ï~~210
Tonio Sebastian Richter
currently kept in the papyrus collection of the Library of the University of
Leipzig, and both were purchased by that institution from the German Papyruskartell in one acquisition and sent in one shipment, as is documented
in the acquisition catalogue.5 Apart from these external and possibly rather
insignificant6 traits, the two pieces have some more specific features in common. They are both written on small strips of paper and, on account of this
and by means of palaeographical criteria,7 can reasonably be dated to the later
tenth or eleventh century.
P.Lips. inv. 260 is written in a variety of the Fayyimic dialect of Coptic,
clearly indicating its origin in the Fayytim region, while the idiom of P.Lips. inv.
250 is based on the Sahidic dialect, possibly indicating another provenance.8
5 The entry runs like this: "Ankauf: Mohammed Chalil. Sendung v[om] Juni 1907.
Fayim." According to the same source, the delivery was accompanied by a control slip
that subsumed both of our pieces under the same number 45, specified as 45/I in the
case of P.Lips. inv. 250 and 45/II in the case of P.Lips. inv. 260 and several other items,
viz. P.Lips. inv. 237, a short Sahidic papyrus document of the reNlGIWT 1n6c12? type
that seems to be connected to the Bawit monastery (cf. PRMon.Apollo, p. 16; S. Clackson,
Am.Stud.Pap. 43, and PRBrux.Bawit, pp. 147-157); P.Lips. inv. 263, possibly an account,
written on paper; P.Lips. inv. 264, a private letter in Sahidic Coptic written on papyrus;
and P.Lips. inv. 265, also a papyrus letter in Sahidic.
6 Cf. below, n. 8.
7 The type of handwriting appearing in P.Lips. inv. 250 and 260 may be compared
with tenth- and eleventh-century non-literary hands of the letters from the so-called
Teshlot archive (paper, mid-eleventh century; cf. Green 1983) and to the hands of the
unpublished alchemical treatise Bodl. Ms. a.1 (papyrus, ca. tenth century), PRFay.Copt.
16 (papyrus, ca. tenth century), the unpublished account book BL Or. 13885 (paper,
mid-eleventh century), and some of the recently discovered paper documents from
Der el-Naqlin (tenth/eleventh century; cf. Urbaniak-Walczak 1999). It is a kind of
documentary style that more or less derives from book hands of the sloping uncial
type (cf. Stegemann, 23-24).
8 The presence of Sahidic material among the items in Mohammed Chalil's "Sendung"
(n. 5 above) raises the suspicion that even if their point of departure (and probably the
place where the papyri were sold) was in the Fayyim, some of the items originated
elsewhere. But the issue is more complicated. One has to remember the case of PFay.
Copt. In this collection, only 22 of the 56 pieces are written in a proper Fayyfimic dialect
(cf. p. vii). This is all the more striking as Flinders Petrie, the director of the excavations, is quoted by Crum as follows: "I never had any occasion to suspect any outside
admixture. Most of the Hammam pieces had evidently just been dug up; certainly they
had never passed through a dealer's hand. The Hawara papyri were all found, scrap by
scrap, by my own workmen. There were no circumstances to suggest in the least that
these were found elsewhere or imported." Crum himself had to confess, "In explanation of this remarkable variety of dialects, no very satisfactory theory can be advanced"
(PFay.Copt., p. viii).
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