Concerning architecture, the so-called Book of the Temple describes how a temple ought to
be built and its cult organized. As regards pharmacology, the efficacy of surviving remedies
such as the application of mouse-dung and wine to an ailing ear recommended in P. Vienna
D-6257 seems questionable. Among the medical texts is a dentist’s manual, P. Vienna
D-12287.
Several mathematical texts survive. They evidence a degree of sophistication that
progressed somewhat beyond the great mathematical texts of the first half of the second
millennium BCE, namely P. Rhind and the mathematical P. Moscow. Examples of problems
treated are as follows: (a) divide 100 by 15^2 / 3 ; (b) if a circular piece of land is 100 square
cubits large, give the diameter; (c) if a pyramid has a height of 300 cubits and a square base
whose side is 500 cubits, give the distance from the center of any side to the apex.
Among astronomical texts, the Stobart Tables record the motions of the planets over a
number of years. P. Berlin 13146+13147 contains a canon of lunar eclipses. The demotic and
hieratic P. Carlsberg 1 and 1a of the 2nd c. CE comment on a hieroglyphic astronomical text
surviving in two copies dating to about 1300– 1150 BCE in the Osireion at Abydos and in the
rock tomb of Ramses IV in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. P. Carlsberg 9 provides a simple
rule for optimally distributing 309 calendrical lunar months of 29 or 30 days over a cycle of
25 Egyptian years, there being about 9,124.95 days in 309 astronomical lunar months and
precisely 9,125 days in both 25 Egyptian years (25 × 365) and 309 calendrical lunar months
of which 164 have 30 days and 145 have 29 (164 × 30 + 145 × 30 = 9,125). Horoscopes, of
which about eight in Demotic have been published so far (far fewer than Greek specimens
from Egypt), are not attested before the Roman period (that is, before 30 BCE). The zodiac
was presumably imported from Babylonia not long before the earliest known horoscopes.
Much more unpublished astronomical material exists in the Carlsberg Collection in Copen-
hagen and in ostraka excavated at Medinet Madi or ancient Narmuthis, now at the Cairo
museum, as well as at the British Museum in London and in Lille and Florence.
For decades, Otto Neugebauer (1899–1990) was the principal and sometimes the sole
student of mathematics and astronomy as transmitted in Demotic (on Neugebauer, see
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137 [1993] 139–65). All his writings on
the subject are essential (for a complete bibliography up to the late 1970s, see Centaurus
22 [1979] 257–80).
R.A. Parker, Demotic Mathematical Papyri (1972); E.A.E. Reymond, “From an Ancient Egyptian Dentist’s
Handbook. P. Vindob. D. 12287,” in: Mélanges Adolphe Gutbub (1984) 183–199; A. Jones, “The Place
of Astronomy in Roman Egypt,” Apeiron 27 (1994) 25–51 (with bibliography); Leo Depuydt, “The
Demotic Mathematical Astronomical Papyrus Carlsberg 9 Reinterpreted,” Egyptian Religion; The Last
Thousand Years (1998) 1277–1297; Fr. Hoffmann, Ägypten: Kultur und Lebenswelt in griechisch-römischer Zeit;
Eine Darstellung nach den demotischen Quellen (2000) 103–137, 271–277.
Leo Depuydt
Derkullide ̄s (ca 50 BCE – 120 CE)
Commentator on P, apparently specialized in mathematical and astronomical pas-
sages. S (CAG 9 [1882] 247–248, 256), quoting P, mentions the 11th
book of Derkullide ̄s’ The Philosophy of Plato, where Derkullide ̄s cites H on
Plato’s “categories.” T S (Expos. 198.11–204.21 Hiller; 202.7–204.21 may
be Theo ̄n not Derkullide ̄s) quotes from The Spindle and the Whorl in Plato’s Republic, an exegesis
of Rep. 616c–617d which may have been a part of the work mentioned by Simplicius.
DERKULLIDE ̄S