Ostraca (Singular: ostracon) are pieces of broken pottery or limestone flakes used to record writing in ancient Egypt. Due to of their abundance, ostraca were much cheaper than papyrus and were used as abundantly as our modern day Post-It note. Many of the ostraca in Houghton Library’s our collection are receipts, records of goods, taxes, and personal letters written in Demotic, Coptic and Greek, languages spoken in ancient Egypt.
In 1877-1878, Henry Williamson Haynes (1831-1912), a Harvard graduate and a university professor of Ancient Greek and Latin, traveled to Egypt and purchased several ostraca on the island of Elephantine in the southernmost part of Egypt. Brought back to the United States by Haynes, they travelled from the Nile to the Charles and finally to the Fogg Museum at Harvard after his death, and ultimately to the Houghton Library.
The ostraca found on Elephantine not only preserve information about daily life on the island, but also show us its uniqueness as a multicultural society.
All the ostraca are from the collections of Houghton Library, Harvard University apart from where otherwise stated.
This website was created in conjunction with Harvard University’s Houghton Library exhibition “Pots as Post-Its: Daily Life Captured on Ancient Egyptian Ostraca”, on view May 1 – September 6, 2018. Visit http://houghton75.org/ for more information.
Guest curated by Andréa Martinez, Julia Puglisi and Hilo Sugita, students in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Harvard University), together with and under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Verena Lepper, Principal Investigator of the ERC-Starting Grant Project ELEPHANTINE, and Curator for Egyptian and Oriental Papyri at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
In 1877-1878, Henry Williamson Haynes (1831-1912), a Harvard graduate and a university professor of Ancient Greek and Latin, traveled to Egypt and purchased several ostraca on the island of Elephantine in the southernmost part of Egypt. Brought back to the United States by Haynes, they travelled from the Nile to the Charles and finally to the Fogg Museum at Harvard after his death, and ultimately to the Houghton Library.
The ostraca found on Elephantine not only preserve information about daily life on the island, but also show us its uniqueness as a multicultural society.
All the ostraca are from the collections of Houghton Library, Harvard University apart from where otherwise stated.
This website was created in conjunction with Harvard University’s Houghton Library exhibition “Pots as Post-Its: Daily Life Captured on Ancient Egyptian Ostraca”, on view May 1 – September 6, 2018. Visit http://houghton75.org/ for more information.
Guest curated by Andréa Martinez, Julia Puglisi and Hilo Sugita, students in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Harvard University), together with and under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Verena Lepper, Principal Investigator of the ERC-Starting Grant Project ELEPHANTINE, and Curator for Egyptian and Oriental Papyri at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz.