De Somniis - On Dreams

One of the facinating things about Internet is the possibilities of getting in contact with scholars all over the world who work with topics related to your own field. Have you ever contemplated how that was 10 to 15 years ago....? Or thought about how it will possibly be in 10 years from now on?

The reason I mention this today is the fact that I last night found a brief article on the net by a scholar I have never met, but whom I have been in contact with several times via e-mail. It is a Spanish scholar, presently at the Institute of Philology in the Department of Greek and Latin Philology, (at CSIC =Consejo Superior de Investigationes Cientificas); Sofia Torallas Tovar.

She has been working a lot on Philo's works De Somniis; her doctoral dissertation,"El De Somniis de Filón de Alejandría", was defended in Madrid (Universidad Complutense), September 12th. 1995.
I have, in fact, a summary of that dissertation, provided by Sofia, on my Philo site. You can read it here: Philo Alexandrinus' De Somniis: an attempt at reconstruction.

The article I found yesterday is in Spanish: Tres Estados De Conciencia En EN Filon De Alejandria: SUEÑO, VIGILIA Y ÉXTASIS. (see further J.-L. Cunchillos, J. M. Galán, J.-A. Zamora, S. Villanueva de Azcona (eds.), Actas del Congreso "El Mediterráneo en la Antigüedad: Oriente y Occidente", Sapanu. Publicaciones en Internet II (1998) [http://www.labherm.filol.csic.es] ).

In 1997 she published a Spanish translation of De Somniis /De Ioseph: Filón de Alejandría. Sobre Los Sueños. Sobre José. Introducción, Traducción y notas de Sfía Torallas Tovar (Biblioteca Clásica Credos, 253; Madrid, 1997).

Other related studies (on 'paper') are
'Sobre la clasificación de los sueños de Filón de Alejandría y sus implaciciones posteriores,' Cuadernos de Filología Clásica: estudios griegos e indoeropeos 9 (1999) 191-212.
‘El libro de los sueños de Sinesio de Cirene’, in R. Teja (ed.), Sueños y visiones en el paganismo y el cristianismo (Santa María la Real 2001) 69–81.
‘Philo of Alexandria on Sleep’, in T. Wiedemann and K. Dowden (edd.), Sleep, Nottingham Classical Studies 8 (Bari 2003) 41–52.

She has also published other fields, as this little book demonstrates: Gramática de Copto Sahídico
CSIC. Madrid, 2001. 164 pp, which seems to be not so much a grammar as a manual for students and researchers.

In later years, I think, she has been engaged in a project on the police system in ancient Egypt, drawing especially on the ancient papyrii. But I have seen no publications from this research so far.