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Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, often referred to as TAD or TADAE, is a four volume corpus of Aramaic inscriptions written in Egypt during the Ancient Egyptian period, written by Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni.

Originally envisaged to be the Corpus Papyrorum Aramaicarum, following the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, it grew to incorporate all Aramaic inscriptions from the region, not just on papyrus, so the title was changed – this time borrowing from J. C. L. Gibson's 1971 Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions.

Each of volumes 1-3 contains 40-50 texts (vol. 1 letters (A); vol. 2 contracts (B); vol. 3 literary texts (C)), and volume 4 contains 478 texts, including D1-5: 216 papyrus fragments; D6: 14 leather; D7-10: 87 ostraca. The collection does not include the Saqqarah papyri and most of the Clermont-Ganneau ostraca.

It is the standard reference textbook for the Aramaic Elephantine papyri and ostraca, as well as other examples of Egyptian Aramaic, which together provide the primary extant examples of Imperial Aramaic worldwide.

Concordance

Reviews

Volume 1

• Williamson, H. G. M. (1987). . Vetus Testamentum, 37(4), 493–493. https://doi.org/10.2307/1517566
• Lipiński, E. (1988). . Orientalia, 57(4), 434–436. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43077597
• Kaufman, S. A. (1988). . Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 47(4), 289–290. http://www.jstor.org/stable/544888
• Grelot, P. (1988). . Revue Biblique (1946-), 95(2), 294–299. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44088910

Volume 2

• Lipiński, E. (1990). . Orientalia, 59(4), 552–554. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43075793
• Grelot, P. (1990). . Revue Biblique (1946-), 97(2), 270–276. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44089014
• Segal, J. B. (1992). . The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 78, 344–344. https://doi.org/10.2307/3822102

Volume 3

• Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (1995). . Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115(4), 710–711. https://doi.org/10.2307/604758
• Grelot, P. (1996). . Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period, 27(3), 351–355. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24660077

Volume 4

• Gianto, A. (2000). . Biblica, 81(3), 443–445. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42614297
• Dion, P.-E. (2000). . Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 318, 77–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/1357731

Work

• Volume 1
• Volume 3
• A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic

Previous corpuses

• Clermont-Ganneau, Charles Simon (1878). "Origine Perse Des Monuments Araméens d'Égypte (Notes d'archéologie orientale) Premier Article". Revue Archéologique. 36. Presses Universitaires de France: 93–107. ISSN 0035-0737. JSTOR 41735287.
  • "Deuxième Article". Revue Archéologique. 37. Presses Universitaires de France: 21–39. 1879. ISSN 0035-0737. JSTOR 41735338.
• Sayce and Cowley, Aramaic Papyri Discovered at Assuan, (London, 1906)
• Arthur Ungnad, 1911, Aramäische Papyrus aus Elephantine
• Eduard Sachau, 1911, Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer jüdischen Militär-Kolonie zu Elephantine
  • Text
  • Plates
• Arthur Ernest Cowley, 1923, Aramaic papyri of the fifth century B.C
• Noël Aimé-Giron, 1931, Textes araméens d'Égypte
• Grelot, Pierre (1972). Documents araméens d'Égypte. Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient (in French). Éditions du Cerf.

Notes

1. Discovered from 1966-73, the group consists of 202 papyrus fragments and 5 ostraca; none of these are full or almost full texts: Pardee writes “As a matter of connected text, however, this collection is much less important than the groups of texts published by Sayce, Sachau, Cowley, Driver, Kraeling, and Bresciani and Kamil, for there is not a single complete document among these 202 papyri.”
2. Discovered in the early 20th century, but very few have been published.

References

1. ^ Botta, A.F. (2012). ""Mr. Elephantine" Bezalel Porten". In the Shadow of Bezalel. Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East. Brill. p. xi-xvi. ISBN 978-90-04-24083-4.
2. Pardee, D. (1988). . Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 47(2), 154–156. http://www.jstor.org/stable/544400
3. Porten, B., & Yardeni, A. (1993). Ostracon Clermont-Ganneau 125(?): A Case of Ritual Purity. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 113(3), 451–456. https://doi.org/10.2307/605393
4. Gianto, A. (2000). . Biblica, 81(3), 443–445. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42614297
5. Dion, P.-E. (2000). . Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 318, 77–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/1357731
6. Cook, Edward (2022). Biblical Aramaic and Related Dialects: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 3-7. ISBN 978-1-108-78788-8. Imperial Aramaic (IA) … As noted, the documentation of IA is significantly greater than that of Old Aramaic; the hot and dry climate of Egypt has been particularly favorable to the preservation of antiquities, including Aramaic texts written on soft media such as papyrus or leather. The primary, although not exclusive, source of our knowledge of Persian-period Aramaic is a large number of papyri discovered on the island of Elephantine… All of the Egyptian Aramaic texts have been collected and reedited in the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt… This is now the standard text edition… Outside of Egypt, Aramaic texts written primarily on hard media such as stone or pottery have been discovered, including texts from Palestine, Arabia, Asia Minor, Iraq (Babylon), and Iran (Persepolis). A recent discovery, of uncertain provenance, is a relatively large collection of documents, now in a private collection, consisting mainly of the correspondence of the official Akhvamazda of Bactria dating from 354 to 324 BCE (Nave & Shaked 2012). They are similar in some ways to the Arshama archive published by Driver; the find-spot was no doubt Afghanistan.
7. ^ Edda Bresciani; Murād Kāmil, 1966, Le lettere aramaiche di Hermopoli, Memorie (Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche)., ser. 8 ;, v. 12, fasc. 5.
8. ^ Kraeling, Emil G.H. (1953). The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri: New Documents of the Fifth Century B.C. from the Jewish Colony at Elephantine. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-405-00873-3.
9. Bargès, J.J.L. (1862). Papyrus égypto-araméen appartenant au Musée égyptien du Louvre (in French). Duprat.
10. ^ Driver, G.R.; Mittwoch, E. (1968). Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B.C. Zeller.

• Book series introduced in 1986
• 1986 non-fiction books
• Books about the ancient Near East
• Aramaic languages
• Inscriptions
• Academic literature
• Aramaic inscriptions
• Egyptian papyri in Aramaic