Draft talk:Book of the Dead of Qenna

Book of Dead of Qenna (newest posts first)
As far as I can determine, Qenna has not been published in full in the professional literature, although Projekt Totenbuch carries a table of contents (i.e. list of spells) for it. Therefore Leemans remains the only source covering Leiden T2. Barbara Lüscher has collations in part (source suggestions, post below). The heart-weighing scene, 125(d) in Thos. Geo. Allen, is present, along with the hymn to Re, 15 in Thos. Geo. Allen, and scene with Isis & Nepthys facing the lions sf "yesterday" & dwA "tomorrow," are available online from Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, or were; recently they cut the download selection to two sheets. The text appears to be in fair condition where extant, but may be corrupt. In Qenna's heart weighing scene, Thoth assumes baboon form at left with Ammit seated facing him across scale; Anubis leads Qenna beyond scale after successful outcome. The hymn to Osiris, 17 in Thos. Geo. Allen, is not available online now.

I am having difficulty reading Qenna independently and w/o published translation cannot add to article. Qenna's name is at head of Col. 1 accompanying heart-weighing, with Gardiner U38 "balance" below; G26+R12 Thoth (ibis on standard) is in Col. 2; phrase Sms Hrw "follower of Horus" heads Col. 3, next, independent pronoun jnk begins a nominal sentence or participial statement; Osiris is named in Col. 4; Col. 5 begins with Dd jn jnpw "Words said by Anubis." Jessegalebaker (talk) 07:38, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Original creator of this article is a hobbyist with no special qualifications in this field. The article were best written by an Egyptologist, which won't happen since they have their own forums.

Ongoing Problems with article content:


 * 1) Scope doubtful--it's possible it should be folded into main article on book of dead.
 * 2) Overreliance on secondary sources, even if reputable. (Von Dassow, Kemp, and Taylor are professional Egyptologists.)  It's hard to provide any background context around Spell 151 from primary sources without lengthy digressions.  And it's discussion of this spell that makes article seem off-topic.  It's supposed to be about Qenna's copy of Book of Dead specifically.  Yet, the house of hearts is central to Qenna's significance, and Spell 151 is essential to understanding the house of hearts.
 * 3) Information still needed  (Please do correct me if I am wrong about following):
 * Provenance and identity of person named Qenna. I suspect Qenna was acquired on the antiquities market in the mid- to latter 19th century without archaeological context. I cannot yet source this information.  Multiple people have the name Qenna.  There are at least two Qennas at Deir el-Medina from the Ramesside period, in the workmen's village near the Valley of the Kings.  They are mentioned in
 * Davies, B. 1999.  Who's Who at Deir El-Medina.  Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.
 * Qenna, son of Anhurkhawy (p. 22)
 * Qenna (viii), son of Prehotep (p. 267)
 * Neither of these Qennas is the Qenna of the papyrus here. His ID as "merchant" is just that--in quotation marks, as his Book of Dead calls him "scribe" and his career details are unknown.


 * Contents and Organization of Qenna copy. Van Dijk (1995 source used this article for house of hearts) relied on Naville 1886, a collation of Book of Dead copies then known, supplemented by photos the museum provided to him at his request.  Qenna apparently had never received a full scholarly publication as of 1995.  This may have begun to change as of 2006 with the Totenbuchtexte series launched by Orientverlag in connection with the Book of the Dead project, which is still ongoing.  There are 8 volumes in all now, though none cover Spell 151.

Source suggestions:


 * Good references on Book of Dead research in general can be found in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology or Jl. Near Eastern Studies, on JSTOR.
 * Many good sources aren't too recent, but stay away from E.A. Wallis Budge, in cheap reprints or pdf but now considered unreliable.
 * Bibliography in German appears in Burkhard Backes, Ed, 2009,  Bibliographie zum Altägyptischen Totenbuch.  This is part of a series, Studien Zum Altagyptischen Totenbuch, issued by Harrassowitz Verlag, with material in German, French, and English.
 * University of Bonn, Germany, has object record of the papyrus, with a bibliography of its own. Most of this is general, not specific to Qenna.  However, they offer a complete list of BOD spells included in Qenna's copy.  Universitat Bonn.  n.d.  Das Altagyptische Totenbuch.  (web site w/ catalog.)  http://totenbuch.awk.nrw.de/objekt/tm134346  See spell list below.
 * Barbara Lüscher. 2006 Die Verwandlungssprüche (Tb 76-88): Totenbuchtexte Band 2. Orientverlag, Basel.  Computer search indicates parts of Qenna are transcribed here.  These are synoptic editions with hieroglyphic, this one with Spells 76-88.  None of the 8 available volumes in this series have Spell 151.  It may come out in near-future years, though.  Publisher catalog at http://www.orientverlag.ch/Publications-TbT/

