| Archive name: | Kellis Area A House 3 Archive |
Trismegistos Archive ID: 
Page on the database Trismegistos Collections for the archive. |
|
| Date:
Dates are CE unless preceded by a minus sign <->, in which case they are BCE. |
301 – 400 |
| Provenance: | Kellis, Egypt |
| Trismegistos Place ID:
Page on the database Trismegistos Places for the place of provenance. |
|
| Manuscripts: | KYP M176 177 184 185 735 907 1105 2114 2115 |
| Classification: | These manuscripts may comprise an “archive”, meaning that they were brought together and deposited by an ancient person or persons. |
| Description: | A group of texts found in Area A, House 3 in Kellis. |
| Acquisition: | The texts were excavated in situ. |
| Dating: | All of the magical manuscripts can likely be dated to the second half of the fourth century, the period in which the individuals mentioned in them were active (Teigen 2018: p. 70-71). |
| Language/dialect: | The archive contains Greek, Lycopolitan Coptic, and a few Syriac texts. Of the magical texts, P. Kell. Gr. 85a + b (M185), P. Kell. Gr. 87 (M184), and P. Kellis inv. 92.35.b (M2115) are all written in Greek. P. Kell. Copt. 35 (M176) is bilingual, written in Lycopolitan Coptic with a small amount of Greek. |
| Materiality/composition: | All of the magical texts are written on papyrus. A few of the other manuscripts from the archive are wooden codices. |
| Content: | P. Kell. Gr. 85a + b (M185) is a formulary, one of whose prescriptions is copied onto an amulet found in the archive (P. Kell. Gr. 87=M184) for Pamour III son of Tapollo, one of the house’s inhabitants active c.350-c.380 (Worp 1995: p. 50-54); a second amulet, P. Kellis inv. 92.35.b (M2115), is also for a Pamour, but the mother’s name is not specified. P. Kell. Copt. 35 (M176) is a letter transmitting a separation curse written by Ouales, perhaps a member of the Manichaean elect, to Psais III, the younger colleague or brother of Pamour III (Gardner, Alcock, and Funk 1999: p. 34-35, 41, 57-58). |
| Discussion: | The texts document the lives of three generations of inhabitants from the end of the third to the end of the fourth century. The inhabitants seem to have belonged to an extended family of Manichaeans, who gained income through weaving, ownership of olive and jujube trees, and trading cloth and fruit. Many of the family members, male and female, were literate, and were involved in the copying of religious texts as a spiritual praxis. The majority of personal letters are in Coptic, but business letters with non-family members are in Greek, and religious texts are in both languages, while Syriac appears in a few bilingual texts with Coptic glosses. The manuscripts found in the archive were likely those left behind when the house was abandoned at the end of the fourth century (Bowen 2015: p. 233-235). |
| Bibliography: |
Bowen, Gillian. “The Environment Within: the Archaeological Context of the Texts from House 3 at Kellis in Egypt’s Dakhleh-Oasis”, in Housing and Habitat in the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by Angelo Andrea Di Castro and Colin A. Hope, Leuven: Peeters, 2015, 231-241. |
| Edit History: | KD (29/9/2020); EL (29/9/2020) |