Usama Gad

The dissertation is an edition of a selection of twelve Greek documentary texts of Roman Egypt. All the papyri are deposited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, most of which under the inventory number of the Special Register (SR) 3049. It is stated that the pieces were brought to the museum in 1927 by certain people who allegedly found all of them in the ruins of Theadelphia in Fayum. Indeed, most of the papyri come either from Theadelphia or Fayum. Yet, the formulae used in the contracts edited as text no. 2, 3 and 11 are not typical of this provenance, but of Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt. Moreover, a letter (12) that belongs to the famous archive of Heroninos, was found under this inventory. Heroninos was an estate manager in Theadelpheia from 249 CE to 268 CE. However, most of the texts of his archive, dispersed now in more than twenty collections of papyri worldwide, were discovered, not through the successive expeditions (1899-1913) to the site, but through clandestine diggings by local workers who continued the search for papyri after the respective expedition has left the site. Offered for sale in the antiquities market, the workers, well aware of the idea of a coherent find, said that they found the artefacts together, which is surely not the case. A similar scenario could be conceived in the case of the papyri of SR 3049. They were not discovered in situ together as a single lot, rather they were collected over a long-time period of illicit diggings mainly in Theadelphia, but also from far remote areas like Oxyrhynchus.

Nevertheless, the dissertation has brought to light a significant amount of texts that illustrate the internal workings of four important, and interrelated, Roman institutions and processes in the administration of Egypt, namely the publication of private documents (δημοσίωσις), registration of property and real rights in the property record office (βιβλιοθήκη ἐγκτήσεων), consensual contracts, and taxation. It is well-known that the property record office was established by the Romans in each nome metropolis of Egypt and aimed in particular at increasing the efficiency of the control of legal transactions concerning landed and other immovable property. Equally known also was that the publication of private documents was a legal procedure that entailed registration and deposition of legal instruments through the two central archives of Alexandria; the library of Hadrian and the library of Nanaion. The formalities of the applications of these two sophisticated and intertwined processes of publication and registration are illustrated in intricate details through the examples of a private purchase contract of a house property (1), a default summons, to which the private loan agreement is appended (2) and a lien (3). Through the texts of a bank statement recording the transfer of taxes in money (4) a receipt of poll-tax payment (5) an account of grain-tax collectors (6) and an order to provide linen (7), the effectiveness of the Roman system of collecting, recording and transferring taxes in money and in kind are exhibited. The conventions of drafting stipulations and clauses of consensual contracts are exemplified by a divorce agreement in a form typical of Alexandria (the so-called synchoresis) (8), a sale of a land (9), and a cession of property rights on a public land (10), both in the form of a records office document (the so-called grapheion-document, and a rent contract of a cellar in the form of a contractual offer (hypomnêma) (11). The letter from Syros to Heroninos (12) is incorporated in the edition due to its importance to the acquisition history of the papyri of SR 3049 (see supra), not because of its thematic affinity with the other texts. The manuscript, in addition to the bibliography (pp.3-15), consists of an introduction (pp. 16-28), the edited texts (pp. 29-191) and plates of the papyri (192-203).

صر قارون بين الواقع والخيال كتاب يأخذك إلى قلب التاريخ.حاولت جاهدا فى هذا الكتاب أن أفصل الواقع عن الخيال فى مسألة قصر قارون بالفيوم مستخدماً الوثائق التى عثرنا عليها حول هذا القصر المزعوم. الوثائق كلها مكتوبة على ورق البردي وباللغة اليونانية القديمة ، لكنى ترجمت هذه الوثائق إلى العربية حتى يتمكن القارئ العربي من معرفة كل كلمة وكل سر مدون على هذه البرديات

تتنال الرسالة دراسة البرديات اليونانية المنشورة عن قرية ديونيسياس ( نسبة إلى الإله ديونسيوس إله الخمر عن اليونان والرومان) من القرن الأول حتى الرابع الميلادى. أطلال هذه القرية توجد اليوم جنوب غرب بحيرة قارون بمحافطة الفيوم بالقرب من قرية قارون.  توثق الرسالة فترة من فترات تاريخ القرية المصرية  المتعدد الفترات و اللغات أيضاً . التعددية فى مصر قديمة قدم الأزل ، أما الفردية فهى وهم  لا يوجد إلا فى عقول من يؤمن به ، فلم تكن مصر ( أو حتى العالم ) حكرا على لغة واحدة أو ثقافة واحدة أو ديناً واحداً .الرسالة تتناول الحياة فى هذه القرية بالدراسة والتفصيل من خلال ثلاثة فصول : يتناول الفصل الأول الإدارة المحلية والموظفين فى هذه القرية و الفصل الثانى نشاطات سكان القرية الإقتصادية و الفصل الثالث يتناول حياتهم الإجتماعية والدينية.

