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Such an undertaking would be utterly impossible without access to unpublished materials granted to me at various times by numerous museums and archives.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

and to all other people who kindly helped to host my research visits and handle my research requests.

Many colleagues have provided valuable feedback and corrections to the published versions of this database. I should like to thank Erhart Graefe, Cecilia Benavente Vicente, Bieke Janssens, Tom Hardwick, Fred Vink, Timofey Shmakov, Christian Knoblauch, Marie-Nahid Massoumipour, Carlos Gracia Zamacona, and Tobias Konrad.

Mainz, 1 August 2023