We just came back from a brief campaign in Aswan this year. We spend most of our time at the warehouse of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Aswan (a.k.a. Karima’s magazine) checking the location of ostraca in the boxes, since we already have a consolidated list from seasons 1 to 19. We have to date 1880 ostraca coming from most areas from 1 to 94. This year area 95 will be excavated and might yield new ostraca.🤞🏻
After almost 10 years working on these ostraca, we are already preparing final publications of their texts. The Latin letter from area 13 is already part of a collaborative article between Sofia Torallas and Mariola Hepa, in which we explore the archaeological context for the text. It is still in press and will hopefully appear at the end of this year. Amalia is preparing the publication of the Arabic ostraca in collaboration with Naïm Vanthieghem in a volume that will also include the ostraca from Paris and Strasbourg. Almost 200 new Arabic ostraca almost triple the number of known pieces to date.
Cataloguing some remains of paper, Amalia found some papyrus fragments belonging to a document that feature three lines of text. This is quite exceptional since most of the texts from the city of Aswan have been preserved on ostraca, due to the humidity of the city ground.
For information about our work on the ostraca see the annual reports here and here.
