During recent years several teams have surveyed and excavated along the roads between Coptos in the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. This article is the result of co-operation between two of them, namely the Dutch-American team working in Berenike since 1994 and the French team that has excavated stations on the Coptos–Myos Hormos road between 1994 and 1997 and later at Didymoi in the N end of the Coptos–Berenike road. A chance visit to Berenike gave the key to a deeper understanding of the origins and history of the road that leads there from Coptos, because an inscription, that could easily have been understood in a purely local context, was suddenly seen to have at least two rather exact, though almost illegible, parallels at other stations. The three inscriptions are published below, two of them for the first time.Sikayt is one of 10 forts that encircle Berenike from southwest to northwest (see fig. 1). These include: (1) a hill top fort at Shenshef; (2) a large hydreuma in Wadi Kalalat; (3) a small fort in Wadi Kalalat; (4) the fort at Sikayt; (5-9) 5 forts in Wadi Abu Greiya (Vetus Hydreuma); and (10) the small fort in Wadi Lahami. These forts range in date from Ptolemaic to late Roman. Some are only from one period, while others seem to span longer periods.
Paper did not exist in the ancient Mediterranean world. Instead, people wrote on an enormous variety of other materials. While almost every substance imaginable has been used as writing material at one time or another, this article focuses on the common ones. First, it considers papyrus since the overwhelming majority of ancient texts are written on this material. It discusses parchment, ostraca, and wooden tablets which receive considerable attention. It also discusses linen (e.g., mummy bandages) and stone (mainly Coptic limestone ostraca inscribed with ink). Looking at Coptic documentary texts, which extend past the end of antiquity, ostraca are the most important medium (47.5%), while papyrus is second (40.5%). Limestone accounts for 10.5%, while skin (leather/parchment), paper, and wood represent less than 1% each.
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