Pottery ostracon, with ten lines of Coptic on exterior, recording an inheritance statement. Ostracon Petrie 47. A short line precedes the main text, which is partially broken and difficult to read, but it should state the identity of the property in question. This ostracon and the others connected with the same property would have been distributed to the parties involved, as a lottery – each share was equal and so the parties received an equal part from the house, thereby ensuring that there was no possible bias in the decision-making process. Here, the person who received this ostracon acquired the veranda on the southern side of the house (a room open to the air, either entirely or with columns), a part of the land outside the house, and also equal access to a number of communal rooms.
Text has been translated as: 'He who will receive the southern veranda will take the tenth(?) that is outside the house. The entrance room, the stone porch, the area below the entrance room, the storage room, the well, the staircase, and the storage room will be communal'.
Collection Place
Thebes
Publications
- Crum, Walter Ewing, Varia Coptica, 12 no.13 - Cromwell, Jenny, Coptic writing exercises in the Petrie Museum with a concordance of its published coptic texts