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
drafts in the possession of a scribe. 81 The only text suggesting public concern is composed of fragments of a journal (III.l), 82 nevertheless other papyrus finds from the Middle Kingdom imply that certain administrative papyri were not kept in offices but by scribes composing them. 83 The wpvW-lists of Hori's family could be copies of the original document, as suggested by 1. 3. 84 These copies in private possession could attest a secondary use of these records by the family members to certify property rights, as observed by Valbelle. 85 Nevertheless, it does not seem plausible to me that this was the primary function of these registers. The possessors of these papyri seem to have been middle or low ranking title-holders who presumably lived in the western sector of the town. In this part of Kahun there are no traces of any public building and it can rightly be assumed that the area was a domestic quarter housing temple functionaries and their families. 86 The inhabitants must not, however, be absolutely attached to the funerary cult of Senwosret II, whose valley temple joins with the settlement at its southwest corner. The papyri attest that personnel of cults other than the royal funerary cult were also among the residents of the western quarter. Quirke argues for the prominence of Anubis at the site, suggesting that the cult of this god could even be housed in the temple of Senwosret II. 87 The family of Satsopdu and persons associated with them were apparently linked with the cult of Sopdu lord of the east whose temple must be searched for outside the western sector. 88 Kemp has distinguished two main groups of the inhabitants of the settlement: „owners of very big houses and owners of very small houses." 89 His observations on the society of Kahun are based on the analysis of the centrally planned layout of the town, which is in accordance with the evidence of the above studied wpwt-lists, also reflecting a construed society. The similar idea of bureaucratic control is suggested by the original plan of the small houses in 81 Griffith, op. cil. (note 16), pis. XXVII-XXVIII. 87 Griffith, op. cit. pis. XXII-XXIII. 83 For administrative papyri found in funerary context see Quirke, op. cit. (note 16), pp. 10-11. 84 Griffith, op. cit. (note 16), pl. IX, 2. 85 See note 38. O'Connor op. cit. (note 8), II, p. 389. 87 Quirke, op. cit. (note 72), pp. 24-48. ss Kemp locates the temple of Sopdu with the ruins south from the 'Acropolis', op. cit. (note 14), p. 156. Kemp, op. cit.. p. 155.
