Brian Muhs and NELC Alums, Jacqueline Jay and Foy Scalf, Publish New Book

Congratulations to NELC Professor of Egyptology Brian Muhs, who together with NELC alums Jacqueline Jay (Professor, and Interim Chair of the Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, Eastern Kentucky University) and Foy Scalf (Head of Research Archives and Head of the the Integrated Database Project at the Oriental Institute) have authored a new book, The Archive of Thotsutmis, Son of Panouphis. Early Ptolemaic Ostraca from Deir el Bahari (O. Edgerton) (Chicago: OI Publications, 2021), 196pp. This volume presents for the first time one of the largest collections of Demotic and Greek ostraca to have been discovered intact by archaeologists, in situ at Deir el-Bahari (excavated 1915-16 by Ambrose Lansing).  in the twentieth century. Through this archive, Muhs, Scalf, and Jay reconstruct the microhistory of Thotsutmis, son of Panouphis, and his family, who worked in Egypt on the west bank of Thebes as priests in the mortuary industry during the early Ptolemaic Period in the third century BC, striving to make it among the wealthy and connected social network of Theban choachytes and pastophoroi, while they simultaneously navigated the bureaucratic maze of taxes, fees, receipts, and legal procedures of the Ptolemaic state.