Documentary texts are generally more difficult to read than literary texts. Although many documentary texts were written by professional scribes, many were not, and sometimes the handwriting is exceptionally difficult to read. Unlike the book hands of literary texts, the handwriting in documentary texts often uses ligatures to create a cursive style of writing. As writing became progressively faster, documentary texts can become especially difficult to read in later eras.
Lists
One very important usage of writing in ancient Egypt was to keep track of things and people. As a result, we have examples of a wide variety of lists; tax rolls, inventories, lists of soldiers, and pawnbrokers' accounts are just a few of the types of lists we have in our colelction.
Letters
Letters form a large subsection of documentary texts. Letters may be correspondences between private citizens such as family members or business partners, business-related correspondences between government officials, or communications between government and private citizens, such as decrees or petitions. Private letters often utilized any spare material available- some brief letters were even written on ostraka. Private letters could have been written by the sender himself, or by a scribe if the person was illiterate.
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P.Mich.inv 4022 |
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P.Mich.inv 6640 |
Private letters were generally quite formulaic and not very personal. Most often they contain instructions or requests and are quick to the point once the introductions are taken care of. Below is an exceptional letter in which Ploutogenia reveals her emotions when she complains about having not recieved any letters from her mother. (For a translation of this letter, click on the bull next to the image to view the APIS record. For more information about the family archive of Paniskos, see Snapshots of Daily Life)
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P.Mich.inv 1362 |
In the example above, you can see clearly the subscription where the sender has signed her name. On the verso of the letter (below), you can see the address, which included the name and town of the recipient. The letter would have been folded, with the address visible on the outside.
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P.Mich.inv 1362 |
Other Texts
Ancient texts may deal with science, magic, and religion, and some of these texts blur the distinction between documentary and literary. For example, the Euclid fragment below contains a literary-style work, but was not part of a book roll. It was copied for private use, probabally by a student or a teacher, and the hand is more of a documentary-style hand.
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P.Mich.inv 925 |
Other documentary texts include court proceedings, contracts, and other official records such as birth certificates and marriage contracts.
