ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that several instances of the scholar’s response to the challenge offered by a papyrus or group of papyri. One of the richest and most influential studies of bilingualism in Ptolemaic Egypt was published a half-century ago by Roger Remondon. It is founded on a single papyrus text, and a small one at that, just nine short lines written on part of a tall, thin strip of material. The comparative evidence for the Delta is too sparse to allow one to be certain what part of it was the source of the papyrus, but the attribution to the region appears sufficiently secure. As van Minnen notes, similar translations of Egyptian names into Greek occur elsewhere; what is noteworthy about the Amsterdam papyrus is the regularity and concentration of cases in a particular population, presumably part of the citizen body of a nome capital in the Delta.