Chapter 6 explores Classical Studies in the Arab world. Egypt has a rich tradition of Greek and Latin studies extending back to the 1940s thanks in part to the pioneering efforts of Tāhā Ḥusayn, one of the greatest Arab intellectuals and authors of the twentieth century. Since that time thousands of studies have been produced in Arabic covering all facets of Greco-Roman Civilization. The author emphasizes that Classics in the Arab world holds a particular interest as an example of Classics in a non-Western context in a region which was once part of the Classical world and whose culture has been profoundly influenced by Greek thought as a result of the Greco-Arabic translation movement of the ʿAbbāsid period.

The need for a checklist for the unpublished papyri of the Egyptian museum has emerged with the first distribution of unpublished papyri in the first round. I discovered many pieces that are published in Ain Shams University's thesis but escaped the notice of international papyrologists who were working on them either before or after they have been published here in Ain Shams. The present checklist, therefore, is the first place to go when you try to make sure that the Cairo piece that you are working on either is not yet published or doesn't under-research by someone else

Edition of P.Col. inv. 156, a sale on delivery for 132 bundles of reeds agreed between the sons of Phoibammon from the Oxyrhynchite nome (Andreas, Matheias and a third son whose name is lost) and Alexander the trader from the nearby Kynopolite nome. The delivery is to be made in Pauni of a fourteenth indiction. A date in the 5th or the early 6th Century AD is proposed on paleographical grounds, but a more precise date, 459-504 AD, is suggested by the internal evidences of the text.

Edition of five Greek papyri in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The papyri were found in Euhemereia (Kasr el-Banat) in the Fayum by Grenfell and Hunt in 1898-1899. The texts were described at P.Fay. 221, 286, 287, 289, and 290 (= P.Cair.Cat. 10819, 10835, 10836, 10838, and 10839). Four date to the second century CE but P.Fay. 286 descr. (= P.Cair.Cat. 10835) dates to the reign of Claudius (41-54 CE); its precise date may be 51-52 CE, which would make it the second earliest penthemeros certificate known to date. The five texts are receipts given to residents of the Fayum after the performance of their assigned labor on canals and dikes in the Fayum for five consecutive days, hence the name penthemeros. The labor is done on behalf of three Fayumic villages: Euhemereia (2 certificates), Athenas Kome (2), and Psenyris (1). Both Athenas Kome and Psenyris are nowhere else attested in penthemeros certificates, while the previously published certificates on behalf of Euhemereia number just four.

In this paper, I would like to explore the new ways of perceiving Papyri und Papyrology i.e. papyrological studies from Egyptian-Arabic perspectives. The paper will shed light on three main and, from my point of view, intertwined ways of thinking about this discipline that has been newly of importance just because of the new media. First, one should consider the question of legal status of papyri presented online, including their provenance, and the Egyptian (legal) point of view in this regard. Most, if not all, the available, papyri databases, which presents papyri online, suffice themselves with just a note about the purchase of a certain piece from unknown Egyptian, sometime known and famous like M. Nahman, without any indication about on which government, circumstances, regulations und laws this “supposedly” legal purchase has been conducted. I would suggest putting up a Wikipedia link or any other mean to give the “Egyptian” Science citizen, a further reading lists and short justifications about the transportation of this artefact from his country to Europe or the United States, where most of the papyri, presented in the moment online, are kept. Second, The provenance of the same pieces are in many cases given either with transliterated names that doesn’t exist on Arabic modern maps which one find through e.g. Google or with names that mix the archeological site with its nearby village or town. A similar database, in cooperation and with the help of with the Egyptian Universities’ students of Archeology, would solve this problem. Such links would also serve as a start for more specialized research that connects Archeology and Papyri with modern as well as recent Egyptian History. Third, an Arabic translation of the Papyri presented online, again with the help of Egyptian students of History, Classics and Archeology departments, would be a basis for more further analysis of these texts, whether they are written in Egyptian (with all its script) Greek, Latin or Coptic. These are some chances, which may seem easier to achieve, thanks to the new digital media, especially the social ones, but the challenges that would face any implementation of the above-mentioned idea in the current Egyptian academia are tremendous. This include but not limited to financial and legal matters that control the education system in Egypt.

