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Contents : Arthur VERHOOGT Dictating Letters in Greek and Ro man Egypt: A Co mparative Perspective In this paper I will describe the process o f dictating letters in a contemporary illiterate setting in West Africa and use the observ ations to shed new light on what we s ee in p apyrus letters from Greek and Roman Egypt. Many of the papyri from Egypt are private and official letters. So me of them were written by the author of the letter him- or herself but many were dictated by the author to a s cribe. This is obviously the case when the author of the letter is illiterate but also occurs in cas es where she or h e is not. Dictated letters can be identified as larg ely spoken language by internal markers such as paratactic style and the inclusion of direct speech in the letter. External mark ers sometimes corroborate this internal evidence e.g. the chang e of hand in the conclusion of a letter often identified as the autograph of the literate author of the letter. For the most recent discussion of markers of dictation see Rog er Bagnall Raffaella Cribiore Wo men s Letters from Ancient Egyp t 2006 p . 61-63. Dictated papyrus letters display the result of dictation b ut are not very informative about the p rocess. Wh at happens wh en somebody dictates a letter to somebody else Wh at are the interactions bet ween the author and the scribe What are the contributions of others in this process In o rder to get so me s ense of the process o f dictation it is worth while to get a comparative perspective by s eeing what h appens during the dictation of a letter in a modern but highly illiterate society. In the context of my wife s anthropological research (completely un related to l etter writing) our family spent ov er a year in rural West Africa. During this period I was able to observe t he process of letter writing first hand on several occasions when members of the village co mmunity wh ere we stayed asked my wife to write (and deliver) letters for them and later read them to the addressees in other villages.

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