Tebtunis

Tebtynis or Tebtunis was a city in Ancient Egypt. The modern town is called Tell Umm el- Baragat and is located in the province of Al Fayyum.

Tebtynis was about 1800 BC by Amenemhet III. founded. The city flourished especially in the Greco- Roman period, at that time it was called Theodosiopolis. She belonged in late antiquity to Arcadia province and was located north of Hermopolis Magna. The early Christian diocese Theodosiopolis in Arcadia is a titular today. It belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Ossirinco ( Oxyrhynchus ) and has not been occupied since 1967.

Excavations

The center of the town is the temple of Soknebtynis, that is, the " Sobek, Lord of Tebtynis ", located on the southern edge of the settlement. Before Naos is a small courtyard. The complex is surrounded by an enclosure wall, which also includes other buildings, including a small side temple and numerous priests cells. Above the entrance is the vestibule, a bent dromos leads to the two kiosks.

The first excavations at this location were 1899/1900 carried out by the two English Papyrologists B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt. They uncovered parts of the Soknebtynis temple and surrounding buildings, while numerous Greek and demotic papyri - the ultimate goal of their excavations - found. In addition, they discovered in the necropolis a larger number of burials crocodile, with more Greek papyri were found in the mummy cases. Added to the burials were probably more demotic cult cooperative statutes. Furthermore, many comparatively modest graves were found. The mummies of the residents of Tebtynis were covered with Kartonagemasken and pads from which many other papyri were acquired later.

The Fund allocation most demotic papyri came to Cairo, the Greek and the other hand still stuck in first to edit the cardboard to Oxford and later - after the death of Grenfell and Hunt - in the Bancroft Library of the University of California; the last previously overlooked boxes are only arrived there recently. The evaluation of these Tebtunis papyri dealt founded the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri (CTP ) 2000.

The Tebtynis papyri in other museums, notably the British Museum in London, in the Papyrus Collection at the University of Michigan and the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection in Copenhagen, come from illegal excavations by locals; they have been acquired from the art market. In the British Museum are, inter alia, about 50 mostly fragmentary demotic Hierodulie certificates. At the University of Michigan and a large part of the archives of the Kronion, son of Apion, the Grapheionvorstehers of Tebtynis are kept. After Copenhagen, however, came primarily literary texts in Demotic as hieratic script. They come safely from the library of Soknebtynis Temple.