Discarded, Discovered, Collected: The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection

567 30 1MB

English Pages [100]

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

Discarded, Discovered, Collected: The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection

  • Author / Uploaded
  • coll.

Citation preview

Page vi →Page vii →

Preface Visitors to the University of Michigan papyrus collection often ask whether there is a book about the collection. Until now, this question had to be answered negatively, although I would always refer patrons to the website of the collection (http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrus-collection), where much information can be found. This answer satisfied some, but not all, and in discussions with the then collection manager, Adam Hyatt, we agreed that a book like the one you are holding now would be a good idea. This book presents the history, scholarship, and impact of the University of Michigan papyrus collection with the help of some 40 texts from that collection. It will provide readers with an opportunity to actively discover something about the ancient world themselves through looking at and reading texts from the Michigan papyrus collection. It is my hope that this presentation will convey some of the excitement that comes with dealing with original documents from the ancient world that is felt by everybody who visits the papyrus collection. What I was looking for in writing this book is to provide a written version of what it is like to visit the papyrus collection for a tour. In a way, what follows is my interpretation of the University of Michigan papyrus collection rather than its objective presentation. In selecting the texts to present and discuss, I have taken into account what visitors to the collection are always intrigued by, but I have also included some lesser-known texts from the collection that I find interesting. Many readers will point at gaps in what this book covers. One significant gap in this book is late antiquity. This is unfortunate, because the collection includes a number of interesting and worthwhile texts from this important period in Egyptian history. The main reason for not including them is that I am not a specialist in Byzantine Egypt. Another issue with Byzantine papyri is that the more interesting ones are very long and difficult to incorporate in the vision I had of this book, which privileges breadth and diversity over exhaustive coverage of any single text. The online database of the collection allows anybody to search for texts that Page viii →she is interested in and that are not covered in this book or to find out even more about the ones that are. The field of papyrology was among the first to adopt the possibilities of the digital age starting in the early 1990s, when the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP) was first developed. Papyrology has continued to be at the forefront of digital humanities with numerous online projects. In this light, it may seem old-fashioned to present the Michigan papyrus collection in a printed book form. However, it will soon become clear to the reader that this book does not stand apart from the online world of papyrology but provides a gateway into it. This book builds on the contributions of numerous scholars who worked in the Michigan papyrus collection. It is a tribute to their hard work and at the same time an invitation to others to come and study the riches of the Michigan papyrus collection.

Page ix →

Acknowledgments The idea for this book took shape between 2010 and 2013 when I served as acting archivist for the Michigan papyrus collection after the unexpected death of Traianos Gagos in April 2010. During those years, I had a great team to work with, and I am grateful for their support. In the first year, Peggy Daub and Shannon Zachary provided a much needed connection with the library administration, while graduate students R. James Cook and Adam Hyatt did the day-to-day work to keep the collection running. I am much obliged to the collection managers, first Adam Hyatt and then Monica Tsuneishi. The latter has been instrumental in making sure that this book includes illustrations and charts. Several people read the manuscript in various stages and added their expertise. I am very grateful for the friendship, good cheer, and support of the current archivist of the collection, Brendan Haug, during the long process of this book’s genesis. Henrike Florusbosch edited the whole manuscript in its final stages and made sure that it all made sense. I want to acknowledge Shannon Zachary, head of the Library Conservation Department, who read through the entire manuscript in an early stage. Library conservators Leyla Lau-Lamb (now retired) and Marieka Kaye commented on drafts for chapter 3. Randal Stegmeyer made most of the images included in this book. He was also kind enough to comment on the section in chapter 4 that describes the various photographic techniques. I am fortunate to have a wonderful group of friends, colleagues, and students at the University of Michigan and elsewhere. Terry Wilfong read through parts of the manuscript and I was once again impressed with his sensitive editorial eye. He also kindly gave me permission to use the translation of his forthcoming edition of the Book of the Dead (fig. 6.1). I am grateful to Graham Claytor and Lizzie Nabney for reading parts of the manuscript and making detailed suggestions for its improvement. In Leiden, my “Doctor-buddy” Koen Donker van Heel once again came to my rescue when I was stuck in a Demotic text and provided the translation for figure 6.2. Rob Sier Page x →kept me focused by consistently asking the right question: What would be first, this book or the next national soccer championship for AZ Alkmaar? I won. At the University of Michigan Press I am grateful to Ellen Bauerle who ever so cheerfully kept me on track for this book project when other equally interesting projects interfered. She was responsible for finding the two anonymous reviewers who provided the kind of feedback that makes books better, and I am grateful to them both for taking the time to do so. I did most of the writing for this book during the 2014/15 academic year when I was a Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar. I wish to thank its staff and all my fellow fellows for creating a productive environment in which to work. In particular, I am grateful to Marwan Kraidy, Mark Moritz, and Diederik Oostdijk for stimulating discussions about the art of writing in our very different disciplines. This work was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS). The publication was supported by a grant from the Office of Research Faculty Grants and Awards Program of the University of Michigan and was made possible in part through the support of Virginia and William Dawson. Finally, I could not have finished this work without the support of my family. They were always there to keep me busy with discarding, discovering, and collecting more ephemeral items than papyri. This work is dedicated to the memory of Traianos Gagos.

Page xi →

Notes for the Reader The world of papyrology is a world full of jargon and technical terms and may seem daunting to the “uninitiated.” I have done my best to untangle this world as much as possible and to present it in a more accessible format without dumbing it down. Doing this requires continuous choices. One of the more apparent choices is that ancient texts are presented in an English translation. This removes the particularities of the ancient language but does allow the reader to engage with the ancient text directly. Because translations of literary texts such as Demosthenes, Homer, and the New Testament are more easily accessible, I have opted to not include translations of such texts. Unless otherwise mentioned, translations for all other texts have been adapted from the online APIS database. I provide some guidance to understanding the translation in the description of the text but have chosen not to give a line-by-line commentary explaining every aspect of a text. Doing this would slow down the pace of the book. I invite the reader to explore each text herself. The abbreviation BCE means “Before the Common Era,” and CE the “Common Era.” In recent scholarship these more neutral terms have replaced the terms BC (“Before Christ”) and AD (Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”). When possible, texts presented in this book are identified with their TM text number, a unique identifier for each text from the ancient world (see http://www.trismegistos.org). This identifier will allow the reader who wants to know more about a particular text presented in this book to search this database.

Page xii →Page 1 →

Chapter 1 The Papyrus Collection of the University of Michigan The eighth floor of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on the University of Michigan Central Campus is the home of the university’s papyrus collection. Behind a nondescript door in the center of the hallway lies an exciting world of writings from the ancient world. Although the actual papyri are hidden from view in the environmental room (see chapter 3), Room 807 is the center of papyrological activity not only on the University of Michigan campus but sometimes also in the United States and even the world. Room 807 Hatcher is the place where people and papyri come together. It provides the working spaces for U-M papyrology staff and conservators. It also is the space where students and the general public come for classes or tours of the collection. In addition, 807 Hatcher is a temporary home to visiting scholars who study papyri from the Michigan collection. Many scholarly friendships are forged here and many important discoveries are made. The physical space is fairly small. This becomes especially clear when larger groups enter for a tour of the collection: 15 people already make the room feel tight, 20 is pushing it, and with higher numbers it becomes uncomfortable. In that case, tour groups may be divided up to give everybody equal access to view the ancient papyri. From a research perspective, 807 Hatcher has everything to offer for anybody whose research touches on the ancient papyri from Egypt. Staff are available to bring out the papyri and if necessary (and time allows) to do conservation on the spot. There are magnifiers and a microscope to aid in reading difficult passages on a papyrus fragment. In addition, high resolution images can be provided, in infrared light if needed. The room also contains an excellent reference collection of papyrological books that aid the scholar in her research, and the U-M wireless network provides access to the many online papyrological resources. The view out of the windows to the south is Page 2 →stunning and allows the scholar to reenergize and organize thoughts while gazing outside. It is this productive setting that led the editors of a recent volume on legal papyri to note in their preface: “One can find no better place than the University of Michigan and its famed Hatcher Library Room 807 in which to work.”1 There can be little doubt that the University of Michigan papyrus collection is the most important collection of papyri in the United States. Both the breadth of the collection (geographically, chronologically, and thematically) and its contributions to many fields of study (biblical studies, ancient demography, ancient history, classical philology, archaeology) ensure that it has pride of place even among the most important papyrus collections in the world (Cairo, Berlin, Vienna, London, Paris, and Oxford to name a few). The actual number of papyri contained in the collection is large, although it is at this time impossible to give an accurate number. The typewritten inventory of papyri (with a few hand-written additions) includes over 7,000 inventory numbers, but many of these numbers actually consist of more than one papyrus fragment. In addition, there are still a number of boxes with numerous papyrus fragments that have not been cataloged or conserved (see fig. 1.1). The online database, which is organized by individual fragment rather than inventory number, has over 18,000 records at the moment of writing. However, this database contains all items that have once been attributed a Michigan inventory number. As we will see below (p. 10), a number of these items (1,100 potsherds with writing and a number of papyri that were excavated at the village of Karanis) have been returned to Egypt and are no longer physically present in Ann Arbor. The database also has records for the 200 papyri that constituted the papyrus collection of Cornell University, donated to the University of Michigan and moved to Ann Arbor in 1972. Although now part of the collection in Ann Arbor, these papyri have kept their Cornell University inventory numbers and are not part of this book. When every fragment has been counted and given an individual record in the online database, the Ann Arbor collection may comprise about 15,000 individual fragments of papyrus. They range in size from very small fragments (sometimes the size of a fingernail) to lengthy rolls.

The collection covers a broad timespan and a wide range of subjects. The oldest item is a fragment of an Egyptian Book of the Dead dating to the 11th century BCE (fig. 6.1), while the most recent item is a fragment of a Hebrew text from the 15th–16th century CE (fig. 6.10). The collection thus covers 2,500 years of writing. As chart 1.1 shows, however, most of the papyri in the Page 3 →collection date to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. This chronological pattern follows the overall pattern of texts from Egypt: the majority of texts date from the 2nd to 4th centuries CE, the time when many villages on the desert edge were abandoned and left to the desert, only to be rediscovered 1,800 years later. Fig. 1.1. Box with uncatalogued papyrus fragments All fragments are part of the single inventory number 6827. Purchased in 1935. The collection has contributed to many scholarly debates in a number of different fields. In biblical studies, the collection is well known for a number of important Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that have helped establish a more accurate text and have given a sense of how early books were produced (see chapter 8 for a description of the codex book format). In particular, the contribution of Michigan’s portion of the Pauline Epistles (fig. 8.2), both for the establishment of the text and the production of early Christian books, cannot be overstated. Among other manuscripts that feature prominently in New Testament scholarship are one page of a 3rd–4th century CE codex of Matthew 26 (P.Mich.inv. 1570) and one page of another 3rd–4th century CE codex with Acts 18–19 (P.Mich.inv. 1571).2 The collection also contains an example of an important apocryphal work, that is, a text that did not make it into the Christian canon of texts. This fragment is part of a 3rd century CE codex with the portions of the so-called Shepherd of Hermas, an allegorical work that was very popular in the early Christian church Page 4 →(P.Mich.inv. 917). The collection is also home to an important collection of early Christian texts in Coptic. Chart 1.1. Chronological distribution of the collection In classical philology, the collection has been important for understanding how books were produced in the ancient world and what features were appreciated by ancient readers. These insights have been derived from fragments in the collection containing works by classical authors. In addition, the collection contains small portions of works that were not copied during the medieval manuscript tradition (see chapter 8). Besides fragments of high literature, the collection also contains segments of more technical works. Homer is the ancient Greek author most represented in the collection with 57 fragments. This popularity is not surprising because Homer was a mainstay of Greek education throughout antiquity. There are 43 fragments of the Iliad and 14 fragments of the Odyssey. These proportions, too, accord with the pattern of Homer papyri overall, with much more Iliad papyri surviving than Odyssey papyri.3 Page 5 →The Michigan collection has also played an important role in various studies of the ancient world. The famous Karanis tax rolls (fig. 11.1), for example, have been crucial for understanding the economic history of Egypt, because they provide scholars with a list of nearly all the inhabitants of this village together with the amount of taxes they paid. The Michigan papyri from Karanis also contain many letters to and from soldiers and veterans of the Roman army. These letters may not be very informative on the military side of the Roman army (size of units, battle tactics, and so on), but they do give important insights into the place of soldiers and veterans in society. We will meet a number of these soldiers and veterans later on. Texts from Karanis sometimes illustrate aspects of life outside of the village, in Egypt, but also in the larger Mediterranean world. One unique and interesting text is a list with boats arriving at the harbor of Alexandria, with names, tonnage, and cargo. This papyrus (fig. 11.4) offers a glimpse into the active trading networks across the Mediterranean Sea under the Roman Empire. Michigan papyri also constitute the main source on the notarial writing office in Roman Egypt, which in turn has proven an important topic for understanding the day-to-day experiences of people living in the Roman Empire. One archive from the village Tebtunis (see also pp. 114–19 below) illustrates not only the day-to-day functioning of the office in the early 1st century CE but also allows for a statistical analysis of the volume of

contracts and other written documents produced by this office, and provides information about the notary’s customers. The doctoral research of a recent Michigan graduate student, Graham Claytor, has brought to light a long register from another writing office in the collection allowing for comparison of Roman writing offices over time and space.4 Papyri in the Michigan collection thus contribute to numerous scholarly debates. It is impossible to give a complete account of all contributions made by specific papyri. Many new contributions are small when taken in isolation: it may be a new personal name that we did not know existed, a new word that is not yet in the ancient Greek dictionaries, or more information about specific aspects of the ancient world such as marriage or inheritance. But taken together all these little discoveries add up to fill out our knowledge of the ancient world. Ongoing research in the collection ensures that the Michigan collection will continue to contribute to scholarly discussion and understanding of the ancient world.

Page 6 →

Chapter 2 History of the Collection The main driving force behind the University of Michigan papyrus collection was Professor Francis Willey Kelsey (1858–1927).1 Kelsey was a great scholar of the ancient world and through various administrative positions, locally and nationally, he was also responsible for successful initiatives such as the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor and the American Philological Association and the Archaeological Institute of America. In his many capacities, Kelsey was central not only to the intellectual and cultural life on the University of Michigan campus but also to classical scholarship in the United States. The impetus for the University of Michigan papyrus collection lay in Kelsey’s belief that students of the ancient world should have access not only to books but also to physical remnants of the ancient world. He wanted Michigan students to be able to see, touch, and experience the ancient world, and to that end he took the initiative to acquire for the University of Michigan a representative teaching collection of materials from the ancient world: ancient manuscripts, artifacts, and papyri. Kelsey’s vision led to the core holdings of what we now know as the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, as well as the Special Collections and Papyrology Collection of the University Library of the University of Michigan.2 Kelsey applied the same energy he showed in his various other initiatives to the acquisition of these collections. He secured the administrative and—more importantly—financial backing of the university for his plans and he personally went on trips to Europe and the Near East. During these trips he purchased the material he wanted for the University of Michigan and had it shipped back to Ann Arbor. During his first trip to Europe and the Near East, Kelsey also visited Egypt. There he sought out the expertise of British papyrologist Bernard P. Grenfell (1869–1926) of the University of Oxford, with whom he made a tour through Egypt in March–April 1920. During this tour, Kelsey and Grenfell Page 7 →visited several archaeological sites in Egypt and they also purchased papyri from a number of antiquities dealers in Cairo and elsewhere. As a result of this tour, Kelsey (and through him, the University of Michigan) forged a long-term working relationship with British papyrologists in Oxford and London and with several antiquities dealers in Egypt, among whom Maurice Nahman (1868–1948) would prove to be the most important for the development of the collection. Fig. 2.1. Francis W. Kelsey portrait Francis Willey Kelsey Papers, HS 5944. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan HS 5944. Photographer Enoch E. Peterson. The papyri that Kelsey purchased during this trip to Egypt were the first papyri to enter the Michigan papyrus collection. They make up the first 534 inventory numbers of the collection (see pp. 29–30 for the concept of “inventory number”).3 When we look back at this first acquisition, it is quite clear that Kelsey aimed for a representative collection of papyri that included an array of languages (Greek, Latin, Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew) and types of documents (literary texts, biblical texts, letters, accounts, etc.). Page 8 →Soon after returning to Ann Arbor, Kelsey applied his talent for organization to the international trade in papyri. Undoubtedly he noticed representatives of numerous Western institutions roaming the antiquities shops of Egypt at the same time and thus driving up the prices of papyri. He was sure that Michigan could do better and within a couple of months he contacted the British Museum in London to establish an international consortium to buy papyri, modeled after the German Papyruskartell that was active before World War I. Apart from the University of Michigan and the British Museum, other rotating members of this consortium were the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, Princeton University, and Columbia University. These institutions would pool

their money and send one representative to Egypt to buy papyri. The papyri were shipped back to the British Museum in London where they received some basic conservation and were divided among the contributing partners. During this division, fairness, not provenance, was the usual guiding factor; each institution would receive a certain number of complete and attractive texts commensurate with the amount of money that was put in. Unfortunately, this meant that groups of texts that clearly belonged together were divided between several collections. The core of the collection, about 2,800 inventory numbers, reached the University of Michigan during the time when this consortium was active.4 The largest acquisitions occurred in the early years (1921, 1922, and 1924), mostly supplied by the Egyptian antiquities dealer Maurice Nahman. In later years, the purchases became smaller with only hundreds of papyri to be divided among the contributing partners instead of, for example, the 4,700 papyri purchased for the consortium in 1924. The consortium continued to function until 1928. Afterward, individual faculty members would continue to buy smaller numbers of papyri for the collection until a more restrictive export policy for papyri and other antiquities and financial restraints caused by the Great Depression brought an end to regular purchases of papyri. It is important to realize that at the time when the University of Michigan began to acquire its papyrus collection, Egypt was under colonial and after 1922 semicolonial rule.5 The British ruled Egypt politically and militarily, while the French dominated the Egyptian Antiquities Service and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. With few exceptions, studying Egypt’s past at this time was something for educated white men from the West, and the representatives of the University of Michigan conformed to this pattern. The occasional racist remarks and asides about Egyptian workmen found in letters from the field written by Michigan faculty are thus jarring to modern ears. Page 9 →Buying antiquities in Egypt, including papyri, was subject to a number of laws and decrees, some dating back to the 19th century.6 A law of 1874, for example, required all exports of antiquities to be subject to approval by the Egyptian Ministry of Education. A 1912 law, when Egypt was under British colonial rule, further ensured that the Egyptian state was the owner of all antiquities found in or on Egyptian soil. As a result, the only antiquities that could legally be sold were part of collections existing before 1912 or that were discovered during excavations conducted under permit from the Egyptian government. Tellingly, the 1912 law did apply only to Egyptians, not to foreigners, who could continue to buy antiquities, but given that Egypt at the time was under British rule, this is not surprising. Antiquities could only be exported after consultation with and approval of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (at that time run by a French national!), but it is clear that this rule was not always followed.7 A new Egyptian antiquities law that also applied to foreigners only came into force in 1951, a year before Nasser’s revolution brought real independence to Egypt. This new law is the culmination of a slow Egyptianization of the country’s antiquities leadership with Egyptians gradually replacing Europeans in the Antiquities Service and directorship of the Egyptian Museum. However, enforcement of the various antiquities laws and decrees remained difficult, in part because punishments were not severe enough to deter antiquities dealers and buyers from breaking the laws. Kelsey was also instrumental in pushing for a University of Michigan excavation in Egypt. This led to the excavations at the site of the ancient town of Karanis in the Fayum. From 1924 to 1935, the University of Michigan funded an annual excavation season during the winter months. As we will discuss in more detail in chapter 11, this excavation was quite innovative for its time, in that it did not focus on searching for papyri alone but took a more holistic approach to the archaeological evidence, also taking into account the architectural and archaeological remains. The University of Michigan team also spent one season at the Fayum site of Soknopaiou Nesos (modern Dime) in 1931–32 and a brief season in Terenouthis (modern Kom Abou Billou in the Nile Delta) in 1935. A small number of papyri were found during the excavations at Soknopaiou Nesos, most of which remained in Egypt, but none during the short season at Terenouthis. The latter project focused on a cemetery that yielded very interesting information about Egyptian mortuary practices.8 Under annual agreements with the Egyptian Antiquities Service that detailed the division of finds between excavator and the Antiquities Service, Page 10 →papyri found at Karanis were shipped to Ann Arbor on loan for

study in the expectation that they could be returned upon request.9 The actual agreements that we have located in the collection of the Bentley Historical Library do not mention this arrangement specifically. They follow the format used for all foreign excavations and stress (in an additional note to Article 10 of the agreement) that the Egyptian Antiquities Service will claim as many objects from the excavations as it deems necessary for the collections of its various museums, but that it may give artifacts that it does not want to the excavator. We know with certainty that divisions of artifacts did happen and that only those objects that the Antiquities Service released were shipped to Ann Arbor and now form part of the collection of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. What sets the papyri apart from the other artifacts is that they all seem to have been brought to Ann Arbor, which implies that the actual division between Egyptian Museum and Michigan was postponed. Many Karanis papyri were indeed returned to Egypt in 1953, most likely as the result of a formal request from the Egyptian authorities, although the actual document has not yet been located in the archives in Ann Arbor. The fact that a large number of the papyri that were returned had not yet been published, or even individually cataloged and photographed, suggests that the return of these papyri happened under some pressure. These papyri are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but have retained their Michigan inventory numbers. A number of them are currently being studied in the original and prepared for publication.10 Research on the remaining Karanis papyri at Michigan has been ongoing, with another volume of Karanis papyri in preparation and others in the planning stages, so that eventually Michigan’s obligation to publish the remainder of its Karanis papyri will be closer to completion. One of the interesting developments on the Michigan campus as opposed to other campuses in the United States was a group effort among the faculty to study and edit the newly arrived papyri. Here too the guiding hand of Francis Kelsey may be detected, although Michigan faculty’s involvement in editing papyri continued after Kelsey’s death in 1927. None of the Michigan faculty at the time were papyrologists by training but they all were very successful in editing and publishing these documents. Among Kelsey’s colleagues on the U-M campus who became very much involved in the study and publication of the growing papyrus collection were Arthur E. R. Boak (1888–1962; professor of history), Campbell Bonner (1876–1954; professor of classical studies, Greek), Henry A. Sanders (1868–1956; professor of Latin), John G. Winter (1881–1956; professor of Latin language and literature; director Page 11 →of the Museum of Archaeology), and William Worrell (1879–1952; professor of Semitics), who were all instrumental in editing and publishing Michigan papyri from the very beginning of the collection.11 The faculty received assistance from a number of graduate students who later became faculty members of the same department (as was common then), among whom Roger A. Pack (1907–93; professor of Greek and Latin), Orsamus M. Pearl (1908–92; professor of Greek), and Elinor Husselman (1900–96; curator of manuscripts and papyri) deserve special mention. This group of scholars was responsible for the publication of a great number of texts that feature in the present volume. They could not have done their work, however, without the support of William W. Bishop (1891–1955), the university librarian from 1915 to 1941, under whose leadership the Department of Manuscripts and Papyri was founded in 1927. The support of the University Library has continued to the present day. The University Library’s support for the papyrology collection resulted in the appointment of Elinor Husselman as curator of manuscripts and papyri in 1925. Husselman, who studied Coptic and Greek papyri with Worrell, Winter, and Boak, held this appointment until her retirement in 1965 and combined it with an appointment as curator at the Museum of Archaeology (currently the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology). After her retirement, she continued to actively work with the collection by publishing papyri, as well as an edited summary report of the Karanis excavations (based on the unpublished excavation report by Enoch E. Peterson [1891–1978], the main director of the Karanis excavations).

Herbert C. Youtie (1904–80) The University of Michigan’s strength in papyrology was consolidated with the appointment in 1929 of Herbert C. Youtie (1904–80) as research assistant (later research associate, and from 1946 research professor) of papyrology. This further professionalized the study of Michigan papyri. Although Youtie’s primary appointment was to study and publish the collection, he was also involved in teaching Michigan graduate students (and students and scholars from other institutions) the art of papyrology. One of the students emerging from the Michigan program during Youtie’s tenure was Gerald M. Browne (1943–2004). In his papyrological

endeavors, Youtie had a companion in his wife, Louise Youtie (1909–2004), herself also a capable editor of papyri. Herbert Youtie was the prototype of a papyrologist in the most precise Page 12 →sense of the term: an astute reader and interpreter of texts on papyrus (and other writing materials). In editing papyri, Youtie set the standard to which others aspired, and it is not surprising that many scholars traveled to Michigan to work with him. One of the most productive visitors was Pieter J. Sijpesteijn (1934–96) from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, who came to regard Youtie as his second teacher of papyrology (his first was B. A. van Groningen at the University of Leiden). Youtie himself was also very interested in the cognitive aspects of reading papyri and devoted a lecture series to this iterative process of reading and interpretation to which we will return (pp. 28–29). Unlike many of his peers at other institutions, Youtie never set out to write a substantial historical narrative; his important contributions to the history of Greek and Roman Egypt were all contained in smaller papers, often based on the edition of a papyrus text. Youtie published many papyri and ostraca from the Michigan papyrus collection by himself, but he did so more frequently in collaboration with others. Among the volumes of Michigan papyri, Youtie was responsible for volume IV (the famous Tax Rolls, see chapter 11) and coauthored volumes VI and VIII, as well as the volume publishing texts from the 4th century CE archive of Aurelius Isidorus (P.Cair.Isid.), whose texts are housed largely in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Other projects for which Youtie was a driving force were the publication of papyri from Panopolis (P.Panop. from the Cologne and Dublin papyrus collections) and the papyri belonging to the archive of PetaГјs, a 2nd-century CE village scribe who did not know how to write (see chapter 10). In addition to these volumes of papyri, Youtie published many texts (not only from the Michigan collection) mostly in the Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik.

Ludwig Koenen (born 1931) With the appointment of Ludwig Koenen as professor of papyrology in 1975, Michigan papyrology became much more than the technical editing of texts. Koenen came from the University of Cologne in Germany where he had received thorough philological training, which he complemented with training with the British papyrologist Sir Eric G. Turner (1911–83). But Koenen is much more; he is also a leading classical philologist, historian, and scholar of ancient religions with many important and innovative publications in all these fields. For example, Koenen is one of the first scholars to point out an Page 13 →Egyptian element of Ptolemaic kingship, something that was until that time only seen as entirely Greek. His involvement in the Petra publication project demonstrates his capacities as an editor of Byzantine papyri that are difficult to read and interpret. Koenen’s arrival also heralded new initiatives in the Michigan papyrus collection. For one thing, his work with the collection made him aware of the need for conservation. Previously, the papyri were housed and stored largely by the papyrologists themselves, often in the original packaging in which the papyri arrived in Michigan in the 1920s, with little or no regard for the archival stability of the materials they were using. Koenen was concerned about the long-term care of the collection and, by expressing these needs in a memorandum to the University Library, he ensured that the conservation department began taking steps toward formal and systematic conservation of the collection in the late 1980s (see chapter 3). Koenen also felt that the collection needed to grow through continuing acquisitions to fill in gaps. At this time there still was a very active trade in papyri, especially those papyri that came from mummy casings that were made from reused papyrus. Several major collections worldwide (including Cologne and Duke University) purchased papyri extracted from such mummy casings at this time, especially from the Austrian papyrus conservator and antiquities dealer Michael Fackelmann (active in the 1970s–1980s). With a scholarly eye, Koenen monitored papyri and related material on the market for items that could meet the needs of the Michigan collection, such as papyri from the Ptolemaic period. He ensured that the library made funds available for a significant purchase of papyri in 1982, mostly papyri extracted from mummy casings. This purchase took place after the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit

Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property entered into force in 1972,12 which outlawed the export of antiquities acquired after this date from their country of origin. However, it took years for the significance of this treaty to result in the kind of due diligence or provenance research that is standard in public collections nowadays and the United States accepted it only in 1983. Provenance records for mummy casings sold by Fackelmann are unclear, so that we cannot always establish whether or not these objects first left Egypt before 1972. What is more troubling is that a small portion of the 1982 purchase (20 inventory numbers) was purchased in Cairo from an antiquities dealer who in 2005 was convicted for smuggling antiquities going back to 1971.13 It is quite clear now Page 14 →that this purchase is suspect. These pieces may have left Egypt illegally, and the Michigan collection must be prepared to return them to Egypt if this is proven to be the case. Given the possibly contested nature of this acquisition, I have chosen not to include any of these texts in this book. Koenen’s appointment intensified the Michigan tradition of training graduate students in papyrology that began already in the days of Kelsey and Winter. A consistent flow of dissertations consisting of editions of Michigan papyri (and other writing materials) was the result. Although not all directly supervised by Koenen, the dissertations of the following Michigan graduate students contained editions of papyrus texts (literary and documentary) from the collection: Timothy Renner (1974), Nancy Priest (1975), Vincent McCarren (1975), Robert Daniel (1981), David Martinez (1985), and Gregg Schwender (1988). In due course, the papyri edited in these dissertations were published in the standard papyrological journals, or as a stand-alone papyrus edition (P.Mich. XIV by Vincent McCarren and P.Mich. XVI by David Martinez). Koenen was also instrumental in pushing Michigan papyrology to the forefront of the new digital age that had its beginnings in the late eighties and early nineties of the 20th century. The support of the University Library was very important in this initiative. By hiring Traianos Gagos (1960–2010) as the first archivist of the Papyrology Collection in 1991 (combined first with a lectureship and from 1995 with a tenure-track faculty appointment in the Department of Classical Studies), Koenen ensured that the collection now had a face and a driving force.

