Talk ‘Education in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt: new insights from the school ostraca from Hut-Repit/Athribis in Upper Egypt’

Illustration: ostracon Athribis 19-36-61/3327 (image: Project Athribis, University of Tübingen)

Sandra Lippert (CNRS, UMR 8546 AOROC, Paris)

The ongoing excavations of the University of Tübingen in Hut-Repit/Athribis in Upper Egypt have already brought to light more than 43 000 inscribed pottery sherds. These ostraca and jar labels in demotic, hieratic, hieroglyphs, Greek, Coptic and even Arabic, dating from the 3rd c. BCE to the 10/11th c. CE, are being studied by an interdisciplinary research group coordinated by the speaker. While the majority belong to the economic and administrative spheres – accounts, lists, receipts etc. –, a growing number of ostraca attest to the existence of a temple school where the different Egyptian scripts, but also Greek and even mathematics were taught.