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Oasis was renewed in the mid-20th century by Ahmed Fakhry, one of the first Egyptian-educated archaeologists, and his work prompted western universities to initiate the Dakhleh Oasis Project. A large-scale archaeological survey followed in 1977, and excavations began in the 1980s. A preliminary historical survey was published by Guy Wagner in 1986.100 Excavation reports and conferences on Oasis archaeology have since been published in the Dakhleh Oasis Project-series and later in the Oasis Papers-series.101
The Roman-era name of Ismant el-Kharab was still unknown when excavations started in 1986/7. The first excavated domestic unit, the housing block labelled House 1–3, also held rich papyrus deposits of documentary and literary papyri. They showed Ismant to be the site of ancient Kellis, a village previously known only from a few, scattered papyri from the Nile Valley. In 1991, a letter found in the same housing block was found to have had Manichaean authorship. It was subsequently realised that the House 1–3 material included many Manichaean literary texts, and constituted an archive that belonged to a group of Manichaeans active in the Oasis in the mid-fourth century, less than a century after Mani’s death.102 The publication of Kellis papyri – Greek and Coptic, documentary and literary, Manichaean and non-Manichaean – has been ongoing since the mid-90s; the last volume of Coptic documentary texts from House 1–3 appeared in 2014, and the finds from Kellis have increasingly begun to receive attention from scholars of Manichaeism.103 Still, no monograph based on the Kellis material has yet been devoted to Manichaeism as social practice in Egypt.
100 Guy Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte: à l'époque grecque, romaine et byzantine d'après les documents grecs (Paris:
Institut français d'Archéologie orientale du Caire, 1987).
101 See Charles S. Churcher and Anthony J. Mills, Reports from the survey of the Dakhleh Oasis, western desert of Egypt, 1977–1987 (Oxford: Oxbow, 1999). More recently, see Roger S. Bagnall et al., The Oasis papers 6:
proceedings of the sixth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012).
102 Gardner and Lieu, ‘From Narmouthis’. The nature of this archive, and the link between material and housing block, will be discussed more thoroughly in section 3.1.
103 Studies include ibid.; Nikolaos Gonis and Cecilia Römer, ‘Ein Lobgesang an den Vater der Grösse in P. Kellis II 94’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 120 (1998); Jean-Daniel Dubois, ‘Une lettre manichéenne de Kellis (P. Kell. Copt. 18)’, in Early Christian voices: in texts, traditions, and symbols, ed. David H. Warren, et al. (Boston;
Leiden: Brill, 2003); Jason D. BeDuhn, ‘The domestic setting of Manichaean cultic associations in Roman late antiquity’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 10 (2008); Iain Gardner, ‘Manichaean ritual practice at ancient Kellis: a new understanding of the meaning and function of the so-called Prayer of the Emanations’, in In Search of Truth:
Augustine, Manichaeism and other Gnosticism. Studies for Johannes van Oort at sixty, ed. Jacob A. van den Berg, et al. (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011); Majella Franzmann, ‘Augustine’s view of Manichaean almsgiving and almsgiving by the Manichaean community at Kellis’, 69, no. 1 (2013); Mattias Brand, ‘Speech patterns as indicators of religious identities: the Manichaean community in late antique Egypt’, in Sinews of empire:
Networks in the Roman Near East and beyond, ed. Eivind H. Seland and Håkon F. Teigen (Oxford: Oxbow, 2017);
28
The House 1–3 papyri
Almost all the literary texts pertaining to Manichaeans at Kellis stem from the House 1–3 housing block, located centrally in the village. The texts from this block remains the only substantial textual archive(s) so far uncovered at Kellis. The religious and literary material from House 1–3 include texts in Coptic, Greek, and fragments in Syriac. Most of the literary texts have been edited by Iain Gardner and published in two volumes, in 1997 and 2007.104 These volumes contained a total of 31 pieces: 20 in Coptic, six in Greek and five in Syriac, Syriac–
Coptic, or Syriac–Greek. They include large sections held to stem from the Epistles of Mani, Manichaean psalms (several previously known from the finds at Med.Madi), prayers, Biblical texts, magical texts, wordlists – including a Coptic-Syriac list of religious vocabulary – and language exercises.105 The Manichaean literary texts are examined in Chapter 10.