Traianos Gagos (1960–2010) During his tenure as archivist of the papyrus collection, Traianos Gagos employed several initiatives to make sure that the interesting facts and information that papyri bring to light about life in the ancient world were not only made available to scholars but also to students and to a general audience. In this endeavor he was helped by the technological developments of that period, especially personal computing, the Internet, and digital photography. Reaching both the scholarly and general audiences was also at the forefront of a multi-institutional project initiated by Gagos, Roger Bagnall (then at Columbia University, now New York University), and the late John Oates (Duke University). Together these three set in motion what would become Page 15 →known as the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS). From 1996 to 2006, this consortium, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, built and expanded an online platform that provided access to the papyrus holdings of the United States (and beyond). It made papyri available with images, descriptions, and translations and thus appealed to both the scholarly world and the public including K-12 and college students who were dear to Gagos’s heart. APIS set the standard for many digital humanities projects that were developed subsequently. Although the consortium has ceased to exist, the project lives on as part of a larger online tool, the Papyrological Navigator (www.papyri.info) and new texts are being added to the various databases that lie behind this project on a regular basis. Gagos gave frequent in-person tours of the collection to interested groups. Many of these groups came from the University of Michigan campus, where undergraduate students in, for example, Great Books and Classical Civilization classes came to 807 Hatcher Graduate Library to see actual texts from the ancient world. Other groups came from further away with a number of church communities visiting the collection to see the early Christian holdings, such as the papyrus codex with parts of the Pauline Epistles (see chapter 8). Gagos’s outreach also had beneficial results in that two endowments were set up that aided research and conservation of the collection. One of them, left by Mr. Ralph Conger, allows the regular purchase of technical equipment (such as a digital presenter and a big screen used in class presentations); the other endowment, left by Edwin and Mary Meader,

supports the conservation and study of the collection. In addition, a bequest left by Mrs. Ann Parsons in 2010 has allowed the collection to install a permanent exhibit case in the University Library’s Audubon Room as well as the production of an iOS app and video projects detailing the history of the Michigan collection. While these exciting developments with APIS and the creation of a collection website were happening, the expertise of the Michigan papyrologists was drawn away from the collection itself. Koenen and Gagos became part of an international team to study the papyri that were found in 1992 in the charred remains of a church in Petra, Jordan. The results of this project were very exciting, as they provided textual material about a period in Middle Eastern history that was otherwise not well documented and added to a small corpus of papyri found outside of Egypt. It cannot be denied, however, that the gains on the Jordanian end resulted in a loss on the Michigan end, with only few papyri from the collection being studied and published during this period. The path Gagos set out for the collection was continued also after his Page 16 →untimely death in 2010. The library renewed its commitment to papyrology by adding a full-time collection manager staff position. This, in combination with the appointment of a part-time acting archivist, allowed the collection to extend its outreach activities, not only in 807 Hatcher Library but also off campus. There were more tours to the collection, now also including students from middle and high schools in Ann Arbor and elsewhere. The collection continued its innovative uses of technology in the development of an iOS app with the Michigan portion of the Pauline Epistles and the development of an online teaching tool for Greek paleography. In addition, the collection produced video portraits of Ludwig Koenen and Leyla Lau-Lamb to provide an oral history of Michigan papyrology. As the first centennial of the collection approaches, the collection is still going strong. Thanks to the institutional support of the University Library and the Department of Classical Studies, in combination with financial support from a number of endowments, Michigan papyrology is a venerable institution. There is a new archivist of the collection, appointed in 2013, in the person of Brendan Haug, an environmental historian of Egypt. And there is a cluster of faculty members in various departments on campus who all work with documents from the collection (and papyrological scholarship more broadly) in their research and teaching. In the Department of Classical Studies, Richard Janko is one of the world’s leading scholars in the study of literary papyri, in particular the carbonized rolls from Herculaneum in Italy. Francesca Schironi specializes in Egypt’s literary and paraliterary texts, and the author of this volume studies papyri from Karanis, especially in their archaeological context. In the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Terry Wilfong is in the process of editing the Hieratic texts from the collection, as well as a number of Coptic texts. In addition, through his appointment as curator of GrecoRoman Egypt in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Wilfong provides an important link with the archaeological remains from Karanis and Soknopaiou Nesos. Finally, Ian Moyer in the Department of History is an historian of Ptolemaic Egypt. Further Reading For a history of the field of papyrology in general, see Peter van Minnen, “The Century of Papyrology (1892–1992),” (available online at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/history.html) and James G. Keenan, “The History of the Discipline,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology,Page 17 → edited by Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59–78. There is much information about Francis Kelsey’s dealings with papyri and the papyrus collection to be found in J. G. Pedley, The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity and the Arts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). For the history of the Michigan papyrus collection, see E. M. Husselman, “Manuscripts and Papyri,” The Michigan Alumnus—Quarterly Review 35 (1928/1929), 622; A. E. R. Boak, “The Building of the University of Michigan Papyrus Collection,” The Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives 66 (1959), 35–42; and T. Gagos, “The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection: Current Trends and Future Perspectives,” in I. Andorlini et al. (eds.), Atti del XXII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Volume I (Florence: Istituto Papirologico “G. Vitelli”), 511–37.

Page 18 →

Chapter 3 Conserving the Collection Papyrus is a fragile, organic material that only survives in the most perfect of circumstances: dry and undisturbed. As soon as it leaves these conditions, it becomes susceptible to decay, and while modern conservation methods work to slow this process as much as possible, they cannot completely stop it. The same fragility applies to the other writing materials that form part of the papyrus collection, such as wood and paper. Originally, care of the papyri was the task of the scholar who discovered and/or studied them. In the course of the 20th century, papyrus conservation became the task of trained specialists, most of whom had a background in paper and book conservation. The most famous of these early papyrus conservators is Hugo Ibscher (1874–1943) at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. In the case of the Michigan collection, minor conservation happened in the British Museum before papyri were distributed among the members of the consortium (see the previous chapter), by the conservator of that institution. It is unclear who worked on a number of papyri found during the Karanis excavations that, as shown by comparison of excavation photos with later photos, were flattened out and straightened for study. In the Michigan library, papyrus conservation activities began in the late 1980s, when Ludwig Koenen raised awareness of the need for conservation and U-M Library conservator Julia Miller began researching current standards for treatment and housing. Conservation of the collection really took off in the early 1990s, when Leyla Lau-Lamb started specializing in papyrus conservation (in addition to her regular job as book conservator) as part of the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) grant projects. In the course of two decades, thanks to the work of Leyla Lau-Lamb, Michigan became a leader in papyrus conservation to whom many other collections in the United States and worldwide turned for guidance and advice. Ideas about how to best preserve papyrus have changed over the decades Page 19 →and continue to change, and the Michigan collection shows many examples of these changes. Conservators at Michigan were, and continue to be, at the forefront of papyrus conservation in doing research and in developing new techniques and materials. In the early days of papyrology, for example, scholars were not afraid to repair papyri with postage stamps, brown packing tape, clear scotch tape, or other self-adhesive tapes. Now we know that such tapes are disfiguring, damaging, and often cannot be removed without destroying the papyrus. Therefore, in the case of fragmentary papyri in the collection that have been thus pasted together, no further attempts are made to remove the tape for fear of causing irreparable damage. The only exception is when the tape covers writing and makes reading the text impossible. Although tape clearly is not the best way to do so, there are clear advantages to being able to anchor fragments in their correct position relative to other fragments of the same papyrus. For papyri placed in glass mounts, too, adhesion is useful to prevent the papyrus from shifting during storage or display. For this purpose, the University of Michigan Library Conservation Lab, in particular Cathleen A. Baker and Leyla Lau-Lamb, developed a new repair tissue specifically for the papyrus collection. This repair tissue consists of small strips of Japanese paper coated with sodium carboxymethylcellulose, a water-soluble adhesive. A small amount of moisture (such as saliva) reactivates the adhesive so that it can be applied to the papyrus, where it dries quickly. What is more important, a light application of moisture will allow easy removal of the tape without destroying the papyrus. Most repairs or anchor points use slips of tissue that are tiny, measuring about 2 by 3 mm.

Storage Just as the ideas about papyrus conservation have changed over the years, so too have ideas about the best way to store papyri, and they continue to change. There is still more or less general agreement that the best way to store papyrus is between two sheets of glass. The conservation department follows developments in the world of glass production closely to find the strongest and lightest material available. Current research, especially by the Michigan conservator Marieka Kaye, explores how new types of glass that are used for screens for smartphones

and the like could be employed also in the storage of papyri. To this end, Kaye will do all sorts of tests to see how this glass ages Page 20 →and how it holds up in the widely different environments that can be found in papyrus collections (from the field-warehouses in the Egyptian desert to the environmental room on the Michigan campus). What is also clear is that in a collection the size of the University of Michigan’s not all papyri can be stored between two sheets of glass. Not only would this be a very costly affair, it would also require much more space to store the collection and perhaps also bring in structural issues because of the weight involved. About a thousand papyri are stored between two sheets of glass that are bound together around the edges with fabric tape. The University of Michigan uses three standard sizes for the glass panes for ease of handling and storage. If necessary, the papyrus is anchored inside the glass frame by the Japanese paper strips mentioned above. Most of the glass sandwiches are stored vertically in wooden racks made specifically to fit papyrus sheets. These racks, organized by size, are located in steel air-vented cases that date back to the 1950s. Ideally, these cases would be replaced by more modern and better suited ways of storage, but this is a very Page 21 →expensive thing to do. In the case of fragile papyri that cannot be anchored easily in their glass mount and very large papyri, the papyri are stored flat. Fig. 3.1. A variety of boxes used to store papyri In the bottom right is one of the original shipping labels used to send papyri from the British Museum in London to the University Library in Ann Arbor in the 1920s. Papyri that are not housed in glass are stored unmounted and flat in acid-free folders that are stacked on top of one another (to a maximum of 15 folders) in acid-free boxes. This systematic rehousing of the papyri in folders was done in the early 1990s. Before that time, papyri were still often stored in special tin boxes that were made by local blacksmiths in Egypt, or in repurposed commercial boxes (cigarettes, soap, Christmas decorations) that the previous users of the collection could find (fig. 3.1). There are currently still a number of such boxes with fragments present in the collection (see fig. 1.1). The choice of which papyrus to house in glass and which to leave in their acid-free folders is based on condition, use, and travel. The most fragile papyri, those most in danger of further damage, have been transferred to glass. All papyri that are used for regular tours of the collection are permanently housed in glass sandwiches. Papyri that are in the course of being studied by scholars or students are also in glass, although in this case the glass panes are not taped together but rather held together with clips so that there can be easy access to the papyrus in case study of the papyrus reveals the need for further conservation or realignment.

Environmental Room The most important aspect to preserving papyri is a stable environment with very few fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Whoever has visited the state of Michigan knows that this is not really true of the Michigan climate with its great (and often impressive) fluctuations. In 1993, Maria Grandinette, then head of conservation and book repair in the U-M Library, designed the specifications for a purpose-built environmental room to store the papyrus collection and the Eastern and Western Manuscripts of the Special Collections division of the library. In this fireproof room, humidity is kept at a range of 45 percent (4 percent +/в€’) and the temperature at 65 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree +/в€’). Materials for the walls, flooring, and fittings were carefully investigated so they would not give off chemicals that could harm the collections. A 2008 replacement of the machinery controlling the environmental conditions in the room permitted the then head of the Department of Preservation and Conservation, Shannon Zachary, to instigate a redesign using Page 22 →new technologies to ensure that preserving these ancient artifacts is done in an energy-efficient and environmentally friendly way.

Continuous Conservation Conservation of papyri and other writing materials from antiquity is never truly complete. A first step will be

basic conservation, to make sure that the papyrus fragment is clean, straightened, and can be stored without risk of further damage. Further conservation may be needed when a scholar begins to read the text on a papyrus. At this time, it may become apparent that ink is still covered by dirt or that fibers with ink or even whole fragments are displaced. The conservator will address these issues in tandem with the scholar (fig. 3.2) so that the optimal circumstances to read the papyrus are created. Even then conservation is not complete. Because papyrus is an organic material and continues to react with its environment, salt particles may leach out of the papyrus and crystalize on the surface at any time. Thus, every time a papyrus goes on display, the conservator will open the glass frame, check that the papyrus and the glass are clean, and make sure that it is at its best for public viewing. Relatively simple procedures of continuous conservation include cleaning the papyri of debris (salt particles, leaves, sand, mud). To do this the conservator uses a collection of brushes of varying thickness and stiffness. She also uses a number of sharp pointed tools (such as a dentist’s hook) to remove debris that cannot be removed with brushes. If this does not work and the papyrus is still very dirty (preventing the papyrologist from reading the text), the conservator may decide to do damp treatment of the fragment. During this whole process of cleaning, the conservator continuously checks the surface using a magnifying visor to make sure that removing dirt does not damage the papyrus or the ink. Damp treatment is needed when the papyrus is very dirty, but also when the papyrus is folded or crumpled. The conservator will then wet two pieces of blotting paper with a 50:50 mix of water and ethanol and put the papyrus between the two blotters and underneath a piece of glass as a light weight. The conservator checks often to see whether the papyrus is damp enough to work on, to clean or straighten. When the papyrus is sufficiently humid, the conservator works across the fragments systematically straightening fibers and aligning breaks, using the growth patterns of the papyrus plant as well as Page 23 →the writing to confirm that everything is in place. A single fragment can often take several hours and sometimes several days to clean and align. When work is complete, the papyrus will be left between dry blotters to dry, with frequent exchanges of fresh blotters. Fig. 3.2. Traianos Gagos, Ludwig Koenen, and Leyla Lau-Lamb A papyrus conservator often works in tandem with papyrologists. This photo shows Leyla Lau-Lamb working on papyrus fragments with Ludwig Koenen and the late Traianos Gagos (standing). There is, to date, no school for papyrus conservation; papyrus conservators learn by doing, hands-on, and then share their knowledge with peers and students. In order to share the knowledge gained by University of MichiganPage 24 → conservators and to provide more regular opportunities to train peers and students, the University of Michigan papyrus collection hosts a biannual summer school in papyrus conservation, which began in 2012. During a two-week intensive course, participants working in conservation departments around the country and the world are trained in all aspects of papyrus conservation with actual papyri from the collection. Further Reading Marieka Kaye, “Housing Papyrus at the University of Michigan Library,” Archival Products Newsletter 19 (2015), 1–3. APIS conservation guidelines, written by the Michigan conservator Leyla Lau-Lamb, are available at: http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrus-collection/advanced-papyrological-information-system-guidelinesconservation-papyrus The Papyrology Collection also produced a video about Lau-Lamb, in which she talks about her work and the tools she uses. This video is available at: http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection/papyrology-videos

Page 25 →

Chapter 4 Studying the Collection The papyrus collection at the University of Michigan came into existence when papyrology had already developed into a field of its own. At the time, however, most of its active practitioners were to be found on the other side of the Atlantic, with the main centers of papyrological study located in England, France, Germany, and Italy. In the United States, the University of California at Berkeley had acquired a big collection of documents through controlled excavations in Egypt in the winter of 1899–1900, although these documents came to Berkeley only in 1938. Both the excavation and study of these documents was mainly the work of the British papyrologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in Oxford. For the publication of the Roman papyri, they received assistance from the first and at that time only American papyrologist, E. J. Goodspeed. In the early part of the 20th century there was no scholar specializing in the study of Greek (let alone Egyptian) papyri at the University of Michigan. There were, however, several scholars in various departments on the Michigan campus (Greek, Latin, history, Near Eastern studies) who readily took on the job of editing papyri from the newly established collection of papyri (see chapter 2). Also important is the institutional support created by the university not only in establishing a Department of Manuscripts and Papyri in the University Library (1927), as well as a Museum of Archaeology (1928), but also by staffing these collections with curatorial positions. European scholars (A. S. Hunt of the University of Oxford for the first batch; H. I. Bell of the British Museum for following batches) compiled the Inventory of Papyri, a typescript document (produced in several copies) in which individual papyri are measured, summarily classified according to type (literary/documentary/account/letter, etc.), and dated on the basis of handwriting or on the basis of an internal reference to a precise date (regnal year, for example). The ensemble of these summary inventories (retyped and bound) comprised the catalog of the papyrus collection until the late 1990s, Page 26 →when it was transferred and much expanded into an online database that is completely searchable as part of the Advanced Papyrological Information System.1 Fig. 4.1. Frontispiece of the Inventory of Papyri for the 1920 purchase of papyri The handwritten notes make clear that A. S. Hunt delivered four copies to be distributed among the University of Wisconsin (one copy), British Museum (one copy), Michigan (two copies, one of which was retyped 12 times for the persons listed in two columns). The Inventory of Papyri was compiled quickly and summarily, but the number of mistakes in a collection of this size is surprisingly low. This speaks to the expertise of the scholars in London and Oxford who inventoried the collection. However, the occasional misidentification did happen. Among the more interesting misidentifications is inventory number P.Mich.inv. 3250. Page 27 →The fragments listed under this number, acquired in 1925, were cataloged as Coptic in the Inventory of Papyri. It was only in 1999, during the digital cataloging of the collection as part of the APIS project, that Paul Heilporn discovered that actually these fragments were Greek (admittedly in sloppy handwriting), and, more importantly, that they joined directly to another text in the collection, P.Mich.inv. 3498. Both papyri, containing an exciting collection of first lines of Greek poetry on their front and Greek lyric poetry on their back, were published in 2012 as a monograph authored by two Michigan graduate students.2

From Trace to Text A brief inventory/catalog entry cannot do justice to the precise contents of each papyrus fragment in the collection. Detailed reading, translation, and interpretation are needed to establish what each fragment is about, and what it contributes to bigger and smaller historical questions. To make sure that this research reaches a wider audience of papyrologists and ancient historians, the findings need to be published in a scholarly journal or book. There is no system or requirement to decide which text from a collection will be studied and published first.

Scholars who work in the collection are free to choose their own texts to study and publish, and although the archivist can make a preselection of texts available for study on the basis of the fancy (and specialization) of the scholar involved, the final choice is the scholar’s to make. Looking back at the first 95 years of the Michigan collection, it is clear that editorial choices follow the scholarly fashions of the time, and therefore it is not surprising to see that many of the most important Greek literary and Biblical texts in the collection were published first, soon after acquisition, followed by documentary texts that were complete and easy to read. The remains of the roll of Homer, Iliad, book XVIII, for example, were part of the 1920 purchase and received the inventory number P.Mich.inv. 2 (see fig. 8.1). It was published already two years later, in 1922, by J. G. Winter in the Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society (TAPA). In contrast, portions of some damaged and difficult to understand Ptolemaic accounts that were part of the same purchase (cataloged as P.Mich.inv. 56, 57, 62, 65, and 66) are studied and prepared for publication only now, 96 years after they entered the collection. From the examples of the different writing styles listed in this volume, it Page 28 →may be clear that reading papyri (or other ancient texts) is not always an easy thing to do. For one thing, after spending thousands of years in sand, many texts are damaged. There are fragments of papyrus missing, there are holes in the text, or the ink has faded or disappeared completely. And even when they are not damaged (see for example fig. 11.3), the decipherment and interpretation of ancient texts takes much time, expertise, and patience. Each language preserved on papyrus has its own problems of decipherment for the modern scholar. Demotic writing (see figs. 6.2 and 9.5), for example, consists of cursive forms of ancient hieroglyphs, simplified to the point that many signs that go back to different hieroglyphs all look alike in Demotic. For Greek, writing on papyrus was continuous, with only very occasional word or sentence divisions and no reading aids in the forms of stops, apostrophes, and so on. Another barrier to reading Greek papyrus texts is that the Greek written represents the knowledge of Greek of the person scribing the text, which is not necessarily the ancient Greek we nowadays learn in school or college that derives from known (and well-educated) ancient authors like Plato and Lysias. For example, many people in the ancient world, especially those with limited education, wrote Greek as it sounded to them, not as it should be written according to the school books. Many letters in ancient Greek at that time sounded very much alike (a development that continued into Modern Greek), giving scribes many opportunities to mix up vowels with interesting results. The Greek for “to us” (hГЄmin) sounded more or less the same as the Greek for “to you” (hГ»min), with all possibilities for misinterpretation by ancient reader and modern scholar alike. The Michigan papyrologist Herbert Youtie wonderfully described the cognitive process entailed in “reading papyri.”3 The state of survival of the ancient writing material, the continuous scribbling of letters in ink, the content and the expectations of the scholar are all involved in a reiterative process of reading and interpreting, and reading and interpreting until the papyrus has been read, translated, and understood satisfactorily. The format and outward appearance of the writing surface itself give some idea about the genre of the text and thus set up expectations in the scholar’s mind. For example, the clear separation of the first two or three lines may point to a letter (see at fig. 9.1), or very clear and beautiful handwriting may point to a literary text (fig. 8.1). The reading and identification of one word in the papyrus may lead to reading another word, because recognition of one word may then lead to reading similar traces elsewhere in the same text. Reading a particular word may help build expectation about the further flow of the text. Slowly the continuousPage 29 → ink traces change into understandable words, sentences, text, and the papyrus becomes understandable to the modern scholar. Let us take an example from the collection where we can follow this process in some detail. Figure 4.2 shows the original papyrus. As one can see even without knowing Greek, the papyrus is damaged on the left and bottom, but the top and right margin show that the document is complete on these sides. The handwriting is regular and practiced but not very elegant. It is clear that the scribe of this text is somebody used to writing, but this is not a literary text. The second line leaves a large blank space at the end setting this text apart from what follows. The text was found during the University of Michigan excavations at Karanis, during the 1926–27 season, and upon entering the collection received the inventory number 4694.

This may be a good moment to explain the different numbering systems that are in use for papyrus collections (and also for manuscript collections). The main unique identifying number for a collection is the inventory number. In the case of the University of Michigan papyrus collection, this number begins with P.Mich.inv. (or, in the case of ostraca, O.Mich.inv.). The inventory number identifies the physical object in the collection and allows the archivist Page 30 →and staff to locate it in the environmental room. Normally, every papyrus fragment has its unique inventory number, although in the case of the Michigan papyrus collection, there are numerous smaller fragments (purchased or found at the same time) that all received the same inventory number. An extreme example is the box with papyrus fragments shown in figure 1.1 that all have the same inventory number. In cases like this, individual fragments are now distinguished by adding a letter, for example, P.Mich.inv. 5855e. In the early days of papyrology, scholars sometimes wrote this inventory number on the actual papyrus itself (with ink!), but nowadays the number is written on the folder containing the fragment, or in the case of a papyrus transferred to glass, attached to the glass frame. Each papyrus in this book has its own inventory number and this number is always mentioned. This unique number allows for easy searching for this papyrus in the online database. Fig. 4.2. Prefectural Edict Greek on Papyrus. 9 xx 14.4 cm. 142/143 CE. P.Mich.inv. 4694 (TM 12018). Found during the 1926–27 season at Karanis. Edition: E. Husselman, P.Mich. IX (1971), no. 522. When a scholar decides to publish a papyrus, the papyrus will also get an individual publication number. This number has nothing to do with the inventory number but refers to a book or periodical where the papyrus was published, with an introduction, its ancient text, a translation, and line notes discussing interesting and problematic features in the text. In the case of a book devoted to the publication of several papyri (arranged around a modern collection, an ancient person, or an ancient site), the book itself receives an identifier (a siglum) for quick reference, and each papyrus in the book receives its own number. For example, there are currently 20 volumes of papyri from the Michigan collection, each with its individual title. In short, however, these books are referred to as P.Mich. I to XX, and future volumes will continue this numbering. The title of the first volume of Michigan Papyri is “Zenon Papyri in the University of Michigan Collection,” but this volume is regularly referred to as “P.Mich. I.” Within each volume, texts are numbered individually and within the series this numbering is also consecutive. Publication numbers are also mentioned in this book and these allow the interested reader to find references to particular texts in secondary scholarship. For Greek texts published outside of such volumes devoted to papyri, the field of papyrology from its beginning developed a way also to give such texts an individual publication number, rather than having to refer to the periodical or publication in which the papyrus appears. This project, begun in 1913 in Germany, is called the Sammelbuch der griechischen papyrusurkunden aus Г„gypten, or SB for short. Here, too, there is a row of volumes (28 at the moment of writing) with consecutively numbered texts in the volumes (the latest volume ended with 17270). These volumes, however, only list the Greek Page 31 →text. For introduction, translation, and so on, one has to resort back to the original publication in the periodical or book. Fig. 4.3. Preliminary transcript of P.Mich.inv. 4694 by O. Pearl But let us return to P.Mich.inv. 4694. What goes into preparing such a text for publication? Figure 4.3 shows a sheet of paper on which the Michigan papyrologist Orsamus Pearl wrote a first transcription of the Greek papyrus presented in figure 4.2. As one can see, he has already made word divisions and added accents and breathings in the Greek, and as such this text looks rather different from the original papyrus. Pearl wrote the readings of which he was fairly certain in black ink. In the lost parts of the papyrus, indicated in the transcription by square brackets [ ], Pearl uses pencil to make suggestions for what must have been written there. However, he uses ink again when he is fairly certain, as in the first three lines, where other texts of a similar nature show what was expected to have been written here. One cannot help but wonder whether the rather forceful crossing out of letters and words in the fourth line shows some of the exasperation and frustration that, as is not hard to imagine, sometimes comes with trying to read and reconstruct a papyrus text.

