Studying ‘Name Stones’ from Deir el-Medina in the IFAO collection: a preliminary report

Among the non-literary Ramesside ostraca from Deir el-Medina kept in the IFAO collection, around 750 belong to the corpus of the so-called “name stones” (also known as “Namensteine”, “Namenostraka” or “tessères onomastiques”). “Name stones” can be defined as small pottery sherds or limestone flakes measuring a few centimeters high by a few centimeters wide, inscribed with a single anthroponym in hieratic. In rare cases, a title or a filiation is also given, probably to distinguish homonyms. Red ink is sometimes employed instead of the usual black. Moreover, women names are attested, in a small but significant proportion. A comprehensive study of this corpus was lacking so far but has been initiated recently, using the tools and methods of “Material Philology”.

This paper aims to present the preliminary results of this comprehensive study. A quantitative and qualitative presentation of the corpus is provided, with a focus on “palaeographical clusters” and their relevance from a socio-cultural and prosopographical perspective, in the specific context of the Deir el-Medina village. Furthermore, the function of the “name stones” is discussed, following a cross-cultural and comparative approach. Similar documents were indeed discovered in other places in Egypt and outside Egypt, dating back from the New Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period, and written in other languages.