Tebtunis was a city and later town in
Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt ( ar, مصر السفلى '; ) is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, ...
. The settlement was founded in approximately 1800 BCE by the
Twelfth Dynasty
The Twelfth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (Dynasty XII) is considered to be the apex of the Middle Kingdom by Egyptologists. It often is combined with the Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth dynasties under the group title, Middle Kingdom. Some ...
king
Amenemhat III
:''See Amenemhat, for other individuals with this name.''
Amenemhat III ( Ancient Egyptian: ''Ỉmn-m-hꜣt'' meaning 'Amun is at the forefront'), also known as Amenemhet III, was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the sixth king of the Twelfth Dy ...
. It was located in what is now the village of Tell Umm el-Baragat in the
Faiyum Governorate
Faiyum Governorate ( ar, محافظة الفيوم ) is one of the governorates of Egypt in the middle of the country. Its capital is the city of Faiyum, located about 81 mi (130 km) south west of Cairo. It has a population of 3,848,70 ...
. In Tebtunis there were many Greek and Roman buildings. It was a rich town and was a very important regional center during the Ptolemaic period.
It is possible that Tebtunis was identical with a town called Theodosiopolis (from grc-koi, Θεοδοσιούπολις ''Theodosioúpolis''), which is only attested since late antiquity.
In
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
, it became Toutōn (
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
''Tuṯun''). In the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, Toutōn was a major centre of Coptic manuscript copying. At least thirteen existing manuscripts were copied there between AD 861 and 940.
The present village of Tuṯun is located about south of Umm el-Baragat.
[René-Georges Coquin]
"Tuṯun"
''The Coptic Encyclopedia'' (Macmillan, 1991), 7: 2283a–2283b.
The Tebtunis Papyri
Tebtunis flourished during the
Ptolemaic Kingdom and is famous for the many
papyri
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a d ...
in
Demotic
Demotic may refer to:
* Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language
* Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language
* Chữ Nôm, the demotic script for writing Vietnamese
See also
*
* Demos (disa ...
and Greek found there. These papyri give information about how people in Tebtunis lived from day to day. For example, one papyrus was found that gave 'minutes' of a meeting of a group of priests. On this papyrus were the names of the priests, what the meeting was about, and a date – indicating that it was written during the Ptolemaic period.
On the basis of documentary papyri, it is possible to gain interesting insights into the life of the priests of local main god, Soknebtunis. For instance, a key text for understanding a major land reform in Egypt at the beginning of Roman rule stems from Tebtunis: The priests of the Soknebtunis temple negotiated with the
prefect
Prefect (from the Latin ''praefectus'', substantive adjectival form of ''praeficere'': "put in front", meaning in charge) is a magisterial title of varying definition, but essentially refers to the leader of an administrative area.
A prefect's ...
of Egypt in 24-22 BC that part of the temple's land holdings would be converted into state land. In return, the priests and their descendants were to receive the privilege of leasing a specific portion of this former temple land. These issues were outlined in a
petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication.
In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offici ...
from 71/72 AD, which the priests of Soknebtunis addressed to the prefect because they were in dispute with a local official over the
tax
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...
ation of these plots. Another group of papyri reveals that in the 120s AD the acting prophet of the Soknebtunis temple (qua office the leader of the rites of the temple) held simultaneously the prophecy of a
Sobek
Sobek (also called Sebek or Sobki, cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲕ, Souk) was an ancient Egyptian deity with a complex and elastic history and nature. He is associated with the Nile crocodile or the West African crocodile and is represented either in its f ...
sanctuary in the Middle Egyptian town
Akoris - a good 100 km away from Tebtunis.
Among the Tebtunis papyri are also preserved many Egyptian astronomical and astrological texts, including several copies of what now is called the ''
Book of Nut
The ''Book of Nut'' (original title: ''The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars'') is a collection of ancient Egyptian astronomical texts, also covering various mythological subjects. These texts focus on the cycles of the stars of the decan ...
'', which originally was entitled, "The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars", and it explicates the concept of sunrise as mythological rebirth.
Local Mythology: Cronus alias Geb
A distinctive feature of the local mythology in Greco-Roman times was the equation of the Greek god
Cronus
In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos ( or , from el, Κρόνος, ''Krónos'') was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and ...
with the Egyptian god
Geb
Geb was the Egyptian god of the earth and a mythological member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. He could also be considered a father of snakes. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter created earthquakes and that he allowed crops to ...
, which was expressed on the one hand in the local iconography of the gods, in which Geb was depicted as a man with attributes of Cronus or Cronus with attributes of Geb. On the other hand, the priests of the local main temple identified themselves in Egyptian texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Geb", but in Greek texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Cronus". Accordingly, Egyptian names formed with the name of the god Geb were just as popular among local villagers as Greek names derived from Cronus, especially the name "Kronion.
__NOTOC__
Manuscripts
Papyri
The Tebtunis papyri vol. I, edited with translations and notes by Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly, 1902at the Internet Archive
The Tebtunis papyri vol. II, edited with translations and notes by Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Edgard Goodspeed, 1907at the Internet Archive
The Tebtunis papyri vol. III part 1, edited with translations and notes by Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly, 1933at the Internet Archive
Parchments
* University of Michigan
Manuscripts Copied in Touton
References
Further reading
* Todd M. Hickey: "Down and Out in Late Antique Tebtunis?" In: Sandra Lippert, Maren Schentuleit (edd.): ''Graeco-Roman Fayum – Texts and Archaeology. Proceedings of the Third International Fayum Symposion, Freudenstadt, May 29–June 1, 2007''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2008, 135–142, .
* Dennis P. Kehoe: ''Management and Investment on Estates in Roman Egypt during the Early Empire''. Bonn: Habelt 1992, .
* Merola, Marco. "Letters to the Crocodile God". ''Archeology Magazine'', November–December 2007.
* Andrew Monson: ''From the Ptolemies to the Romans. Political and Economic Change in Roman Egypt''. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 2012, .
* Vincent Rondot: ''Derniers visages des dieux dʼÉgypte. Iconographies, panthéons et cultes dans le Fayoum hellénisé des IIe–IIIe siècles de notre ère''. Paris: Presses de lʼuniversité Paris-Sorbonne; Éditions du Louvre (Passé Présent) 2013.
* Benjamin Sippel: ''Gottesdiener und Kamelzüchter: Das Alltags- und Sozialleben der Sobek-Priester im kaiserzeitlichen Fayum''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2020, .
External links
The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection- Inventory of Published Papyri (many Tebtunis papiri)
{{coord, 29, 07, N, 30, 45, E, display=title
Cities in ancient Egypt
15th-century BC establishments in Egypt
Faiyum Governorate