New Kingdom : hieratic collections from around the world. Vol. 2

This book is the second in a series of volumes designed to provide a detailed overview of the New Kingdom hieratic materials preserved in various museums and public collections around the world. Each volume is arranged geographically and proceeds in alphabetic order - continent by continent and country by country. Volume 2 contains overviews (and case studies) of 13 European museums and collections, including the French National Library (BnF, Paris), the Louvre (Paris), the Museo Egizio (Turin), the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Leiden), and the Vatican Museums.

The endeavour is directly connected to the interdisciplinary project Crossing Boundaries: Understanding Complex Scribal Practices in Ancient Egypt, a joint venture of the University of Basel, the University of Liège, and the Museo Egizio (Turin). Since 2019, the Crossing Boundaries project has targeted the rich papyrological materials from the village of Deir el-Medina (c. 1350-1050 BCE) held in the Museo Egizio, seeking to enhance our understanding of the scribal practices that lie behind the production of the texts from this community.

The driving methodological motto of Crossing Boundaries has been to adopt a contextualized approach to these written documents. As progress was made on the Deir el-Medina materials, the need to develop a clearer picture of all the hieratic texts available from the same period quickly became evident, which is met by the present publication.