الفهرس 
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Abstract
Despite the preponderance of dated Middle Kingdom features, the preserved remains of the site referred to as a cemetery used in almost all major periods through the history of ancient Egypt ranging from the Early Dynastic times up to the Coptic Period.
However, El-Lahun flourished and reached the height of its importance in the era of the Middle Kingdom during the time of the 4th Pharaoh of the 12th dynasty, Senwosret II. He chose this place to build his complex funeral pyramid and the El-Lahun settlement also played the role of a regional centre.
William Matthew Flinders Petrie the discoverer and excavator of El-Lahun town for many years (1889, 90, 1911, 1914 and 1920), revealed numerous quantities of furniture, implements and ornaments, which supply useful information about Egyptian town planning. He also unearthed one of the most significant papyri finds in the history of Egyptology. These papyri are dealing with such varied topics as healing and veterinary texts, administrative and business records and provide new knowledge about social aspects such as administrative and legal systems, insight into the daily life of the people, their attitudes, and customs, plus the personal issues of social interaction in the Middle Kingdom and El-Lahun society.
A short time after the discovery of the Petrie papyri in 1898 another group of papyri appeared on the Egyptian antiquities market at the start of 1899. Ludwig Borchardt obtained the permission of a survey on the site in June 1899, The investigations on the area during the 12th to 26th June, yielded the three rubbish heaps located East, North, and West of the town. Concentrating his activity on the western rubbish heap which was situated outside of the town wall to the north of the Valley Temple he found the papyri which is now called the Berlin papyri.
Through these excavations, the El-Lahun papyri were divided into two categories:
1- “The Town Archive” which is represented by the papyri which Petrie had found in the town. These papyri date to the late Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties, and are now in the Petrie Museum.
2- “The Temple Archive” is represented in the papyri which Borchardt had discovered in the rubbish mound north of the Valley Temple of the Senwosret II pyramid complex, by the west wall of the town. These papyri date to the reigns of Senwosret III and Amenemhat III, and are now in the Egyptian Museums of Berlin and Cairo.
As a result of the great importance of this huge collection of hieratic papyri, which included many mysteries and information both in their content, form, design, and the method of their writing. By using the expressions and formulas which serve the type of the manuscript and its content, we can reflect on these papyri as to what they tell us about the nature of El-Lahun society and the role of writing in the service of different institutions and elements in ancient Egyptian society. This prompted the researcher to choose this subject under the title: “A Social History of Writing through the Hieratic Sources of the Middle Kingdom from El-Lahun”.
The researcher has faced several questions about the concept of “the social history of writing”. To this I generally replied by saying the social history of writing - a vast field of research the purpose of which is to understand the level of education and literacy not only as the percentage of individuals able to read and write but also studying the levels of literacy in the society.
The topic of “social history of writing” has the potential for a substantial contribution to Egyptology and the wider history of the ancient world, because there has been little research into the question of the social context for writing (the manuscripts themselves and the materials used in writing).
Paleography as a social history of writing is not only interested in the morphology of the documents but by social practices that guide their creation . In using the term “social history” I am trying also to convey an interest in looking at and explaining the relation between writing and a variety of social institutions, such as legal, medical, educational, religious and economic interests. That is, I am interested in exploring the various ways in which writing has served these social institutions, how it has done so, and that by using the specific formulas, terms and expressions, form and design we can determine the purpose of each kind of object. Through that we can reach out to who wrote it, where and how they did it and why and for what was it done.