Dating and Understanding of the Papyrus Greg

The so called “Necropolis Journal” is a day-by-day record of Necropolis workmen at Thebes. Thus, the study of this kind of documents is important in understanding their administration.In this paper I would like to focus upon one single typical text, the Papyrus Greg, which had long been unpublished, although it is well-known to the Egyptologist. Now, however, Prof. Kitchen's Ramesside Inscriptions contains a hieroglyphic transcription with a few textual notes. The document is now easily accessible. In these circumstances a comprehensive study of the Papyrus Greg (as well as the whole study of “Necropolis Journal”) has not yet appeared so far.In this present discussion we deal with two points concerning this Papyrus and the “Necropolis Journal”; To what reign does the Papyrus Greg belong? Some scholars believe it was written in the reign of Ramesses III. We can read regnal year 5 to 7 in the Papyrus Greg but the king's name is missing. We take special notice of the “gap” in this papyrus. If this papyrus was written in the reign of Ramesses III, we must suppose that about 12 months' entries of the recto and 13 months' entries of the verso are missing and must suppose a divergency of a month in the entries of the same length gap (between recto and verso). After considering the contents, we arrived at the conclusion that we cannot assume the existence of the gap—there is no gap. And this papyrus belongs to the reign of Siptah/Tawsert. After discussing the dating of the Papyrus, we went on to investigate how to locate and understand the Papyrus Greg in the whole range of the “Necropolis Journal”

Art · Literature · Notice · Papyrus · Politics · Reign · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classics · History · Law

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