During his time at Michigan, Pearl made such preliminary transcriptions Page 32 →of many papyri, but he did not publish all of them himself. In the case of this papyrus, it was studied anew and published by Elinor Husselman as no. 522 in her 1971 edition of papyri from the Michigan collection. The printed text shown in figure 4.4 allows us to see the further elements that are expected for a scholarly edition of a papyrus text, all added by Husselman. The heading provides the publication number (522), the inventory number, the physical measurements, the date, and the find spot information. After a one-sentence description of the physical papyrus, the editor suggests that the fragment is part of a roll containing edicts by the same prefect, or alternatively, as suggested by Herbert Youtie (H.C.Y.) a roll containing “other materials on anonymous complaints.” The second paragraph then tries to make sense of this particular edict, although it is much damaged. After the Greek text follows one brief remark about the difficulty to establish how much text is missing on the left. What would be added in more modern editions is an attempt at translating whatever Greek text there is to aid scholars from other fields who may be interested in what a papyrus contributes. It is interesting that in this text none of the possibilities for the lacuna on the left that were considered by Pearl have been taken up by Husselman, who apparently felt that these suggestions were too uncertain to be listed in print. Nowadays, the Greek text of the papyrus is upon publication entered in an online database of all published Greek papyrus texts, the DDbDP portion of the Papyrological Navigator,4 which is organized according to publication numbers. The edition there looks as shown in figure 4.5. The web page presents information drawn from three other online databases: the APIS catalog of the collection where further data about the physical object can be found; the Heidelberger Gesammtverzeichnis (HGV), identifying type of text and date; and the Trismegistos platform (TM) that combines various online projects and most importantly provides a stable and unique identifying number for each text from the ancient world.5 After a papyrus has been published in a book or periodical, there is in many cases still room for improvement. It is possible, for example, that papyri from other collections that are published at a later date provide a parallel for missing text and allow for a new or different restoration of the text concerned. Or rereading of the traces of ink either by a new pair of eyes (another scholar) or with added technology (see below) can result in a different reading. Because such new and changing readings of papyrus texts are part and parcel of a field like papyrology that deals with original and unique texts, there is a mechanism to keep track of these improved readings so that every Page 34 →scholar can always access the latest state of affairs. This project, begun in Germany in 1922, is a directory of all such new and rejected readings in published papyri, known as the Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyrusurkunden aus Г„gypten, or BL for short. Nowadays, the BL is part of the online Papyrological Navigator, which keeps track of changes and allows scholars to suggest changes and new readings to texts. Page 33 → Fig. 4.4. P.Mich. IX 522 Fig. 4.5. Screenshot of P.Mich. IX 522 in the Papyrological Navigator (http://www.papyri.info/ddbdp/p.mich;9;522) We can catch a glimpse of how some Michigan scholars arrived at new and better readings for papyrus texts in the Michigan collection by handwritten notes in books. Yes, papyrologists sometimes write in library books to insert improved readings in the printed texts. Many of the papyrus editions that are part of the Papyrology Room show the hands of various scholars who have worked in the collection over the years and note the corrected reading of a specific text. Admittedly, they mostly do this lightly in pencil, and reserve the use of pens only for their own private books. Figure 4.6, for example, shows a page in the third volume of Michigan papyri (P.Mich. III, published in 1936) from Herbert Youtie’s private library, donated to the papyrus collectionPage 35 → after his death. In the Greek text presented for number 176, Youtie has noted a number of corrections, undoubtedly done after consultation of the original papyrus. He later collected these and other corrections in a small paper very matter-of-factly entitled “P.Mich. III 176–178,” which he published in Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik (20 [1976], 284–87). The corrections he made to the Greek text are listed in volume VII of the BL (p. 108), so that every person working on this text is able to acknowledge these new and correct readings. Fig. 4.6. P.Mich. III 176 with handwritten notes by H. C. Youtie

Reading Aids

Apart from a sharp eye, an historical mind, and good knowledge of the ancient language in which the text was written, there are several implements that can aid the papyrologist in her reading of a papyrus text. Simple magnifying glasses allow the scholar to see the traces of ink and way the letters have been written up close. Magnifying visors allow the scholar to keep her hands free for writing notes. Should more detail be necessary, for example in the case of very fragmentary papyri, to establish whether there is really any trace of ink left, the scholar can use a microscope with focused lights. Photographic reproduction of a papyrus text is sometimes also helpful. Sometimes images bring out the contrast in a papyrus better than in the original papyrus and thus can aid the scholar in trying to read the text. It is important, however, to always revert back to the original if possible, because a shadow on an image can suggest that there is ink even if in reality there is not. Imaging of papyri follows the technical developments of photography. Scholars first reproduced papyri with handdrawn facsimile drawings, but in the late 19th century and early 20th century papyri were reproduced with gravure and later halftone images. Black-and-white photography added sharpness and contrast to images, which could help to bring out the writing more clearly. In the second half of the 20th century color photography also came into use, although for contrast many papyrologists preferred black-and-white images. The development of digital imaging technology allowed easier sharing of images between the collection and scholars working elsewhere, but it also allowed the scholar to adjust the image and try to bring out the writing as much as possible. What is more, digital images allowed the scholar to enhance the image separately for each part of the papyrus. As imaging techniques continue to improve, it will again become possible to image previously Page 36 →photographed papyrus fragments that remain largely illegible to bring out more of the writing. The developments in photographic technology and especially its cost also had consequences for the printing of books containing papyrus editions. Originally it was too expensive to add plates of papyri to papyrus editions, because these had to be printed separately and on different paper. Halftone printing of black-and-white photographs made this process a little cheaper but still not enough to add photographs of all papyri in a volume to the printed edition (sometimes there were several sheets of microfilm added in back). Digital reproduction and recent refinements in papermaking have made it much easier to represent papyri next to the text’s description and transcription in the book itself and not just on special paper in the back of a volume. In addition to mainstream photographic techniques, there have also been successful attempts to make a papyrus more readable by looking at it with light wavelengths beyond the capabilities of the human eye. This is especially helpful for papyri that have become dark and where there is less contrast between ink and papyrus. In particular, these techniques are helpful for papyri that were burned in antiquity (and hence carbonized, such as the papyri found at Herculaneum in Italy). There are no carbonized papyri in the Michigan collection. Because ink and papyrus have different reflectivities, photographing papyri with other wavelengths can bring out this contrast better. Figures 4.7 and 4.8 show what difference using a camera equipped with a special CCD (charge-coupled device) chip, capable of capturing infrared wavelengths, can make. Because carbon ink absorbs infrared light and papyrus reflects it, the contrast between the two becomes greatly increased. Figure 4.7 is made with a normal camera and it is clear that it is quite difficult to distinguish the ink from the dark papyrus. Figure 4.8 was made with an infrared filter and the text becomes much more readable. This technique is also useful in imaging socalled palimpsests, that is, papyri whose text was washed off to make room for a new text. Very little traces of this earlier ink remain, but this technique, as well as the multi-spectral analysis described below, is able to make them visible. Infrared photography has its limits, too, and recently, following technological developments, there have been attempts to photograph papyri in smaller bands of wavelengths that range from ultraviolet through infrared. This process, known as multi-spectral analysis, captures a papyrus in different wavelengths, allowing the scholar to find the particular wavelengths where the contrast between papyrus and ink becomes the greatest, and as Page 37 →a result the text becomes most readable. A project based at Brigham Young University has further developed this technique with the help of a number of papyri from collections in the United States, including the University of Michigan. Researchers at Brigham have made the results of this project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, available online.6 It is to be expected that multi-spectral imaging technology will continue to

develop and these results can then also be used in the imaging of palimpsests or, in general, papyri that are otherwise difficult to read because there is no contrast between ink and writing surface. Fig. 4.7. Document photographed in natural light Greek on papyrus. 8.3 x 11.5 cm. 2nd/3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4453a. Purchased in 1925. Edition: unpublished. Fig. 4.8. The same document photographed in infrared light Fig. 4.9. Bracelet with papyrus rolls P.Mich.inv. 3527. Purchased in 1925. Edition: unpublished. Page 38 →Researchers in the University of Michigan papyrus collection have also experimented with capturing objects in the collection with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technique. This technique captures an object from one position, but with many different exposures created with a flash that is moved around the object in several arcs. A computer application then registers and stacks all the different images and allows the scholar to adjust the image, choosing the different positions of the flash that best reveal the details of the writing. This is especially helpful for documents with depth, and Page 39 →exciting results have been achieved especially with the collection’s waxed tablets. One of the results of this project, by the collection’s photographer Randal Stegmeyer, can be seen in figure 5.4. Surveying the many exciting initiatives that have taken place in image capturing in the hard sciences, it is clear that these advances will also have applications for the imaging of ancient artifacts. One of the more interesting developments is a project that uses computerized tomography (CT) scanning techniques in the reading of ancient rolls.7 Should this be successful, this technique will allow the scanning and reading of papyrus rolls without having to physically open the roll. Opening the roll is sometimes not possible, or in other cases not desirable, because it will destroy an ancient artifact. An example can be seen in figure 4.9, an ancient bracelet made up of papyrus rolls. It is likely that these papyrus strips contain protective magical charms, but opening the rolls would forever destroy the object. Here we have to wait for the technology to develop further before we can interpret the contents of the bracelet. Further Reading The classic papers describing the work of a papyrologist (including its challenges and problems) were all written by the Michigan papyrologist Herbert Youtie. See H. C. Youtie, “The Papyrologist: Artificer of Fact,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 4 (1963) 19–32 (= Scriptiunculae I [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973], 9–23); “Text and Context in Transcribing Papyri,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966) 251–58 (= Scriptiunculae I [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973], 25–33); and The Textual Criticism of Documentary Papyri. Second Edition (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1974). Paul Schubert wrote a more modern guide to editing a papyrus in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 197–215.

Page 40 →

Chapter 5 Writing Materials The Michigan papyrus collection contains a representative sample of the writing materials of the ancient world. As we have seen previously, its holdings were all purchased in Egypt, whose desert climate is uniquely favorable to the preservation of organic materials that would otherwise decay. Such materials are occasionally found outside Egypt in special circumstances. Examples include the wooden writing tablets that were found near Hadrian’s Wall in England, several caches of papyri and leather scrolls from caves near the Dead Sea, and the carbonized papyrus rolls that were found near Mt. Vesuvius in Italy. The Michigan collection, however, is exclusively Egyptian in provenance. Chart 5.1 shows the contents of the collection broken down by material.1 What immediately stands out is the overwhelming predominance of papyri, which give the collection its name. The other materials, broken down on the right-hand side, are very diverse. Some of them will be presented in more detail below. A search for any of these materials by name in the online database will bring up the relevant items.

Papyrus The most important writing material in terms of representation in the collection is papyrus, as already mentioned above. Papyrus was made from the papyrus sedge (Cyperus papyrus L.) that grew abundantly along the banks of the river Nile and in marshes in ancient Egypt. The papyrus manufacturer would peel the stem of the sedge and cut narrow strips of the inside. After soaking the strips in water, he then arranged one series of strips close together and parallel to each other, and added another series on top, perpendicular to the first. Pressing the two layers together and letting them dry produced a sheet of papyrus, comparable in size to a modern piece of notepad paper. The Page 41 →manufacturer would then paste twenty sheets together to form a roll, from which shorter sheets could be cut, or to which further rolls could be pasted, as needed. Chart 5.1. Writing materials in the collection Papyrus was used as a writing material from the 3rd millennium BCE until the end of the 1st millennium CE, when it was gradually replaced by paper (see below). During this 3,000-year period, the method of fabrication remained the same, although the actual format of the roll changed. In the Pharaonic period, for example, rolls would be about 48 cm. high. In the Greek and Roman periods, the standard roll would be about 30 cm. high. Papyrus was used across the whole Mediterranean world, from Britain to the Euphrates region, but with a few exceptions such as those mentioned above, it has only survived in the dry sands of Egypt, in most cases as trash or reused in the fabrication of human and animal mummies. A person would write on the side of the papyrus where the papyrus fibers ran horizontally (commonly called the “front,” or—following terminology from manuscript studies—the “recto” side of a papyrus), although in certain time periods and for certain types of documents he or she would turn the papyrus clockwise so that the writing ran across the fibers. The other side of the papyrus (the “back” or “verso”) was occasionally used for writing, but if so rather for personal use (drafts and copies of accounts and letters). Figure 5.1 shows a sheet of papyrus used for a 3rd-century BCE letter. The sheet does not have the standard height of a papyrus roll so was most likely cut to shape. The traces of ink in the top margin are a mirror image of the Page 43 →first line. Apparently the ink was still wet when the papyrus was rolled from the top down to be given to the person carrying this letter to the addressee, possibly showing the great haste of the sender. Letters on papyrus were rolled up, and then the address was added on the outside. In this case, however, since the letter was to be hand-delivered, as is clear from its contents, the only thing on the back (not shown here) is a brief docket written by the addressee Zenon himself, consisting of the name of the sender (“Dionysodoros”) and the

topic (“papyrus rolls”). Page 42 → Fig. 5.1. A request for rolls of papyrus Greek on papyrus, July 29, 257 BCE. 15 x 19.7 cm. P.Mich.inv. 3119 (TM 1924). Purchased in July 1925. Edition: C. C. Edgar, P.Mich. I (1931), no. 22. The sender asks the addressee for 10 rolls of papyrus (which would be a total of about 30 meters of papyrus) to be given to the person carrying the letter. Interestingly, the author uses papyrus to ask for more papyrus, showing the ubiquity of this writing material. The letter comes from the archive of Zenon, for which see pp. 134–36 below. Dionysodoros to Zenon greeting. We hear that the ship has sailed past with the papyrus rolls on board. Will you kindly then send us the ten rolls that Apollonios ordered to be given to us? Give them to Apollonides, the bearer of this letter, in order that we may not be unduly late. Farewell. Year 29, Daisios 29.

Ostraca (Potsherds with Writing) Every house and courtyard in the ancient world must have been littered with shards of the pots that formed the basis of every household for cooking, storage, and consumption. The potsherds provided a free writing material that was used for the same sort of writings for which papyrus could also be used. Most, however, were not big enough to contain large amounts of writing. Many potsherds were used for tax receipts, written proof that the holder of the text had paid his or her taxes, although there are also examples of private letters, school texts, and literary texts written on potsherds. The technical term for a potsherd with writing is ostracon, plural ostraca. University of Michigan archaeologists uncovered 1,110 ostraca during their excavation of Karanis (see chapter 11). As with the papyri, they were first brought to Ann Arbor for study and publication, only to be returned to Egypt in the late 1930s. Leiv Amundsen (1898–1987), a Norwegian classical scholar who was part of the Karanis expedition, published a first volume of ostraca from Karanis in 1935.2 Fig. 5.2. Christian hymn(s?) Greek on potsherd. 8.9 x 6.1 cm. 6th/7th century CE. O. Skeat 14 (TM 65204). Donated by T. C. Skeat in 1948. Edition: H.C. Youtie, Transactions of the American Philological Association 81 (1950), 113–15. Page 44 →The ostracon shown in figure 5.2, clearly broken in two and restored, contains two Christian hymns or two strophes of one hymn. The first ends in line 2, the second begins in line 3 and is part of a hymn to Mary Theotokos (Birthgiver of God). The ostracon was purchased in November 1933 by the British papyrologist T. C. Skeat (1907–2003), who donated it to the University of Michigan in 1948.

Wood Wood was used in different ways for writing in the ancient world. The most basic is a thick or thin wooden tablet on which the scribe would write with ink, similar to papyrus. There are, however, also a small number of examples where the scribe has scratched the writing into the wood, similar to what Page 45 →happens in a stone inscription. The collection contains a number of wooden tablets, many of which were used for school texts and are thus presented in chapter 7. Many of these wooden tablets formed part of a group of tablets that was tied together with a leather string. The advantage of writing on wood is that the scribe could erase the writing by washing and sanding the wood. Fig. 5.3. Mummy label of Premposirios Greek on wood. 13.8 x 8.5 cm. 2nd–4th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4533 (9) (TM 28506). Purchased in 1924–25. Edition: L. C. Youtie, P.Coll.Youtie II (1976), no. 105.

In Egypt, wood was often used in a mortuary context, to identify mummies. These wooden tags that contained the name and sometimes other identifiers of the deceased (father’s name, occupation, etc.) are called “mummy labels.” They were attached to the mummy with a string. It was important to identify mummies because in Egyptian thinking, the body needed to be preserved and taken care of in order for the soul/spirit to survive in the afterlife. Regular offerings were to be brought for the mummies of ancestors, who had to be called by name, and although this was the task of the oldest son, it could be outsourced to a special group of mortuary priests. The mummy labels identified the mummy for these rituals. On a more practical level, the mummy label also identified a mummy that needed to be transported in Egypt from place of death to place of burial. In most cases, the tags were Page 46 →removed from the mummy during excavation and offered for sale on the antiquities market separately. There has been no actual mummy identified for any of the mummy labels in the Michigan papyrus collection. Figure 5.3 shows a mummy label on which the scribe wrote the name of the deceased, and the names of his mother and father. The label itself consists of a rather thick slab of wood that was carved to form a handle on the left side. The hole that was drilled on the left allowed the board to be attached to a mummy with a string (the string visible on the image is a modern one that holds the inventory number). The scribe of this text wrote with a narrow-pointed pen in rather large and inexperienced letters. Premposirios, son of (the woman) Taous; his father (is) Hatres the club-footed.

Wax Tablets Wax tablets consist of a panel of wood that was hollowed out on one side (sometimes on both) and filled with beeswax mixed with soot. Two or more tablets could be bound together to form a book. The outside panels would be wood only because otherwise the wax would get damaged. The scribe scratched the text in the wax with a pointed stylus. It was easy to correct text and to erase the whole text for a new text. Wax tablets were therefore often used for preliminary accounts and for school writing exercises. However, official Roman legal documents such as birth certificates (see fig. 9.2) and wills were also written on a pair of wax tablets that were then closed and sealed. Figure 5.4 shows one page of a two-page wooden tablet that contains a series of short day-by-day accounts that deal with the harvesting and threshing of crops. The short accounts, presented in four columns, list several individuals that were involved in tillage and threshing of barley and vetch (a plant of the legume family) on each day. It is likely that these are the first preliminary accounts that were later transferred to a papyrus roll for more permanent record keeping. The image presented here was made with Reflectance Transform Imaging (RTI) technology (see p. 38). The four holes visible on the left may have been used to bind several tablets together, the two on the right to make sure that the book stayed closed. Page 47 → Fig. 5.4. Account of an estate Greek inscribed in wax. 21.3 x 29.4 cm. 3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 762 (TM 31057), page 2. Purchased in 1920. Edition: A. E. R. Boak, Journal of Hellenic Studies 41 (1921), 217–19 (= SB III 7013). Page 48 → Col. i Pauni 29th. Account of tillage and threshing of Artemas. Pakusis 30th. Pakusis Epip (=Epeiph) 1 Pakusis Ptolemaios Poupis

2nd. Pakusis Ptolemaios Poupis Ioulis Charidemos Petesus Tabaitousis (unread) 8 (artabas) Account of mowing near Bakchias. Epeiph 7 Ptolemaios Poupis Isidoros Heras 9. Gaion and Isidoros, 5 artabas Charidemos And Aunes his son, 5 Sisois and Ptole[-] his son, 4. 11. Gaion Charidemos Aphrodisis Horion Col. ii 12. Gaion Charidemos Achillas Poupis Satabous Aphrodisis 14. Gaion Isidoros Kothon Horion (unread) Heras Sochotes 15. Gaion Isidoros Kothon (Unread) 1 obol Sochotes Sisois Poupis Satabous. 16. Gaion Charidemos Horion Satabous 17. Charidemos Pnepheros Petesus

Horion Horion son of Eudas Sisois Poupis Col. iii Account of threshing on the 17th. Charidemos Pnepheros Sisois Poupis 18. Isidoros Satabous Ptolemaios Tabaitousis Pnepheros Charidemos Sisois Poupis 19. Pnepheros Charidemos Gaion Account of vetch. 19. Sochotes Heras Gaion Pnepheros Ptolemaios 20. Gaion Pnepheros 21. Gaion Charidemos (unread) 1 drachma, 1 obol. Granary account of working (?) Aphrodisis 1 obol. Charidemos 1 Kothon 1 Col. iv At Bakchias Of barley 9 1/3 1/12 artabas. 27. Gaion Charidemos Kothon Petesus 30. Gaion Petesus 2 1/2 obols Pnepheros Petesus Sochotes Pakusis Sisois Poupis Of vetch 2 1/2 1/12 artabas. 3. Sochotes

Horion Peteus 304 (?) 14. Heras Petesus 304 (?) Ptolemaios Page 49 →

Parchment The papyrus sedge used to manufacture papyrus sheets only grew in Egypt and this required people outside Egypt to be on the lookout for other writing materials. One of these writing materials is parchment, made from the skins of sheep, goat, or calf. The skin would be cleaned of flesh and hair and stretched to dry, after which it could be cut to the format and size desired. Parchment is a much more durable writing material compared to papyrus. Figure 5.5 shows one sheet (containing four pages, two of which are shown in the image) from what must have been quite a valuable codex made from very thin and fine parchment. The text is the Third Philippic of the Greek orator Demosthenes who lived in Athens in the 4th century BCE. There are two columns per page with 27 lines in each column and an average of 16 letters per line. Although parchment is more durable than papyrus, this specimen Page 50 →shows that parchment, too, is susceptible to wear and tear from use, especially at the corners and edges of the manuscript where people would handle it to turn pages. Fig. 5.5. Double-leaf of parchment codex (Demosthenes, Third Philippic, 29–34 and 61–68) Greek on parchment. 32.5 x 21 cm. 4th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 918 (TM 59643). Purchased in 1922. Edition: J. G. Winter, Classical Philology 20 (1925), 97–114; F. De Robertis, Quaderni di Storia 78 (2013), 235–46.

Limestone The collection contains 17 mummy labels consisting of a chunk of limestone. Sometimes the text on these tablets was incised and then traced with red ink, but the text was also just written in black ink. The group of limestone labels was purchased by Arthur E. R. Boak in 1924–25 and comes from Dendera in Upper Egypt. Like the example of a wooden mummy label above, these tags have been removed from the mummy they once identified and no connection can be made between this label and an actual mummy. The example below (fig. 5.6) shows one of the mummy labels in which the Demotic text was first incised and then traced with red ink. Interestingly, the Page 51 →peculiar combination of names (in three generations) makes it very likely that the mummy label that was once attached to this man’s son (also called Peteharsemtheus) has also survived and is now part of the collection of the British Museum. The string through the hole that was drilled at the top is modern and attaches the label with the inventory number to the object. Fig. 5.6. Mummy label on limestone Demotic incised and traced with red ink in limestone. 4.9 x 7.7 cm. End 1st century BCE/early 1st century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4536 (12) (TM 92887). Purchased in 1924–25. Edition: C. Arlt, Studi di Egittologia e Papirologia 7 (2010), 33. Peteharsemtheus son of Petosiris, grandson of Harnouphis.

Leather Other than parchment (see above), animal skins could also provide a writing material after having been tanned, as leather. Writing is usually on the hair side only. The Michigan collection contains a beautiful example of such a

sheet of leather. It was cut to look like a stone monument with the tapered top and straightened sides and bottom, making clear that this sheet was not part of a codex but was kept separately, most likely rolled up like a papyrus scroll. Written in a rather smallish hand, it contains three hymns in Greek that may have been employed in Christian liturgies of baptism. The three hymns, separated by distinctive crosses (†) in the text, are all elaborations on the hymnic type “Holy is God, Holy and mighty, Holy and immortal, have mercy on us” (based on Isaiah 6:3), which is known as trisagion (“thrice-holy”). The first hymn is acrostic with each line starting with a new letter of the Greek alphabet, but this form is not repeated in the other two hymns. At the top, the Greek letters IC XC for О™(О—ОЈОџОҐ)ОЈ О§(ОЎО™ОЈО¤Оџ)ОЈ (Jesus Christ) are easily recognizable, separated from the main text by line dashes over the full width. This way of writing the words God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, and so on with only the first and last letter is known in scholarship as a nomen sacrum, and its occurrence is a clear indication of the text deriving from the Christian tradition. †A star from heaven heralds the king. Holy is God, Jesus is begotten through the word of God holy and mighty, of the virgin Mary, (Jesus) the giver of life. Holy and immortal, Herod sought to kill God. You who rose from the dead, have mercy on us. John baptized the Lord our God. Holy is God, Hosts of martyrs and prophets assembled. Holy and mighty, by night he was betrayed whom they crucified on the tree. Holy and immortal, for the Lord of all submitted to suffering. You who were crucified for us, have mercy on us. Beating Page 53 →him, crucifying him, Holy is God, all this he suffered at the hands of lawless men. Holy and mighty, a voice from heaven! The angels rejoicing, holy and immortal, praising and proclaiming, O Immortal who rose from the dead, have mercy on us. †Page 52 → Fig. 5.7. Leather sheet with three hymns Greek on leather. 23.3 x 38.5 cm. 7th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4936, hairside (TM 66102). Purchased in 1926–27. Edition: D. Martinez, P.Mich. XIX (1999), no. 799. Isaiah, the mighty voiced among the prophets, whose knowledge transcends all the created order, saw the uncreated nature. And the seraphim sing with three blessings to one being and lordship, holy holy is God, who bowed the heavens and came down to us; holy holy holy and mighty, who formed man after his own image; holy holy holy and immortal, God made flesh of the virgin, have mercy on us. †Holy is God “who stretched out the heaven by his wisdom, who walks on the sea as on dry land; holy and mighty, the maker of the Pleiades and Hesperos and Arktouros and the chambers of the south, who does things great and unsearchable, glorious and amazing, of which there is no number”; holy and immortal, “who makes sand the boundary for the sea.” Come then, all ye faithful, behold and marvel and ? his unspeakable love. He came down to us, made flesh for us of the ever-virgin and baptized for us.

Paper The Arabs introduced paper making from China into their empire in the 8th century CE. From that moment paper (fig. 5.8, p. 54), made from beaten and felted refuse fibers of hemp, linen, or cotton, slowly began to replace papyrus as the most important writing material in the world. Especially in Egypt this proved to be an uphill battle, with the papyrus industry continuing well into the 11th century CE. The Michigan collection contains a substantial number of fragments of paper, most of which have not yet been edited and studied. The letter on the front of this piece of paper (fig. 5.8, p. 54), addressed to a governor, deals with financial and personal problems that have arisen for the author. The letter is written largely in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic but contains many Arabic words and constructions that have been rendered in Coptic, making it very difficult to

understand in places. As such, this letter is a good example of how sometimes in papyrology, even when the writing is clear, the scholar studying the text can still not understand the precise contents. On the back is an unknown text in Arabic. With God! I do reverence to, and I greet with the salutation, your beloved Page 55 →honored Governorship. May the Lord spare you! I received your letter and noted it. And it made me (want) to flee; for you alone know that I have spent three days sitting while the business is ruined and a(n allotted portion of ?) water is cut off (?). It will take a lot of money at our expense, and the place is not thriving. We do our work. And I tell you that Muhammad is ending his account (?). Bassere, the poor child, I will testify for her. And this is not just to my means. You worry me (?) that he took hisВ .В .В . my money in. I did not get a carat. See, myВ .В .В . I did not get hold of them. And if my business has given you trouble in Mallawi (?) God it is who is between me and you that I will not sleep in the village now under my promise. For I am estranged from the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. And persevere, I took what I took to the Devil. And my wife, the mother of my children, is divorced now for the third time of my divorcing; and twice (?) I slept with her, sleeping with Kyra, my mother who bore me, even though it were in the place of my promise. I knowВ .В .В . I gave. I took some moneyВ .В .В . that sheВ .В .В . Antinoe. But it rests with you to settle (?) this matter. You are theВ .В .В . of the place, like the Governor, Abu l-Bishr, may the Lord guide him! while (?) he settles (?) every business which is ours. Salvation in the Lord! And the word of the Lord is this: if she comes to Mallawi (?) then I will send her to him if the Lord is willing. Page 54 → Fig. 5.8. Coptic letter on paper Coptic on paper. 21 x 14 cm. 12th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 6862 recto (TM 86556). Purchased in 1936. Edition: W. H. Worrell and E. M. Husselman, P.Mich.Copt. (1942), no. 18.

Ink In antiquity there were two types of ink. Most widely used was carbon ink, a mixture of soot, gum arabic (or another binder), and water, comparable to what is still being sold in craft stores today as India ink. This ink binds to the papyrus well and in most cases has not faded over the centuries. Carbon ink was kept in dry blocks and mixed with water in an ink pot when the scribe prepared to write his text. Color pigments could be added instead of soot to create inks in other colors than black. The red ink used to write figure 10.3, for example, was created by adding iron oxide. A second type of ink was made from a mixture of gallnut powder, ferrous sulfate (copperas, green vitriol), gum arabic, and water with wine or vinegar. This ink changes color with time, turning from clear when first made to black to brown (rust). Iron-gall ink binds better to the smooth surface of parchment because it bites into the skin, but often it is so aggressively acidic that it leaves holes in the papyrus or parchment. Iron-gall ink was introduced later than the carbon-based ink, with the earliest specimens dating to the 2nd century CE. Both types of ink, however, continued to exist next to each other. Page 56 →Fig. 5.9. The damage done by iron-gall ink Coptic on parchment. 15.2 x 36.6 cm. 9th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4951 (TM n/a). Purchased in 1926–27. Edition: G. M. Browne, Michigan Coptic Texts (1979), no. 3. Page 57 →This 9th-century copy of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 4:9–5:3) was written with the iron-gall ink described above. In this case the ink that was used to draw a cross in the top left of the page ate through the parchment leaving only the outline of the cross.

