A personal note from the "linguistic department"

Before posting the season finale, the team members are given an opportunity to share their personal views on the past season. These posts will be published individually during the coming few days, starting here with Dr. Adrienn Almásy, our demotist:

Adrienn copying one of many texts. Photo by V. Oeters

Returning to the everyday life after a successful season is always difficult. Being still on the site in our heart we try to answer the question set by every colleague and friend: what is the most important result of the season? As member of the “linguistic department”, I find most interesting the many newly discovered inscriptions and as demotist a new demotic ostracon must be considered my favourite. The “Pylon quarry” (named after the pylon drawings) provided us in this season a few more unpublished inscriptions as well as an inscribed potsherd. This is the first demotic ostracon found in Gebel el Silsila, so it is very exciting and I am now working on the translation. Although my little “Liebling” [the ostracon] is decorated with demotic script I’m happy that this season brought to light also many new hieroglyphic and hieratic graffiti, especially on the West bank. These texts reveal a new face of the history of Gebel el Silsila and provide evidence for that the site was continuously visited and used as a quarry. These inscriptions increase our enthusiasm and give us something new to follow in our hope to understand better the life of the people worked in the quarry.  I thank to the Director and the team for this amazing season, the only thing that I don’t miss is the huge spiders living on our dahabeya (especially in my room…).     

Adrienn

Dr. Almásy completed her doctoral studies in 2012 from Eötvös Loránd  University of  Budapest, Faculty of Arts, Egyptology and École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne IV. Paris, Sciences Historiques et Philologiques with a thesis focusing on Greek influence in Demotic literature.