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 (2017-2024) 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, Pascal Siesenop, and Lara Ivanov, as well as interns Anissa Zoubir and Mostafa Shaker. Much support is provided by the university Data Center.
I am grateful to colleagues working on other digital Egyptological projects, open for cooperation and providing useful information. 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 for consulting me on the possible inclusion of parts of my data in the Trismegistos, to the THOT project, and personally to Peter Dils for entering additional entries for collection to THOT. I am grateful to Anne Herzberg-Beiersdorf (Prosopographia Memphitica ) for a fruitful exchange of data and ideas and to the team of the iClassifier project for inspirations and discussions. I very much appreciate the kind permission from Kento Zenihiro to include data on museum holding of funerary cones from his magnificent database The world of funerary cones and stamped bricks. I always profit from lunchtime discussions on digital topics with the team of the project Altägyptische Kursivschriften.
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 | ,
| Belfast | National Museums NI | Stephen Weir, Agrippa Njanina | ,
| Berlin | Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung | Friederike Seyfried, Klaus Finneiser, and Jana Helmbold-Doyé |
| Berlin | Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities | Silke Grallert and Angela Böhme |
| 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, Jamie Kelly |
| Chicago | Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum (Oriental Institute Museum) | John Larson, Susan Allison, and Emily Teeter |
| Cincinnati | Art Museum | Sarah Wenner |
| 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 |
| Leiden | National Museum of Antiquities | Robbert Jan Looman |
| Leipzig | Ägyptisches Museum — Georg Steindorff | Dietrich Raue, Nadine Zschach, Susi Bergmann, and Jana Helmbold-Doyé |
| 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 |
| Northampton | Northampton Museum & Art Gallery | Elizabeth Ravine |
| 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, Romane Betbeze |
| 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, Kristina Gaugler |
| 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 |
| Swansea | The Egypt Centre | Ken Griffin |
| 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 |
| Uppsala | Uppsala University Museum | Ludmila Werkström |
| Vatican | Musei Vaticani | Mario Cappozzo |
| Vienna | Museum of Art History | Michaela Hüttner |
| Zagreb | Archaeological Museum | Igor Uranić |
Many colleagues have provided valuable feedback, corrections, and additions 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, Tobias Konrad, Anne-Hélène Perrot, Danijela Stefanović, Gloria Rosati, Olena Romanova, and many more people. I am very obliged to all colleagues sharing research material, particularly to Jorke Grotenhuis for kindly providing spellings of names in Coffin Texts for inclusion in the database and to JJ Shirley and Alexis Den Doncker for generously shared study photographs of Theban tombs.
While working on the database, I conducted a survey of ten unpublished 18th dynasty tombs in Luxor (November-December 2023). I am much obliged to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt for the permission to conduct a survey within the framework of my database project, and particularly to Dr. Nashwa Gaber, Dr. Fathy Yaseen, Dr. Bahaa al-Din Abd el-Gaber Badawy, and inspector Mahmoud Elazab. I owe many thanks to rais Abdelhamid Osman Taia Daramalli and to Mohamed Osman Taia Daramalli, who helped me a lot in accessing and photographing the tombs. Many colleagues have helped me in word and deed in the preparation of this survey. While I risk having omitted someone, I would like to express my utter gratitude to Susanne Bickel, Alexis Den Doncker, Khaled Hassan, Julianna Paksi, Elina Paulin-Grothe, Wael Sherbiny, and JJ Shirley. I particularly profited from the kind advice on infrared photography provided by Marco Repole, Antonio José Gómez Laguna, and Juan Ángel Ruiz Sabina. I also owe special thanks to Zoltán Fábián for the kind permission to document TT 204, located (originally unbeknown to me) within his concession. I am thankful to the German Archaeological Institute (Dietrich Raue and Kathrin Gabler) and the Austrian Archaeological Institute (Irene Forstner-Müller) for providing me the abode during my research trip to Egypt.Mainz, 16 August 2024