Digital Alignment of the Greek Text with the Medieval Arabic Translation of Gregory Nazianzus. Carmen Morale XXX in Greek and Arabic using Alpheios Alignment Editor under Perseids Platform. The aligned TEI XML text of Ullman's edition 1961, pp 77-80 was downloaded from The Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies (Mellon Foundation, Harvard, Tufts University).

For more details about this important session  of the SunoikisisDC programme, see, here where you can download the slides and see video recordings and do the exercise, https://github.com/SunoikisisDC/SunoikisisDC-2019-2020/wiki/DCH-Session-3-Decolonization.
A quick outline of the session:
1- Introduction to Decolonisation of Cultural Heritage
2- Digital methods to give Egyptian/Middle Eastern scholars access to classical resources
3- The colonial impact of digital standards and methodologies

This was the 13th session of SunoikisisDC;an international consortium of Digital Classics programs developed by the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Leipzig in collaboration with the Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and Perseids. The session is an introduction to what translation alignment is and how it can be useful for pedagogical and philological research. The presentation will be of three main parts; the first part, a general introduction to the topic, is delivered by Usama Gad (15 minutes) followed by the second part, a specific introduction about the translation movements and practical examples to use the editor, delivered by Riccardo Strobino (30 minutes) then a concluding part on how to overcome some of the problems specific to Arabic, delivered by Usama Gad (15 minutes). It is supposed that if anyone would have a question, could interrupt and ask the presenter during the talk or write the question in the chat.

My presentation of Egyptian modern and ancient culture to primary school kids with pictures of my two princesses, sweet cat, a butterfly, Tahrir square Luxor, the Nile and much more. It was fun doing this presentation for Greenleaf primary school kids Walthamstow, London.

"Research for this piece was conducted by Katherine Blouin, Usama Ali Gad and Rachel Mairs.  It is the first of a series on the data from the International Congresses of Papyrology, which will be published on Everyday Orientalism over the coming months."

My Review of Garth Fowden's BAM, Princeton University Press 2014. The review is in Arabic and don't pretend to be exhaustive, but I have tried to highlight the main ideas treated in the book. A special emphasis has been given to his apt critics to the Eurocentricity of European histories  in neglecting the role of Islam in history.

"Thinking big in a global digital age forces you, as a scholar from the global South, either to make the best use of the limited access to knowledge and scientific information available within your national boundaries or to be a troublemaker. I have chosen to be a troublemaker."

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL DILEMMA OF PAPYRLOLOGY

"Egyptian papyri are the main study objects of the field called papyrology.  The founding fathers of this discipline are Western scholars who, based in study centres in Europe, the UK and the USA, were able during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries to build a massive archive of Egyptian papyri to support their research and teaching with original artefacts. The dispersed collections of these papyri in these Western study centres is, at least to me as an Egyptian scholar of Greco-Roman Egypt, a troubled archive with a complex legacy of imperialism and colonialism. This post is a first attempt to decolonize this troubled archive and to analyze the postcolonial discourse in the academic field built upon it i.e. papyrology."

GALEN is a long-term project to produce the first comprehensive digital corpus of translations between Greek, Arabic and Latin. The project seeks not only to include the medieval translations from Greek into Arabic (8th-10th Century AD) and again from Arabic into Latin (11th -13th Century AD), but also to comprise the modern translations of Greek and Latin literature into Arabic (19th -21st    Century AD). Moreover, the project would ideally include Arabic translations of Greek and Latin Papyri found in Egypt. The main idea behind this project is then to integrate as much Graecum-Arabicum-Latinum sources as one could in both Arabic and classical studies, presenting these sources to both scholars and students in a digital format with open access license CC BY-SA.

In this paper, I would like to explore the new ways of perceiving Papyri und Papyrology i.e. papyrological studies from Egyptian-Arabic perspectives. The paper will shed light on three main and, from my point of view, intertwined ways of thinking about this discipline that has been newly of importance just because of the new media. First, one should consider the question of legal status of papyri presented online, including their provenance, and the Egyptian (legal) point of view in this regard. Most, if not all, the available, papyri databases, which presents papyri online, suffice themselves with just a note about the purchase of a certain piece from unknown Egyptian, sometime known and famous like M. Nahman, without any indication about on which government, circumstances, regulations und laws this “supposedly” legal purchase has been conducted. I would suggest putting up a Wikipedia link or any other mean to give the “Egyptian” Science citizen, a further reading lists and short j...