Preface and acknowledgments
It was Sergej Saprykin, chair of the Department of Ancient History at Lomonosov Moscow State University, who first proposed to prepare my complete dataset for publication after I completed my PhD in 2011. The enterprise seemed unfeasible at first (even more so, as the original proposal was to publish the catalogue as a book, with hieroglyphic transcriptions or photographs of each object). Yet the idea lingered in my mind, and eventually, I found that making the database publicly accessible is not only possible, but also necessary step.
The lifework of Oleg D. Berlev on Middle Kingdom society has always been the greatest inspiration for me ever since I started studying Egyptology (sadly, two years after Berlev's death). The present dataset owes much in form and substance to his slip index catalogues of Middle Kingdom persons, titles, and monuments, kept at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg after his death.
The project in its present stage is generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and carried out at the Division of Egyptology of the Department of Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. I am most grateful to all my colleagues here in Mainz for friendly support and the perfect research atmosphere. I should like to especially thank the project research assistants Svenja Stern and Pascal Siesenop and interns Anissa Zoubir and Mostafa Shaker as well as the university Data Center.
I am grateful to colleagues working on other digital Egyptological projects, open for cooperation and providing useful information. In particular, my thanks go to the Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der ägyptischen Sprache (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities) for providing the raw data on Egyptian personal names and titles from the TLA, to the Trismegistos project (The Catholic University of Leuven) for consulting me on the possible inclusion of parts of my data in the Trismegistos, and to the THOT project.
Museums and archives
Such an undertaking would be utterly impossible without access to unpublished materials granted to me at various times by numerous museums and archives. I send my immense thanks to (in the alphabetical order of locations)
| Aberdeen | University Museums | Louise Wilkie |
| Athens | National Archaeological Museum | Maria Lagogianni and Konstantinos Nikolentzos |
| Barcelona | Museu Egipci de Barcelona | Luis Manuel Gonzálvez |
| Berlin | Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung | Friederike Seyfried, Klaus Finneiser, and Jana Helmbold-Doyé |
| Beverly Hills | California Museum of Ancient Art | Jerome Berman |
| Bristol | Bristol Museum and Art Gallery | Lisa Graves |
| Cairo | Egyptian Museum | Lotfy Abdel Hamid, Eman Amin, Marwa Abdel Razek, and the entire Registration, Collections Management, and Documentation Department |
| Cambridge | Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology | Imogen Gunn and Annie McKay |
| Chicago | Field Museum | Lauren Hancock |
| Chicago | Oriental Institute Museum | John Larson, Susan Allison, and Emily Teeter |
| Durham | Oriental Museum | Rachel Barclay and Ashleigh Sheppard |
| Edinburgh | National Museums Scotland | Margaret Maitlandand Daniel Potter |
| Florence | Egyptian Museum | Maria Cristina Guidotti |
| Fribourg | University of Fribourg, BIBEL+ORIENT Museum | Leonardo Pajarola and Andreas Dorn |
| Geneva | Museum of Art and History | Marie-Laure Monney |
| Glasgow | Glasgow Life/Glasgow Museums, The Burrell Collection | Winnie Tyrrell |
| Hanover | Kestner Museum | Christian Loeben |
| Hildesheim | Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum | Christian Bayer and Regine Schulz |
| Jerusalem | Israel Museum | Shirly Ben-Dor Evian |
| Jerusalem | Rockefeller Archaeological Museum | Alegre Savariego |
| Karlsruhe | Badisches Landesmuseum | Katarina Horst |
| Kirklees | Dewsbury Museum, Kirklees Museums and Galleries | Katina Bill |
| Kraków | National Museum | Agata Ralska |
| Leeds | Leeds Museums and Galleries | Katherine Baxter |
| Leipzig | Ägyptisches Museum — Georg Steindorff | Dietrich Raue, Nadine Zschach, and Susi Bergmann |
| Liverpool | World Museum | Ashley Cooke |
| Liverpool | The Garstang Museum of Archaeology | Elle DeSpretter, Daniel Potter, and Hannah Godfrey |
| London | British Museum | the entire staff at the Study Room for the Ancient Egypt and Sudan |
| London | The Egypt Exploration Society | Carl Graves |
| London | UCL Petrie Museum | Pia Edqvist, Stephen Quirke, and Alice Stevenson |
| Lund | Kulturhistoriska föreningen för södra Sverige | Viveca Ohlsson |
| Lyon | Musée des Beaux-Arts | Geneviève Galliano and Henrique Simoes |
| Manchester | The Manchester Museum | Campbell Price |
| Marseille | Musée d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne | Gisèle Piérini |
| Moscow | The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts | Olga Vassilieva |
| Munich | Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst | Sylvia Schoske, Nathalie Skotnik, and Jan Dahms |
| New York | Brooklyn Museum | Edward Bleiberg, Yekaterina Barbash, Kathy Zurek-Doule, and Sandy Wallace |
| New York | Metropolitan Museum of Art | Janice Kamrin |
| New York | Staten Island Museum | Audrey Malachowsky |
| Nottingham | Nottingham City Museums & Galleries | Ann Inscker |
| Oxford | Ashmolean Museum | Liam McNamara |
| Oxford | Griffith Institute Archive | Cat Warsi, Francisco Bosch-Puche, Melissa Downing, and Vincent Razanajao |
| Paris | Centre Wladimir Golénischeff | Laurent Coulon |
| Paris | Musée du Louvre | Guillemette Andreu, Vincent Rondot, Patricia Rigault, Sophie Labbé-Toutée, Audrey Viger, and Catherine Bridonneau |
| Philadelphia | University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology | Jennifer Wegner and Jean Walker |
| Pittsburgh | Carnegie Museum of Natural History | Deborah G. Harding |
| Prague | Náprstek Museum | Pavel Onderka |
| Reading | Reading Museum & Town Hall | Jill Greenaway |
| St. Petersburg | Institute of Oriental Manuscripts | Ivan Bogdanov and Svetlana Shevelchinskaya |
| San Antonio | San Antonio Museum of Art | Jessica Powers |
| Strasbourg | The National and University Library | Daniel Bornemann |
| Toronto | Royal Ontario Museum | Cheryl Copson and Chris Grzymski |
| Toulouse | Musée Georges-Labit | Rodolphe Carreras |
| Tübingen | Egyptian Collection, The University of Tübingen | Susanne Beck |
| Turin | Museo Egizio | Simon Connor, Federica Facchetti, and Paolo Del Vesco |
| Vatican | Musei Vaticani | Mario Cappozzo |
| Vienna | Museum of Art History | Michaela Hüttner |
| Zagreb | Archaeological Museum | Igor Uranić |
Mainz, August 2021