Archaeologists have uncovered more than 43,000 ostraca, aka pottery shards and limestone flakes used for writing, at the Athribis site in Upper Egypt. Collectively, they provide us modern folk with reams of vivid detail of everyday ancient Egyptian life through a variety of notes, including ancient receipts for transactions.
The excavations were led by the University of Tübingen in Germany and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and were conducted between 2005 and 2026. The shards discovered harken back thousands of years, ranging from the Ptolemaic period (332–30 BCE) to the 9th–11th centuries AD.
They were primarily written in Demotic script, a simplified cursive used in ancient Egypt for everyday writing, but they also included texts in Greek, hieroglyphic, Coptic, Arabic, and Hieratic.
Archaeologists Found 43,000 Ancient Egyptian Notes and Receipts Scribbled on Pottery Shards
As for the subjects of all this writing, it’s nothing monumental and earth-shattering, which makes it all the more special. It’s receipts, delivery notes, kids’ schoolwork, horoscopes, and notes to self. They encapsulate the mundane to them but fascinating to us day-to-day lives of people who would have otherwise been lost to time.
The discovery of this trove reveals how religious practices unfolded and how ancient Egyptian businessmen conducted their administrative duties, but also provides evidence of detailed record-keeping, literacy, and education among the Egyptian non-elite.
The excavation site has expanded over time, yielding a new trove of discoveries with each growth spurt. In 2018, a section near the Temple of Ptolemy XII revealed a large ceramic deposit, prompting further digging and expansion that yielded thousands more shards. On some days, archaeologists unearthed 50 to 100 pieces, each of which needed to be painstakingly 3D digitized, catalogued, and interpreted.
It was a slog, one that was eventually eased a bit by AI, according to Professor Christian Leitz of the University of Tübingen Institute for the Cultures of the Ancient Near East, via a university press release.
The researchers expect the trove of shards to expand as the excavation continues, with each new piece furthering our understanding of what life was like on the Nile over 2,000 years ago.
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