The hands of Papyrus Turin 1879: Individualizing handwritings in 20th dynasty hieratic sources

Papyrus Turin 1879 (and other fragments) — the so-called ‘Map of the gold mines’ or ‘Turin map’ — is among the most famous papyri of the Turin collection, but it was neither systematically published, nor studied up until today. Most of the egyptological attention was indeed captured by the ‘map’ side (e.g., Goyon 1949; Harrell & Brown 1992, with previous references), but the other side, which contains many hieratic texts belonging to different genres, has never been examined thoroughly (exceptions are Janssen 1994 and Hovestreydt 1997 for col. 1-2 of frag. A, vo). The goal of this talk is twofold. First, I will provide an overview of the texts found on this papyrus, focusing on the types of hieratic hands. A special attention will be devoted to the repertoire of hieratic signs as well as to the amount of variation in terms of signs formation for a single hand. Second, I will explore the possibility of ‘individualizing’ the hands of this papyrus by connecting their features to other hieratic sources of the 20th dynasty. Harrel & Brown’s (1992) suggestions regarding the attribution of these texts to specific scribes will be challenged and an alternative methodology will be suggested