The documentary evidence forms the main focus in the present study. A first volume of documentary material, all of it from the House 1–3 complex and written in Greek, was published by Klaas A. Worp in 1995.106 It contained 90 remains of papyrus texts. The texts display a range of genres, including letters, calendars, contracts, receipts, petitions, and the fragments of a prefectural decree (partly in Latin). Two years later, Bagnall published his edition of the Kellis Agricultural Account Book (the KAB).107 Coptic documentary material has been edited and published by Gardner with Anthony Alcock and Wolf-Peter Funk in two instalments, the second published in 2014.108 These two volumes contain 118 texts and textual remains, all but ten of which stem from the House 1–3 complex. The Coptic material consists mostly of private letters, but includes accounts, lists, memos, as well as a private contract or
Nicholas J. Baker-Brian, ‘Mass and elite in Late Antique religion: the case of Manichaeism’, in Mass and elite in the Greek and Roman worlds: From Sparta to late antiquity, ed. Richard Evans (London: Routledge, 2017).
104 Gardner, KLT I; Iain Gardner, Kellis Literary Texts vol. 2 (P. Kell. VI) (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007).
105 The non-religious literary material from House 1–3 includes a codex with two speeches of the Athenian rhetor Isocrates, published in Klaas A. Worp and Albert Rijksbaron, The Kellis Isocrates Codex (P. Kell. III Gr. 95) (Oxford:
Oxbow Books, 1997).
106 Klaas A. Worp, ed. Greek papyri from Kellis vol. 1 (P. Kell. I Gr. 1–94), vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1995).
107 Roger S. Bagnall, The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (P. Kell. IV Gr. 96) (Oxford: Oxbow, 1997).
108 Gardner, Alcock, and Funk, CDT I; Iain Gardner, Anthony Alcock, and Wolf-Peter Funk, eds., Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis vol 2 (P. Kell. VII 57–131) (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014).
statement of inheritance (pkc.69). Texts on ostraca from the House 1–3 housing complex were included in Worp’s 2004–publication of Kellis ostraca, while additional material, mostly from other parts of Kellis, has appeared in various articles.109 The above-listed publications form the basis of the network database utilised in Chapter 5.
1.4.2 Egyptian Manichaean material
To date, the most important group of Coptic Manichaean texts were those found at Medinet Madi (Med.Madi), the current name for a site in the Fayyum in Middle Egypt known as Narmouthis in the Roman era. They provide important evidence for the literary works of the Manichaean ‘ecclesiastical’ tradition, developed by church authorities in the wake of Mani’s death, with which the lay documents from Kellis has often been contrasted. Their relationship to the Kellis material is explored more extensively in Part III, and so a presentation is in order.
The Med.Madi find consisted of seven (or so)110 codices, written in Coptic, containing, respectively: Mani’s Epistles (the Epistle codex), excerpts from Mani’s Living Gospel (the Synaxeis codex), ‘historical’ (hagiographical) narratives (the Acts codex), a group of homilies (the Homilies codex), Manichaean psalms (the Psalm-Book, one codex in two parts), and two
109 The papyri I have included are found in: John F. Oates, ‘Sale of a donkey (P.Duke inv. G9)’, The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 25 (1988); John F. Oates and Peter van Minnen, ‘Three Duke University papyri from Kellis’, in Papyri in Memory of P.J. Sijpesteijn (P.Sijp.), ed. Klaas A. Worp and Adriaan J. B. Sirks (Oakville: The American Society of Papyrologists, 2007); T. de Jong and Klaas A. Worp, ‘A Greek horoscope from 373 AD’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 106 (1995); T. de Jong and Klaas A. Worp, ‘More Greek horoscopes from Kellis (Dakhleh Oasis)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 137 (2001); Roger S. Bagnall and Klaas A.
Worp, ‘Two 4th century accounts from Kellis’, in Papyri in honorem Johannis Bingen octogenarii (P. Bingen), ed.
Henri Melaerts, Rudolf de Smet, and Cecilia Saerens (Leuven: Peeters, 2000); Colin A. Hope and Klaas A. Worp,
‘A Greek account on a clay tablet from the Dakhleh Oasis’, in Papyri in honorem Johannis Bingen octogenarii (P.
Bingen), ed. Henri Melaerts, Rudolf de Smet, and Cecilia Saerens (Leuven: Peeters, 2000); Klaas A. Worp, ‘A new wooden board from the temple at Kellis (with plate XXVI)’, in Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin, 13.–19.8 1995, ed. Bärbel Kramer, et al. (Stuttgart; Leipig B. G. Teubner, 1997);
Klaas A. Worp, ‘Short texts from the Main Temple’, in Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary reports on the 1994–
1995 to 1998–1999 field seasons, ed. Colin A. Hope; Gillian E. Bowen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2002); Colin A. Hope and Klaas A. Worp, ‘Dedication inscription from the Main Temple’, in Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998–1999 field seasons, ed. Colin A. Hope and Gillian E. Bowen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2002); Roger S. Bagnall, Colin A. Hope, and Klaas A. Worp, ‘Family papers from second-century A.D. Kellis’, Chronique d'Égypte 86, no. 171–172 (2011); Klaas A. Worp, ‘Miscellaneous new Greek papyri from Kellis (P.Gascou 67–88)’, in Mélanges Jean Gascou: textes et études papyrologiques (P.Gascou), ed. Jean-Luc Fournet and Arietta Papaconstantinou (Paris: Collège de France, 2016); Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 327–28.
