Crum W.E., Evelyn-White H.G. The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes: Part II: Coptic ostraca and papyri - Greek ostraca and papyri

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926. — 471 p. — (Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 4).The texts published in this volume are those written upon the papyri and ostraca found in and about the ruined Christian buildings at the Tomb of Daga, during the Metropolitan Museum's excavations in 1911-12 and 1913-14. The publication, as at first projected, was to have included not only all texts—whether complete or fragmentary— unearthed in or immediately around the tomb, but also a number of others from ostraca found at certain outlying sites, together with some acquired at the time by purchase and mostly of uncertain provenance. The number of texts to be printed and translated thus amounted to over 830. But the events of 1914-18 suggested modifications in this scheme and when printing began, in the spring of 1921, it had been decided to include none but the texts emanating from the tomb itself and its more immediate neighborhood. That a group of pieces from one distant site (182, 203, 294, 332, 381, 577, 616) have notwithstanding found their way into this book is to be ascribed to an oversight.1 But since, without appreciable loss to knowledge, a further reduction could be achieved by the omission of a number of unimportant fragments from Daga, a second revision of the material was made; with the result that the number of texts now published amounts to two hundred less than that contemplated at the outset. Here and there, however, these seemingly negligible fragments proved subsequently to be not valueless and they have in such cases been used in the commentary, under the term "discarded." Yet another series is that whereof translations have been given, although the texts themselves, as containing nothing linguistically notable, are not printed. To decide, however, upon the pieces to be thus treated was not an easy matter and the choice has not, upon reflection, always seemed the best. Of these texts the translations are preceded by an asterisk. Besides the papyri and ostraca, facsimiles of a number of graffiti from the tomb and adjacent cells have given material for over sixty short texts, while others imm