The volume The Materiality of Texts from Ancient Egypt discusses the material aspects of ancient writing through various methodologies and case studies from the early pharaonic to the Late Antique periods in Egypt. The articles are revised and extended versions of papers presented during the conference ‘Beyond Papyri: The Materiality of Ancient Texts’ in Leiden, 27–29 October 2016. The majority of the nine contributions discuss papyri, ostraca, and graffiti from the later phases of Egyptian history. If intentional, such chronological emphasis is a satisfactory approach. The materiality of texts has become a popular subject of research and is best discussed with focussed clusters of written material. Regardless of chronology, the papers can furthermore be grouped according to three themes: theoretical treatises (Eyre and Pinarello); focussed discussions of distinct collections of inscriptions (Ast, Töpfer, Haring, Lougovaya, and Caputo and Cowey); and experiments with modern imaging technologies (Prada and Wordsworth, and Piquette). In a publication that addresses the materiality of ancient writing, those articles using tangible examples are inevitably best placed to achieve the aim of the publication: to enhance understanding of the material context and history of Ancient Egyptian written sources. Most authors connect materiality to functionality, spatial and chronological distribution, literacy and audience, state of preservation and accessibility. The considerable overlap between the articles confirms the strength of such correlations, which can lead to new models of interpretation. Most text specialists probably agree that a written document is not just a record or an incidental carrier of communication, but an object used within a historical context and that its materiality is crucial to the power of its content. Discourses in favour of ‘a wider perspective that holds objects rather than language at the centre of analysis’ (Massimiliano S. Pinarello, p. 14) as ‘writings were as much, if not more objects than texts’ (Christopher Eyre, p. 1) illustrate the danger of overemphasizing (or overtheorising) the value of an approach – as if an appreciation of the materiality of the inscribed object should exclude linguistic or literary aspects. Surely it is the holistic consideration of text and matter that should be encouraged, as successfully illustrated by those contributions that have taken the inscribed object as their starting point. In ‘The Material Authority of Written Texts in Pharaonic Egypt’ (pp. 1–11), Christopher Eyre almost denies the phonetic character, the literary richness and performative nature of the pharaonic writing system. The acknowledgment of these, the author calls ‘a modern assumption’. Eyre considers literacy levels among an ancient population as indicators of the functionality of a script – the Egyptian writing system is too difficult. Only communication systems that are understandable to illiterate members of the community suggest ‘a sort of partial literacy’. It is hard to see how the creation of classic Egyptian literature such as the Story of Sinuhe or The Eloquent Peasant are the result of an educational approach that ‘did not promote the ordered acquisition of minimal, partial and eventually full and unrestricted literacy’ (p. 7).1 Consequently, the author denies the important role of individual agency in the development of writing and the creativity of reorganising parts of a composition into new compositions; yet acknowledges the long transmission of early texts into the Roman Period as ‘productive re-workings’ (p. 7).2 How are the latter not evidence of intellectual activity or the product of advanced literacy? As Töpfer indicates in her contribution (pp. 35–42), the Tebtunis texts are not coherent copies of older ritual compositions, but evidence of how a reinterpretation of tradition produced innovations. The reader may have high expectations of the second article as Massimiliano S. Pinarello promises to ‘propose a new agenda for social studies of the ancient world’ (p. 12) while ‘challenging our intellectual limits’ (p. 26). However,

中文翻译：

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书评：古埃及文本的重要性。法老早期至古代晚期文本材料研究的新途径

《古埃及文本的物质性》一卷通过各种方法论和案例研究讨论了古代文字的物质方面，这些方法和案例研究从埃及早期的法老时期到古代晚期。这些文章是 2016 年 10 月 27 日至 29 日在莱顿举行的“超越纸莎草纸：古代文本的物质性”会议上发表的论文的修订和扩展版本。 九篇论文中的大部分讨论了纸莎草纸后期阶段的纸莎草纸、ostraca 和涂鸦埃及历史。如果有意，这种按时间顺序的强调是一种令人满意的方法。文本的重要性已经成为一个流行的研究主题，最好通过集中的书面材料集群来讨论。无论按年代顺序如何，这些论文还可以根据三个主题进行分组：理论论文（Eyre 和 Pinarello）；重点讨论不同的铭文收藏（Ast、Töpfer、Haring、Lougovaya 以及​​ Caputo 和 Cowey）；和现代成像技术（Prada 和 Wordsworth 以及 Piquette）的实验。在解决古代文字重要性的出版物中，那些使用具体例子的文章不可避免地最适合实现出版物的目标：增强对古埃及书面资源的物质背景和历史的理解。大多数作者将重要性与功能、空间和时间分布、文化和受众、保存状态和可访问性联系起来。文章之间的大量重叠证实了这种相关性的强度，这可以导致新的解释模型。大多数文本专家可能都同意，书面文件不仅是记录或偶然的交流载体，而且是在历史背景下使用的对象，其重要性对其内容的力量至关重要。支持“以对象而不是语言为分析中心的更广阔的视角”（Massimiliano S. Pinarello，第 14 页）和“文字与文本一样多，甚至更多的对象”（克里斯托弗·艾尔，第 14 页） 1) 说明过分强调（或过度理论化）一种方法的价值的危险——好像对铭刻对象的物质性的欣赏应该排除语言或文学方面。当然，应该鼓励的是对文本和问题的整体考虑，正如那些以铭刻对象为起点的贡献所成功说明的那样。在“法老埃及书面文本的物质权威”（第 1-11 页）中，克里斯托弗·艾尔几乎否认了法老书写系统的语音特征、文学丰富性和表演性质。承认这些，作者称之为“现代假设”。艾尔将古代人口的识字水平视为脚本功能的指标——埃及的书写系统太难了。只有社区文盲成员可以理解的通信系统才表明“某种程度的识字”。很难看出经典埃及文学的创作，如 Sinuhe 的故事或 The Eloquent Peasant 是一种教育方法的结果，这种教育方法“没有促进有序获得最低限度、部分和最终完全和不受限制的识字”（p . 7).1 因此，作者否认个人能动性在写作发展中的重要作用以及将作文的各个部分重新组织成新作文的创造力；但承认早期文本在罗马时期的长期传播是“生产性再加工”（第 7 页）。2 后者如何不是智力活动的证据或高级识字的产物？正如 Töpfer 在她的贡献（第 35-42 页）中指出的那样，Tebtunis 文本并不是旧仪式作品的连贯副本，而是对传统的重新诠释如何产生创新的证据。读者可能对第二篇文章抱有很高的期望，因为 Massimiliano S. Pinarello 承诺“提出古代世界社会研究的新议程”（第 12 页），同时“挑战我们的智力极限”（第 26 页）。然而，