Linguistic innovations and evolution of registers in the Deir el-Medineh community: Scribal networks and families during the 20th dynasty

The aim of this lecture was to investigate the relation between scribal variation and language change in pre-Demotic Egyptian, focusing more specifically on “The best case scenario in the worst cultural environment”, i.e. the text community of Deir el-Medineh during the 20th Dynasty. The talk was methodologically oriented and several case-studies (related to the diaphasic and diachronic dimensions of variation) were presented in order to illustrate some principles and to suggest new ways of investigation in the description of Ancient Egyptian variation. Additionally, the possibility of a scribal network analysis of the written material found in Deir el-Medineh has been discussed.