Nubica onomastica miscellanea V: Reedition of two Old Nubian lists of names from Qasr Ibrim

Abstract

Unlike previous instalments of the ‘Nubica onomastica miscellanea’-series which focused on correcting single names or phrases in Nubian texts, its fifth part brings the complete reedition of two more substantial texts originally published by Giovanni Ruffini. The former is a list of witnesses to a deed of land sale (P. Qasr Ibrim IV 65) and the latter an account (P. Qasr Ibrim IV 80). While the main subject of the paper are personal names that can be found in the two documents, other elements, such as grammar, lexicon, and – especially for P. Qasr Ibrim IV 80 – the matter of the document are also duly treated. By identifying ghost-names in Ruffini’s edition and proposing the identification of new Old Nubian substantives, the paper enhances our knowledge about the vocabulary of the language. Last but not least, the new interpretation of P. Qasr Ibrim IV 80, which – for the first time in medieval Nubia – appears to explicitly state the value of certain commodities in dirhams, is an important contribution to the studies on the monetisation of Nubian economy.