Writing Implements The Michigan papyrus collection contains no examples of writing implements because those are part of the

collection of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. The writing surfaces do show with what implement a text was written, and in that respect it is helpful to devote some words to the two different pens used by people in antiquity to write on papyrus (and ostraca and wood). The first was the rush pen that was used by the ancient Egyptians since at least the Pharaonic period. Chewing on the end of a long rush straw created a brush with which the scribe could easily vary the thickness of his writing. An example of writing with a rush pen can be found in figure 6.1. Greeks used a shorter reed pen that was sharpened at one end and cut to form a nib. This type of pen was called kalamos. Writing with this reed pen resulted in much thinner and uniform lines, especially when done by a skilled scribe. Most of the papyri and ostraca presented in this volume were written with a reed pen. This is not surprising because writing with a reed pen requires much less skill than writing with the long rush pen originally used by the Egyptians. Further Reading A good overview of the various writing materials in the ancient world can be found in A. Bülow-Jacobsen, “Writing Materials in the Ancient World,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–29. Further examples of different writing materials from the Michigan collection can be found online at http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection/ancient-writing-materials

Page 58 →

Chapter 6 Languages The papyrus collection contains a selective sample of many of the languages written on papyrus (and other writing materials) from Egypt. These languages give an indication of the various language communities that were present in Egypt at one time in that country’s long history, although they by no means show all languages ever written down in Egypt. The languages represented in the collection are shown in chart 6.1. This chart makes clear that the collection has an enormous bias towards ancient Greek, something that is the case also for many other papyrus collections in the world. This is not only the result of the fact that there are more papyri that survive in Greek, especially from the villages on the fringes of the cultivated space in Egypt that were abandoned in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE (see p. 3), but in the case of Michigan (as elsewhere) the result, especially, of the purchase bias of the collection towards the classical languages. Interestingly, most of the diversity in language representation comes already from the 1920 papyrus purchase by Francis Kelsey himself (see pp. 7–8). Chart 6.1. Languages represented in the collection Page 59 →

Egyptian (Hieroglyphs, Hieratic) The ancient Egyptian language knows several scripts that developed separately but were in use at the same time, especially in the late period. The oldest two are Hieroglyphs and its cursive form, Hieratic. Hieroglyphs is the name given to Egypt’s oldest writing system, developed already in the 3rd millennium BCE. In it, each symbol, which is drawn with minute detail, represents a sound or a word. Hieroglyphs are found on papyrus and ostraca, but its main use was on temple and tomb inscriptions in stone. Hieratic is a form of cursive Hieroglyphs that was developed for writing on papyrus and ostraca whose writing surfaces allowed a quicker drawing of the signs. The symbols used in Hieratic are the same as the hieroglyphic symbols, but they are written more quickly and with less detail. The use of Hieroglyphs and Hieratic continued into the Roman period of Egyptian history. They were almost always written with the Egyptian rush pen, which allowed the scribe to vary the thickness of his writing in individual signs. In most cases, Hieroglyphs and Hieratic were written right to left, sometimes in narrow columns, but they could also be written left to right. As a rule of thumb, the signs for living beings in the text show the reading direction, and one should begin reading at the side to which the human beings and animals are facing. Figure 6.1 shows a papyrus in which both Hieroglyphs and Hieratic occur. This beautiful sheet of papyrus presents the opening portion of a Book of the Dead for the “Chantress of Amun.” The first scene is a decorated vignette with an offering by the deceased whose hands are visible at the bottom right, being presented to the god Re-Harakhte, who is identified by the hawk head and the red sun-dish surrounded by a snake on his head. The first column (on the right) consists of Hieroglyphs in narrow columns, the following broad Page 60 →columns (one of which is represented in fig. 6.1) were written in Hieratic. The red ink (represented in all caps in the translation below) identifies the beginnings of the spells needed for the deceased’s soul to survive in the afterlife (chapters 23 and 24 of the Book of the Dead). It is perhaps interesting to note that this papyrus is the oldest item in the University of Michigan Library. Fig. 6.1. Book of the Dead Hieroglyphs and Hieratic on papyrus. New Kingdom (c. 1100–1000 BCE) 8.4 x 41 cm. P.Mich.inv. 3524 (TM n/a, detail). Purchased in 1925. Edition: T. G. Wilfong (forthcoming). (Hieroglyphs) Words spoken by Re-Harakhte-Atum, Foremost of Southern Heliopolis (Thebes), the Great God, who comes forth from the horizon: May they give offerings.

A gift that the king gives to the late mistress of the house, singer of Amun-[Re, Djed-Mut-iuesankh:] may they give offerings. (Hieratic, column 1) CHAPTER OF OPENING A PERSON’S MOUTH FOR HIM IN THE NECROPOLIS. Words spoken by the late singer of Amun, Djed-Mut-(iuesankh), daughter of Mutemope: It is Ptah who loosens the bonds from the guardian of my mouth. He is the god of my town. Thoth has come, fully equipped with magic. He has loosened the members of Seth guarding my mouth, when he (Seth) opposes Khepri, having placed them as guards. His mouth has been opened, his mouth has been parted with my chisel of iron, with which he parted the mouths of the gods. I am Sakhmet. I have sat on the starboard side, the great one of heaven. I am Orion, Great one among the souls in Heliopolis. As for any magicians that say it, however, the gods will rise up against them, being completely assembled. CHAPTER FOR BRINGING A MAN’S MAGIC TO HIM IN THE NECROPOLIS. I am Khepri, who created himself on the lap of his mother, who gave jackals to those who are in the Watery Abyss and dogs to those who are in the council. See, [this magic of mine has been] assembled [В .В .В .В ] (Translation by T. G. Wilfong) Page 61 →

Egyptian (Demotic) Demotic is a further development of the Hieratic script, in which the characters have evolved to a point where the similarities to Hieroglyphs are barely recognizable to the nonspecialist. Demotic, written and read from right to left, was originally used for more ephemeral texts, such as legal contracts and personal letters, with Hieratic continuing to be used for religious and literary texts. Later, Demotic was also used for literary texts. The Demotic script began being used in the 7th century BCE and, like Hieroglyphs and Hieratic, continued into the Roman period. Figure 6.2 shows an example of a document in Demotic. The papyrus is damaged at the right and has an enormous hole in the middle but is otherwise well preserved. The most eye-catching sign can be found in the left part of the fourth line. This sign was meant to be noted because it is the Demotic sign for “has said,” which is the beginning of the actual contract. On the back of the papyrus (not shown here), beginning at the precise spot of this sign, at least 10 witnesses signed their names, thus visualizing that these witnesses were present when the contracting party spoke the actual words during the drawing up of the contract. Whenever family wealth was involved, Egyptian families would document a marriage with two separate documents. The first was the contract in which the husband acknowledged receipt of the woman’s dowry, often consisting of money and/or clothing and jewelry. This is the document presented here. At the same time, a second contract was drawn up, known as the “contract of endowment,” which is also mentioned in this text (the actual contract itself does not survive). In this contract of endowment, the husband promised the wife that he would maintain her, and more importantly that any children to be born from the marriage would inherit the husband’s capital. This pledging of the capital of the husband’s family explains why in this document the father of the husband also has to agree with the transactions involved. In the contract, the acknowledging party (in this case the husband Petiesis) is presented in direct speech as he addresses his wife. He acknowledges that he has received her bridal gifts consisting of money and some items (earrings, a ring, and a dress). Although at the moment of writing Egypt is a Ptolemaic kingdom under a dynasty

of Greek pharaohs and the official currency consists of talents, drachmas, and obols, the text also still mentions the traditional Egyptian weights to measure silver and gold, the deben and kite (with Page 62 →10 kite making 1 deben). The 900 deben of silver mentioned in the text would be roughly 81 kilograms of silver. It is not known whether the wife’s family actually contributed this amount of money or if this was a fictitious amount. Fig. 6.2. Egyptian marriage contract Demotic on papyrus. February 6, 153 BCE. 24.8 x 26 cm. P.Mich.inv. 4244 (4) (TM 44489). Purchased in 1925. Edition: E. LГјddeckens, Г„gyptische Ehevertrage (1960), no. 6Z. Regnal year 28, first month of the growing season, day 12 under Pharaoh Ptolemy (VI) and Cleopatra, his (sister, the children of) Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the Manifest Gods (and under) the Priest of Alexander and the Savior Gods, the Brother-and-Sister Gods, the Beneficent Gods and the FatherLoving Page 63 →Gods and Mani[fest Gods in Rakotis (= Alexandria) and (under) the Bearer of the Prize of Victory before Berenike the Beneficent who is in Rakotis and (under) the Bearer of the Gold Basket before Arsinoe, the Brother-Loving who is in Rakotis and (under) the priestess of Arsinoe, the Father-Loving in Rakotis. The Counselor of the chapel of IsisВ .В .В .В , the Priest of Demeter, the Priest ofВ .В .В . N.N. in the Souchos-town Pathymis, Petiesis son of N.N., whose mother is Nanefershy has said to the woman Philotera daughter of Pnepheros, whose mother is Seminis: “You have given me 900 (deben of) silver, of which half is 450 (deben of) silver, which makes 900 (deben of) silver again, copper: (at a rate of) 24 (obols per kite), and a pair of golden earrings, whose value is 140 (deben of) silver.” “One silver ring of 2 kite, whose value is 60 (deben) of silver and aВ .В .В .В , whose value is 100 (deben of) silver and a dress made from red linen, whose value is 50 (deben of) silver, which makes 4 talents (and) 50 (deben of) silver, their half being 2 talents (and) 25 (deben of) silver, makes 4 talents (and) 50 (deben of) silver again, (and ?) the remainder of your dowry in the name of the contract of endowment for 21 (deben of) silver of the pieces of the Treasury of Ptah, refined, which I made for you in regnal year 28, first month of the growing season, day 12 abovementioned.” “I have received them out of your hand. My heart is satisfied with them, they being complete without any remainder. I do not have any issue in the world against you in their name.” “The one who comes to you on account of them, I will cause him to be far from you (in accordance with) the right of the written document abovementioned, .В .В .В compulsory, without delay, you still being behind me.” “The right of the contract of endowment for 21 (deben of) silver of the pieces of the Treasury of Ptah, refined, which I made for you in regnal year 28, first month of the growing season, day 12 abovementioned, (is) apart from the right of the written document abovementioned, amounting to 2 written documents. And I will act towards you (in accordance with) their right.” Meanwhile the Counselor of the chapel of IsisВ .В .В . N.N., his father stood up and said: “Write and do all the things abovementioned. My heart is satisfied with them. Receive the written document abovementioned out of the hand of Petiesis, my eldest son, whose mother is Nanefershy abovementioned. Cause that he will act in accordance with all words abovementioned. My heart is satisfied with them. I do the calling abovementioned (= I agree to the transaction),Page 64 → you still being behind me (concerning) the right (derived from) the calling that I have done for you on the contract of endowment for 21 (deben) of silver of the pieces of the Treasury of Ptah, refined, that Petiesis, my eldest son abovementioned, whose mother is Nanefershy abovementioned, made for you in regnal year 28, first month of the growing season, day 12 abovementioned, apart from the right

(derived from) the calling abovementioned, to complete 2 callings. I will act towards you (in accordance with) their right.” In the handwriting of Pnepheros son of Petosiris. (Translation by K. Donker van Heel)

Greek After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, Greek became the official language of the ruling classes in Egypt. Not only Greek immigrants and the occupying military power made use of Greek but also many Egyptians learned Greek in order to be able to communicate with or function in the new administration. The Greek introduced into Egypt was the mixed dialect, or Koine, that allowed Greeks from all over the Mediterranean world to communicate with each other. Koine Greek would also become the language of the Greek New Testament. There are Greek documents on papyrus from the 4th century BCE to the 9th century CE. They are very important sources to show what happened with the language in this period, the way it was written, pronounced, and used. The enormous variety in different handwritings, not only over time but also in the same period, is a striking feature of Greek papyri. For one thing, there was a separate style of writing used for literary texts, the books of antiquity. This handwriting is characterized by an attempt by the scribe to make each individual letter look the same as all other letters of its kind. Although still handwritten, a really professional ancient scribe can make the page of a book look like print. Examples of these so-called book hands are presented in chapter 8. The range of nonliterary hands, or personal hands as they are called, is breathtaking. They can be easily compared with the help of an online project that lists images of papyri that are securely dated.1 Although every handwriting is personal and different, as it is today, there are nonetheless specific traits that characterize handwriting as coming from a distinct period. This Page 65 →is comparable to the ways in which the handwriting of grandparents in all their individuality differs noticeably from the handwriting of the current generation. These identifiable differences allow papyrologists to roughly date a papyrus to a specific century on the basis of the handwriting contained in the document. The possible handwritings for each time period have been identified with the help of those papyri that bear an internal date. Many official documents (letters, accounts, ledgers, decrees, etc.) were precisely dated by reference to the regnal year of the ruler (whether Ptolemaic king or Roman/Byzantine emperor). An example of such a dating formula in Demotic can be found in figure 6.2. Examples of Greek dating formulas can be found in several texts discussed elsewhere in the book. The handwritings found in these precisely dated texts provide a secure grid against which the handwriting of undated texts can be compared. This is obviously a very subjective art, where the important thing is to not compare handwriting letter by letter only but to keep the appearance of the whole text in mind. Given this subjectivity, it is surprising to find that papyrologists rarely propose very different dates for papyri, except perhaps in the case of New Testament papyri, where sometimes there has been a tendency to date these earlier than would be the case for comparable non-Christian texts.2 Dating papyri on the basis of handwriting is one of the many tricks of papyrology that cannot really be learned from a book, but only by doing, and doing it frequently. The three main periods that can be distinguished within Greek handwriting broadly coincide with the periodization that historians use to divide late period Egyptian history: Ptolemaic (300–30 BCE), Roman (30 BCE–300 CE), and Byzantine (300–641 CE). In the following, I will briefly discuss the main characteristics of handwriting in each period, illustrating each with an example. Readers can find additional examples of different handwriting styles elsewhere in this book and also online by browsing the online collection database.

Ptolemaic

Ptolemaic handwriting is the handwriting that we find in documents that date from the period when Egypt was an independent kingdom under a dynasty of Ptolemies, from roughly 300 to 30 BCE. The handwriting from this period can be recognized by the fact that letters are not written on an imaginaryPage 67 → line but seem to be hanging from it, as clothes on a clothesline. Within this period there is a movement from quite broad letters in the 3rd century BCE written mostly separately, to narrower and rounder letters that are often written in combination (“ligature”) in the 1st century BCE, but the imaginary clothesline is visible in all texts from this period.3 Page 66 → Fig. 6.3. Royal decree Greek on papyrus. 23 x 12.5 cm. March/April 237 BCE. P.Mich.inv. 3106 (TM 2299). Purchased in 1925. Edition: C. C. Edgar, P.Mich. I (1931), no. 70. Figure 6.3 shows a papyrus from the mid-3rd century BCE and belongs to the so-called Zenon Archive (see chapter 10 for this archive). The imaginary line from which the letters seem to be hanging is quite apparent. The date, clearly recognizable by the big hook-like sign used for “in the year,” is separated from the main text at the bottom. The royal decree presented in figure 6.3 is in answer to a specific request from Zenon who had been penalized for failing to produce a person (Kallias) in court within the fixed term. The king now decrees that Zenon, and likewise all others who are a surety for somebody else, are to be freed from this penalty if they actually produce the person wanted. Although the Greek grammar is somewhat obscure in the beginning, the text seems to suggest that Heniochos submitted the petition on behalf of Zenon, and that the royal decree is now being announced to Zenon by Aischylos, which would suggest that there has been no direct contact between the king and Zenon on this matter. By order of the king, announced by Aischylos agent of Sostratos to Zenon, on behalf of whom Heniochos of the troop of Anthippos, taxiarch, presented a petition. If he has become surety for the appearance of Kallias as defendant against Eukles, on producing his person let him be released from the penalty of exceeding the term and in like manner let all who become surety for the appearance of another be, on producing his person, released from their bond and not debarred from exceeding the term. Year 10, (in the month) Audnaios.

Roman Handwriting from the Roman period can be found in the first three centuries CE, at the high point of the Roman Empire. During this period, Greek handwriting becomes smaller and rounder and, in contrast to handwriting from the Ptolemaic period, does not hang from an imaginary line anymore, but appears to be confined within a bilinear core consisting of two imaginary lines between which the bodies of all letters are contained. Only bars going up or down will go beyond these imaginary lines, but not by much.4 Page 68 →Figure 6.4 shows a letter from the first half of the 1st century CE. The handwriting is small and letters are almost all written in ligature, not separately. This is a clear sign that the text was written by somebody used to writing and who is comfortable creating a flowing text on a sheet of papyrus. The writing becomes smaller and more crammed together towards the end of the letter, which could suggest that the scribe was running out of space. The final line is clearly set off from the main text by indentation and it only contains the greeting (“farewell”). This final greeting in letters was sometimes written by the same scribe who penned the actual letter, but sometimes by the actual sender of the letter who added this greeting in his/her own handwriting. There is no clear difference between the handwriting of the body of the letter and the greeting at the end, suggesting that the scribe himself wrote this greeting. Fig. 6.4. Letter from Nemesion to Tryphon Greek on papyrus. 12.5 x 18 cm. First half of the 1st century CE. P.Mich.inv. 1638 (TM 25892). Purchased in 1924. Edition: G. M. Browne, P.Mich. XII (1975), no. 656.

Page 69 →In this letter, Nemesion, probably the tax collector of the village of Philadelphia, complains to the addressee that he has been harassed by somebody acting on behalf of the chief of the armed guards. The archive of this tax collector was purchased in the early 1920s and is currently dispersed over 10 papyrus collections, one of which is the Michigan papyrus collection.5 There is still a number of unpublished texts that are being studied and prepared for publication by Ann Ellis Hanson (Yale University). Nemesion to Tryphon, his brother, greetings. I ask you to go to the officials and inform them that Papei, on account of the chief of the armed guards, is annoying me, wearing me down about his travel money; therefore it is necessary that they appeal to the strategos. I owe nothing, either in arrears or on the current account. If you do not get rid of him, I am going to have no peace. Farewell.

Byzantine Byzantine handwriting develops out of Roman period handwriting and adds a more vertical aspect to it. It is obvious that this change does not occur overnight and that the choice for 300 CE as the beginning of Byzantine handwriting follows historical periodization more than actual paleographical common sense. The movement towards what papyrologists call a Byzantine hand can already be seen in the course of the 3rd century CE, whereas more conservative scribes continue to use handwriting that would fit the terminology “Roman” into the beginning of the 4th century CE. What distinguishes a truly Byzantine hand from a Roman hand is that the bilinear core of letters that was found in the Roman period is now embellished by more pronounced upward and downward strokes for vertical letters. In the course of the Byzantine period, the bilinear core becomes more condensed to give way to even more pronounced vertical portions of letters.6 Figure 6.5 (p. 70) shows an example of a text that chronologically still belongs in the Roman period but already shows early signs of Byzantine handwriting. As one can see, the bilinear core of the letters is still central to this handwriting, but vertical strokes have become more pronounced than in figure 6.4 from the early Roman period. Especially the lower diagonal of the kappa (K) in this text extends to the right for one or more letters following. In the third line, the scribe puts in spacing between the words “my” (written Page 71 →larger than the rest), “very many,” and “greetings.” This indicates the end of the heading of the letter (with name of sender and addressee), after which the actual text of the letter begins. This papyrus also shows a feature frequently found in private letters. If the person writing the text is running out of space, he (or she) will add further text (whether an afterthought or a greeting) in the empty left-hand margin, at a right angle to the main text. Page 70 →Fig. 6.5. Letter from Paniskos to his wife Ploutogeneia Greek on papyrus. 24.7 x 11 cm. Late 3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 1367 (TM 21344). Purchased in 1924. Edition: J. G. Winter, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 13 (1927), 61–63. Reprinted as P.Mich. III (1936), no. 214. In this letter, Paniskos requests his wife Ploutogeneia to follow him to Koptos in middle Egypt, where he is staying and to bring some items for him. This letter is part of a small family archive consisting largely of private letters between the members of this family, which will be discussed in more detail in chapter 10. The letter gives a clear impression of how family members stay in touch while they are apart from one another. The addition at the end that his wife should not wear her gold jewelry on the boat has been understood to imply that this may attract thieves and muggers. Paniskos, to my wife Ploutogeneia, mother of my daughter, very many greetings. First I pray daily for your good health in the presence of all the gods. I would have you know then, sister, that we have been staying in Koptos near your sister and her children, so that you may not be grieved about coming to Koptos; for your relatives are here. And just as you desire above all to greet her with many greetings, so she prays daily to the gods desiring to greet you along with your mother. So when you have received this letter of mine make your preparations in order that you may come at once if I send for you. And when you come, bring ten wool shearings, six jars of olives, four jars of honeyed wine, and my shield, the new one only, and my helmet. Bring also my lances. Bring also the fittings of the tent. If you find an opportunity, come here with good men. Let Nonnos come with you. Bring all our

clothes when you come. When you come, bring your gold ornaments, but (continued in the left margin:) do not wear them on the boat.

Figure 6.6 (p. 72) provides a clear example of Byzantine handwriting. It also shows the variety of handwritings that can be found at the same moment in time because the surviving text includes the handwritings of four individuals. The first part that contains the end of the actual contract was written by Aurelius Iordanes, who is also writing for the illiterate contracting party (whose name is lost). Iordanes’s handwriting is practiced and well executed; he was clearly a man used to writing. At the end of line 12, the second personPage 72 → begins to write, the witness Aurelius Phoebammon. The second witness, Aurelius Georgius, begins writing in the line before last. The notary Victor adds his signature in the last line with many flourishes and added symbols and signs that cannot be securely read. The four handwriting styles are different yet all conform to the general traits (long vertical up and down strokes) found in Byzantine handwriting. Fig. 6.6. Loan of money Greek on papyrus. 31 x 29 cm. 6th/7th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 502 (TM 38532). Purchased in 1920. Edition: T. Gagos, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 79 (1989), 276–80 (= SB XX 15043). Figure 6.6 preserves the end of a loan of money between two people whose names were mentioned in the top part of the papyrus that has not survived. What is interesting about this loan is that instead of paying interest, Page 73 →the borrower undertakes to perform irrigation duties on land belonging to the lender. What exactly these duties entailed is not specified and may have been the subject of a separate labor contract between the two parties that has not survived. The loan amount is expressed in gold coins (solidus, plural solidi) that became the standard of many economic transactions in Egypt after the 4th century CE. There were local standards of the gold coin and the solidus of Hermopolis used for this loan was apparently not full-weight (ca. 4ВЅ gram), but 6/24 less (a carat being an accounting unit corresponding to 1/24 of a solidus). .В .В . I acknowledge that I have received [В .В .В .В ] five gold solidi less six carats on the public standard of the said city, total 5 gold solidi less 6 carats, which I will provide to you whenever I give up the irrigation of the said vineyard in stamped money as I received, without any delay or dispute or lawsuit or legal process, all my possession present and future being mortgaged to you as though by decree of court. The document (is) enforceable and guaranteed and, having been questioned, I have given my consent. I, AureliusВ .В .В .В , the aforementioned, have drawn up this contract as written above. I, Aurelius Iordanes, son ofВ .В .В .В , from Hermopolis, having been requested, have signed on his behalf because he does not know letters. (2nd hand) I, Aurelius Phoibammon, from Hermopolis, witness the document having had it read to me from the person who has drawn it up. (3rd hand) I, Aurelius Georgius, son of Achilleus, from Hermopolis, witness the document having had it read to me from the person who has drawn it up. (4th hand) Through Victor, by the Grace of God, public notary.

Latin When the Romans arrived in Egypt in 30 BCE after Octavian had defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony the year before, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire. Like in the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, this had no big consequences for the linguistic choices of the administration, which continued to be run largely in Greek. Latin only played a role in the spheres of Roman law, the military, and the highest levels of the administration in the capital Alexandria. As a result, only a small percentage of documents from Egypt even Page 74 →during the Roman period were written in Latin. These Latin texts, however, are very important for understanding the development of Latin handwriting and the Latin language because they provide examples of Roman cursive

handwriting and of spoken Latin from this early period. Fig. 6.7. Decision of a judge in an inheritance case Latin on papyrus. 12 x 25.5 cm. First half 1st century CE. P.Mich.inv. 1320 (TM 78513). Purchased in 1924. Edition: H. A. Sanders, Transactions of the American Philological Association 55 (1924), 21–34. Reprinted as P.Mich. III (1936), no. 159. Figure 6.7 provides an example of a clear, beautiful style of Latin handwriting that was used for documentary, rather than literary, purposes. The first four letters of this text are “quod,” in which the modern printed shapes of the letters are perhaps already recognizable. As with Greek, there are no word or sentence divisions in this Latin text, although we know from earlier inscriptions that Latin actually used to have word divisions in written texts. This is an interesting example of Latin following Greek practice that to our modern mind makes reading the text harder. However, that word and sentence division were not always abolished in Latin texts is also clear in figure 6.7, where the occasional dots between words mark word division. There are also a number of corrections in the text, especially of some personal names. Figure 6.7 records the decision taken by the Roman centurion Publius Mattius in a dispute about the inheritance of an auxiliary soldier. The text describes the parties involved and narrates the proceedings of the case, concludingPage 75 → with Publius’s decision. The context for this text is the death of a soldier (Dionysius son of Manlius) and the question who of two contesting parties can legally succeed to this man’s inheritance because he did not leave a will. In the case of intestate inheritance, Roman law is quite specific as to who can and who cannot obtain possession of such an inheritance, in which the main qualifier is relational distance to the deceased. One of the parties in the suit was a brother (seemingly with the same name as the deceased), the other two were nephews (“sons of the sister”), and according to Roman law, brothers take precedence in this case. Whereas between Dionysius, son of Manlius, a discharged cavalryman, whose cause in his absence was defended by Marcus Trebius Heraclides, a cavalryman in the Aprian squadron, unit of Acamas, the son of the said Dionysius, and Marcus Apronius and Marcus Manlius, cavalrymen in the Vocontian squadron, unit of Domesticus, there was a lawsuit concerning the nearness of relationship, as to which of them was the more nearly related so as to obtain possession of the property of Dionysius, the son of Manlius, a cavalryman in the Aprian squadron, who was said to have died intestate; and whereas for that suit Lucius Selius Laetus, the camp prefect, had appointed as judge Publius Mattius, centurion in the third Cyrenaic legion, and had ordered him to give judgment, the said Publius Mattius, centurion in the third Cyrenaic legion, employed as his advisers Marcus Publius Marcius Optatus, the son of Marcus Publius, of the Falernian Tribe, decurion in the Xoitan squadron, and Lucius Herennius Valens, decurion in the Aprian squadron, and Octavius Domesticus, decurion in the Vocantian squadron, and, after the pleading had been completed on both sides and the surety bonds had been read through, rendered decision, in accordance with which decision he announced that it seemed to him that Dionysius, the son of Manlius, was the brother of his brother (?) Dionysius who is said to have died, but that Apronius and Manlius were the sons of the sister of that Dionysius according to the bonds of near relationship that they have themselves furnished, and that the property of Dionysius, which is the subject of the suit, seems to belong to Dionysius, the son of Manlius, a discharged cavalryman, and should be assigned to him. Acted in the campВ .В .В . in the Heliopolite nomeВ .В .В . of the month Neos Sebastos of yearВ .В .В . ofВ .В .В . Germanicus Imperator. Page 76 →

Coptic Coptic is essentially the Egyptian language written in Greek characters with the addition of six (or seven) additional characters to represent Egyptian sounds that Greek did not have. The first experiments with writing the