110 Schmidt mentioned eight, but it has been assumed that one codex was split in two for sale. James M.
Robinson, The Manichaean Codices of Medinet Madi (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013), 4. See also Gardner, ‘An introduction’, 2 n.2.
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codices of ‘theology’. Of the latter two, one codex bore the title Kephalaia of the Teacher (1 Ke, also called the Berlin Kephalaia), the other; Kephalaia of the Wisdom of My Lord Mani (2 Ke, called the Dublin Kephalaia). All were written in a dialect of Coptic termed L4, associated with Lycopolis, and probably date from ca. 400 CE, although the materials contained within were translations of earlier works in Greek and/or Syriac. The codices were found by local workers around 1929, acquired by European and American buyers in Cairo in 1930–31, and the finds were announced in 1933.111 Some codices landed in London (later Dublin), others in Berlin. A few texts were published before the Second World War,112 but not, unfortunately, the Epistles or the Acts. These had been stored in Berlin, and disappeared in the looting after the war.113 The remaining codices were in poor conditions, and while the last few decades have seen the publication (and re-editing) of several texts, much remains unpublished even today.114
111 Hans J. Polotsky, Carl Schmidt, and Hugo Ibscher, ‘Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten: Originalschriften des Mani und seiner Schüler’, Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1933).
112 Hans Jakob Polotsky and Hugo Ibscher, Manichäische Homilien, Manichäische Handschriften der Sammlung A Chester Beatty (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1934); Hans Jakob Polotsky and Alexander Böhlig, Kephalaia.
Lieferung 1–10. Erste Hälfte, Manichäische Handschriften der Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1940); Charles R. C. Allberry, A Manichaean Psalm-book. Part II., Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1938).
113 Schmidt & Polotsky’s 1933-publication remains important for its description of these lost texts. For a detailed account of the turbulent history and survey of the remains of the various codices (up until the early 1990s), see Robinson, Manichaean Codices.
114 Another fascicle of 1 Ke, based on work mostly completed by 1943, was published in 1966 by Alexander Böhlig, Kephalaia. Lieferung 11/12. Zweite Hälfte. Vol. 1, Manichäische Handschriften der Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1966). The remaining two parts have been only recently translated and published by Wolf-Peter Funk, ed. Kephalaia. Lieferung 13/14. Zweite Hälfte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1999); and Kephalaia. Lieferung 15/16. Zweite Hälfte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2000). Facsimile editions of 2 Ke were published by Søren Giversen in the 1980s (see Wolf-Peter Funk, ‘Zur Faksimileausgabe der koptischen Manichaica in der Chester-Beatty-Sammlung’, Orientalia 59, no. 4 (1990).), and its contents considered by Michel Tardieu,
‘La diffusion de bouddhisme dans l'empire Kouchan, l'Iran et la Chine, d'après un kephalaion manichéen inédit’, Studia Iranica 17 (1988). Work on a critical edition is still ongoing, however, with publication of a part of 2 Ke scheduled for April 2018. Remaining leafs of Mani’s Epistles are being edited by Gardner and Funk, see Iain Gardner, ‘Once more on Mani's Epistles and letter-writing’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 17, no. 2 (2013):
293–94. For recent work on the Psalm-Book, see Gregor Wurst, Liber psalmorum. Pars II. Fasc. 1. Die Bêma-Psalmen Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Series Coptica (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996); Siegfried G. Richter, Liber psalmorum. Pars II. Fasc. 2. Die Herakleides-Psalmen Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Series Coptica (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1998). For the Homilies, see Nils A. Pedersen, The Manichaean Homilies: With a Number of Hitherto Unpublished Fragments, Chester Beatty Library (Brepols, 2006). For the Synaxeis Codex, see Wolf-Peter Funk,
‘Mani's account of other religions according to the Coptic Synaxeis Codex’, in New Light on Manichaeism, ed.
Jason D. BeDuhn (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Another text of great importance that I occasionally refer to here is a miniature codex containing traditions on the life of Mani, written in Greek. It appeared in Cologne in 1969, and is therefore referred to as the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC). Details surroundings its discovery are hazy, apart from the fact that it was found in Egypt.115 It contains narratives purporting to be written by the early disciples of Mani, concerning his life and missionary journeys.116 Its publication provided new impetus for work on western Manichaeism, and much has been written on Egyptian Manichaeism since the publication of its discovery in 1970.117