Documentary Fayumic Papyri in Vienna - Reedition of Texts from CPR II and IV

Documentary texts these are all texts used in daily life in one of the dialects (Fayumic) of the Egyptian language (Coptic) of Byzantine time are object of the research. There exists an abundance of documentary texts from Egypt due to the climatic conditions. In the collection of papyri in Vienna more then 20.000 in Coptic. Most of them in the major dialect called Sahidic. For many centuries the lives of small villages and the history of families and single persons is documented in papyri. The fragile material would have perished in different circumstances, however, it survived in Egypt. Thus, every research into this wealth of material has to focus on one comparatively small and if possible well defined area. And to choose texts in the Fayumic dialect is the equivalent of selecting a well defined area in every aspect. The Fayum is an oasis approximately 100 kilometres southeast of Cairo. And Fayumic is an Egyptian dialect (one of the Coptic dialects) documented for this area from approximately 400 to 800 CE. Thus, the texts under research come from one rather small area and belong to a small window of time. Therefore, they are interconnected and will yield for this reason important insight into the place and time under scrutiny. Persons and places occur in more than one of the objects. Thus, the picture can arise e.g. of the social standing of persons. It might also be possible to follow the ownership of land or to the legal matters attended to. The sample in question consists of a little bit less than 100 (mostly fragmentary) texts. The differences between the Coptic dialects are substantial enough that many scholars choose one or two dialects to work closely with. And the Fayumic dialect is one of the minor dialects, which, by consequence, has been neglected compared to the major dialects. Most of the documentary texts in the Fayumic dialect from the collection of papyri in Vienna have been transcribed in an edition from 1895 (CPR II) and some of them have seen a bit more of attention in a second volume published in 1958 (CPR IV). However, to make the texts available for historical and linguistic research a modern edition of these texts with translations and commentaries is necessary. It is evident already from the preparation of the application that the results of the research will be of importance also for the history of law in Egypt during this period.

Egypt is the best documented part of the ancient world. Thanks to its climatic conditions, numerous fragile documents written on papyrus have survived. This documentation starts from the time of the pharaohs and continues until the abolition of papyrus as writing material in Arabic times. Papyrus documents in Coptic language represent the latest stage of the Egyptian language. Coptic texts use the Greek alphabet - with a few additional characters to signify Egyptian sounds - but the language inherits its grammatical structure and vocabulary from the Ancient Egyptian language that had been used since the time of the pharaohs. Coptic emerged in Egypt under Roman and Byzantine rule, when Coptic documents existed parallel with Greek texts, and continued into Arabic rule. The earliest testimonies of Coptic are literary texts, probably due to the Christianisation of Egypt and the translation of religious texts from Greek into Coptic. Coptic is not one language but a group of (considerably distinct) dialects. The two main dialects are Sahidic (used mostly in the southern part of Egypt and the more important dialect in ancient times) and Bohairic (used in the northern part and the predominant dialect in later times). There is a number of minor dialects, as well. One dialect among these is Fayyumic, which, as the name already manifests, was used in the Fayyum Basin situated approximately 100 kilometers southwest of Cairo. The project aimed at a comprehensive and systematic study of the Fayyumic dialect which is known from a relatively small number of about 400 documentary papyri datable to the 8th-9th cent. A.D. About 100 of these papyri are kept in the Department of Papyri at the Austrian National Library, which is among the largest collections of texts in this dialect. The study of Fayyumic Coptic had never been in the focus of research. The scarcity of published documents, the state of publications (not up to modern standards) and the difficulty of the language had hindered deep scholarly engagement and adequate study. The project was thus ground-breaking to the extent that it shed light specifically on this documentation, deepened the understanding of the texts and linked them to other parts of the documentation in the historical perspective. The project has resulted in a better understanding of the Fayyumic dialect, for instance, in the identification of specific words and structures that do not occur in Coptic texts from other regions. On the other hand, the study of papyrus documentation from the same period and the same region written in other languages (Greek and Arabic) provided more precise knowledge of the functioning of the Arab administration in Early Islamic times, and thus put the Coptic documents in the historical context, both regional and transregional.