JAKARTA - The archaeological findings in Egypt this time are not about the tombs of kings or treasures. What actually opens a big story is the pottery fragments. Reported by The Independent, more than 42 thousand written pottery fragments from the Athribis site, Upper Egypt, reveal the daily life of ordinary citizens since more than two thousand years ago.
The contents of the fragments are not the great records of rulers. What emerges are everyday things: tax lists, writing exercises for schoolchildren, religious texts, to certificates stating the quality of sacrificial animals. From these seemingly trivial objects, archaeologists get a much more honest picture of the social life of ancient societies.
Excavations at Athribis have been underway since 2005. But the explosion of findings has occurred in the last eight years. In a report quoted from The Independent, Thursday, April 16, the area west of the Temple of Ptolemy XII began to be opened in 2018 and expanded to the southwest. From an area of 40 x 40 meters, archaeologists found a large deposit containing more than 40 thousand fragments, with 50 to 100 new fragments being discovered every day.
Athribis is about 10 kilometers west of the Nile River. In ancient times, this area was known as the center of worship of the lion goddess Ta-Repit. Its territory includes a temple complex, settlements, burial areas, and limestone quarries.
What makes this finding important is not just the number. Ceramic fragments or ostraca were used as a writing medium before paper was widely known. The oldest text is a tax receipt from the 3rd century BC. Meanwhile, the oldest text comes from the 9th to the 11th century AD. This means that this finding records social life for more than a thousand years.
Most of the writing is in demotic, an administrative script commonly used in the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. A number of fragments also contain Greek writing. There are also images, geometric patterns, and rare texts in hieroglyphic and Arabic.
The archaeologist of the University of Tübingen, Christian Leitz, said that this finding shows a variety of everyday life situations that are rarely recorded in major historical sources. Precisely because the content is simple, the Athribis findings are considered important for compiling a more complete social history of the region.
This site is also known to contain more than 130 ancient horoscope texts. Such findings are considered important for tracing the history of astronomy and astrology in the past.
Even so, the work of the researchers is not light. Thousands of fragments still have to be digitized and cataloged. The process requires special equipment, large computing capacity, and trained personnel. AI is said to be able to help, but the cost of training and maintaining the system is not small.
From here it can be seen that history is not always stored in magnificent buildings. Sometimes, it is the small fragments that people threw away in their time, which now give the clearest story about the life of ordinary people.
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