Egyptian language in Greek letters date already to the 1st century CE, but it becomes more frequent in the 3rd century CE and soon afterwards takes over all the earlier scripts of Egyptian discussed above. Although Coptic is best known as the language of the Christian church in Egypt, there are also many documentary texts in Coptic, including private letters, tax receipts, and accounts. Within Coptic there are a number of different dialects, of which Sahidic that was primarily spoken in Upper Egypt was the most important. Figure 6.8 shows an example of a Coptic literary hand that is beautifully executed. The papyrus contains half of a page of what must have been a large codex with two columns of writing to the page. Of this page, a substantial part of the right, inner column (19 lines and the bottom margin) and only a couple of letters of the left, outer column survive. Comparison with the known text shows that there are only four lines missing at the top. There is no word division, but there are occasional dots and spaces to separate sections from one another. There are few Coptic manuscripts containing the Old Testament books of Kingdoms, suggesting that this book was not very popular in the Coptic Church of Egypt. Two leaves of a Coptic manuscript of IV Kingdoms (renamed 2 Kings in the Septuagint) are part of the Michigan collection and contain a part of this book that is not otherwise known in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic. The image shows the verso of the first page (or “folio”), which contains parts of IV Kingdoms chapter 2. It has been suggested that this fragment comes from the White Monastery in Egypt. (col. i)В .В .В . “Sit here, because it is to the Jordanes that the Lord has told me to go.” And Elisaios said to himВ .В .В . (col. ii)В .В .В . He] struck the water with it; the water separated on this side and that, and they crossed the dry sea together. (2:9) And when they had crossed, Helias said to Elisaios, “Ask me for a thing, and I shall do it for you before I am taken up from your sight.” Elisaios aid to him, “Let your spirit become doubled upon me.” (2:10) Helias said to him, “You have exceeded the measure for requesting. If you see me being taken up from your sight, this shall happen to you. But if I am not taken up, this thing shall not happen to you.” Fig. 6.8. IV Kingdoms 2:6 and 2:8–10 Coptic on Papyrus. 15.5 x 20.1 cm. Second half 9th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 607 (TM 113559), Folio I, verso. Purchased in 1921. Edition: G. M. Browne, Illinois Classical Studies 3 (1978), 196–205. Page 77 →

Arabic The Arabs conquered Egypt in 641 CE and introduced Arabic into Egypt. However, they initially left much of the existing administration in Greek intact, resulting in the first Arabic documents from Egypt being bilingual, Page 78 →Arabic-Greek, or even trilingual, Arabic-Greek-Coptic. Even documents written in Arabic 300 years after the Arab conquest may involve contracting parties that do not know the language, as in figure 6.9. The Arabic found in the papyri, like the Greek before it, gives a good idea about the spoken language of the time, for which there are no other sources. Fig. 6.9. Sale of a residence Arabic on white parchment. 26.5 x 69 cm. March, 963 CE. P.Mich.inv. 5635 (TM n/a) (detail). Purchased in 1931. Edition: G. Frantz-Murphy, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40 (1981), 212–22. Figure 6.9 shows a complete contract of sale from the end of the 10th century CE written on a very thin and long (69 cm) sheet of parchment. As in earlier periods, the contracting parties were required to sign under the Page 79 →contract in their own hand, or, when illiterate, to use the services of a literate friend or professional scribe. The survival of the ink is very uneven, and while the top and bottom part of the text show that this is a problem of

survival, the uneven application of ink in the central part of the text also suggests that the scribe used a varying amount of ink while writing. This would seem to indicate a rather inexperienced scribe. Figure 6.9 preserves a legal contract that confirms the sale of a house by Baqam to Sarah, both residents of the village Tutun. The contract specifies the neighboring plots of the property involved (among which the property of the buyer himself) and the sale price. It is interesting to note that apparently the contracting parties did not know Arabic, and that the contract “was explained to him in a foreign language,” which must have been Coptic. At this point in time, the Arabs have ruled Egypt for over 300 years, but still not everybody speaks Arabic. In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is what SarГЎh son of Daniyal bought from BaqГЎm son of Damiyani, from among the residents of TutГєn in the District of the FayyГєm. He bought from him the house that belongs to him, east of the residence of SarГЎh son of Daniyal, with its boundary and its boundaries, and below it and above it, and inside it and outside of it. The southern boundary is the residence of the heirs of MГєnah the Deaf. Its northern boundary is the house that belongs to BaqГЎm son of Damiyani, Its eastern boundary is the residence of the heirs of Kayl son of AbamГЎlah. Its western boundary is the residence of SarГЎh son of Daniyal. He bought that from him for two dinars and a sixth, minted gold of full, new weight. BaqГЎm, son of Damiyani has taken the price without any demand and in full. And he has removed himself from the house described in this document. And he delivered that to SarГЎh son of Daniyal. He took it, and he took possession of it, and he took ownership of it, and that has become part of his property, possessed out of his right of possession. If he wishes he may sell, and if he wishes he may build, and if he wishes he may reside. There is not belonging to Page 80 →BaqГЎm son of Damiyani in this house, after this recording, any claim and no demand, not for any cause and not for any reason. He sold that according to the stipulation of the sale of Islam and its contract. And whatever there may be by way of a claim for an attachment to the property, or claims for a right in, or due from, the property, or should someone come adventitiously because of a loan, the execution of that and its clearance will be the obligation of BaqГЎm son of Damiyani for the worth to which it amounts, out of his clear property. Testimony was given to the affirmation of BaqГЎm son of Damiyani to all that is in this document, after it was read to him in Arabic and explained to him in the foreign language, being of sound mind and body and his actions legal, being willing, without being averse, not being compelled, not being treated unjustly, being the petitioner and the one desiring. And that is in Muharram of the year two and fifty and three hundred. (2nd hand) BaqГЎm agreed with SarГЎh son of Daniyal to that which is in this document. Umar son of MГєsГЎ wote on his behalf with his hand on its date. (3rd hand) Ali son of Jabrayal bore witness to all that which is in this document and he wrote with his hand. (4th hand) And DitГєz son of Ahmad and he wrote on his behalf Titiu.В .В .В . (5th hand) Ismail son of Abd al-QГЎhir testified respecting the affirmation of these persons named in this document and he wrote with his hand on its date.

Hebrew The presence of the Jewish people in Egypt goes back to at least the 5th century BCE when there was a Jewish unit stationed at Elephantine. While Aramaic was the language in day-to-day communication, Hebrew continued to be used for literary texts. Figure 6.10 shows a page from a 15th- or 16th-century CE codex. The handwriting is beautifully written with a thick pen. This fragment of paper preserves a portion of the Rif’s Talmudic commentary. It discusses two pages from the first chapter of the Baba Batra that deals with Jewish legal laws regarding property ownership. This is one of only three fragments in Hebrew in the papyrology collection, all of which Kelsey purchased in 1920. Page 81 → Fig. 6.10. Commentary on the Talmud Hebrew on paper. 16.6 x 23 cm. 15th/16th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 533 (TM n/a). Purchased in 1920. Edition: unpublished. Page 82 → Further Reading The Trismegistos project (www.trismegistos.org) is the only project that allows access to all published texts from Egypt, whatever its language. Several papers in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) deal with Greek and Latin handwriting and several aspects of the multilingual environment of late period Egypt including bilingualism.

Page 83 →

Chapter 7 School Texts The written documents from Egypt show that there were many people who knew how to write. It is also clear that there was a wide range in the ability to write, from people barely able to write their own name in crude letters to professional scribes who were able to produce beautiful books or hastily scribbled legally binding contracts. Interestingly, both extremes on the writing spectrum came out of the same educational context, where people, mostly men, would learn how to write beginning with letters (or signs), then syllables (groups of signs), then sentences, and finally texts (literary and documentary). One of the big questions of papyrological scholarship is how large a portion of the population was able to write. To answer this, it is necessary to distinguish between the various historical periods. In Pharaonic Egypt, for example, writing was the domain of priests, but not necessarily all priests, leading to estimated literacy rates of less than 1 percent of the population. In the classical world, the ability to write was less restricted and became a matter of money and social standing rather than occupation. Members of the Greek and Roman elites would educate their children, mostly their sons but occasionally also their daughters, how to write and read. Clearly only a small percentage of the population was able to write in the ancient world, but how small this percentage was exactly is up for debate, and depends on where and when one looks. W. V. Harris in his magisterial study of ancient literacy posited a literacy rate of less than 10 percent for the ancient world of Greece and Rome at large.1 Others have pointed out, based on the study of writing in papyri from specific villages in Egypt, that literacy rates in those villages could be as high as 20 percent of the population in the Roman period.2 Whatever the precise numbers may have been, and keeping in mind that these deal with literacy in Greek only, I think we can be fairly sure that less than a quarter of the population was able to write in late period Egypt. Page 84 →The various stages of Greek education in writing can be illustrated with texts from the Michigan collection. These illustrate the curriculum that students went through from the writing of letters and syllables to the writing of short sentences. At the end of the chapter, I add one text that may give an indication of how math figured into the student curriculum, and because Greek numbers and Greek letters are the same (see below), Greek mathematics could not be done without knowing how to write letters.

Letters and Syllables A student of Greek would first begin to practice writing the rudimentary forms of the letters, both as an alphabet and combined in clusters, syllabaries. Although there are examples of such writing exercises on papyrus, the Michigan papyrus collection contains a number of examples on wooden boards. One of the advantages of using a wooden board instead of papyrus is that one could wash and sand a board to make it available for reuse. Figure 7.1 shows one board of what must have been a book of at least two boards. The holes with which the boards were bound together are slightly visible in the bottom middle. That there must have been another board is not only clear from these holes but also from the fact that this side only contains the first half of the Greek consonants (from beta to lambda). The handwriting is clearly that of a person learning to write. Individual letter shapes are irregular in shape and size, especially in the more difficult letters like beta (B) and theta (О). The board itself is not high quality and has been sanded and washed many times, leaving dark smudges in the left half of the board, nearly obscuring the writing there. On the other side of the board (not shown here), the pupil wrote the Greek alphabet three times, first in regular order (abcВ .В .В .), then backwards (zyxВ .В .В .), and finally in paired (azbycxВ .В .В .) order. The student first wrote the seven Greek vowels (a, e, ГЄ, i, o, y, Гґ) and then continued pairing these vowels with the consonants including the iota (i) again, which was used not only as a vowel but also as a consonant (modern jsound). In this case, the interesting result is an entry “iii.” The student reaches lambda and must have

continued with the rest of the consonants on another board that does not survive. All entries are underlined. These scribal exercises are exciting because they allow us to look over the shoulder of an ancient student who was working hard to learn how to write, and to follow his Page 85 →mistakes. In this case, for example, we can clearly see that the student forgot to write BOB after BIB in the second column, and added that later. We can also assume that the student was very glad to reach the end of each column because he wrote much larger letters for the final entry in each column. Fig. 7.1. Greek Syllabary Greek on wood. 35.7 x 10.2 cm. 4th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 763 (TM 64587). Purchased in 1920. Edition: A. E. R. Boak, Classical Philology 16 (1921), 189–91.

Words When the student was secure in writing individual letters and combinations of letters, he continued to practice and improve his or her writing skills by writing words. In most cases, the student would copy a model written by his teacher. Often words used in these exercises came from Greek geography, history, or mythology, which meant that most of these words (that were also supposed to be learned by heart) were not really used in daily conversations. Figure 7.2 (p. 86) shows an example of a model for a writing exercise, where a teacher in clear letters has written the names of five deities to be copied by the student. The potsherd containing this text was found in the same house as another potsherd containing further text in the same hand, and in his study of this text Herbert Youtie suggested that both texts belong together although they do not physically join. They could of course also be two separate models to be copied by students. The actual potsherd was returned to Egypt in the late 1930s. Of the five names, two will be recognized immediately: the Greek goddess Artemis and the Greek god Dionysos. Demo at the end is the shortened Page 86 →form for Demeter, another goddess from the Greek pantheon; Demeter’s daughter is mentioned as Koura, which is a dialectal form for KorГЄ, “girl,” another name for Persephone. Sambathis is not otherwise known and may be connected with Sambethe, originally a Babylonian oracle goddess whose cult spread over the ancient Near East into Egypt. If this is correct, it is interesting to find a reference to this goddess in Karanis, where there are no other references to this oriental cult. However, the rare name Sambathis fits with the rare Demo for Demeter and Koura for Kore, showing the “learned” aspect of this exercise. Fig. 7.2. List of gods Greek on potsherd. 11.7 x 12.6 cm. Late 3rd/early 4th century CE. O.Mich.inv. 9010 (TM 64283). Found in Karanis during the 1927–28 season. Edition: L. Amundsen, O.Mich. I (1935), no. 657. Sambathis Artemis Koura Dionyso[s] Demo Page 87 →

Sentences The next step in learning Greek would be to learn how to write sentences, practicing letter combinations and speed. Here, too, the teacher would write down a model to be copied by the student. Figure 7.3 shows an example of such a writing exercise, written on the back of an account (not shown here). The

teacher wrote down three sentences with a clear Greek mythological content, each verse beginning with a new letter of the alphabet (“acrostic”). The teacher’s handwriting is fluent and regular with the occasional combination of letters, although it is not a very appealing hand. In the fifth line, the student began writing the first verse in a much less regular handwriting, and for an unknown reason stopped copying after the Page 88 →fourth word of the first verse. He then wrote his own name, Eutuchides, son of Kalopos (?), in a curved way in the bottom margin. Fig. 7.3. Writing exercise Greek on papyrus. 11.5 x 9.3 cm. 3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4953 (TM 64120). Purchased in 1928. Edition: R. W. Daniel, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 49 (1982), 43–44. The writing model consists of three different sentences that deal with three different and unrelated episodes from Greek mythology. The first verse refers to the myth of Althaea, who at first tries to protect her son Meleager by burying the firebrand from the home hearth because she was foretold by the Fates that her son (possibly born from a union with the god Ares) would die when this firebrand was consumed by the fire. After Meleager had killed his uncles (Althaea’s brothers) in rage, Althaea dug up the firebrand and set it on fire, thus killing her own son. The second verse describes the victory of Polydeuces, one of the Argonauts, over Amycus, who ruled the country of the Bebryces. The third verse refers to the better-known episode when the Greek hero Perseus beheads the Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze could turn everything into stone. Althaea killed Meleager with the pitiless firebrand. Polydeuces prevailed over Amycus, the chief of the Bebryces. Perseus lopped off the head of the direful Gorgon.

Math Apart from writing, the school curriculum also contained math, both basic and more advanced, practical and more theoretical. Among the skills to be learned were basic skills such as addition and multiplication, but there are also several tables that list rather complicated fractions. Greek numbers are Greek letters in alphabetical order with additional signs (for 6, 90, and 900). Alpha is 1, iota is 10, and rho is 100. Thousands are formed by adding a tick to the letter, and 10,000s by adding a my (for myriad). Figure 7.4 shows one of the longer rolls that form part of the Michigan collection. The height of the papyrus (9.2 cm) shows that it is one-third of a Page 89 →roll. It is likely that in order to produce this roll, an actual roll of papyrus (30 cm high) was cut into three lengthwise, and that these smaller sheets were attached to one another end to end to produce the current roll (which has not survived completely). Fig. 7.4. Table of fractions (overview) Greek on papyrus. 9.2 x 106.7 cm. 4th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 621 (TM 64468). Purchased in 1921. Edition: F. E. Robbins, Classical Philology 18 (1923), 328–33. Fig. 7.5. Table of fractions (detail, column vi–vii) This long and narrow roll contains a table of fractions. As it survives, it begins with the sevenths and ends with a heading for the nineteenths, although the details for that section were never filled in. For each fraction, the Page 90 →ordinals follow in ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands, ending with 10,000, with for each ordinal number the amount of the fraction. Figure 7.5 shows a detail from the roll above. It shows the “of the,” slightly separated from the ordinal number, which itself is set apart from the result. As one can see, the result is indicated by ticks above all numbers, not only the actual fractions. For example, in the first entry (“(a ninth) of 300 is 33 1/3, all three letters (О» for 30, О“ for 3 and О“ for 1/3) have a tick to their top right, and this continues throughout the columns.

The detail image shows the end of the ninths and the beginning of the tenths. Interestingly, in the section of tenths, the second item is the 10th of 6,000. The importance of the number 6,000 is that there were 6,000 drachmas to the talent, both monetary units that were important in financial transactions. Col. vi Of 300 = 33 1/3 Of 400 = 44 1/3 1/9 Of 500 = 55 1/2 1/18 Of 600 = 66 2/3 Of 700 = 77 2/3 1/9 Of 800 = 88 1/2 1/3 1/18 Of 900 = 100 Of 1,000 = 111 1/9 Of 2,000 = 222 1/6 1/18 Of 3,000 = 333 1/3 Of 4,000 = 444 1/3 1/9 Of 5,000 = 555 1/2 1/18 Of 6,000 = 666 2/3 Of 7,000 = 777 2/3 1/9 Col. vii Of 8,000 = 888 1/2 1/3 1/18 Of 9,000 = 1,000 Of 10,000 = 1111 1/9 Tenths: Of 1, the 1/10th = 1/10 The 1/10th (of 6,000) = 600 Of 2 = 1/5 Of 3 = 1/5 1/10 Of 4 = 1/3 1/15 Of 5 = 1/2 Of 6 = 1/2 1/10 Of 7 = 1/2 1/5 Of 8 = 2/3 1/10 1/30 Of 9 = 1/2 1/3 1/15 The most important studies on education in Greek and Roman Egypt are by Raffaela Cribiore: R. Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996; available as ACLS ebook at http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.02273.0001.001). On literacy in the ancient world more generally, see W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Page 91 →

Chapter 8 Ancient Books As soon as numerous Greek papyri began to come out of the Egyptian desert in the late 19th century, scholars gave much attention to books on papyrus, even though literary texts form only a small percentage of the surviving texts. This is not surprising. Before papyri were found in Egypt, the oldest manuscripts of the Greek and Latin authors were those on parchment that were kept at the great libraries and monasteries of the world. Many of these, however, dated over 1,000 years after the ancient author had lived and worked. For example, before papyri were discovered, the oldest manuscript containing works of the Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 428–347 BCE) dated to the 9th century CE (currently at the Bodleian Library in Oxford), thus about 1,300 years after Plato was active. This long period during which Plato’s text was copied and copied again offered many opportunities for scribal mistakes that can obscure the original content and meaning of the ancient author. There was therefore much excitement among classical philologists when the first literary texts were discovered in the sands of Egypt. These papyri dated much earlier than the texts contained in medieval manuscripts and it was expected that they could aid in trying to discover the text that was actually written by the ancient author. This process of trying to reconstruct the text written by the ancient author is known as textual criticism. It entails carefully comparing all extant manuscripts of an ancient author with a special eye to those places in the text where different manuscripts offer different readings of individual words or sentences. By comparing the different readings it is often possible to decide which reading is a mistake and why. The rule of thumb employed by scholars occupied in this activity is that the more difficult reading is most likely the original one. This is based on the assumption that a scribe in the process of copying is more likely to change something difficult that he does not understand into something less difficult. It should be noted that the readings offered by the literary papyri from Egypt are judged on the same principle, not on the basis of their relative antiquity. Page 92 →Even more exciting to classical scholars was the fact that papyri soon began delivering texts from authors whose work had not been copied in the medieval manuscript tradition. Ancient authors whose works were only known by titles, or by small fragments that were quoted in other ancient authors, could now be seen in greater detail. One interesting example of a rediscovered ancient author is the Athenian comic poet Menander (active in the 4th century BCE), of whom we previously only had a volume of quotations cited in other texts. The Michigan collection contains a fragment of one of this author’s comedies, the Epitrepontes (P.Mich.inv. 4733). This fragment was found during the Michigan excavations at Karanis. Papyri such as these have now given us one complete comedy written by Menander, and substantial portions of several more. As with the classical philologists, an equal interest was also manifest among biblical scholars. Although the gap in biblical manuscripts was not as big as with classical authors (the oldest known Bible manuscript before papyri came to light dated to the 4th century CE), the idea that one could get closer to the actual word of God spurred some excitement with general audiences as well as with scholars. This same enthusiasm is still present today whenever there are rumors of new papyrus finds that could give us a 1st-century CE manuscript of one of the Gospels.1 In addition, papyrus discoveries also aid in our understanding of the early Christian religious communities and the texts that they read. Papyri have given us fragments of various Gospels (Judas, Thomas, Mary) that circulated among the Christian communities in the first centuries of our era, but were eventually not taken up in the Catholic (and hence Protestant) biblical canon. These texts, in combination with the occasional private letters written by Christians, allow a more intimate view of what was happening in the first centuries after Christianity came into existence. Apart from content, the literary papyri from Egypt are also important sources for the history of the book form as they provide examples of what a book looked like in various periods of time. Papyri also allow us to get a little sense of what was “hot” and what was “not” among readers, as scribes would cater to their intended audiences. For example, we now know that ancient readers at one point liked to have book rolls with columns that

slanted to the right with varying degrees of subtlety, something not very appealing to the modern eye. Papyri also provide information about how book lovers collected their books (basically by using a network of friends and fellow readers), and sometimes how much they cost. Collecting books was clearly an Page 93 →activity for the wealthy, although the price of a book depended on the choice of material (parchment or papyrus), and execution of the manuscript (professional scribe or private copy). Chart 8.1. Typological distribution of the collection Although the Michigan literary and biblical papyri are indeed important, chart 8.1 clearly shows that the literary and biblical texts form only a very small part of the collection. The documentary papyri, which make up the majority of the collection, will feature prominently in the following chapters.

Roll The traditional form of the ancient book was a roll. The scribe would take a standard papyrus roll of twenty sheets (see p. 41) and begin writing the text in columns. In the case of poetry, the verse length decided the length of individual lines. This means that a literary papyrus can easily be identified as poetry because the right edge of the text is not justified. In the case of prose, the scribe followed conventions for the various literary genres, but the right edge of the text was always justified, even if this meant hyphenating words. Historical works normally have very narrow columns of only a dozen or so letters. The length of the roll depended on the work (or portions of a work) contained in it, as the only limit to pasting papyrus rolls behind each other was practical in that there came a moment when a roll became too large and heavy to handle. For example, William Johnson at Duke University has calculated that a papyrus roll 20 meters long would have the diameter of a two-liter bottle of soda.2 This is not a very practical book to hold and read. Page 94 →On a roll of papyrus, the writing would be on the side where the fibers of the papyrus sedge run horizontally, traditionally called the “recto” or front side of the papyrus. This was not so much because these horizontal fibers provided writing lines for the scribe (although they indeed could be helpful) but rather because when the scroll was rolled up with the recto side on the inside, the other side (with the fibers running vertically) could deal better with the stress from rolling. For most literary texts, there was no writing on the verso (back) side of the papyrus except in some rare cases. Figure 8.1 shows two columns of a papyrus roll containing the 18th book of Homer’s Iliad. That we are indeed dealing with verse is made clear by the ragged view of the right side of each column. The handwriting of this text is regular and practiced, although perhaps not very beautifully executed. This suggests that this roll was rather a personal copy than a library copy. In support, we note that the text contains some corrections, one of which is clearly visible about midway in the left column, where the scribe has crossed out a word and added the correct word above it. In higher quality manuscripts, such a correction would be executed with more care, by wiping out the text rather than crossing it out. The papyrus is much damaged in its lower half and it is clear that this damage repeats itself progressively in the length of the roll. Indeed, the shape and size of such damage can help scholars in reconstructing rolls that have broken apart into separate fragments. Fragments of almost the complete roll survive, the largest being from the end of the roll that contains columns 10 to 14. At the end there remains a blank space with no writing, which was customary in papyrus rolls (also at the beginning). The beginning and end of the roll were the places where there would be the most possible damage by stress from either rolling or handling, so that ancient scribes kept the first and last sheet of a roll empty. The fragments that make up this particular roll arrived in the collection at different times. The largest was part of the 1920 purchase by Francis Kelsey, and it received inventory number 2. Other fragments were found during the 1924 season of excavations at Karanis and received inventory number 2755a. In July 1925, after the Michigan archaeologists had left, further fragments were purchased in Egypt and received the inventory number 3160. This clearly shows the roll was not in one piece anymore and was scattered around in several spots in Karanis. Sebbakh digging activities at Karanis (see p. 149) had already resulted in papyrus finds that were offered for sale on the

antiquities market well before the Michigan team arrived in 1924. That the third batch of fragments was offered for sale in 1925 shows that after the Michigan Page 95 →archaeologists left, local workers continued digging activities and offered any finds for sale on the antiquities market. Fig. 8.1. Homer, Iliad XVIII, 484–574 Greek on papyrus. Ca. 30 x 300 cm. 2nd/3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 2 + 2755a + 3160 (TM 60687). Portions purchased in 1920 and 1925, and found at Karanis during the 1924–25 season. Edition: J. G. Winter, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 53 (1922), 128–33 (inv. 2); C. W. Shelmerdine, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 12 (1975), 20–21 (inv. 2755); N. E. Priest, Homeric Papyri in the Michigan Collection (UM diss., 1975), no. 31 (inv. 2 + 2755a + 3160). The 18th book of Homer’s Iliad deals with the aftermath of the death of Patroclus, the friend of the Greek hero Achilles. Patroclus had donned Achilles’s armor and chased the Trojans away from the Greek army camp. This is the moment when Achilles will resume battle himself, after sitting in camp for the first 17 books because he was angry at Agamemnon. The second half Page 96 →of the book deals with the production of a new shield for Achilles by the god Hephaestus, the detailed scenes depicted on which are described in the columns shown here.

Codex A later development in the history of the book is a format that most of us are more familiar with: the codex (plural codices). Sheets of the writing material (whether papyrus or parchment or paper) were folded in half vertically and then stitched through the fold. Stitching one or more gatherings of folded sheets together resulted in a book. The advantages of the codex versus the roll are clear: instead of using only one side of the writing surface as in the case of a roll, one always uses both sides. It is also easy to browse through a codex rather than to have to unroll a roll to reach the required passage. And, also important, one can hold a codex in one hand; for a papyrus roll, one always needs two. Like books on papyrus rolls, books in codex form also come in all forms and sizes. Some codices have pages with one column of writing per page (e.g., fig. 8.2), whereas others have two smaller columns of writing (e.g., fig. 6.8). Some codices were made from sheets of papyrus, others from more durable parchment (e.g., fig. 5.5). The introduction of the codex is often linked directly to Christianity, as almost all of the early manuscripts of the New Testament are in the form of a codex. Some scholars have hypothesized that by putting their holy books in a new format, Christians could set themselves apart from the Jewish people, whose holy books were still in rolls. This difference in format does help in identifying books from the Hebrew Bible as part of the Christian tradition (codex) rather than the Jewish tradition (roll). In addition, scholars cite the importance of being able to go to specific places in books, which is much easier in a codex than in a roll, although one should realize that at this early stage manuscripts did not yet have the notations of chapter and verse numbers that Christians are used to today in helping to find their way in the scriptures (chapters and verses were only added after the 13th century CE). Figure 8.2 shows one page from one of the most studied and visited papyrus manuscripts of the Michigan collection.3 Inventory 6238 comprises 30 leaves (60 pages) of an early codex that contained the Pauline Epistles. Page 98 →Another 56 leaves of this same codex were purchased by Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968) in a sort of Christian manuscript rush that took place in the early 1930s. The other leaves are now part of the manuscript collection of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. The remaining 18 leaves that originally must have completed this codex are missing. Because the whole manuscript was published together, even though it was divided physically over two collections, it is often, but mistakenly, referred to as P.Beatty II (without allowing for its Michigan inventory number). In the scholarship that deals with the textual criticism of the New Testament, again the whole manuscript (both the Dublin and the Michigan portions) is known as P46. Page 97 → Fig. 8.2. Pauline Epistles (Second Letter to the Corinthians)

Greek on Papyrus. 14.8 x 21.9 cm. ca. 200 CE. P.Mich.inv. 6238 (TM 61855), p. 145. Purchased in 1930–31. Edition: H. A. Sanders, Epistles of Paul (1935). Clearly visible in the top margin of figure 8.2 are three Greek letters that represent the number 145. This is the page number, and the presence of page numbers throughout the manuscript allows reconstruction of the whole codex. What is visible at the bottom of the page, set off from the main text by a line, is the title of the work. This is a so-called end-title, following the work rather than preceding it. However, the codex also contains titles at the beginnings of Pauline letters. It is easy to understand that without the presence of chapter and verse numbers, individual titles (at the beginning and/or the end of each Pauline letter) are very useful allow the ancient reader to find his or her place in the manuscript. The handwriting is beautiful and regular, with each letter taking up its own imaginary little square. An interesting feature of this particular codex is that the pages in front and back contain more text than pages in the center of the codex. This is caused by the fact that this particular codex was constructed by stacking 52 sheets of papyrus on top of one another, folding them in half, and trimming the uneven fore edge before writing the text. Because of the thickness of the gathering, much more material was trimmed from the center leaves than from the outer ones. As usual in Christian manuscripts of this time (see also p. 51), the writing for “God,” “Jesus,” “Christ,” and so on was written with only the first and last letters (as required by the Greek case ending) and marked by drawing a line over these letters. A word or name abbreviated in this way is known as “nomen sacrum,” (sacred name) or nomina sacra in plural. The page shown here contains the end of 2 Corinthians, 13:5 (partially)–13. Page 99 → Fig. 8.3. Dioscorides, De Materia Medica II 76.2 and 7–18 Greek on papyrus. 32.7 x 13.8 cm. Second half of 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 3 (TM 59697). Purchased in 1920. Edition: C. Bonner, Transactions of the American Philological Association 53 (1922), 142–68. Page 100 →

Medical Handbook Papyri not only contain works of literature but also preserve copies of more technical works of scholarship such as medicine and science. Among the first papyri to arrive in Michigan in 1920 was a fragment of a work of the 1stcentury CE physician Dioscorides. As figure 8.3 shows (p. 99), the papyrus preserves part of three narrow columns that are extraordinarily long (89 and 87 lines in columns ii and iii). Such very long columns are quite uncommon in literary texts. That this is a prose text and not poetry is clear from the justified margins on the right hand side as well as the left. The handwriting is a sloping small book-hand that can be dated to the 2nd century CE. This date is further confirmed by a small notation on the back of this roll that mentions the regnal year of the Roman emperor Commodus that coincides with 190/191 in the Common Era. The writing on the front of the papyrus must date to before this writing on the back. The columns in this roll clearly tilt to the right, a feature that was mentioned earlier (p. 92). Right tilting columns were a sought-after attribute of book rolls, carefully produced by the ancient scribes. The 1st-century CE physician Dioscorides wrote a treatise about the medicinal properties of plants and animal products. There are only a handful of fragments of this work on papyrus, of which this is one of the oldest. The present manuscript was written about a century after Dioscorides originally published his work. The section that survives here deals with the preparation of different animal fats (bulls, calves, etc.).

