43,000 ostraca found at one site shed light on social history of Egypt

"The ostraca show us an astonishing variety of everyday situations. We find tax lists and deliveries, along with short notes about everyday activities, exercises by schoolchildren, religious texts, and priestly certificates attesting the quality of sacrificial animals. This mixture is what makes the find so valuable. This everyday content gives us a direct insight into the lives of the people of Athribis and makes the ostraca an important source for a comprehensive social history of the region."

"The excavation of Athribis is a joint mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and archaeologists from the University of Tubingen. The site was the temple complex of the lion goddess (Ta-)Repit, and contained a mud brick settlement, necropolis and limestone quarries as well as the temple itself. It was occupied for more than a thousand years, generating an immense variety of texts dating to between the 3rd century B.C. and the 9th-11th century."

"Athribis is also considered the world's most important site for demotic-hieratic horoscopes, featuring more than 130 such texts. The majority of the ostraca are written in Demotic script, followed by a considerable number of Greek inscriptions. A smaller but significant proportion of the sherds shows figurative and geometric designs. In addition, there are rare texts in Hieratic, hieroglyphic, Coptic or Arabic script."

The ancient site of Athribis in Lower Egypt has yielded 43,000 inscribed pottery fragments (ostraca), the largest collection discovered at a single Egyptian archaeological site. A joint mission between the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Tubingen excavated the temple complex of the lion goddess Ta-Repit, which also contained a mud brick settlement, necropolis, and limestone quarries. Occupied for over a thousand years, the site produced texts ranging from 3rd century BCE Demotic tax receipts to 9th-11th century CE Arabic inscriptions. The ostraca reveal everyday life through tax lists, delivery records, schoolchildren's exercises, religious texts, and priestly certificates. Most texts are in Demotic script, with significant Greek inscriptions, hieratic, hieroglyphic, Coptic, and Arabic texts also present. Athribis is particularly renowned for containing over 130 demotic-hieratic horoscopes, making it the world's most important site for such texts.

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