The University College London Lahun (Middle Kingdom) papyri constitute one of the most remarkable harvests of papyri of any age. This volume communicates the content of the surviving letters and letter fragments from the Petrie excavations at Lahun in an accessible and affordable format. The letters and fragments are from original letters: model letters, letter copies, and reports are reserved for future publications. The volume is intended not only for Egyptological researchers, but also for learners in higher and further education. This mass of writing calls for a more nuanced appreciation of the roles of writing and reading, and the social reach of the written culture across the different classes, ages, genders inhabiting this architecture and landscape.
The papyri presented in the second volume in the Lahun series range across all categories between letters and accountancy documents and five broad groupings have been adopted for this work – ‘Religious, Literary, Legal, Mathematical, and Medical'. As in the ‘Letters’ volume, the printed pages present updated transcriptions with transliterations for all but the smallest fragments.
Third volume completes the presentation of all University College London's Lahun papyri. Over half of the great mass of papyrus fragments retrieved by Petrie from the Middle-Kingdom town-site near al-Lahun (Fayum region) comprises administrative records and the authors have divided the analyses into items for which Petrie-Griffith lot numbers are known, items for which Petrie-Griffith lot numbers are not known, and items of less determinate content not included in otherseries. The work includes a CD showing colour photographs of the original material.