Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
same time as the earliest phase of the neighbouring monument of Meryneith. It
remains to be seen whether the tomb of Ptahemwia, too, was decorated in successive
phases. Some of the scenes in raised relief seem to betray a slightly different stylistic
character more characteristic of the reign of Tutankhamun . We can only speculate
why the reliefs on the north and east walls were never finished. Perhaps an answer
will be provided by our excavation of the subterraneran part of the tomb, which will
take place in January and February 2008.
Development of early writing in Egypt: a palaeographic study
Ilona Regulski
The very interesting problem of the “origins” of writing is shrouded in a cloud of
darkness and is as hard to interpret as the “origins” of art, architecture, religion, and
social institutions, to name only a few of the important aspects of early civilizations. It
would be unthinkable even to try to sketch the history of writing without taking into
consideration the written sources of ancient Egypt. But great gaps in our knowledge
remain. The further back we go in time, the fewer sources we have at our disposal.
Needless to say, early burial places have been repeatedly disturbed. Despite these
misadventures, however, a rich variety of inscribed artefacts, intact or fragmentary,
have survived to provide glimpses into the earliest phases of writing in Egypt. The
most numerous categories are sealings, engraved inscriptions or cursive annotations in
ink on pottery or stone vessels, and bone or wooden tags originally attached to tomb
equipment. Examples of Egypt’s earliest written documents also include royal stelae
and stelae of royal women and courtiers from subsidiary tombs around the royal
tombs at Umm el-Qa‘ab. More elaborate reliefs appear at the end of the Secondbeginning
of the Third Dynasty. Written papyrus is not attested before the end of the
Third Dynasty.
It can clearly be seen that early Egyptian writing witnessed rapid growth, and that
the main principles that were established in the early dynastic period, remained en
vogue throughout the pharaonic and Greaco-Roman periods for fully three thousand
years. A Ph.D.-dissertation, submitted by the author in august 2007 at the University
of Leuven (Belgium), contributed to the research of writing evolution in Egypt as an
attempt to collect, describe, and evaluate the earliest attestations of writing from a
palaeographic point of view. It seemed an opportune moment to undertake such an
investigation. Not only have the earliest texts tended to be neglected when compared
to larger and more formal historical inscriptions from later periods, but the amount of
new evidence has increased dramatically during the past few decades. Only recently,
scholars began to question the conclusions of the exhaustive studies done by Kaplony
on early writing. 124 This has revealed that some material had not been analyzed since
his publication of the Inschriften der Ägyptischen Frühzeit or even earlier, at the
beginning of the 20 th century. Systematic work by Jochem Kahl on the earliest stage
of writing 125 has placed research on a solid basis and goes far beyond what had been
124 P. KAPLONY, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit I-III, ÄA 8 (Wiesbaden, 1963); Die
Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit. Supplement, ÄA 9 (Wiesbaden, 1964); Kleine Beiträge zu den
Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit, ÄA 15 (Wiesbaden, 1966).
125 J. KAHL, Das System der ägyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift in der 0.-3. Dynastie, GOF IV Band 29
(Wiesbaden, 1994); ‘Hieroglyphic writing during the Fourth Millennium BC: an snalysis of systems’,
Archeo-Nil 11 (2001), 103-34; ‘Entwicklung der frühen Hieroglyphenschrift’, in: W. SEIPEL (ed.), Der
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