Pocket Edition

It may be clear from the examples above that many books were not very practical to carry around and were best used and consulted in a safe and steady environment, such as a library. However, people could choose to create a much smaller version of the book that would allow them to carry it around and consult it. Thus, scholars have noted the category of the “miniature codex,” any book with a page size of about 10 centimeters or smaller. Figure 8.4 shows two pages from a codex that was too large to fit the definition of a miniature codex (the pages must have been about 15 Г— 12 cm), but was nonetheless about half the size of a regular codex. The handwriting consistsPage 101 → of fairly regular but not very well executed capital letters. Different sections are indicated by beginning the first line of a section outside the margin, as can be seen on the right page. Nomina sacra (“sacred names,” see above) are present also in this text. Fig. 8.4. Christian allegorizations Greek on papyrus. 15 x 22 cm. 7th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 3718 (TM 65332), Fragm. 1. Purchased in 1925. Edition: A. Henrichs – E. M. Husselman, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 3 (1968), 175–89. The two pages shown here do not necessarily follow consecutively as one or more sheets of papyrus inside the gathering may have been lost. The quotations on the left page all come from the Old Testament Book of Proverbs, while the quotations on the right page come from the New Testament Gospel of Matthew. The mention of John at the end of the right page indicates what will follow on the next page. By the same token, this suggests that another page of quotations from Proverbs would follow on a sheet (or sheets) that is/are now missing, at least four pages. This text preserves biblical quotations followed by very simple allegorizations that basically consist of one-on-one equalizations of elements of the biblical verse with people or spiritual concepts. The quotations in the surviving fragments are taken from the Gospels of Matthew (2), John (1), Luke (1), and especially from the Old Testament Book of Proverbs (15). There is to us Page 102 →no apparent theme that unites all quotations. It is not really clear what the purpose of this book was other than perhaps to provide a tool to a traveling preacher for simple Bible explanations, as suggested by a recent undergraduate honors thesis at the University of Michigan.4 All the works of the humble man are manifest before God, but the impious will be destroyed on the evil day. (Proverbs 16:1) The lips of the wise are bound by discretion (Proverbs 15:7) The lips are the prophets; the wise the apostles; discretion is Christ Wise lips are the weapons of discretion. (Proverbs 14:7) The weapons were the apostles; lips Christ; the wise the gospels. Of Proverbs. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24) The camel is Judas; the eye of the needle is salvation; the rich man is the devil. The kingdom of heavens is like yeast that a woman takes and leavens into three measures of meal. (Matthew 13:33) The yeast is Mary; the meal is the body; [?] is Christ; the three measures is the tomb (?). Of John. Further Reading A good general introduction to books in the ancient world is William A. Johnson, “The Ancient Book,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 256–81. Many technical aspects of ancient books (measurements of margins and columns, etc.) can be found in William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). Fragments of early codices at in the University of Michigan papyrus collection are described in detail by Julia Miller, “Puzzle Me This: Early Binding Fragments in the Papyrology Collection of the University of Michigan Library,” in Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding, vol. 2, edited by Julia Miller (Ann

Arbor: Legacy Press, 2015), 198–297.

Page 103 →

Chapter 9 Ancient Lives in Writing One of the most appealing aspects of dealing with papyri is their directness and sometimes their familiarity. Papyri (and texts written on other writing materials) present direct witnesses from the ancient world. Instead of having a third person, such as a Greek or Roman historian, describe the world of antiquity for us, we have access to the ancient world from a first hand. Obviously, we only see the ancient world through that part of the population that was literate (less than a quarter of the population at large, see p. 83), but we are seemingly closer to the issues that concerned those people. And a lot of what occupied people then also occupies people now. The contents of the papyri are very, very diverse. They basically cover everything that people put to paper nowadays as well (although of course the digitization of record keeping is changing this): tax records, government letters, bank accounts, shopping lists, birth certificates, and so on. Taken together, all these documents allow for more insights in what life in the ancient world was like. At the same time, we are dealing with unique documents that show us a minuscule part of the ancient world but not the rest. It has been said that reading and interpreting a papyrus text is as if looking through the keyhole in a door. If there is sufficient light on the other side, one sees one part very clearly, although it is sometimes still difficult to interpret what exactly it is, but everything else that is behind the door cannot be seen and is unknown. If the light is dim, little can be discerned to begin with. So it is with papyri, especially with those that are damaged and difficult to read in the first place. What this chapter offers are a number of vistas through a number of “keyholes.” I have organized these through the various stages of a person’s life, from pregnancy to death (and beyond). This is obviously not the only way to present information from papyri, but it is a way to show the stunning breadth of topics illustrated by papyri from Egypt. We sometimes present papyri in Page 104 →this manner during tours of the collection. For each text I will provide guidance, but I will try to also leave some room for discovery and excitement, which are also important aspects of working with papyri, even for professional papyrologists. The reader who wants to know more about a particular text can venture out into the online world of papyrology through the various digital projects, including the Michigan papyrus collection website. The main problem with this thematic approach is that the papyri come from different periods of Egyptian history and thus make reference to different social realities. The periodization of Egyptian history that was presented above (p. 65) when discussing the three main periods of Greek handwriting on papyri also has consequences for the institutions and officials that are mentioned in the text. Even the method of dating a text differs widely from period to period, and even within a period. It is outside the purposes of the present book to provide a full history of Egypt from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest and beyond. (Others have done so and the reader is referred to the “further reading” section at the end of this chapter for more information on this topic.) It may be worthwhile, however, to provide some general impressions of Egyptian history in the various periods, Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, and Arabic. During the Ptolemaic period (traditionally 332–31 BCE), Egypt was an independent kingdom under a dynasty of Ptolemies. The first Ptolemy was a general in the army of Alexander the Great who, after his leader’s death, took command of the part of the empire that encompassed Egypt. In 305/4 BCE, he declared himself king (basileus in Greek and Pharaoh in Egyptian texts) and from that moment he and his descendants ruled Egypt. They did so out of the newly constructed capital, Alexandria, situated in the Nile Delta on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. During the Ptolemaic period, texts are dated by mentioning the regnal year of the ruler, although unfortunately the neat numbering of Ptolemies followed by modern scholarship (I to XIV) did not exist in antiquity when, apart from the first (Ptolemy son of Lagos), every other Ptolemy was a “Ptolemy son of Ptolemy.” The Ptolemies left much of the earlier Egyptian administration in place, such as Egypt’s division into

administrative districts called “nomes” (singular “nome”). This adoption of previous administrative structures also extended down to administrators in the lower levels of the administration, and at the outset even to the use of the Demotic Egyptian language. A conscious cultural policy promoting Greekness (tax breaks for those who adopted a Greek Page 105 →way of living; settlement of Greek teachers in nearly every settlement of Egypt) soon led to an elite of Greek-speaking Egyptians who were active in administration and the military. Greek soldiers received a plot of land for their services, settled in the countryside, and married Egyptian women, thus also creating a mixed Greek-Egyptian social space, where individuals had both a Greek and an Egyptian identity, sometimes reflected by the use of two personal names, one Greek and one Egyptian. The Roman period of Egyptian history began in 30 BCE when Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. The Romans left certain things in place but, as scholars have gradually come to realize, also substantially changed Egyptian administration and taxation. Among the most visible changes was the institution of a regular census of the population (also known from the Christian New Testament) and a change in taxation strategies based on land ownership rather than on land productivity. This allowed landowners to become wealthier and accrue more land, which in turn created a pool of potential administrators. In Roman times, administrators were appointed to specific offices because they had the required wealth, not because they had the necessary qualifications. As already discussed in chapter 6, Latin did not take over Greek as the main language of Egypt at this time. As in the rest of the eastern part of the empire, Greek remained the language of choice for the local and urban elites. Latin was only used in Roman law and, in combination with Greek, in the military. Documents were now dated according to the regnal year of the emperor who was identified with all his official titles, although sometimes dating according to consuls (as was done in Rome itself) also appears in papyri from Egypt (e.g., fig. 9.2). The Romans had some trouble dealing with the fluid identity of the residents of Egypt, where some ethnic labels seem to have been a matter of choice rather than actual background. For example, Egyptians who enrolled in the Ptolemaic army became “Persians,” and if they were promoted, “Macedonians.” This was too difficult for the Romans. Legally, Romans distinguished between Roman citizens and others, all of whom were categorized as “Egyptians.” This apparently caused some stir among that part of the population who frequented the gymnasia of Egypt and otherwise presented themselves as Greeks. For these people, the Romans very soon created an elite group who received a substantial reduction in the poll tax they paid, but who—unlike Roman citizens—were not freed completely from this obligation. The members of this elite group needed to show their status by documenting their familyPage 106 → history. Papyri show that Romans kept strengthening the requirements for belonging to this elite, especially by requiring members to not only demonstrate that the family belonged to this group on the father’s side but also on the mother’s side. The Byzantine period of Egyptian history begins with the various administrative reforms that were undertaken by the emperor Diocletian (ruled 284–305 CE). For one thing, he divided the empire into a western and eastern half, each with its own emperor and deputy-emperor resulting in what is known as the Tetrarchy (“rule of four”). Diocletian also redistricted various provinces. In this period, Egypt was no longer one province but at different times consisted of two or more provinces, each with its own administrative structure and leadership. Egypt was part of the eastern half of the empire, where the new administrative center eventually became Constantinople (modern Istanbul). One important development in Byzantine Egypt, well documented in papyri, is the emergence of large estates. These estates consisted of several plots all over Egypt and were supervised by a group of managers and other administrators who were all in frequent written contact with the absentee estate owner. In the course of the Byzantine period, these estates became entities by themselves that were often competing for resources with the central state and local administration. Another development that is important in the Byzantine period is the emergence of Christianity and especially the Christianity of the Coptic Church. In 641 CE, the Arabs conquered Egypt and it became part of the Caliphate. Because Arabic papyri that deal with this very important period have not yet been studied to their full potential, much remains unclear about what exactly happened on the ground at this time. What is clear is that not everybody became Muslim and that there remained a place for Christians. It is also clear that Arabic played an important role, but that for at least two

centuries there still also was a role for Greek and Coptic, if not written then certainly spoken (see fig. 6.9). Fortunately, there is currently a lot of scholarly attention being devoted to this period of transition, especially by Petra Sijpesteijn at the University of Leiden, who recently published a volume that includes Arabic papyri from the Michigan collection.1 With this very brief background, let us now look at some important moments in the lives of people in ancient Egypt. Page 107 →

Pregnancy The promise of a new child in the ancient world must have triggered various responses dependent on the family involved. A new child could mean hope for the family’s continued existence, a caretaker of the parents in old age, an heir, or an added labor force for the family farm. A new child could also mean an extra mouth to feed for a family that was already poor, or, in the case of a girl, another possibility to lose family wealth because a dowry had to be provided in the future. And even before the child was born, pregnancy provided an extra health risk for the mother in a world that was otherwise already filled with threats from diseases like malaria. In this hastily written letter (fig. 9.1), the sender informs his mother about the situation he encountered upon arrival at his brother’s house. The letter is illustrative of the dangers of pregnancy in the ancient world but also shows that, like today, prospective parents and their family members were counting the months. As background it is important to realize in reading this letter that a seven-month baby was considered to be lucky (the number 7 was a lucky number in ancient thinking), whereas an eight-month baby was thought unlucky and unlikely to survive.2 It was therefore important to identify any baby as having been born after seven full months, not eight, of pregnancy. Zoilos to my mother Theodora, greetings. When I arrived in Thallou today, I found everyone at my brother’s house in good health. But my sister Techosous is fearfully ill, and I expect that she will give birth today to a seven months’ baby. If then she comes through it successfully, I will let you know what happened. Inaroous, the father of the little one, who brings you this letter, together with Akes, son of Pachymis, the weaver, and with the others also, has gone to Oxyrhynchus to work off an inescapable obligation imposed on them in the affairs of the most estimable Hieronikes. Please give them the key to the room of theВ .В .В . in the gate-house. For Eudaimonis says that they have first come to you so that they may stay there until they obtain lodging from your lord. Salute all those at our house; Eudaimonis and Techosous and all who are here salute you. And she gave to the same men for expenses. (papyrus becomes too damaged to translate.) (Addressed on the back): From Zoilos to Theodora, his mother. Page 108 →Fig. 9.1. Letter from a son to his mother Greek on Papyrus. 12 x 23 cm. Late 3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 340 (TM 30293). Purchased in 1920. Edition: H. C. Youtie, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 36 1979), 70–73 (= SB XVI 12606). Page 109 →

Birth Like pregnancy, the birth of a child did not always trigger joy and gladness in the ancient world. Child mortality was high and about a quarter of children born would not live to their fourth year. When a child was not wanted, it could be left behind on the local garbage dump, where the foundling could end up as somebody else’s slave. For more privileged sections of the ancient population, the birth of a child also resulted in all sorts of

administrative actions to ensure that the privileged status would also apply to the child. For Roman citizens, for example, it was important to register the birth of their child (of either sex), so that this child could claim the benefits of Roman citizenship (such as exemption from poll tax). Figure 9.2 (p. 110) shows one of a pair of waxed tablets (wood on the outside) that contains a certified copy of the birth of a Roman citizen girl, Herennia Gemella. The birth certificate is in Latin, scratched in the wax on the inside, and written in ink on the outside. Seals of the seven witnesses present would close the tablets to prevent alterations on the inside text. The text on the outside (not shown here) allowed people to read the contents without opening the boards. In the consulship of Lucius Nonius Torquatus Asprenas, for the second time, and Marcus Annius Libo, on the Ides of April, in the 12th year of the Emperor Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, on the 18th day of the month Pharmouthi, in Alexandria ad Aegyptum, a copy was made and verified from a record of declarations of births of children, which record had been posted in the Forum of Augustus; in which was written that which is written below: In the consulship of Marcus Claudius Squilla Gallicanus and Titus Atilius Rufus Titianus, in the twelfth year of the Emperor Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, when Titus Flavius Titianus was prefect of Egypt, acknowledgments of the births of children were received for record without judicial cognizance: There was written on tablet 8, page 2, in larger letters, вЂin the consulship of Lucius Nonius Torquatus Asprenas, for the second time, and Marcus Annius Libo’, and after other entries on page 9, under the date of the sixth day before the Kalends of April: Fig. 9.2. Birth certificate of a Roman citizen Latin in wax and on wood. 17 x 13.5 cm. August 13, 128 CE. P.Mich.inv. 766 (TM 78515). Purchased in 1922. Edition: F. W. Kelsey, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 54 (1923), 187–95. Reprinted as P.Mich. III (1936), no. 166. Page 110 →I, Gaius Herennius Geminianus, whose census rating is 375 (thousand) sesterces, (registered) in the monthly (record) as a Roman citizen record my daughter, Herennia Gemella, born of Diogenis Thermoutharion, daughter of Marcus, on the fifth day before the Ides of March last past.

Learning a Trade The ancient world was largely agricultural and most children would soon have been helping their parents (and other family members) in the fields. Unfortunately, this activity in most cases leaves no written documentation. In addition, girls would have been helping in the household. Only children born into wealthy families would have seen little to no physical labor, although Page 111 →they would have been kept busy with school work (see chapter 7). Most children would have followed their family’s trade, and therefore most training would be done without leaving a written record. In some trades, however, such as weaving, it was beneficial to have a child trained by a different weaver, who could add a different set of skills to the family business. This would leave a written record in the form of an apprentice contract (see fig. 9.3, p. 112). In this text (fig. 9.3), a woman registers her nephew with those responsible for the weavers’ tax so that he can become the apprentice of the master weaver Pausiris. One of the addressees signs in his own hand at the bottom for approval. Several texts belonging to the archive of this master weaver are part of the Michigan papyrus collection and will be published as P.Mich. XXI. As usual in Greek legal documents, women could not act as a contracting party by themselves but needed the assistance of a male legal guardian, whether the father, brother, or, as in this case, the husband. The papyrus also clearly shows how documents were validated in the ancient world, by the official adding a note of approval (or acknowledgment) below the document submitted to him. The document with the signature would then be given back to the person who submitted the application for further

action or archival storage. In this case, it seems that the document was given to the master weaver Pausiris, among whose papers it survived. In ancient Egypt many taxes were not levied directly by the state but were put up for auction. The bidder who guaranteed the highest revenue from the tax would become the “tax-farmer” for a specified period. Any money that this person collected from tax payers in excess of what he promised to pay to the state would be his profit. There are clear advantages for the state as income from the particular tax is guaranteed, and there was no direct contact with the payers of the tax. The potential abuse of power by the tax-farmer that is inherent in this system was taken for granted and dealt with if necessary (for example, if a tax payer petitioned to the authorities about such abuse). To Panechotes and Ischyrion, farmers of the weavers’ tax, from Helen, daughter of Horion, acting with her guardian, her husband Epinikos, son of Theon. Since I wish to apprentice Amoitas, the minor son of my deceased brother Pasion, registered in the Temple of Hermes Quarter, that he may learn the art of weaving, from the present fifth year of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Imperator, to the master weaver Pausiris, son of Ammonios, of the Cavalry Camp Quarter, I therefore ask you to register Amoitas among the apprentices of the said year, as is fitting. Farewell. Page 112 →Fig. 9.3. Registration of an apprentice Greek on papyrus. 8.5 x 36.5 cm. September 26, 58 CE. P.Mich.inv. 73 (TM 21334). Purchased in 1920. Edition: O. M. Pearl and V. B. Schuman, P.Mich. III (1936), no. 171. Page 113 →(Second hand) I, Panechotes, have affixed my signature. The fifth year of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Imperator, Sebastos 29, dies Augusta.

Marriage In the ancient world, marriage was the affair of two families with no official state registration or sanctification. In most cases, a marriage consisted of a woman moving into the household of the man, as is made clear by the Greek verb for marriage, “to live together.” Only when one or both families involved had resources was it opportune to accompany a marriage with written documentation to ensure what would happen with each partner’s property in case of children or a divorce (which was not that uncommon). Such marriage documents survive from all periods of Egyptian history, although the precise format and contents changed over time. In Egyptian law, for example, we have already seen (fig. 6.2) that a marriage document required two separate contracts: a document in which the husband acknowledged receipt of the dowry and a document in which he promised to maintain his wife during marriage. In Greek common law that we find applied in Greek papyri, marriage involved a contract between husband and the father of the bride in which legal arrangements were made for the marriage. As a rule, there was a big age gap between husband and wife in ancient Egyptian marriages. The age of first marriage for men was in their late 20s/early 30s, whereas for women it was mid-teens, sometimes as low as 12 (see fig. 9.6 for a 15-year age gap between husband and wife). One feature of especially Roman Egypt that has attracted much attention is that of the brother-sister marriage. Although recently some scholars have suggested that such a marriage would be between a biological and adopted child, other scholars have clearly shown that these marriages were between real brothers and sisters and that it possibly was a strategy some wealthier families applied to prevent the family property from being scattered too much. After all, when a daughter was married outside of the family, she would receive her portion of the family wealth as a dowry. Most of the evidence for sibling marriage comes from official documents such as census registrations. When husband and wife address each other as “sister” and “brother” in their correspondence, this is not necessarily a sign of a sibling marriage, but rather an extension of kinship terms to function as markers of familiarity. Page 114 →What could also happen, as is shown by the following text (fig. 9.4), is that financial arrangements between the families of husband and wife might be strengthened a number of years after the marriage, for

example, as in this text, when a child had been born. One of the measures of success for an ancient marriage was the birth of children. This papyrus (fig. 9.4) preserves a rough draft of a contract that was prepared at the notary office of the village Tebtunis. It consists of an acknowledgment by one Haryotes that he has received from his father-in-law (Didymos) a supplementary gift of money and land. This gift is in addition to the dowry he received four years earlier when he married. Of course the contract stipulates that in case of divorce the husband Haryotes has to give back both the dowry and this additional gift. That the contract is a draft is shown by the fact that the ages and physical descriptions of the contracting parties are not filled in and that there are a number of deletions and corrections. I have tried to show these deletions and corrections also in the translation below. In addition, the same person who wrote the contract also wrote the subscriptions that needed to be added by the contracting parties themselves in the final version of the contract (either in their own hand or, if they were illiterate, through another person). The actual contract that the notary must have drawn up on the basis of this draft has not survived in the archive. Haryotes, son of Lysimachos, aboutВ .В .В . years old, with a scarВ .В .В .В , acknowledges to the father of his wife Herakleia, who has been and is still living with him, Didymos, son of Maron, aboutВ .В .В . years old, with a scarВ .В .В .В , the aforesaid Herakleia, aboutВ .В .В . years old, with a scarВ .В .В .В , together with her aforesaid father Didymos as guardian, being present and approving all the conditions set forth through this contract, that he has received from him as a gift in accordance with this.. in accordance with this contract as an addition to the dowry for the benefit of the aforesaid Herakleia twenty drachmas in silver, from hand to hand, out of the house, and as a gift without evaluation the five arouras, more or less according to the existing, of a catoecic allotment belonging to Didymos near Ibion Eikosipentarouron in the division of Polemon, of which the adjacent properties have been set forth in the contracts concerning them, and which formerly belonged to the aforesaid Haryotes, apart from the dowry in gold and silver which the same Didymos, with his wife Rhodous, daughter of Herakleides and mother of Herakleia, has given him for the benefit of the same Herakleia and apart from a supplementary gift of allotments and slaves belonging to him according to two other contracts one being an Egyptian Page 115 →alimentaryВ .В .В . completed through the same writing office in the 3rd year of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Germanicus Imperator in such and such a month, of which one is an Egyptian alimentary contract, while the other is Greek. and the gift of the aforesaid allotment has been made from the harvests of the present 6th year And these shall remain valid together with all the provisions therein prescribed, and the gift of the aforesaid allotment has been made from the harvests of the present 6th year of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Germanicus Imperator, all public charges for the allotment being on Haryotes Didymos from past times up to the 5th year and for the 5th year also. Accordingly let Haryotes and Herakleia live together with one another just as formerly, in contentment, as there has been born to them a female child Page 116 →whose name isВ .В .В .В ; but if trouble should develop between them and they should separate from one another, either Haryotes divorcing Herakleia or Herakleia leaving of her own accord, let the allotment of five arouras given as aforesaid become at once the property of Didymos, but if he should not survive, of his daughter Herakleia; and let Haryotes give back to Didymos, but if he should not survive, to the same Herakleia the dowry specified in former contracts and other gifts and bridal gifts and also the twenty drachmas specified in this deed of gift, immediately in case of divorce, but in case of voluntary separation within sixty days after they have been demanded. And if he shall not restore them as has been written, he shall repay them immediately and half as much again; the right of execution resting with Didymos or, if he should not survive, with his daughter Herakleia against the party of the first part, Haryotes, and againstВ .В .В . just as against a debtor, and against all his possessions as if in accordance with a judgment. Fig. 9.4. Property settlement after marriage Greek on papyrus. 40 x 28 cm. 45–46 CE. P.Mich.inv. 1271 (TM 12149), Col. i–ii. Purchased in 1923. Edition: E. M. Husselman, P.Mich. V (1944), no. 340.

Subscription of Haryotes. I, Haryotes, son of Haryotes,3 acknowledge that I have received as a supplementary gift the twenty drachmas in silver and as a grant the aforesaid allotment, and I concur as aforesaid. Subscription of Didymos. I, Didymos, son of Maron, have given with the consent of my daughter Herakleia acting under my guardianship, have given a supplementary gift of twenty silver drachmas to Haryotes for the sake of Herakleia, and as a grant the aforesaid allotment of the five arouras, and we concur as aforesaid. I, Didymos, have written for my daughter also as she is illiterate.

Housing Most people in ancient Egypt would live in houses made of mudbrick. The papyri from Egypt show that people in ancient Egypt lived in various constellations, from just the nuclear family of husband and wife and child(ren) to more extended households in which several brothers lived in the same house with their surviving parents and individual wives and children. Especially in the case where several brothers lived together in the same house, this could result in interesting property divisions when the parents died, because people would own a fraction of a house, or even a fraction of a room in a house. These fractions of houses could then be sold, rented, or put up as collateral for a loan just like any other property. Page 117 →This papyrus (fig. 9.5) preserves a Demotic contract for the sale of a half share in two rooms in a house. The contracting parties’ subscriptions are in Greek. Like the previous text, this text was part of the archive of the notary of the village of Tebtunis. This text shows the actual subscriptions of the contracting parties that we only saw in draft form in the previous text. In this case, the first subscription, of the acknowledging party, is much more detailed and basically repeats the whole contract in Greek. That the subscription was in Greek and not in the language of the main contract is an innovation that happened after the Roman conquest. Autograph subscriptions (or, as here, subscriptions through a literate intermediary) replaced the use of witnesses from earlier periods and, together with the involvement of a notary who registered the contract in an archive, secured that the contracting parties were held to their legal obligations. (Greek date) 16th year, 5th intercalary day of Mesore. (Demotic) Year 16 of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, fifth month of the third season, the (days of) illumination, day 5. The woman Thermouthis, daughter of Marepsemis, her mother being Demarion, has said to Jijoj, the elder, (son of) Jijoj, who is called Takn-lain, her son being present and acting for her as guardianВ .В .В . who is called Eutos,4 his mother being Thermouthis: “You have satisfied my heart (with the) silver of the price of my half share of this room which is built which is equipped with beams and doors downstairsВ .В .В .В , together with my half share of the way of entrance and exit, together with my half share of this bedroom (in) the third story, he having authority against her in the gate of the courtyard (?), (in the) Souchos town of Tebtunis (in) the division of Polemon, on the south side of the canal of Moeris, (in the) Arsinoite nome. The boundaries of the entire, undivided house: south the house of PeteВ .В .В . together with its courtyard; north, (the) house of Kames and his brothers; west, the royal road; east, the courtyard of .В .В .В . No man in the world, nor I likewise, shall be able to exercise authority over them, except you, from this date. Whoever shall come to you on account of them, I will cause him to be far from you in respect of them, of necessity, without delay, and I will cause it to be clear for you from every writing, every document, everything in the world. Yours is every writing [which has been made] concerning them and every writing which has been made (for) my father (or) my mother concerning them and every writing which has been made for me concerning them. YoursВ .В .В . together with their law. The oath Page 119 →(and the) confirmation which shall be required of you (to) cause that I make it, I will make it.” Page 118 → Fig. 9.5. Sale of a share of two rooms

Demotic and Greek on papyrus. 19.7 x 31.1 cm. August 28, 30 CE. P.Mich.inv. 1267 (TM 12088). Purchased in 1923. Edition: W. F. Edgerton – E. M. Husselman, P.Mich. V (1944), no. 253. (Greek subscriptions) (1st hand) I, Thermouthis, daughter of Marepsemis, my mother being Demarion, with my guardian, my son, Eutychos the third, son of Eutychos, acknowledge that I have sold to my elder son, Eutychos, son of Eutychos, the half share, belonging to me by inheritance from my mother, of a room on the ground floor, and on the roof another half share of a so-called bedroom, unplastered, and of all the appurtenances, in Tebtunis, and of the entrances and exits. The neighbors of the whole house are: on the south, the house and court of Petenephies, son of Orseus Achis; on the north the house and court of Kames and others; on the west the royal road; and on the east the lots of the sons of Nephies. In return for this property we have received from Eutychos the elder the entire price fixed and agreed upon, in full, from hand to hand, out of the house, and we shall guarantee the sale with every guarantee from both public and private encumbrances and from every impost as aforesaid. I, Eutychos the third, son of Eutychos, wrote for my mother because she is illiterate, and I have been appointed her guardian. (Second hand) Eutychos the elder, son of Eutychos. The sale was made to me as aforesaid.

