Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEMBIB (From Texts to Literature: Demotic Egyptian Papyri and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-01-01 do 2023-06-30
• What is the problem/issue being addressed?
With the discovery of numerous papyri in Egyptian Demotic script during the last two decades, a whole new corpus of Egyptian literature has become available. Based on 25 years of research by the Principle Investigator (PI) on Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, this project, for the first time ever, correlates the newly accessible Demotic papyri with biblical literature. Since Demotic literature comes from the exact historical period when the Hebrew Bible received its final form – the Persian and Hellenistic eras – the Egyptian papyri are nothing less than the extra-biblical evidence that biblical scholarship has asked for in recent decades. Like the Hebrew Bible, Demotic literature is rooted in a scribal culture, and thus displays significant parallels to biblical literature.
It is widely agreed that the Hebrew Bible reached its final form between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. Yet almost no material evidence is preserved from this formative period. In contrast, scholars in recent decades have brought forth an abundance of historical and literary texts from ancient Egypt written in Demotic. This is of crucial significance since Egypt – like ancient Israel – was governed by foreign rulers at that time, first the Persians and later the Ptolemies. Both regions were therefore part of the same socio-political world. Hitherto overlooked by biblical scholars, the Demotic texts display a set of significant structural similarities. The literary creativity of the Egyptians came into full bloom under foreign rule, a process that is obviously similar to the formative processes in biblical literature. Neither phenomenon should be interpreted as coincidental. They are, on the contrary, the result of very similar historical circumstances. Comparison of the two can therefore shed light on an important phase of both biblical and Egyptian literary formation.
• Why is it important for society?
DEMBIB presents a fundamentally new approach to the understandings of the Hebrew Bible, also known in European contexts as the Old Testament, the first part of the Christian Bible. The research project conducted by the Principal Investigator with the support of two external advisors (Kim Ryholt, Copenhagen, and Joachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg) aims at nothing less than to bridge a fundamental gap in Hebrew Bible scholarship.
For more than a century, scholars have extensively studied the profile of biblical books and identified different textual strata within the compositions. It has become increasingly clear that “external evidence”, i.e. similar processes of text production and literature formation in other ancient text corpora, is an important key to understand the complex compositional processes that led to the biblical texts and books as they can be found in the Hebrew Bible.
DEMBIB is designed to shed light on the socio-historic and literary processes that shaped the foundational texts of the Jewish and Christian traditions. In other words, the project will help to understand this literature on its own terms and provide invaluable insights into the development of the religious traditions themselves.
• What are the overall objectives?
The DEMBIB project aims to understand the intellectual and historical genesis of the final formation of the Hebrew Bible. By analyzing Hebrew and Demotic compositions from the Persian and Hellenistic periods, a fundamentally new perspective will be offered. This perspective is based on four main assumptions:
1) In both the Hebrew Bible and Demotic Papyri an evolution from text to literature can be traced that led to larger literary compositions.
2) These literary compositions are rooted in a scribal culture where a group of literati (“Schriftgelehrte”) transformed, revised and composed textual traditions.
3) These groups of scribes were influenced by the socio-historical situation of their time.
4) Due to a shift in the socio-historical situation, scribes in Egypt and “Israel” composed a new form of literature that served as a scribal curriculum for the educated scribe.
The primary objectives of the subprojects are generated from these research hypotheses, seeking to elucidate the dynamic interplay between the aforementioned scribal culture and the socio-historical situation:
- The project will investigate transformations of smaller texts into larger scribal compositions in both Egyptian Demotic and Hebrew Bible literature.
- It will identify and describe the compositional strategies of these larger compositions, which often combine different, sometimes mutually exclusive perspectives.
- It will contextualize these developments within the socio-historical situation during the 6th–3rd c. BCE, when scribal elites in Egypt and “Israel” faced similar challenges.
