetting a god came forth

who rests in the midst of Thebes I am […]

[I am …] of the great Lady under whom Hapy comes forth I am the face of great awe […]

[I am …] soul in his protection

I am the noble child who is in the house of Re I am the noble dwarf who is in the cavern […]

[I am] the ibis of true protection who rests in Heliopolis I am the master of the great foe, the lord who obstructs semen The very strong one […] is my [name]

I am the Ram, son of the Ram

Lotus-Lion-Ram (and vice versa) is my name

Re-Khepri-Atum is my true name [P. London-Leiden11/4–9]²⁶ Example C is taken from a spell to acquire charm and success as is made explicit in the example D, the lines that follow immediately exam-ple C. The instruction itself is rendered in Demotic but the standard closing phrase is again written in hieratic.

D Give me praise and love [before NN, son of] NN today, so that he give me all good things, so that he give me food and nourishment, and so that he do everything which I [shall desire. And do not let him] injure me so as to do any harm, so that he say to me a thing which [I] hate, on this day, in this night, this month, this year, [this] hour […]

[P. London-Leiden11/9–11]²⁷ Examples A and B are extracts from an invocation that has to be recited to a lit oil lamp in the course of an elaborate divination rit-ual that makes use of a youth to serve as medium. The ritrit-ual has to be carried out at dawn in a dark, clean room with the lamp facing the east. At the rising of the sun, the practitioner has to recite hymns to the sun god, which are not written out in the handbook but merely mentioned by their generic title as if the practitioner was expected to

25 Note that the two determinatives of ˇst, ‘mysterious’, are actually in hieratic script (Gardiner Q6 and G7). The hieratic signs are to be explained as an unetymological borrowing from the word ˇs

¯tyt, the chapel of the god Osiris-Sokar.

26 Tr. Janet H. Johnson, with minor modifications. Since this section lacks verse points, the division into verse lines is tentative. Note that the use of the third person singular suffix as the possessive after

¯hbr (twice in line4) is a grammatical construction typical of Classical Egyptian, which gives the hymn an archaic touch.

27 Tr. Janet H. Johnson. The phrase m hrw pn m gr.h pn m "ıbd pn m rnp.t tn m wnw.t [tn] or parallel phrases occur frequently in texts of a ritual or magical nature: P. Louvre E3229 3/18, see also 2/7.10 (similar mixing of Demotic and hieratic).

know them by heart. The title of this collection of hymns is written in a mixture of hieratic and Demotic: ‘Adoring Re in the morning at his rising’ (P. London-Leiden 6/3). The title itself is not known from other late sources but resembles titles of ritual books that were kept in the House-of-Life, the cultic temple library.²⁸Since the combination

‘adoring Re’ (dwA R#) served also as a generic technical term for sun hymns,²⁹ it is very well possible that the present title refers to, or was even extracted from, a once existing compilation of sun hymns that was generally known in priestly circles. The distribution of hieratic and Demotic words in the title seems to be random and not governed by any hierarchical order between the two scripts. The following example is taken form the same recipe and confirms that the mixing of hieratic and Demotic script was not strictly determined by hierarchical consid-erations of any kind. The short passage contains two phrases that are coordinated in a parallelismus membrorum, the first member of which is written in Demotic and the second in hieratic.

‘adoring Re’ (dwA R#) served also as a generic technical term for sun hymns,²⁹ it is very well possible that the present title refers to, or was even extracted from, a once existing compilation of sun hymns that was generally known in priestly circles. The distribution of hieratic and Demotic words in the title seems to be random and not governed by any hierarchical order between the two scripts. The following example is taken form the same recipe and confirms that the mixing of hieratic and Demotic script was not strictly determined by hierarchical consid-erations of any kind. The short passage contains two phrases that are coordinated in a parallelismus membrorum, the first member of which is written in Demotic and the second in hieratic.