To Theanous, I wish you to know that the caravan comes to Didymoi on the twenty seventh. So I write to you to get your things ready. [Signed] Theophilos
-Ostracon 404, from the Red Sea Desert fort Didymoi on the Berenike-to-Koptos Road, French Archaeological Institute, Cairo, 2011
I received a letter from Hajj Bashir in Sudan, its message much like that on this Ist C CE pottery shard, giving me two weeks notice to get myself to El Obeid in January 1984 if I wanted to join his Dabouka to Cairo. Lucky for me, KhairAllah was its Khabīr and I arrived on time.