With the discovery of numerous papyri in Egyptian Demotic script during the last two decades, a whole new corpus of Egyptian literature has become available. Based on 25 years of research by the Principle Investigator (PI) on Egypt and the Hebrew Bible, this project, for the first time ever, correlates the newly accessible Demotic papyri with biblical literature. Since Demotic literature comes from the exact historical period when the Hebrew Bible received its final form – the Persian and Hellenistic eras – the Egyptian papyri are nothing less than the extra-biblical evidence that biblical scholarship has asked for in recent decades. Like the Hebrew Bible, Demotic literature is rooted in a scribal culture, and thus displays significant parallels to biblical literature.
It is widely agreed that the Hebrew Bible reached its final form between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. Yet almost no material evidence is preserved from this formative period. In contrast, scholars in recent decades have brought forth an abundance of historical and literary texts from ancient Egypt written in Demotic. This is of crucial significance since Egypt – like ancient Israel – was governed by foreign rulers at that time, first the Persians and later the Ptolemies. Both regions were therefore part of the same socio-political world. Hitherto overlooked by biblical scholars, the Demotic texts display a set of significant structural similarities. The literary creativity of the Egyptians came into full bloom under foreign rule, a process that is obviously similar to the formative processes in biblical literature. Neither phenomenon should be interpreted as coincidental. They are, on the contrary, the result of very similar historical circumstances. Comparison of the two can therefore shed light on an important phase of both biblical and Egyptian literary formation.
• Why is it important for society?
DEMBIB presents a fundamentally new approach to the understandings of the Hebrew Bible, also known in European contexts as the Old Testament, the first part of the Christian Bible. The research project conducted by the Principal Investigator with the support of two external advisors (Kim Ryholt, Copenhagen, and Joachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg) aims at nothing less than to bridge a fundamental gap in Hebrew Bible scholarship.
For more than a century, scholars have extensively studied the profile of biblical books and identified different textual strata within the compositions. It has become increasingly clear that “external evidence”, i.e. similar processes of text production and literature formation in other ancient text corpora, is an important key to understand the complex compositional processes that led to the biblical texts and books as they can be found in the Hebrew Bible.
DEMBIB is designed to shed light on the socio-historic and literary processes that shaped the foundational texts of the Jewish and Christian traditions. In other words, the project will help to understand this literature on its own terms and provide invaluable insights into the development of the religious traditions themselves.
• What are the overall objectives?
The DEMBIB project aims to understand the intellectual and historical genesis of the final formation of the Hebrew Bible. By analyzing Hebrew and Demotic compositions from the Persian and Hellenistic periods, a fundamentally new perspective will be offered. This perspective is based on four main assumptions:
1) In both the Hebrew Bible and Demotic Papyri an evolution from text to literature can be traced that led to larger literary compositions.
2) These literary compositions are rooted in a scribal culture where a group of literati (“Schriftgelehrte”) transformed, revised and composed textual traditions.
3) These groups of scribes were influenced by the socio-historical situation of their time.
4) Due to a shift in the socio-historical situation, scribes in Egypt and “Israel” composed a new form of literature that served as a scribal curriculum for the educated scribe.
The primary objectives of the subprojects are generated from these research hypotheses, seeking to elucidate the dynamic interplay between the aforementioned scribal culture and the socio-historical situation:
- The project will investigate transformations of smaller texts into larger scribal compositions in both Egyptian Demotic and Hebrew Bible literature.
- It will identify and describe the compositional strategies of these larger compositions, which often combine different, sometimes mutually exclusive perspectives.
- It will contextualize these developments within the socio-historical situation during the 6th–3rd c. BCE, when scribal elites in Egypt and “Israel” faced similar challenges.
DEMBIB is organized in two sub-projects, “Inventing History: Narrative Compositions in Demotic and Biblical Literature” and “Discovering the Future: Scribal Prophecy and Wisdom Instruction in Demotic and Biblical Literature”. In each sub-project, biblical scholars and Egyptologists work in close interaction and with ongoing discussion with each other.
