This volume publishes the demotic ostraca discovered by the EES in the Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara more than thirty years ago. The majority of the four hundred plus ostraca published in this volume are written on potsherds but there are also limestone and gypsum plaster fragments, and writing-boards. Collectively, they preserve two different types of text: jar-labels or dockets originally written upon a complete vessel, and secondly compositions written upon a sherd that had already been broken from its parent vessel, or a flake of limestone or some similar material. The texts include literary and magical compositions, and a range of texts which argue for the existence of a scribal school of some kind. There is also a short oracular question, various dedications to the gods of the Necropolis, an appeal to the Mother of the Apis, lists of payments and divine images, and a document of self-sale or self-hire which is probably the earliest such document so far recognised. Some of the texts date from the Achaemenid period but the majority are undoubtedly Ptolemaic.

John Ray was Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has a particular interest in the Demotic script, and has published widely on this.