Census Registration In the Roman period, all households had to register the inhabitants of their house every 15 years during the census. A number of these house-by-house declarations have survived and provide very important information about household composition and demographic information for the ancient Roman world. They allow scholars to establish average date of marriage, average fertility, and the overall composition of households.5 Figure 9.6 shows two different examples of such census returns. Only a handful of lines survive from one census return (bottom left), the top half survives of the second one. Pasting documents together was the way in which incoming correspondence and declarations like this were archived in the ancient world. In this light-brown papyrus (fig. 9.6), PaГ«sis from the village Alabanthis registers his family and property for the Roman census, as required every 15 years by the Roman state. Especially interesting in this text is the high age of the father (72, “over-age,” meaning no longer liable to poll tax), who is marriedPage 121 → to a wife 15 years younger) and the low age of the son (8, “under-age,” meaning not yet liable to poll tax). Although we cannot exclude completely that the mother had her son when she was 49 years old, it is perhaps more likely that this is a case of adoption. Page 120 → Fig. 9.6. Census return Greek on papyrus. 11.5 x 14.5 cm. 160/161 CE. P.Mich.inv 158a (TM 14898). Purchased in 1920. Edition: J. G. Whitehorne, Symbolae Osloenses 65 (1990), 140–41 (= SB XX 14666). (Col. ii) From Paesis son of Nebteichis whose mother is Pachomis, from Alabanthis. In accordance with the instructions given by the ex-prefect Furius Victorinus, I declare for the house-by-house census of year 23 of our lord Antoninus Caesar: myself, Paesis, son of Nebteichis, over-age 72 years; Horus my son whose mother is Athenais alias Kinna daughter of Besis, under-age in year 23, 8 years; Women: Athenais alias Kinna, my wife 57 years; Tereus, my daughter, whose mother is the same Athenais 40 years. And there are in the possession of my wife Athenais daughter of Besis son of Harpechis shares in landed property in Alabanthis, and in other places other shares inherited from her father in other landed property and appurtenances. And I swear by the Fortuna of Imperator Caesar Titus Aurelius

Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus PiusВ .В .В . [the papyrus breaks off]

Sacrificing to the Gods Religion can be a powerful political tool. This was the case then as it is now. In the mid-3rd century, the Roman Empire was in crisis. There were many wars and internal strife with one emperor following closely upon the next. In 250 CE, the emperor Decius came to power and in an attempt to get the empire back in order he decreed that all of its inhabitants should make a sacrifice to the gods. There is much debate whether this was a conscious attack on the Christian community that had gained some prominence in this time, but current scholarship holds that this was not the objective of the decree (although it did have this side effect because Christians, as Jews, could not sacrifice to pagan gods). The bureaucratic operation set in motion to make this decree work is stunning. Committees of “sacrificeoverseers” traveled everywhere in the empire, visiting villages and towns and witnessing every inhabitant make a sacrifice and taste of the offerings. What is more, every inhabitant would then Page 123 →receive a certificate attesting to the fact that he or she had made the sacrifice, signed by the overseers. A number of these certificates have survived on papyrus and one of them is presented here (fig. 9.7). Page 122 →Fig. 9.7. Certificate of performance of a sacrifice Greek on papyrus. 21.5 x 8.1 cm. June 21, 250 CE. P.Mich.inv. 263 (TM 11978). Purchased in 1920. Edition: A. E. R. Boak, Harvard Theological Review 16 (1923), 386–87 (= SB III 6825; P.Mich. III (1936), no. 158). A woman and her daughter declare under oath that they have publicly performed a sacrifice to the gods. To make the document valid, official witnesses attest to the performance of the sacrifice by adding their signature. One of them is a so-called slow-writer who writes his name in big and rather clumsy capital letters. To those in charge of the sacrifices of the village Theadelphia, from Aurelia Bellias, daughter of Peteres, and her daughter, Kapinis. We have always been constant in sacrificing to the gods, and now too, in your presence, in accordance with the regulations, I have poured libations and sacrificed and tasted the offerings, and I ask you to certify this for us below. May you continue to prosper. (Second hand) We, Aurelius Serenus and Aurelius Hermas, saw you sacrificing. (Third hand) I, Hermas, certify. (First hand) The 1st year of the Emperor Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus Decius Pius Felix Augustus, Pauni 27.

Misfortune The papyri show many instances when life did not go as one would hope. There are break-ins, robberies, accidents, and of course the occasional power abuse by government officials. The Ptolemaic kingdom and the Roman state provided a means to deal with the difficulties of life through the system of petitions. Whenever something bad or adverse had happened, a person could submit a written petition to a representative of the state and ask for the situation to be remedied. From the extant petitions it seems that the residents of Egypt could petition to numerous officials, whether local, regional, or even national. In the Ptolemaic period, for example, people could petition the king himself, and in the Roman period, they could petition the prefect, the highest official of the country. In most cases, we do not know the result of the petition. Where we can follow a case beyond the stage of the first petition, papyri show that the results of petitioning the authorities were mixed. There are several cases where the Page 124 →same person petitions to various officials about the same affair showing that there was not much

movement in dealing with the problem. The important thing to realize is that the whole system was basically do-ityourself and that success had to do not so much with the official involved as with the tenacity and resources of the person petitioning. Resources were needed because, first, petitioning required the use of papyrus and the involvement of a scribe if one was illiterate. Petitions also had to be submitted in person, something that often required travel and being away from one’s trade or agricultural activity. What is more, one had to wait in place for the official’s answer, which he would write at the bottom of the petition. The petition would then be returned to the petitioner so that he could instigate the next phase in the proceedings by going to another official, or by appearing in a court session before an official. This would take up even more time and resources. The benefit for modern scholars is that this whole process leaves a large paper trail. However, it has to be remembered that the surviving paper trail obscures everything that was mediated orally, without authorities, and everything that happened to people who did not have the means and time to play the petition game. In this petition (fig. 9.8) addressed to the prefect of Egypt, a certain Ptolemaios complains that he has been driven from his land and house by a government official. As in the case of the contracts above, Ptolemaios signs the document in his own hand. That the petition in this case was actually submitted to the prefect is made clear by the order at the bottom of the papyrus (in a different hand) that the strategos (the most important official of the nomeregion) is to look into the matter. It would be up to Ptolemaios himself to take this document to the strategos for further action and review. This text is one of at least 19 texts that come from the archive of the petitioner, a lessee of domain land.6 The papyri were purchased between 1920 and 1925 by various collections in Europe and the United States (only three of the papyri reside in the Michigan collection). From reading the petition it may be clear that there is a certain rhetoric used and probably expected. The official addressed needs to be praised and courted, the deeds of the other person must be painted as negatively as possible, and one’s own activities shown in the most positive light, stressing especially one’s social status and many (financial) contributions to society. The rhetoric used in petitions often makes it difficult for a modern scholar to discern what actually happened from what the petitioner presents. Page 125 → Fig. 9.8. Petition to the prefect Greek on Papyrus. 32 x 24.5 cm. 145–147 CE. P.Mich.inv. 147 (TM 11980). Purchased in 1920. Edition: A. E. R. Boak, P.Mich. III (1936), no. 174. Page 126 →To Lucius Valerius Proculus, prefect of Egypt. From Ptolemaios, son of Diodoros also called Dioskoros, an inhabitant of the Arsinoite nome. Since your inbred kindness, my lord prefect, extends to all, I too ask to share it. There is in the nome a certain class of men who are called sailor-divers. These, being public officers and in the service of the water administration and in attendance on the shore-guards and cultivation inspectors for the time being, are therefore relieved of all poll taxes and all public services and are also fed at the public expense; and accordingly they are absolutely forbidden to take up any other employment. One of these, a certain Isidoros, son of Mareis, a man of very bold and reckless character who, by means of suborned agents, counterfeits royal leases for the sake of extortion and gain—as I shall prove also on the day of trial—made an attack on me through one of his suborned agents, a certain Ammonios, surnamed Kaboi, a culpable fellow who had been proscribed on account of his lawless life. Notwithstanding that I am a lessee of domain land who paid considerable revenues to the imperial treasury and offered considerable security for the lease, he refused to let me enjoy my lease and even excluded me from my house and insulted me until he extorted money from me. I have therefore had recourse to you, the helper of all, and beg you, since you have for the present renounced your visit to the nome, to give orders for a letter to be written to the strategos of the divisions of Themistos and Polemon to hear me against him, since I can bring proofs on the spot concerning my being insulted

and subjected to extortion, so that I may be able to live unmolested in my home during the most happy times of our exalted emperor, and your delightful prefecture, and may obtain relief. Farewell. (Second hand) I, Ptolemaios, son of Diodoros, have presented the petition, as aforesaid. (Third hand) The strategos of the nome will do what is proper. (Fourth hand) Return it.

Death Death was an important part of life in the ancient world. Average life expectancy at birth was low and only improved when a child had survived the first couple of years, especially for members of the elite. Many people died young, but the papyri also offer examples of people who lived into old age. This may be related to the fact that most of our texts deal with the elites of the ancient Page 127 →world, for many of whom life circumstances must have been more favorable than for the remainder of the population. For taxation purposes, an important age was 62, after which a person was no longer liable to pay the poll tax. Fig. 9.9. Death notice Greek on papyrus. 9.5 x 15 cm. October/November 111 CE. P.Mich.inv. 2841 (TM 14012). Found at Karanis during the 1924–25 season. Edition: A. E. R. Boak, Annales du Service des AntiquitГ©s de l’Égypte 29 (1929), 49–51; Corpus Papyrorum Graecarum II (1985), no. 25. This papyrus (fig. 9.9) preserves the declaration by Sambas to the village scribe of Karanis that his father has died. The text does not state the age of the father exactly, but the mention of his being “released from the polltax” shows that he was older than 62. The text was found in the courtyard of a house in Karanis during the 1924 excavation season. To Ptolemaios, village scribe of Karanis, from Sambas, son of Pakysis and Tketis, grandson of Petaus, of the above-mentioned village of Karanis. My aforesaid father Pakysis, son of Petaus and Tamystha, grandson of Teos, who Page 128 →had been released from the poll-tax in the same village as being over-age, died in the month of Hathyr of the present 15th year of the Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus Dacicus. Therefore I hand in this memorandum, so that his name may be listed in the list of deceased persons. (Remnants of three lines, washed off) (2nd hand) Recorded by the village scribe on account of a death in the [15th] year.

After Death While death meant that the life of a person was over, the obligations and property arrangements that this person had been involved in would continue and now be the responsibility of his children or family. The debts that a person had on his or her death would not disappear, and debts as well as property would be divided among surviving family members. All this could result in paperwork that would continue well past the death of a person. In some instances, inheritance cases have been known to continue for almost a century. This papyrus (fig. 9.10) settles a dispute between a Roman officer and the relatives of his deceased wife, one of whom is also a Roman officer. The parties involved reside in the “small Oasis,” which is the Greek name for the Bahariya oasis in the Western Desert. This text is dated according to Roman consuls, not according to the regnal year of an emperor. In the consulship of our lords Jovinianus, eternal Augustus, for the first time, and Varronianus, the most noble.

Flavius Lalachios, centurion of the fort of the Small Oasis, residing in the same Oasis, to Flavius Lalachos, centurion of the same fort, and to Aurelius Pelios and Aurelius Kanopos and the other sons, and [—]onios, through the persons signed below, greetings. Because Aurelia [—]is, daughter of Hiereus, my deceased wife, being a relative of yours, left to me just before her death the vineyard in the village Moumpsa along with the fields and the waters and all sorts of plants which belong to it and (because), after I had taken possession of it, you raised a dispute towards me, Lalachios, [not (?) in the] second indiction, but in the seventh indiction, on the grounds that a larger measurement in arouras were imposed upon you than was the proportionate share for the (registered) name of her father, Hiereus, son of Ammon, since you have Page 130 →agreed to a settlement, I acknowledge, swearing by God the almighty and the piety of our lord Jovinianus, the eternal Augustus, that in your presence in the Oasis the proportionate share for this name in the compulsory cultivation of whatever is the measurement in arouras in accordance with the census has come to an accurate calculation and if something will turn outВ .В .В . (papyrus breaks off) Page 129 → Fig. 9.10. Settlement over property dispute Greek on papyrus. 14.5 x 12.2 cm. 364 CE. P.Mich.inv. 4008 (TM 79203). Purchased in 1925. Edition: T. Gagos – P. J. Sijpesteijn, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 105 (1995), 245–52 (= SB XXII 15768).

Doodling Papyri do not only provide us with the written world of Egypt. There are also examples of drawings made with varying degrees of expertise. The most adorable drawing in the Michigan collection is presented in figure 9.11. On the back of a very fragmentary letter (not shown here), somebody drew an African elephant (shown by the shape of head, ears, and back) and two human figures. One of the figures clearly is handling the elephant and could point to a form of entertainment. We do not have much information about the use of elephants in the 5th and 6th centuries CE (contrary to earlier periods when elephants played an important role in several armies such as that of Hannibal). Actually, in this late period there has been only one historicalPage 131 → reference to African elephants in the Roman world, and one scholar suggested to connect this drawing to this historical event in 496 CE. In that year, we know from literary sources, an elephant and two giraffes arrived in Constantinople as gifts from the king of Axum (modern Ethiopia).7 If this is true, this would be one case where the “keyhole” view through a papyrus actually connects with a well-lit room on the other side. Fig. 9.11. Drawing of an elephant and two figures Drawing on papyrus. 20 x 9.5 cm. 5th/6th century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4290 verso (TM 68861) (detail). Purchased in 1925. Edition: T. Gagos, Zeitschrift fГјr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 79 (1989), 273–76. Further Reading

Without being exhaustive, the following books provide readable introductions to daily life in Greek and Roman Egypt in English: A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BC–AD 642. Revised Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); N. Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Reprint by the American Society of Papyrologists, 1999; N. Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Reprint by the American Society of Papyrologists, 2001; R. S. Bagnall and R. Cribiore, Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); and J. Rowlandson (ed.), Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Page 132 →

Chapter 10 Archives The previous chapter hopefully made clear that individual papyri provide an unparalleled and detailed look into the world of antiquity. However, if we can connect a number of different texts that all deal with the same person or family, the result can be more of a “movie” of ancient lives, as the Belgian papyrologist Katelijn Vandorpe has described it. In this metaphor, individual texts are single “snapshots,” to which I may add, continuing the metaphor even further, that many of these are somewhat out of focus. But we can get a much more detailed picture of an ancient person, or persons, if we can combine various data that are mentioned in different texts. There are various ways to arrive at a group of connected texts. A first indication that texts belong together is that they are found and/or purchased in one group. This can indicate a group of texts that was together in antiquity. Such a group of texts is often called an “archive” by papyrologists. There are numerous examples of such groups in the Michigan collection and a small number will be presented in this chapter. Most of these consist of texts that were purchased during the 1920s and that were divided over several of the contributors to the papyrus consortium that was active then (see chapter 2). In a handful of cases, the collection contains groups of texts that were actually found in one spot—these all come from Karanis. What is more difficult to establish is why these texts were together. Contrary to what one would hope (and what papyrologists often have assumed), it is now clear that in most cases these groups of texts do not really provide one undisturbed archive but rather the contents of the wastepaper basket of texts that were removed from one or more archives. Each papyrus find or purchase needs to be analyzed and reconstructed to establish what the connection between the various texts is. Within archives papyrologists make a further distinction on the basis of the texts contained in it. A family archive is the term used for an archive that contains the papers and documents collected by several family members Page 133 →over several generations. Often the documents kept this long are legal instruments that document the ownership of property, but family members also kept private letters, books, and sometimes even the writing exercises of their children. A personal archive is the term used for an archive that was collected by one individual rather than a family (although sometimes the distinction is difficult to make). Here again there may be a mix of private legal documents, but also letters and other written documents. A professional archive, finally, is the term used for the archive that was collected by a person in antiquity in his official capacity. In it, documents have been collected that deal with the office held by the person (scribe, notary, manager, etc.). Even within professional archives there are sometimes private documents to be found, because in antiquity there was no real divide between personal and public. The distinction between a personal and a professional archive is thus one of proportion rather than absolute numbers, and we can be fairly certain that the actual archive holders in antiquity would not have understood the distinction modern scholars are trying to make. A second way to study ancient texts as a group is to actively search for all texts that deal with the same person, family, or office. A group that is compiled in this manner is often called a “dossier,” to distinguish it from the groups of texts that survived together as a group in antiquity. As may be clear from the above discussion, however, this division is not as neat as it seems, because even in the case of many archives scholars have to search for texts that deal with the same person or family and reconstruct the archive. But at least these texts were certainly together in antiquity (for whatever reason), something that cannot necessarily be said for a dossier that is collected by a modern scholar. The Michigan collection contains many texts that belong to a number of archives and dossiers that have been identified to date. Out of the 484 archives listed in an online project that lists all archives from Greek and Roman Egypt, 58 (or 12 percent) contain papyri that are part of the University of Michigan papyrus collection at the moment of writing (January 2015).1 Most of them come from papyrus purchases rather than from controlled excavations, with the result that most archives represented in the Michigan collection connect to other papyrus

collections that were active on the antiquities market at the same time (either as part of the consortium or separately). The space of this volume does not allow us to treat all 58 archives, so the following serves to note some of the highlights. The Trismegistos website provides accompanyingPage 134 → narratives for many of the archives with a Michigan connection (downloadable as pdf), which provide more information about the archive and the historical information that can be extracted from it.

Archive of Zenon From a purchase in 1920 and two additional lots in 1925, the Michigan collection contains a portion of one of the largest archives to survive from the ancient world, the archive of Zenon.2 This archive contains over 1,800 individual texts and is currently preserved in 20 collections and museums all over the world. Of these, about 150 papyri (roughly 8 percent) are part of the Michigan collection. The archive must have been found in the early 1910s by Egyptians digging for sebbakh (the mix of earth and organic material primarily found at the remains of ancient villages and that was used as fertilizer) at the ancient site of Philadelphia in the Fayum. We can establish that the first papyri were offered for sale in 1911 but the majority hit the market in 1914, and even in 1925 there were still numerous papyri from this archive available to be purchased. This shows that Egyptian antiquities dealers were playing the market by not offering interesting collections all at once, but by first creating demand with a small portion and then gradually releasing the remainder of the papyri. The archive of Zenon is one of the main sources for Ptolemaic history. Zenon was an immigrant into Egypt from modern-day Turkey who apparently sought out the opportunities offered by the recent Greek takeover of Egypt. The 1,800 texts contained in the archive follow Zenon during his activities in Egypt, where he eventually served as an assistant to the most important official of Ptolemaic Egypt. In this man’s service, Zenon made a trip to ancient Palestine and some of the correspondence resulting from this trip has also survived. The majority of the archive, however, was collected when Zenon was the manager of a big landed estate that his superior (called Apollonios) had received from the king as a reward for his services. When Apollonios received it, this estate was basically empty desert land and Zenon was responsible for making the estate profitable. In his capacity as estate manager, Zenon also acted sometimes as the authority to whom the people active on the estate could appeal for help and assistance, as the text presented below shows. The Zenon archive gives a detailed look at how business administrations were run in the ancient world. There are numerous examples of business lettersPage 135 → (see fig. 5.1), in which it has often been noted that Zenon and his correspondents are short and to the point. The archive also provides some indication of how Zenon kept track of all incoming correspondence. For most incoming letters he wrote a docket on the back of the text, naming the correspondent, a key word about the content, and often the date of receipt. This Page 136 →allowed him to see on the outside what a letter was about, without having to unroll it. Most of the texts contained in the archive were written in the typical 3rd-century BCE handwriting shown by figures 5.1 and 6.3, so that texts like figure 10.1 below stand out. Fig. 10.1. Petition to Zenon Greek on papyrus. 14.5 x 17.5 cm. July 256 BCE. P.Mich.inv. 3198 (TM 1929). Purchased in 1925. Edition: C. C. Edgar, P.Mich. I (1931), no. 29. The text presented in figure 10.1 is interesting because it was authored but almost certainly not written by an Egyptian woman, Senchons. She complains about the fact that her donkey was taken away while she needs it to transport beehives. The handwriting is fluent and was clearly written with a brush, not with a nibbed pen (for the different writing implements, see p. 57). This is indicated by the varying thickness of the strokes in each letter. Writing with a brush was an ancient Egyptian technique that was difficult to learn. Whenever we see Greek written with an Egyptian brush, as in this case, we can be certain that the scribe was an Egyptian.3 The horizontal folds that become larger toward the bottom show that the text was rolled up from the top down. To Zenon greeting from Senchons. I made a petition to you about my female donkey which Nikias

took. If you had written to me about her, I would have sent her to you. If it please you, order him to return her, so that we may carry the hives to the pastures, lest they be ruined and of no profit to yourself or the king. And if you examine the matter, you will be persuaded that we are useful to you. And the foal of the donkey I will send him to you. I beg and beseech you then not to keep me waiting. I am a widowed woman. May you prosper. (On the back) (2nd hand) (Received) year 30, Pachons 2. Senchons about a donkey.

Archive of Sabinus and Apollinarius One of the archives in the Michigan collection for which we have actual find circumstances is the archive that is known as that of Sabinus and his son Apollinarius.4 This archive was found in one of the granaries that were excavated in Karanis (C123). When Elinor Husselman worked on a number of the texts from this archive she proposed that this archive represents the actual inhabitants of this structure. Recent research, however, has shown that this archive is part of a bigger cache of texts (and other artifacts) all found in the same spot but not related to this archive, so that more likely we are dealing with a papyrus dump rather than the archive of residents. Another archive Page 137 →that comes from the same find spot is the family archive of Satabous son of Pnepheros.5 To date about 40 texts have been identified as belonging to this archive, but there are still many unstudied fragments from this structure in the collection, so more could be found. Eighteen texts have been published in P.Mich. VIII (1951) and IX (1971), and another 20 will be published in P.Mich. XXII (forthcoming). The majority of the archive consists of correspondence between family members, but it also includes a number of interesting legal texts. This group provides an example of a family archive rather than a professional archive such as Zenon’s. The family was fairly wealthy with landed property not only in Karanis, where the archive was found, but also in other villages in the Fayum. They belonged to the regional elite and acquired Roman citizenship through the army service of the father, Sabinus. The son Apollinarius enlisted in the Roman army, too, and we can follow his various assignments to Arabia and Rome through the letters he sent home to his family. The archive provides much information about the man behind the soldier and as such makes for interesting reading for anybody interested in the Roman army. Most of the letters that belong to the archive were published in 1951 (P.Mich. VIII), after which they were returned to the Cairo Museum. Figure 10.2 shows one of the legal documents from the archive. This document differs from the legal documents presented in other sections because unlike those, this document is drawn up in a subjective style (“I acknowledgeВ .В .В .”). This type of document, called a “handwritten document” (cheirographon), was used to document an informal agreement. It had the same legal force as a formal document that was drawn up in a notary office. The present papyrus (fig. 10.2) does not show Apollinarius in his role as soldier (although he does identify himself as such in the document) but as landholder. He leases out a number of different plots in various villages to one Sabinus, not his father but another inhabitant of the village of Karanis with the same name. Apollinarius had a diversified property with both grain land and an olive grove, spread out over small plots in various places. Apollinarius also presents himself as frumentarius, which was a rank of soldier used for special assignments involving travel to various places. It is not surprising to see that he leased out (part of) his property to others while he was away, thus ensuring continued income from his land without having to be present. Gaius Iulius Apollinarius, soldier of the third Cyrenaic legion, frumentarius Page 139 →of Rome, to Sabinus, son of Sokrates, from the village of Karanis in the Arsinoite nome, greetings. Page 138 → Fig. 10.2. Lease of grain land and olive groves

Greek on papyrus. 22 x 14.2 cm. September 1, 119 CE. P.Mich.inv. 5883 (TM 12054). Found at Karanis during the 1930–31 season. Edition: E. M. Husselman, P.Mich. IX (1971), no. 562. I acknowledge that I have leased to you the two arouras of an olive grove of grain-bearing land near the same village, and one-half and one-fourth of an aroura near Bacchias, and two arouras of an olive grove near Karanis in the so-called Onkos, and one(?) aroura of an olive grove near Alkias(?), and two arouras near Hiera, for which I have received the rents for three years from the present 4th year of Hadrian the lord; all expenses and labor and taxes, and whatever public or private charges may be owed on them devolving upon [me(?)], the estates suffering no diminution, as has been agreed upon; on the further condition that Sabinus, son of Sokrates, shall return the two arourai of olive grove near Bacchias Hiera in full cultivation. 4th year of the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, Thoth the third(?), 3. Figure 10.3 shows another legal document from the archive of Sabinus and Apollinarius. There are several interesting aspects to this text that explain its inclusion in the present volume, but the most visible aspect is that the text was written in red ink. It is one of only about 50 texts in red ink that are presently known from Greek and Roman Egypt. Most of these, like the current text, are official copies of legal documents. The composition of red ink is comparable to that of black ink discussed in chapter 5, other than that a red mineral pigment, iron oxide, is added to the ink instead of soot. This text (fig. 10.3) preserves the official copy of a decision by the chief judge of Egypt in response to a request for the appointment of a person to write subscriptions to legal documents. The woman making the request is the aunt of Sabinus, the great-aunt of Apollinarius. She has problems with her eyesight and cannot write a subscription to documents herself anymore. She asks the chief judge for her kinsman Sabinus to be appointed as the person to subscribe documents for her. It is presently unclear who this Sabinus is, whether her nephew or somebody else. This text is one of those cases where there is much of interest being suggested, but the state of the papyrus makes it very difficult to establish precise readings and what exactly is going on. Copy of a decision. Year 2 of Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus. With Sambathion, the daughter of Neilos, Egyptian, who is weak in the eyes, .В .В .В petitioning with Sabinus presentВ .В .В . wishingВ .В .В . to ask to be allowed to employ (?) Page 141 →Sabinus, her kinsman, to subscribe on her behalfВ .В .В . instead of him another kinsman of Sabinus with assentВ .В .В . Page 140 → Fig. 10.3. Report of legal proceedings Greek on papyrus. 15.5 x 21 cm. 117/118 CE. P.Mich.inv. 5900 (TM n/a). Found at Karanis during the 1930–31 season. Edition: W. G. Claytor – L. Loehndorff, P.Mich. XXII (forthcoming). Iulius Apion, former president, archon, priest, and chief judge: вЂSabinus shall subscribe on your behalf for this transaction aloneВ .В .В . NN, the assistant went out. Copy of subscription: I, Apion, chief judge haveВ .В .В . the preceding decision. Year 2 of Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus AugustusВ .В .В .

