The TM Petitions database was created in the context of Gert Baetens’ doctoral project on petitioning in Ptolemaic Egypt and lies at the heart of his doctoral dissertation, a revised version of which is now published as G. Baetens, A Survey of Petitions and Related Documents from Ptolemaic Egypt (Trismegistos Online Publications Special Series 5), Leuven 2020. This dissertation provides an overview of all Ptolemaic petitions and all other Ptolemaic documents written in the typical petition formats (enteuxis, hypomnema and Demotic mqmq).

The ancient sources do not make a clear distinction between enteuxeis, hypomnemata and mqmq with petitioning function and without, but in the study under consideration texts are classified as petitions if they make “requests that are out of the ordinary or presented as such to the authorities” (Baetens 2020, pp. 6-9). The enteuxeis are further divided in enteuxeis addressed to the king and/or queen and enteuxeis addressed to other persons (Baetens 2020, pp. 19-21). The hypomnemata are further divided in an early type, with prescripts that actually contain the word ὑπόμνημα, and a later type, with prescripts of the form τῶι δεῖνι παρὰ τοῦ δεῖνος (Baetens 2020, pp. 67-70). Petitions designated as prosangelma are also included in the study, but are viewed as a subset of the later hypomnema petitions (Baetens 2020, pp. 197-218).

The database collects all 1198 published Ptolemaic enteuxeis, hypomnemata and mqmq, and adds some basic metadata to the TM Texts information about these documents (most importantly format, function, and addressee). It also provides access to their main formulae, and to the subjects and requests of the texts with petitioning function (over 7,000 annotations in total). In this first online version, designed by Mark Depauw and Yanne Broux, with the help of Tom Gheldof and Frederic Pietowksi, the documents can be browsed by means of individual formulae, subjects and requests. On the detail pages, links to the general TM Texts database can be found. In the future, more detailed searching options will be added.

A database of Ptolemaic enteuxeis, hypomnemata and mqmq.

General coordination:	M. Depauw
Database structure (Filemaker):	T. Gheldof
Online version (PHP & MySQL e.a.):	M. Depauw, T. Gheldof, F. Pietowksi
Online version (web design):	Y. Broux
Data processing:	G.Baetens