ï~~Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 47 (2010) 279-280
Steve Pasek, Hawara. Eine igyptische Siedlung in hellenistischer Zeit.
Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2007. 514 + 719 pages + CD-ROM. ISBN
978-3-86596-092-4.
The two hefty volumes represent the publication of Pasek's dissertation
(Julius-Maximilians-Universitit, Wirzburg, 2005). The volumes are arranged
in a relatively straightforward manner. The first volume involves itself with a
short discussion of the site and history of Hawara in the Fayum during the
Ptolemaic period. This is followed by sections dealing with the scribal families,
religious cults found in the Hawara area, the personnel who served as priests
in the cults and their families, the roles of the religious cults within society,
the organization of the necropolis and its personnel, and the role of the "God's
Sealers" and "Embalmers." The volume concludes with three sections related to
the social and economic impact of these groups, paying particular attention to
the role of the God's Sealers and their families. This includes an investigation
of marriage patterns, the economic processes followed, and the role of women
in the society.
The second volume is a convenient compilation of the 87 Demotic documents which serve as the basis for this study. Most of these texts have been
published elsewhere, but the author provides a new translation with commentary of all of the texts. The volume concludes with a bibliography and a series
of indices of translated names and terms. A CD-ROM of the "new" texts is
included, though this reviewer found the five files excessively large (43 to 99.5
MB) which made loading and viewing the texts difficult.
The discussions in the volumes for the most part are limited to information derived from the texts themselves. This provides a good glimpse of the
Egyptian settlement of Hawara. Not much effort is devoted to showing the
relationships with Greek settlements (if any) in the Fayum and that may be
beneficial since it allows the author to concentrate on organizing the large body
of material. There are several significant items of interest, especially the section on the evidence for brother-sister marriage during the Ptolemaic period
(pp. 362-364).
The "new" texts that Pasek adds to the Hawara corpus derive mostly from
the Ashmolean Oxford fragments published by Reymond (here text numbers
25c, d, and e, with photographs placed on the added CD-ROM). The documents round out our knowledge of the archive with listings of deceased individuals being handled by the necropolis personnel. I would like to make several
small comments on the readings and commentary from Urkunde Hawara 25
e (Vol. 2, pp. 289-301).
