The Archive of the Theban Choachytes

The archive of the Theban choachytes contains over 80 texts, Greek and demotic. They are largely private documents that together constitute the papers of a family of choachytes (undertakers). It is known since the beginnings of modern Egyptology and Papyrology as the "Hermias Archive" after the antagonist of the choachytes in a now famous Greek law suit kept in Turin. Although its bilingual information contributed in no uncertain measure to the decipherment of demotic, a large part of this fundamentally demotic archive is still not or not properly published. This Survey reviews for each text, Greek or Demotic, all relevant data in great detail and determines its exact place within the whole of the archive. The second half of the book presents the study of a number of special subjects that emerge from the contentts of the archive, such as the topography of Thebes (city and necropolis), prosopography, mummies and liturgies, but also more general subjects as onomastics, prices and transfer tax (enkyklion), and the diplomatics of the documents.