Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
KATALIN ANNA KÓTHAY: Houses and households at Kahun: Bureaucratic and Domestic Aspects of Social Organization During the Middle Kingdom
The Kahun lists contain frequent references to other wpwt-lists, as well as to their continuations by oaths ( c rk), which seem to have been administered at regular intervals. Pap. Kahun 1.3 and IV.l refer to such oaths: 41 • 1.3: date of the list: year 3, IV îht 27, oath: year 5,1 prt 8 42 • IV. 1 : date of the list: first year of Sekhemra-khutawy, oath: year 3,1 Smw 4 43 In the first case, the oath was taken almost exactly two years after the compilation of the document. In the second, no exact date of the original listing is given but, as the reference is to the first year, it is plausible that the accession of a new king was to be meant. The oath was taken in the third year, hence again a quasi two-year period seems to be involved. The dates of the oaths imply that registers with the results of censuses appear to have been compiled or confirmed at regular intervals, perhaps every second year. Nevertheless, a yearly confirmation by the administration, which did not involve oath, is also possible as bore out by a further remark in the lector priest's document, written above the first line and referring to the second year: mh r rnpt-sp 2, 'approved for the second year'. Recurring attestations of the word wpwt as component of official titles, 44 as well as in Middle Kingdom documents outside the Kahun town-papyri entail a countrywide system. 45 However, these assessments must not be seen as national censuses and were plausibly not co-ordinated in central level of the administration. 46 The registration would be of importance for the local offices, and the central administration did evidently not intervene in local affairs. The initial dates and oaths show that the two-year cycle is only relevant within the context of documents concerning one family, therefore we must not asssume a general registration, occurring at the same time at every place. Hence the assessments appear to have been carried out by different institutions (in the case of the lector priest this was clearly the temple at Sekhem-senwosret), who registered their personnels autonomously. The lists were also modified according to specific needs. Change of the family head (1.3-6) and other events (birth, attachment of 41 For an alternative view, the oath being a declaration that the household died out in Pap. I.3., sec Poscncr, op. cit. (note 33), p. 146. His interpretation, which is based on the attempted reading of a problematical group of signs, is cautiosly cited by Franke, op. cit. (note 3), p. 232. It does not seem plausible, however, that all the women of the household - as believed by Posener - would have deceased within this short period of two years. 42 Griffith, op. cit. (note 16). pl. IX, 9. 41 Griffith, op. cit. pl. X, 4a. As regard to the year of the oath Griffith, op. cit. I, p. 26, hesitates between readings 3 and 5, but his final decision 3 seems certain. 44 Ward, op. cit. (note 37), passim. a Berlev, op. cit. (note 37), pp. 50-52. * Eyre, op. cit. (note 12), p. 16-17.
