Papyrus Anastasi I (officially designated papyrus British Museum 10247) is an ancient Egyptian papyrus containing a satirical text used for the training of scribes during the Ramesside Period. One scribe, an army scribe, Hori, writes to his fellow scribe, Amenemope, in such a way as to ridicule the irresponsible and second-rate nature of Amenemope's work.
The letter gives examples of what a scribe was supposed to be able to deal with: calculating the number of rations which have to be doled out to a certain number of soldiers digging a lake or the quantity of bricks needed to erect a ramp of given dimensions [1], assessing the number of men needed to move an obelisk or erect a statue, organizing the supply of provisions for an army. In a long section Hori discusses the geography of the Mediterranean coast as far north as the Lebanon and the troubles which might beset a traveller there.
This papyrus is important to historians and Bible scholars above all for the information it supplies about towns in Syria and Canaan during the New Kingdom [2]
References
- Alan H. Gardiner Egyptian Hieratic Texts - Series I: Literary Texts of the New Kingdom, Part I, Leipzig 1911
- K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Blackwell 2000
- ^ Dieter Arnold The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture, I.B.Tauris 2002, p.40
- ^ Kitchen 2000, p.530.
Links
- [1] Gardiner's translation of Papyrus Anastasi I
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