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

nected with an office or a function. People from the lower classes were not seen as members of families, but rather daughters of mothers and sons of fathers. Bureaucracy thus distinguished 1) nuclear families of male title-holders, which, in cases, could be extended by widowed or single, mostly female, relatives, and 2) individuals with or without children, who could be attached as dependents to a title-holder, but did not absolutely live in his household. Residents of the western sector at Kahun The history of Hori's family can be linked with further hieratic material from the same archive. Together they form Lot I of the town-papyri,

67 and appear to have come from the same location, presumably from Rank A, i.e. the southernmost block of houses in the western sector of the town.

68 The Lot can be divided into three groups: • 1.3-6: wpwt-lists of Hori's family • 1.1-2: documents involving property transfer (swnwt and imyt-pr) concerning two brothers called Ihyseneb-Ankhren and Ihyseneb-Wah (further on I simply call this group Wah's documents) • 1.7: a letter of a servant to an overseer of the temple Nevertheless their close association is not accepted by every scholar,

69 there indeed may be a link between the first two groups, i.e. 1.3-6 and 1.1-2. Wah's documents have preserved three legal texts written on two papyri: 1.2 is stated to have been drafted in regnal year 29 of an unnamed ruler, evidently Amenemhat III, and involves the transfer of 4 Asiatics between the brothers, and approved by the administration.

70 1.1 assembles two legal texts, the first bears year 44 (clearly of the same rule as previous), the second is dated to regnal year 2, the name of the king being omitted again but probably Amenemhat IV is concerned. It contains an imyt-pr made by Wah to his wife, and the copy of an earlier document of the same type, made by Ankhren to Wah. The inclusion of the earlier text was clearly intended to prove that Wah was entitled to the property of his brother, which had previously been transferred to him. Griffith, op. cit. (note 16), I, pp. 19-25, 31-36, 71-72, and pis. IX, XII-XIII, XXIX. Griffith, op. cit. I, p. 19; C. Gallorini, A reconstruction of Petric's excavation at the Middle Kingdom settlement of Kahun, in: S. Quirke (ed.), op. cit. (note 39), pp. 44-45. Quirke, op. cit. (note 16), pp. 165-166. For this interpretation of the document see B. Menu, Quelques principes d'organisation du travail d'après les textes du Moyen Empire égyptien, in: Id., Recherches sur l'histoire juridique, économique et sociale de l'ancienne Egypte, Versailles 1982, pp. 117-119.