Demotic Texts from Kom Ombo: a first overview

As Kom Ombo was an important center in Upper Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Romans periods, a substantial amount of demotic material highlights some hitherto unknown aspects of people’s lives there. Demotic building annotations and graffiti can be found in the Graeco-Roman temple, while a small corpus of documents (“Prinz Joachim Ostraca”) informs us of the burial of animal mummies. Furthermore, previous excavations by G. Wagner and the “Kom Ombo Groundwater Lowering Project” have yielded about 150 demotic ostraca which remain largely unpublished.
Against this background, our talk aims to present our translations of the three demotic ostraca found so far by the Joint Austrian and Egyptian Mission at Kom Ombo and to contextualize them. More material is expected during the next seasons and thus our study might provide a starting point for further works.