Subproject 1: Inventing History: Narrative Composition in the Demotic and Biblical Literature
Demotic Literature and texts of the Hebrew Bible composed in the Persian and Hellenistic periods witness an interaction of learned scribes with their own national pasts in different genres. This is obvious in historiographic texts but also readily detectable in narrative literature. Both are typically set in the (sometimes distant) past but are told through the lens of, and sometimes with a (political) message for, their contemporary contexts. Historiographic texts like the Demotic Chronicle and the biblical book of Chronicles structure and interpret the national past, especially kings and dynasties, and sometimes evaluate and critique these native rulers. In narrative literature, novellas were a prominent genre in the Persian and Hellenistic periods and were not only set in the past but often in a context of compromised national rule or outright foreign rule. Examples include The Battle for the Prebend of Amun (Papyrus Spiegelberg) and the book of Esther. Nevertheless, rulers are presented in different ways, sometimes as enemies, other times as allies. In this subproject, these literary corpora will be subjected to detailed philological analysis and also considered with a systematic perspective, with a goal of understanding how scribal elites in Egypt and "Israel" composed complex narrative literature that reflected an awakening of national self-reflection under the horizon of Persian and Hellenistic rule.
Research-Triplet:
Dr. Joseph Cross (1.1)
Rafa Saade (1.2)
Lilian Uhlig (1.3)
Joseph Cross joined the research team in August 2022 coming from the University of Chicago/IL (USA). In his PhD project he focused on the poetics of plot, by comparing Demotic and Hebrew Bible examples of novellas. He means to continue this research with a study on Ruth and Esther in comparison to Demotic literary sources.
After two calls for applications for the second post-doc position were not successful, the position was split for allowing two junior researchers to write their PhD theses as a contribution to the project. Rafa Saade, M.A. joined the team in October 2022 coming from Brown University in Providence/RI (USA). He will work on the so-called Demotic Chronicle and, alongside a new transcription and translation, set it in comparison to similar historiographic compositions from the Hebrew Bible but also with a perspective on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, Lilian Uhlig, M.Theol. took over the second PhD position in November 2022, immediately after finishing her theology exam at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. She specialized on trauma literature and will compare narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible, in particular 2 Kings 18-20, with Demotic literature under the assumption, that both were influenced by the traumatic events of foreign occupation, connected with the so-called western expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire. In this regard the project fits perfectly to the research of the external advisor Prof. Kim Ryholt who demonstrated that a significant part of narrative Demotic literature from the Tebtynis library addresses the Neo-Assyrian occupation of Egypt in the 7th c. BCE.
Subproject 2: Discovering the Future: Scribal Prophecy and Wisdom Instruction in Demotic and Biblical Literature
Prophetic and wisdom texts contain comparable structural phenomena between Demotic and biblical literature. Biblical Hebrew and Demotic texts from both genres testify to an increased interest on the part of the scribes in the (nation’s) future. This means that traditional scribal patterns are transformed in order to accommodate visions of a distant future, while at the same time incorporating aspects of traditional wisdom. Wisdom literature itself was subject to significant transformations in the period of interest: Demotic and biblical wisdom books, such as the Great Demotic Wisdom Book (Papyrus Insinger) or the book of Proverbs from the Hebrew Bible, present a fundamental critique of the foundations of sapiential thought. One of the working hypotheses of DEMBIB is that the developments in prophetic and Wisdom texts from the Persian and Hellenistic eras can be understood as two sides “of the same coin”, both having been produced by scribal elites under the influence of foreign rule and increasing globalization.
Research-Tandem:
Dr. Petra Schmidtkunz (2.1)
Dr. des. Robert Kade (2.2.)
