Leiden

Although this small fragment is only a few centimeters big and might look like an unimportant scrap, it gives a wealth of information. We are lucky that we can reconstruct both a place name and a personal name here, and such a well-known one too! The fragment resides in Leiden, as part of the collection of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). It was acquired in Egypt in the 1930s by professor of Assyriology Franz de Liagre Böhl, who is well-known for his collection of cuneiform tablets.

It is a nice coincidence that this particular fragment found its way to Leiden: Leiden Egyptology has a longstanding tradition of research into the town of Deir el-Medina. Leiden Egyptologists can often be found on fieldwork projects on the site and, for example, have also created the Deir el-Medina database Deir el-Medina database, an online database of non-literary texts originating from the site.