Non-literary, ‘documentary’ texts from Ancient Egypt have provided and continue to provide a key witness for our knowledge of the administration, education, economy, etc. of the Ancient world. This project argues that since documentary texts represent originals, their external characteristics should also be brought into the interpretation. The project’s driving hypothesis is that ‘communicative variation’ – variation that is functionally insignificant but socially significant – enables the expression of social meaning. The main aim of the project is to analyse the nature of this communicative variation.