Planned Revisions of article:

List of BOD spells in order in Qenna: 16A, 15A, 16B, 15A2, 1, TG, 17, 180, 181, 15B3, 151, 83, 84, 85, 82, 126, 144, 77, 86, 99, 99B, 119, 125A, 125B, 102, 136, 136A, 136B, 32, 39, 79, 88, 87, 81A, 146, 79, 63A, 89, 110, 148, 185, 186, 27, 78. Source: Univ. of Bonn, see above.

There are of course duplicates, omissions, and gaps. Spell 17 Hymn to Atum, 125 Negative Confessions, 151 Anubis over Mummy with Sons of Horus, 148 Celestial Cows and Steering Oars, and 185-186 Hymn to Osiris are present. In Papyrus Ani, 30B goes with weighing of heart by Anubis, but it is not listed here. This doesn't tell me whether heart weighing vignette is shown, with different text or no text. Ani was probably somewhat later date.

Problems with article formatting:


 * 1) "ibid" changed.  But the references now depend on the bibliography, which could also be altered.  The biblio itself is not in the recommended MLA style.  I may simply lack the skill to format the article.  The latter seem to entail generating a complete biblio entry for every footnote, because a new Refname is still needed for each new page number in a single work.

Jessegalebaker (talk) 22:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Ida B. Wells: People's Grocery in Early Career section (unlikely to use)
Only the Wells quote has a citation. Material on this business, its competition with a store across the street, the 1892 altercation (which involved the shootings of three white males), the following lynch mob, and motives for participants in these events are all unsourced and possibly not too accurate. The events themselves occurred but some of the reasons remain unclear. For instance, Wells relates an earlier fight between area white and colored children which involved the adult store owners in a legal dispute [1]. Apparently a colored boy in the fight had been flogged by one of the white adults. So, did personal animosities not related to business competition factor?

Likewise, most recent historians writing about the People’s Grocery have had political interests in the story. It was an issue discussed in Populist circles then, and covered mainly by feminists and civil rights activists today [2]. Which makes it doubtful in my opinion that some things about it will ever be known.

If the race controversy is going to remain intractable, a summary article just giving dates, places, and names would be preferable to narrative or explanation. Ida Wells is looked to as a founding figure in American sociology and social work, meaning that lots of students consult the Wiki first to get research leads. They shouldn't have to wade through interpretive clutter to do so.

[1] Wells, I. (1892/2013). A Lynching at the Curve, 1892. [Book chapter]. Pp. 47-52 in A. Duster, (Ed.), Crusade for justice: The autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Waldrep 2006, used elsewhere in the Wiki article, does contain this selection but it’s not cited for the People’s Grocery, only for Well’s leaving Memphis after the Free Speech newspaper offices were sacked.)

[2] Sterling, D. (1988). Black Foremothers. New York: The Feminist Press. Jessegalebaker (talk) 18:21, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Hays, Kansas (unlikely to use)
Hays City (renamed simply as Hays in 1895) was a frontier town witnessing violence which would later fuel the American myth of the Old West, including the 1869 murder of Union Pacific watchman James Hayes and subsequent vigilante hanging of three African-American soldiers from the fort among 30 homicides which occurred during the six years up to 1873. By 1885, the year Hays City was incorporated, a cemetery north of town held the bodies of at least 79 outlaws and had become known as “Boot Hill.” Several notable figures of the Old West lived in the Hays City of this era, including George Custer and his wife Elizabeth, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok, who served a brief term as sheriff in 1869.

Hays City became the county seat of Ellis County in 1870. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, rougher elements of the populace began to leave town, many following the Kansas Pacific railroad construction west to Sheridan (in Logan County) or heading for the newer Dodge City area to the south. Hays City became more civilized, especially as Volga Germans entered Ellis County in 1876, finding its land suitable for their lifestyle and the types of crops they had grown in Russia. They brought with them Turkey Red Wheat, a type of winter wheat whose cultivation contributed to the agricultural transformation of the region. Bukovina Germans began settling in the area in 1886. These groups had a significant impact on the local way of life, establishing Hays as a regional center of ethnic German culture.[needs citation] Jessegalebaker (talk) 04:16, 22 January 2017 (UTC)