Petra Schmidtkunz joined the research team on March 1st 2022 as a Hebrew Bible scholar coming from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has devoted the first stage of her research to the biblical book of Isaiah in correlation with Demotic prophetic literature. In the book she is writing, the thematic focus will be on notions of rule in Isaiah. The concepts that are found in the book span a wide horizon and include personal kingly rule and human messianic figures as well as theocratic rule. Petra Schmidtkunz will analyse interrelations and developments between the different notions, both on a literary level and with regard to their socio-historical background. The emerging results seem to correlate to an astounding degree with a similar plethora of conceptualisations of rule in the Demotic Egyptian literature.
On March 1, the tandem was completed by (Dr. des.) Robert Kade, an Egyptologist, who was previously working on a research project at the University of Würzburg. He will prepare an edition of the so-called Great Demotic Wisdom book, the longest preserved composition in which Egyptian proverbs were arranged in thematic chapters. It will incorporate for the first time all parallel manuscripts from the Roman period, most of which are part of the Carlsberg Papyrus collection in Copenhagen and were kindly allocated to the project by the external advisor Prof. Kim Ryholt. Especially a severely abbreviated “second” edition found in P.Carlsberg 2 is testament to the continuous reworking of the older composition by a scribal elite In addition to that, his book will give the first detailed analysis of the complex inner structure of the late Egyptian wisdom instructions, wherein the scribes applied compositional strategies with a discursive perspective, questioning the reliability of the teachings, alongside a religious interpretation not to be found in the tradition covering the previous two millennia. It will be shown that several of these scribal strategies are closely comparable to the ones applied in the biblical book of Proverbs. With the completion of the team, the project also launched its website and started to promote the progress of the research on several social media channels (blog, Twitter, Instagram).
The winter semester 2022/23 was opened by the first project workshop hosted by the Collège de France in Paris (Thomas Römer) from 30th September to 01st October. The workshop allowed the researchers in the two subprojects to present their ideas and prospects under a close scrutiny of the members of the international advisory board. In addition, Dr. Stephen Germany from the University of Basel, Switzerland, presented as invited speaker a paper on ”David and Inaros: Comparing Memories of Imperial Domination in the Book of Samuel and in Demotic Literature”.
In addition to that, the project welcomed Dr. Benjamin Ziemer from the University of Halle as visiting professor for the Wintersemester 2022/23, who engaged with the researchers and offered additional advice from his expertise on questioning the theological “Wachstumsmodell” on the background of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. In a lecture on December 13th Prof. Ziemer presented his approach to the project team.
Principal Investigator Bernd Schipper participated in the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) from November 19-22 in Denver, Colorado. He presented the ERC project both with a lecture on the structural similarities between Egyptian and Biblical wisdom compositions, while also moderating a panel on the complicated genre allocation of “wisdom literature”.
In January and February 2023, the project welcomed Prof. David Carr from Union Theological Seminary, New York as visiting scholar. In several meetings with the research-team and a lecture on February the 6th he presented and discussed his “scroll approach” which is connected to the materiality of biblical texts. During his research stay the idea was discussed to devote the first international conference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have apparent connections to all text genres relevant to the DEMBIB approach. The perspective of Qumran will be fulfilled during the activities of the project in year three (2024).
While the advisory board had highlighted in Paris the importance of including a perspective of Mesopotamian literature as well, the project was able to hire Franziska Küster as a student assistant, starting in March 2023. She is currently graduating in two faculties with a simultaneous M.A./exam study of Theology and Assyriology and in that way serves as the ideal nexus between the team of researchers and the cuneiform sources.
For the summer semester 2023, the project invited the two Demotic co-advisors, Prof. Kim Ryholt (arriving in Berlin in March) and Prof. Joachim Quack (arriving in Berlin in April). Both will conduct research on unpublished papyri with importance to the project in the Neues Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin, as well as supporting the researchers in their individual tasks. Kim Ryholt with a special focus on the narrative texts, studied by Joseph Cross, Rafa Saade and Lilian Uhlig and Joachim Quack accordingly with a focus on the prophetic and wisdom texts, studied by Petra Schmidtkunz and Robert Kade.
Joachim Quack, who is one of the most famous scholars on Egyptian wisdom literature with a research history spanning the past 30 years, will complement the research questions of subproject 2 by focusing his attention on the tradition of wisdom in loose form, most prominently preserved in the Demotic Teachings of Chasheshonqy, which also have close intersections with the Biblical proverbial tradition. During his stay in Berlin he will work on the edition of the hitherto unpublished papyrus P.Berlin 15709, which includes an arrangement of proverbs with parallels to the Teachings of Chasheshonqy but also other Demotic wisdom compositions and in that way attests to additional compositional strategies of the scribal elite.
The project invited Prof. Julia Rhyder from Harvard University, a specialist for the Hebrew Bible, for a project workshop on 14-15th April. During this workshop all members of the research team presented first results of their research. During the Summer Semester 2023 the project expects the following guests: Prof. Sofia Salo from the University of Göttingen will join the team as visiting professor for Hebrew Bible.
Prof. Jacqueline Jay from the University of Kentucky was in Berlin for a workshop on Demotic narrative literature on May 19th-21st.
Prof. Klaus-Peter Adam from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago joined the project as visiting scholar from May 16th to June 8th. He conducted research conducted research on the book Leviticus and Demotic narratives on priests such as for example pRylands IX.
Subproject 1: Inventing History: Narrative Composition in the Demotic and Biblical Literature
Demotic Literature and texts of the Hebrew Bible composed in the Persian and Hellenistic periods witness an interaction of learned scribes with their own national pasts in different genres. This is obvious in historiographic texts but also readily detectable in narrative literature. Both are typically set in the (sometimes distant) past but are told through the lens of, and sometimes with a (political) message for, their contemporary contexts. Historiographic texts like the Demotic Chronicle and the biblical book of Chronicles structure and interpret the national past, especially kings and dynasties, and sometimes evaluate and critique these native rulers. In narrative literature, novellas were a prominent genre in the Persian and Hellenistic periods and were not only set in the past but often in a context of compromised national rule or outright foreign rule. Examples include The Battle for the Prebend of Amun (Papyrus Spiegelberg) and the book of Esther. Nevertheless, rulers are presented in different ways, sometimes as enemies, other times as allies. In this subproject, these literary corpora will be subjected to detailed philological analysis and also considered with a systematic perspective, with a goal of understanding how scribal elites in Egypt and "Israel" composed complex narrative literature that reflected an awakening of national self-reflection under the horizon of Persian and Hellenistic rule.
Research-Triplet:
Dr. Joseph Cross (1.1)
Rafa Saade (1.2)
Lilian Uhlig (1.3)
Joseph Cross joined the research team in August 2022 coming from the University of Chicago/IL (USA). In his PhD project he focused on the poetics of plot, by comparing Demotic and Hebrew Bible examples of novellas. He means to continue this research with a study on Ruth and Esther in comparison to Demotic literary sources.
After two calls for applications for the second post-doc position were not successful, the position was split for allowing two junior researchers to write their PhD theses as a contribution to the project. Rafa Saade, M.A. joined the team in October 2022 coming from Brown University in Providence/RI (USA). He will work on the so-called Demotic Chronicle and, alongside a new transcription and translation, set it in comparison to similar historiographic compositions from the Hebrew Bible but also with a perspective on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, Lilian Uhlig, M.Theol. took over the second PhD position in November 2022, immediately after finishing her theology exam at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. She specialized on trauma literature and will compare narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible, in particular 2 Kings 18-20, with Demotic literature under the assumption, that both were influenced by the traumatic events of foreign occupation, connected with the so-called western expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire. In this regard the project fits perfectly to the research of the external advisor Prof. Kim Ryholt who demonstrated that a significant part of narrative Demotic literature from the Tebtynis library addresses the Neo-Assyrian occupation of Egypt in the 7th c. BCE.
