Crafts in the temple: the Ptolemaic inlay workshop in the Soknebtynis sanctuary

The economic role of temples in Graeco-Roman Egypt has been stressed on various occasions. In fact, they constituted key points of the local administrative system and did not only cover religious functions. The main sanctuaries consisted in the temple building, home of the god, which contained his living effigy, and a series of connected paraphernalia. From an archaeological point of view, production facilities and warehouses inside the temples are often poorly visible, because they were mainly built of mudbricks, and therefore are more exposed to post-depositional processes. In this context, the possibility of locating the workshops unearthed by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Egypt at the site of Tebtynis (years 1930-1936), thanks to the study of an extraordinary archival documentation preserved both in Italy and Canada, offers the chance to obtain a preliminary topographic and typological overview of the annexes of the temples during the Graeco-Roman period. The following paper aims to investigate, by way of example, that «laboratorio di smalti colorati tolemaici» (workshop of colored Ptolemaic enamels) which is described by Carlo Anti as the source of some of the most relevant «oggetti d’arte» (art objects) discovered during his excavations in Tebtynis.