This dossier of thirteen early demotic documents from the last years of the reign of Dareios the Great and from the brief reign of the ephemeral native king Psammetichos IV, a time of apparent prosperity in Egypt, relates to various agricultural affairs. Thanks to the great variety of their contents, the detailed commentary constitutes a veritable conspectus of the study of early demotic documents and shows what may be achieved in this fact at present. The book's most notable advances are those made in the diverse domains of state and temple administration, cattle breeding, agriculture, metrology ('money'), grammar, vocabulary, and the legal formulary of early demotic contracts.

These texts are here published in annotated transcriptions and translations with complete word indexes, and also represented in photographic plates. A long and innovative excursus investigates the exact derivation of a great number of demotic signs, thus placing the transcription of early demootic on a more certain footing than it previously had, while occasionally the results have repercussions for our transcription of New Kingdom hieratic proper.