Subproject 2: Discovering the Future: Scribal Prophecy and Wisdom Instruction in Demotic and Biblical Literature
Prophetic and wisdom texts contain comparable structural phenomena between Demotic and biblical literature. Biblical Hebrew and Demotic texts from both genres testify to an increased interest on the part of the scribes in the (nation’s) future. This means that traditional scribal patterns are transformed in order to accommodate visions of a distant future, while at the same time incorporating aspects of traditional wisdom. Wisdom literature itself was subject to significant transformations in the period of interest: Demotic and biblical wisdom books, such as the Great Demotic Wisdom Book (Papyrus Insinger) or the book of Proverbs from the Hebrew Bible, present a fundamental critique of the foundations of sapiential thought. One of the working hypotheses of DEMBIB is that the developments in prophetic and Wisdom texts from the Persian and Hellenistic eras can be understood as two sides “of the same coin”, both having been produced by scribal elites under the influence of foreign rule and increasing globalization.
Research-Tandem:
Dr. Petra Schmidtkunz (2.1)
Dr. des. Robert Kade (2.2.)
Petra Schmidtkunz joined the research team on March 1st 2022 as a Hebrew Bible scholar coming from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has devoted the first stage of her research to the biblical book of Isaiah in correlation with Demotic prophetic literature. In the book she is writing, the thematic focus will be on notions of rule in Isaiah. The concepts that are found in the book span a wide horizon and include personal kingly rule and human messianic figures as well as theocratic rule. Petra Schmidtkunz will analyse interrelations and developments between the different notions, both on a literary level and with regard to their socio-historical background. The emerging results seem to correlate to an astounding degree with a similar plethora of conceptualisations of rule in the Demotic Egyptian literature.
On March 1, the tandem was completed by (Dr. des.) Robert Kade, an Egyptologist, who was previously working on a research project at the University of Würzburg. He will prepare an edition of the so-called Great Demotic Wisdom book, the longest preserved composition in which Egyptian proverbs were arranged in thematic chapters. It will incorporate for the first time all parallel manuscripts from the Roman period, most of which are part of the Carlsberg Papyrus collection in Copenhagen and were kindly allocated to the project by the external advisor Prof. Kim Ryholt. Especially a severely abbreviated “second” edition found in P.Carlsberg 2 is testament to the continuous reworking of the older composition by a scribal elite In addition to that, his book will give the first detailed analysis of the complex inner structure of the late Egyptian wisdom instructions, wherein the scribes applied compositional strategies with a discursive perspective, questioning the reliability of the teachings, alongside a religious interpretation not to be found in the tradition covering the previous two millennia. It will be shown that several of these scribal strategies are closely comparable to the ones applied in the biblical book of Proverbs. With the completion of the team, the project also launched its website and started to promote the progress of the research on several social media channels (blog, Twitter, Instagram).
The winter semester 2022/23 was opened by the first project workshop hosted by the Collège de France in Paris (Thomas Römer) from 30th September to 01st October. The workshop allowed the researchers in the two subprojects to present their ideas and prospects under a close scrutiny of the members of the international advisory board. In addition, Dr. Stephen Germany from the University of Basel, Switzerland, presented as invited speaker a paper on ”David and Inaros: Comparing Memories of Imperial Domination in the Book of Samuel and in Demotic Literature”.
In addition to that, the project welcomed Dr. Benjamin Ziemer from the University of Halle as visiting professor for the Wintersemester 2022/23, who engaged with the researchers and offered additional advice from his expertise on questioning the theological “Wachstumsmodell” on the background of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. In a lecture on December 13th Prof. Ziemer presented his approach to the project team.
Principal Investigator Bernd Schipper participated in the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) from November 19-22 in Denver, Colorado. He presented the ERC project both with a lecture on the structural similarities between Egyptian and Biblical wisdom compositions, while also moderating a panel on the complicated genre allocation of “wisdom literature”.
