Tebtunis
Tebtunis was a city in Lower Egypt. It was located in what is now the village of Tell Umm el-Baragat in the Faiyum Governorate. The town was known as Koinē Greek: Θεοδοσιούπολις Theodosioúpolis and Latin as Theodosiopolis in the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt.
History
Tebtunis was founded around 1800 BCE by the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III. The town flourished during the Ptolemaic Kingdom and is famous for the many papyri in Demotic and Greek found there. These papyri give information about how people in Tebtunis lived from day to day. For example, one papyrus was found that gave 'minutes' of a meeting of a group of priests. On this papyrus were the names of the priests, what the meeting was about, and a date – indicating that it was written during the Ptolemaic period. In Tebtunis, there were many Greek and Roman buildings. Tebtunis was a rich town and was a very important regional center during the Ptolemaic period.
Among the Tebtunis papyri are preserved many Egyptian astronomical and astrological texts, including several copies of the Book of Nut.[1]
Bibliography
- Merola, Marco. "Letters to the Crocodile God". Archeology Magazine, November–December 2007.
Tebtunis Papyri Volumes
- The Tebtunis papyri vol. I, edited with translations and notes by Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly, 1902 at the Internet Archive
- The Tebtunis papyri vol. II, edited with translations and notes by Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Edgard Goodspeed, 1907 at the Internet Archive
- The Tebtunis papyri vol. III part 1, edited with translations and notes by Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly, 1933 at the Internet Archive
References
- König, Jason; Oikonomopoulou, Katerina; Woolf, Greg (2013). Ancient Libraries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN 9781107012561.
External links
- The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection - Inventory of Published Papyri (many Tebtunis papiri)