In January and February 2023, the project welcomed Prof. David Carr from Union Theological Seminary, New York as visiting scholar. In several meetings with the research-team and a lecture on February the 6th he presented and discussed his “scroll approach” which is connected to the materiality of biblical texts. During his research stay the idea was discussed to devote the first international conference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have apparent connections to all text genres relevant to the DEMBIB approach. The perspective of Qumran will be fulfilled during the activities of the project in year three (2024).
While the advisory board had highlighted in Paris the importance of including a perspective of Mesopotamian literature as well, the project was able to hire Franziska Küster as a student assistant, starting in March 2023. She is currently graduating in two faculties with a simultaneous M.A./exam study of Theology and Assyriology and in that way serves as the ideal nexus between the team of researchers and the cuneiform sources.
For the summer semester 2023, the project invited the two Demotic co-advisors, Prof. Kim Ryholt (arriving in Berlin in March) and Prof. Joachim Quack (arriving in Berlin in April). Both will conduct research on unpublished papyri with importance to the project in the Neues Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin, as well as supporting the researchers in their individual tasks. Kim Ryholt with a special focus on the narrative texts, studied by Joseph Cross, Rafa Saade and Lilian Uhlig and Joachim Quack accordingly with a focus on the prophetic and wisdom texts, studied by Petra Schmidtkunz and Robert Kade.
Joachim Quack, who is one of the most famous scholars on Egyptian wisdom literature with a research history spanning the past 30 years, will complement the research questions of subproject 2 by focusing his attention on the tradition of wisdom in loose form, most prominently preserved in the Demotic Teachings of Chasheshonqy, which also have close intersections with the Biblical proverbial tradition. During his stay in Berlin he will work on the edition of the hitherto unpublished papyrus P.Berlin 15709, which includes an arrangement of proverbs with parallels to the Teachings of Chasheshonqy but also other Demotic wisdom compositions and in that way attests to additional compositional strategies of the scribal elite.
The project invited Prof. Julia Rhyder from Harvard University, a specialist for the Hebrew Bible, for a project workshop on 14-15th April. During this workshop all members of the research team presented first results of their research. During the Summer Semester 2023 the project expects the following guests: Prof. Sofia Salo from the University of Göttingen will join the team as visiting professor for Hebrew Bible.
Prof. Jacqueline Jay from the University of Kentucky was in Berlin for a workshop on Demotic narrative literature on May 19th-21st.
Prof. Klaus-Peter Adam from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago joined the project as visiting scholar from May 16th to June 8th. He conducted research conducted research on the book Leviticus and Demotic narratives on priests such as for example pRylands IX.
Coming from Jerusalem, Petra Schmidtkunz brings profound knowledge of Aramaic and a keen interest in Dead Sea Scrolls to the DEMBIB project. Discussions with visiting scholar Prof. David M. Carr on matters of scribal activity and literary developments beyond the Hebrew biblical canon make it seem desirable to use this expertise and interest to round off the publication on notions of rule in Isaiah (sub-project 2.1).
As the perspective of Qumran is relevant to both subprojects, the PI decided with the team to set the comparison of Egyptian and Aramaic material as the main topic of the forthcoming first international conference in Berlin scheduled for spring 2024. Esteemed scholars of both disciplines will be invited to illustrate five wider topic areas under the title “Egyptian Demotic Papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls”, which will be the first time that these sources are studied in such an interdisciplinary manner.
As the perspective of Qumran is relevant to both subprojects, the PI decided with the team to set the comparison of Egyptian and Aramaic material as the main topic of the forthcoming first international conference in Berlin scheduled for spring 2024. Esteemed scholars of both disciplines will be invited to illustrate five wider topic areas under the title “Egyptian Demotic Papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls”, which will be the first time that these sources are studied in such an interdisciplinary manner.