Archive of Petaus, Village Scribe The Michigan collection contains a portion of the official archive of Petaus son of Petaus who was village scribe for a number of neighboring villages at the end of the 2nd century CE.6 The archive contains a total of about 130 texts, 27 (about 20 percent) of which are part of the Michigan collection; the remainder is part of the papyrus collection of the University of Cologne.7 The group is a professional archive and consists of official documents such as outgoing and incoming

correspondence and various accounts and lists that the village scribe drew up in the course of his tenure. There are, however, also a handful of private documents. Petaus is best known for being a village scribe who did not know how to write. The archive actually contains a sheet of papyrus where we can see Petaus practicing his signature, following a model that was written by one of his assistants. This papyrus is part of the Cologne collection, but the image can be accessed online.8 How an illiterate person ended up in the important office of village scribe has to do with the Roman way of doing administration. As described earlier (p. 105), the Romans introduced a system of so-called liturgies (compulsory public services), in which men with sufficient income were appointed to perform a specific office for a certain period of time. One could only perform one liturgy at a time. There was a bracketed system detailing which income level was sufficient to be nominated for which liturgy, with the more intensive jobs (such as village scribe) requiring more wealth than less demanding functions. Wealth thus mattered more than ability—with the result that at least one illiterate person ended up as scribe. Of course, Petaus will have hired people to do the actual writing for him and only added the signature (which he, as we can still see, dutifully but not very skillfully practiced) in his own hand. One of the tasks of a village scribe was to nominate to a liturgy people Page 142 →from his village (or villages) whose wealth was sufficient for nomination. The archive contains a number of such nominations. In this case (fig. 10.4), Petaus nominates candidates for two villages (Ptolemais Hormou and Syron) for which he was responsible. The archive actually contains three versions of this same letter with only slight variations. The others are P.Mich.inv. 6872 and 6873. The reason for three versions may be related to the fact that candidates are nominated for three different liturgies. In this way, a copy of each letter could go to the separate administrations. However, it is unclear why none of these three letters was sent to the strategos and are still present in the archive. To Apollonios, strategos of the Arsinoite nome, Herakleides division, from Petaus son of Petaus, village scribe of Ptolemais Hormou and other villages. Wealthy as designators of embankment work: For Ptolemais Hormou: Ischyrion son of Neseus and Diodora For Syron: Sokras son of Ptollion And as supervisor of the vessels: Panoupis son of Heron and Ouaramis. For Syron: Penneus and Penneus son of Penneus And as supervisor of the marketplace: Pouaris son of Ischyrion and Ischyriaina. Figure 10.5 (p. 144) shows one of the many lists in the archive that contain the names of people with their registered wealth. The village scribe kept various lists of this kind in order to make nominations like the ones mentioned in figure 10.4. A number of these have survived in the archive, sometimes even in two copies as in the present case. This text is a copy of the second column of a text in the Cologne collection (P.PetaГјs 53).9 The text is organized into paragraphs with each paragraph listing names from a different village. The headings are set to the left so that it is easy to spot where a new village begins. The villages in question are Syron and Kerkesoucha Orous and listed are people with a wealth put at 700 or 800 drachmas. In Syron, likewise: Sextilis, son of Miysis, income 800 drachmas; Pathynis son of Kilikas and Thaesis, likewise 700 drachmas; Pathynis son of Penneus, grandson of Tales, likewise 800 drachmas; Page 143 → Fig. 10.4. Nomination for a liturgy

Greek on papyrus. 12.6 x 22.5 cm. Late 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 6871 (TM 69640). Purchased in 1937. Edition: D. and U. Hagedorn and H. C. and L. C. Youtie, P.PetaГјs (1969), no. 86. Page 144 → Fig. 10.5. List of names Greek on papyrus. 12.3 x 21 cm. 184/185 CE. P.Mich.inv. 6874 (TM 8756). Purchased in 1937. Edition: D. and U. Hagedorn and H. C. and L. C. Youtie, P.PetaГјs (1969), no. 54. Page 145 →Sokmas son of Paaus, grandson of Ilas, likewise 700 drachmas; Maximus son of Sokmes, grandson of Tenes, likewise 800 drachmas. In Kerkesoucha Orous, likewise: Ischis son of Horos and Thases, with an income of 800 drachmas; Marres son of Phanesis and Taonnophris, likewise 700 drachmas; Phanesis son of Horos and Charitous, likewise 800 drachmas; Pnepheros son of Marres, grandson of Soeris, likewise 700 drachmas; Orsenouphis son of Orsenouphis and Sambous, likewise 700 drachmas. Year 25 of Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus the lord.

Archive of Ploutogeneia There are nine letters in the collection that were all purchased together in 1923. The contents and the reappearing characters show that they clearly belonged together and formed part of the same family archive. Five letters were sent by Paniskos to his wife Ploutogeneia, making it likely that she was the keeper of this archive.10 One of those letters was presented above (fig. 6.5). From the letters it becomes clear that at one point the husband Paniskos is elsewhere (Koptos) for business and tries to convince his wife to come to him, and also bring some items, including military equipment. It is unclear whether Paniskos needs these items because he is a soldier or because he is a merchant dealing in them. What is most clear from the repeated requests is that Ploutogeneia does not come at the bidding of her husband, showing herself to be quite an independent woman in a men’s world. This same independence also shows in the text presented in figure 10.6, where it appears that Ploutogeneia has moved to Alexandria, but kept being in charge of the family business back home. This letter (fig. 10.6) by Ploutogeneia to her mother Heliodora was probably not written by herself but dictated to a professional scribe. In it, Ploutogeneia mentions that she is in Alexandria for a prolonged stay and orders her mother to take care of some business for her. The mention of “the lord god” has been taken by some scholars to mean that the family was Christian, but this is not certain, and the husband in another letter prays before multiple gods. The beginning of the letter is quite personal with Ploutogeneia accusing her mother of treating her not as a daughter but as an enemy. Interesting also Page 147 →are references to “your daughter” and “your children,” instead of the more neutral terms “my sister” and “my siblings” for what would have been Ploutogeneia’s (half) siblings. Possibly the mother of Ploutogeneia has remarried, although it could also be that Ploutogeneia uses this to create more distance to show her anger. Note also that Ploutogeneia does not call her mother by name, which is also unusual. Page 146 → Fig. 10.6. Letter from Ploutogeneia to her mother Greek on papyrus. 26 x 12.5 cm. Late 3rd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 1362 (TM 21351). Purchased in 1924. Edition: J. G. Winter, P.Mich. III (1936), no. 221. Ploutogeneia, to my mother, many greetings. First of all I pray before the lord god for your good health. It is already eight months since I came to Alexandria, and not even one letter have you written to me. Again then you do not regard me as your daughter but as your enemy. The bronze vessels which you have by you, give them to Atas, and do you get them back in full number from her, Atas.

And write to me how much money you received from Koupineris, and do not neglect it. Attend to the irrigation wheel and to your cattle; do not hesitate and do not wish to troubleВ .В .В . And if your daughter intends to marry, write to me and I come. I salute you together with your children. I salute also by name those who love us. I pray for your continued health.

Further Reading For a good overview of the different types of archives and dossiers, see K. Vandorpe, “Archives and Dossiers, ” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by R. S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 216–55. An online source that is regularly updated is the Trismegistos archive project (http://www.trismegistos.org/arch/index.php). A number of archives are introduced in a pdf document that is freely downloadable. Archive descriptions of those archives that come from the Fayum are available in K. Vandorpe, W. Clarysse, and H. Verreth, Greco-Roman Archives from the Fayum (Collectanea Hellenistica 6; Leuven: Peeters, 2015).

Page 148 →

Chapter 11 Karanis Dumps and Discoveries A substantial portion of the University of Michigan papyrus collection was found during controlled excavations at the site of ancient Karanis (modern Kom el Aushim, about 75 kilometers southwest of Cairo). These texts have an actual but not very detailed find spot in the archaeological record, so that we can roughly point at the location where a text was found inside a building/structure, or on a street. In most cases, unfortunately, there is no information about the precise find circumstances within this location. Furthermore, in most cases, the find spot of Karanis papyri can nowadays no longer be identified in the real world, but, with the help of archival maps and photographs, they can sometimes be situated in a two-dimensional reconstruction. Combining papyri with the archaeological record is a tricky business. Where originally scholars were not afraid to make clear and definite connections between the persons mentioned in the papyri and the structure in which the papyri were found, today more theoretically trained archaeological scholars have shown that this is naГЇve. Even though papyri are sometimes found in actual structures, the ways in which they may have ended up there are manifold and in most cases cannot be reconstructed. It is not necessarily the case that a papyrus was put in the structure by the then-inhabitant and remained there until the Michigan team found it. There are many more archaeological processes at work that could explain a papyrus being where it is, including storage, dumping of trash, movement of papyri by wind or animals, or a combination of these (and more). It is now clear that each papyrus has to be interpreted as an archaeological object first, before the relation between the specific text and the inhabitants of the structure in which it was found can be determined. For other kinds of questions, too, it is useful to approach papyri as archaeological objects. The theorizing of papyri as archaeological objects has its roots and center Page 149 →at the University of Michigan. Several faculty members and graduate students here have dealt with the problems and possibilities of text and archaeology, beginning with Elinor Husselman. Her 1971 edition of Michigan papyri was the first to actively engage papyri with the archaeology of Karanis. Michigan can be the center of this research precisely because the papyrus collection and the archival records of the Karanis excavations here allow a rudimentary linking between texts and structure, something not possible, or not with this detail, for other collections.1 At the same time, it is also clear that the excavation records for the Karanis excavations come with their own problems that seriously endanger any definitive analysis. The University of Michigan team was active in Karanis from 1924 to 1935. Every winter, the team was on site and employed local workmen to dig sand and unearth the various architectural structures and the finds contained therein. During the summer months, the team was not in Karanis, but they employed summer guards to make sure that the site was secure during their absence, although it is quite clear from texts and other artifacts offered on the antiquities market that the presence of guards was no guarantee against looting. Karanis was not unknown to the papyrological community before the arrival of the Michigan team. Already 30 years earlier, in 1895, a British team funded by the Egypt Exploration Fund had spent a brief season at the site as part of an overall expedition to the Fayum region. For a variety of reasons, they were not really impressed with the site and did not return. No other controlled archaeological excavations took place until the arrival of the Michigan team in 1924. This is not to say that nothing happened at the site during the intervening years. Most importantly, the site had been identified (like many others) as a good source for sebbakh, the mixture of earth and organic material (including pottery and papyri) that was used as fertilizer. This mix was readily available in the ancient ruins of villages in the Egyptian countryside. The agricultural revolution that took place in Egypt in the early 20th century spiked the need for this fertilizer, with the result that companies began to commercially mine ancient sites for sebbakh. In the case of Karanis, the company responsible for this mining even constructed a small railway to

cart the sebbakh away from the site. That this mining activity also yielded papyri is clear from the fact that already during the 1910s and 1920s papyri from Karanis were offered for sale on the Cairo antiquities market and ended up in many Western collections, including the University of Michigan. The main portion of the Homer papyrus presented as figure 8.1 is a case in point. Page 150 →Looting of the site continued to happen even after the Michigan excavations started in 1924, although now these papyri and other objects were first offered for sale to the Michigan archaeologists. The damage done to the archaeological remains by the sebbakh mining activities was clear to many early 20thcentury Western scholars, and when Kelsey had to decide on a site for the University of Michigan to excavate, surely this threat contributed to the decision in favor of Karanis. Here, the center of the ancient town had at this time already been cleared to the rocky underground. During the first seasons of Michigan excavations, perhaps surprisingly to modern sentiments, sebbakh extraction continued. Obviously, this seriously impacted the success of the excavations in the first seasons, not only because the Michigan team had to negotiate with the sebbakh company where archaeological digging could take place, but also because the competition added a sense of urgency to the whole process. When we look back at the beginning of the excavations it is quite clear that the Michigan team had no idea what they were getting into when they arrived on site in 1924. For one thing, they were not prepared for the enormous wealth of finds that comes with excavating in a desert climate, where much more organic materials survive than in comparable classical sites elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It is not often that excavations end up with over 68,000 individual finds (not including the finds that were not identified because they were too damaged or not deemed interesting enough). This number translates to, on average, over 6,000 finds per season, or about 100 finds per day. Every find needed to be recorded, cleaned, and studied. The Michigan Karanis excavators, following current and innovative practices for their day, soon began working with a site-wide system of stratigraphy and identified each structure within this framework. Based on architectural changes, the excavators distinguished six occupation layers with the letters A (highest) to F (deepest). They also associated rough chronological periods with each level: A: Late 3rd century CE and beyond B: Mid-2nd to late 3rd century CE C: Mid-1st to early 2nd century CE D: Early Roman (late 1st century BCE/early 1st century CE) E: Late Ptolemaic (late 2nd/early 1st century BCE) F: Ptolemaic from foundation in 3rd century BCE Page 151 →The main problem with this Karanis stratigraphy is that not every change in architecture implies a change in occupation level and, vice versa, not every change in periodization necessarily results in architectural changes in individual buildings. Every building has to be interpreted by itself and not only on the basis of architectural changes, but also on the basis of individual finds within a building, including pottery. This interpretation may be very difficult to do now—some may even say impossible—because the individual structures have disappeared and the finds have been recorded according to the layer system. In my view, the possibilities are greater than the problems, but any possible success depends very much on the building(s) chosen for analysis. Very helpful in this quest will be the extensive photographic record of the Karanis excavations, with many detailed photos of structures and finds,2 which has not been explored to its full potential. These problems notwithstanding, we should not forget the innovative character of the Michigan excavations. The Michigan team was among the first in Egyptian archaeology to not only dig for papyri and mortuary artifacts (mummies, etc.) but to go through a site structure by structure, room by room, street by street. It also cannot be denied that when the excavators settled on their routine of recording finds, it provided a successful method of recording an archaeological site at a time when there were scarcely any technical aids. Today’s excavators, by contrast, can use satellites to help locate every object with its own GPS coordinates and record it easily on iPads or other devices. For the time, the Michigan excavation set the standard for others to follow.

In this chapter I will present a small number of texts that come from the Karanis excavations. As we will see, there is currently much more to be said about the contents of the texts than about their role in the archaeological record and contribution to archaeological interpretation (if any). The main reason for this is that there has been much more attention to the papyri from Karanis than to the other finds (apart from glass and coins). In addition, a number of the more interesting texts come from the earlier seasons of excavations, when record keeping was less detailed than in later seasons, so that there simply is not much known about the precise archaeological aspect of the texts. As such, perhaps, this chapter shows potential rather than results. The village of Karanis is important because it is the best documented site of the ancient world. As such, Karanis is an important source for studying the Roman Empire, not from above, at the center in Rome, but from the ground Page 152 →up. The papyri from Karanis allow scholars to analyze the many ways in which the Roman state reached a small village on the fringes of its empire. They show the reach of taxation and the military and the ways in which inhabitants could appeal to state officials. The papyri also show that several inhabitants of Karanis moved within the Roman Empire, mostly as soldiers of the Roman army.

The Karanis Tax Rolls One of the longest of the documentary Greek papyri that have survived from antiquity forms part of the Michigan papyrus collection. What remains of this text (P.Mich.inv. 4171) is about 31 meters long and contains more than 200 columns of a day-by-day record of tax payments made by inhabitants of Karanis in 173–74 CE.3 The roll is part of a group of four rolls, only one small fragment of which was actually found at Karanis during the University of Michigan excavations. One was offered for sale already in 1924, and another in 1926, so that it is likely that the rolls were found during the sebbakh mining activities. It is unknown whether the rolls were found together and that the antiquities dealer kept one behind in 1924, or that they were found separately. The tax rolls can be linked to numerous other papyri with a precise find spot in Karanis. The handwriting in some of these tax rolls has been identified as that of Sokrates, Karanis’s tax collector, and of his son, who both lived in house B17 (that is structure 17 of the B-level).4 Many of the papyri coming from that structure have been identified as belonging to the archive of this family.5 As more papyri from this big cache (over 200 individual papyri) are published, it will become clear whether this is indeed the undisturbed archive of Sokrates or if we are dealing with a dump site for several papyri (including this man’s archive), as is the case for papyri found in other houses in Karanis. The four tax rolls, which together have received their own Trismegistos ArchID number,6 are important for getting a sense of the number of inhabitants of Karanis in the 170s CE.7 They give a precise list of all people who paid money taxes, and the fact that there are several registers for subsequent years, from 171 to 175 CE, allows for a comparison over the years to establish whether people are no longer there (or in any case not paying their taxes) or if others have arrived newly to the village. Given that the registers represent the period of the so-called Antonine Plague (actually a smallpox or measles pandemic) that ravished the Roman Empire between 165 and 180 CE, this Page 153 →information is very important and can aid scholars to see how the pandemic had consequences at the fringes of the Roman Empire as well as the center. In some interpretations, the tax rolls help to show that there was indeed a significant drop in the population of Karanis (in some estimates as much as 36 percent) between the mid- and late 2nd century CE. When studying the long, repetitive, perhaps even boring tax lists, the Michigan papyrologist Herbert Youtie made a surprising discovery. He noticed that sometimes there were names enclosed in brackets at the end of an entry. These were not the tax payers themselves but somebody through whom the actual payment was made. Youtie noticed that whereas the tax payers’ entries were formal (name, father’s name, mother’s name, and grandfather’s name), the bracketed names had no regular format. What is more, by comparing the entry for the man making the payment for a taxpayer in one register (P.Mich. IV 224), he provided an explanation for a problematic entry in another text (P.Mich. IV 223; part of the Cairo Museum collection). In the first text, the payer’s name was given as Panpin. In Egyptian, this name means “the one of the mouse.” In the entry in the other text, there was no Panpin but ink traces that could be read as andiktes. This word only occurs one other time in ancient Greek, in a text by the Greek author Callimachus (one of the librarians of the Library in

Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE). This word means “mouse-catcher.” Youtie assumed that the tax collector made a pun on the Egyptian man’s name by using a rare word from Greek literature. Perhaps this made his rather mundane activities of recording several payments per day more amusing. Figure 11.1 shows one column from one of the tax lists. Although not the longest of the four, it comes close with over 200 columns of writing surviving. The column number (59) is visible in the top margin. Otherwise it is clear that the payments are neatly grouped by day. Day numbers are on the left, and day totals follow in the center of the column after each day. This column lists the end of the month Pharmouthi (March/April) and the first entries of the month Pachon (which began April 26) and does not list any payments on the first day of that month. Most likely the order in this roll follows the tax collector as he went door to door in the village of Karanis to collect the various taxes. The column numbers that are added to each entry are cross-references to columns in another roll where the payment is listed again. Most payments are payments for the poll tax, either in drachmas (multiples of 4) or in small coin, obols (with 7 obols to the drachma, 28 obols equals 4 drachmas). Page 154 → Fig. 11.1. Tax register from Karanis Greek on papyrus. Height 30 cm. 173/174 CE. P.Mich.inv. 4172 (TM 12000), col. 59. Purchased in 1924. Edition: H. C. Youtie, P.Mich. IV part I (1936), no. 225, col. 59. Page 155 →(Col.) 59 Heron, son of Ekysis and Herais, grandson of Menandros: 4 drachmas column 51 Heron, son of Ptolemaios and Heras, grandson of Pnepheros: 28 obols column 59 Kastor, son of Sisois and Thaisas, grandson of Petheus: 28 obols column 65 Petaus, son of Esouris and Tkollauthis, grandson of Petheus: 4 drachmas column 71 Petheus, son of Pakysis and Tamaron, grandson of Petheus: 8 drachmas column 69 Total for the day: 48 drachmas 27 obols. On the 29th, similarly: Horos, son of Harpagathes and Thaesis, grandson of Horos: 20 drachmas column 31 Sarapion, son of Phasis and Helene, grandson of Keras: 4 drachmas column 85 Sarapion, son of Valerius and Stotoetis, grandson of Sarapion: 8 drachmas column 85 Horos, son of Anchorimphis and Achillis, grandson of Horos: 4 drachmas column 98 Kastor also called Sabinus, son of Ptolemaios and Melidous, grandson of Satabous: 4 drachmas column 99 Total for the day: 40 drachmas In Pachon: 2nd: Isidoros, son of Mysthes and Thasis, grandson of Isidoros: 16 drachmas column 3 Apollos, his brother, (born) of the same mother: 16 drachmas column 3 Petaus, son of Pnepheros and Thaesis, grandson of Phanomgeus: 4 drachmas column 11

Lucius Longinus Gemellus, for the third tax (33 percent) on the bath house, for year 13 (and) year 14: 28 drachmas including extra charges. (In left margin: 28 drachmas.) Page 156 →Agathopous, slave of Thermouthis also called Tpaietis: 28 obols column 21 Orsenouphis, son of Heron and Zoidous, grandson of Orsenouphis: 28 obols column 23 Artemas, son of Heron and Thaesis, grandson of Petheus: 8 drachmas 28 obols column 96 Onnophris, son of Petheus and , grandson of Petheus, over the age (of liability to the polltax), for the guards: 4 drachmas column 24 Ptolemaios, his son, (born) of Tapetheus, diseased, for the guard towers: 8 drachmas column 24 Kastor, his other (son), (born) of the same mother: 8 drachmas column 24 Total for the day: 100 drachmas 26 obols.

“House of the Sons of Ptolemaios” House B1, which was excavated during the 1926 season, yielded a mixed collection of artifacts. In this case there is a plan of the house made during excavation that shows the location of the various rooms, as well as archival photographs that show the house as it was after excavation. Room C in this structure yielded 45 different objects, including two papyri and six ostraca, and fragments of many wooden implements. Although we cannot be certain, the variety of objects strongly suggests that what we have here is a dump where somebody in antiquity disposed of items that were no longer needed. This interpretation is not really a solid base to identify this house as the house of the addressee of the letters presented below, the woman Taesis. There is unfortunately no further information about where exactly in the room items were found in relation to each other. The ostraca found in room C (and also in the adjoining room D) are certificates for work on the embankments by two sons of a Ptolemaios (Ischyras and Sarapion), so that it is also possible to identify this house as the house of the sons of Ptolemaios. Although clearly a minority in the archaeological record, the two papyri have attracted the most scholarly attention. And they are indeed interesting texts in their own right, even if they do not provide solid evidence for identifying house B1 as the house of Taesis. The two papyri contain letters, written Page 157 →from (but not by) the same person to the same addressee. The sender is one of the inhabitants of Karanis who ventured out into the big world of the Roman Empire and ended up in Rome. In these letters he informs his mother about his well-being and tells her that he will be part of the Misenean fleet of the Roman army. The letters are not only informative about the movement of a young enlistee of the Roman army and the way in which he tries to help his mother cope with the fact that he is away but also about the process of letter writing. Comparison of the two letters (figs. 11.2 and 11.3) clearly shows that they were penned by two different scribes. One of these scribes has a very big handwriting, whereas the other employs a much smaller and more cursive handwriting. The sender, Apolinaris, therefore at most wrote one of the letters himself while employing a scribe for the other. Alternatively, he did not personally write either of the letters. There is also some confusion about the precise name of the addressee who in the first letter is called Taesion and in the second Taesis, although both names are variants of the same Egyptian name that means “The one of Isis.” Figure 11.2 shows the letter that, based on its contents, was written first. The heading is set apart from the main text by centering the second line. Writing becomes smaller as the text progresses, showing perhaps that the scribe had originally miscalculated the available space. We cannot establish whether the handwriting that pens the final line is that of Apolinaris or the person scribing the main text but writing differently. In itself it is not without parallel to see a literate person use another person to write a letter for him, only to add a small note at the end in his own handwriting to more or less personalize the letter. But the fact that Apolinaris does not seem to write a note in the next letter seems to suggest that he was in fact illiterate. The folds that are still visible show that this

letter was rolled from right to left, and then folded in half. The address was written on the two visible strips on the outside. In this letter, Apolinaris informs his mother in Karanis about his arrival in Portus, also known as Ostia, the harbor of Rome. The letter also tells us about the route he took from Karanis to Rome by traveling first to Cyrene (modern Libya) and then crossing the Mediterranean. There, Apolinaris made use of another person traveling to Karanis to carry a letter for his mother. This letter has not survived, either because it was never delivered or his mother did not store it together with the two other letters. The Sokrates mentioned in the letter undoubtedly was the tax collector Sokrates (see p. 152) who we know lived nearby. Fig. 11.2. Letter from Apolinaris to his mother Greek on papyrus. 22 x 18 cm. 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4527 (TM 27100). Found at Karanis during the 1926–27 season. Edition: J. G. Winter, Classical Philology 22 (1927), 239–42. Reprinted in J. G. Winter – H. C. Youtie, P.Mich. VIII (1951), no. 490. Page 158 →Apolinaris to Taesion, his mother, many greetings. Before all else I wish you good health and make obeisance on your behalf to all the gods. From Cyrene, where I found a man who was journeying to you, I deemed it necessary to write to you about my welfare. And do you inform me at once about your safety and that of my brothers. And now I am writing you from Portus, for I have not yet gone up to Rome and been assigned. When I have been assigned Page 159 →and know where I am going, I will let you know at once; and for your part, do not delay to write about your health and that of my brothers. If you do not find anybody coming to me, write to Sokrates and he forwards it to me. I salute often my brothers, and Apollinarius and his children, and Kalalas and his children, and all your friends. Asklepiades salutes you. Farewell and good health. I arrived in Portus on Pachon 25. (Second hand) Know that I have been assigned to Misenum, for I learned it later. (Addressed on the back) Deliver to Karanis, to Taesion, from Apollinarius, her son. Figure 11.3 shows the second letter, clearly written by a different scribe. The subscript of the letter at the very bottom (“I pray for your health”) looks different from the main text, but upon closer inspection was actually written by the same hand, yet in a different writing style. This change of style happened often for such final greetings in letters, and was apparently how a private letter was supposed to look in the ancient world. The different writing style gave the impression that the author added an autograph even if this was not actually the case, as here. This letter was also rolled up from right to left and then folded in half. In this letter (fig. 11.3), which must have been written shortly after the one in figure 11.2, Apolinaris informs his mother that he has arrived in Rome and has learned that he will be stationed in the fleet at Misenum but does not yet know his unit. In this letter, Apolinaris greets more people at home, perhaps because in this letter there was plenty of space still available on the papyrus. Apolinaris to Taesis, his mother and lady, many greetings. Before all else I pray for your health. I myself am well, and I make obeisance on your behalf before the gods of this place. I wish you to know, mother, that I arrived in Rome in good health on the 25th of the month Pachon and was assigned to Misenum. But I have not yet learned my unit, for I had not gone to Misenum when I wrote you this letter. I beg you then, mother, take care of yourself, and do not worry about me, for I have come into a fine place. Please write to me about your welfare and that of my brothers and all your kinsfolk. And for my part, if I find someone, I will write to you; I will not delay to write to you. I salute my brothers often, and Apollinarius and his children, and Karalas and his children. I salute Ptolemaios, and Ptolemais and her children, and Heraklous and her children. I salute all your friends, each by name.

I pray for your health. Page 160 → Fig. 11.3. Letter from Apolinaris to his mother Greek on papyrus. 15.5 x 22 cm. 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 4528 (TM 27101). Found at Karanis during the 1926–27 season. Edition: J. G. Winter, Classical Philology 22 (1927), 243–45. Reprinted in J. G. Winter – H. C. Youtie, P.Mich. VIII (1951), no. 491. Page 161 →(Addressed on the back) Deliver to Karanis, to Taesis, from Apollinarius, her son, of Misenum.

Merchant Ships Karanis also brings us the occasional surprise, as in the case of figure 11.4. This papyrus was found in 1929, in a house to the northeast of one of the big granaries of Karanis (structure 65 in the C-level). Whereas there is much information about the granary, not much is known about this house to the northeast, other than that another papyrus containing fragments of Homer, Odyssey, book 14, was found in the same location. The text deals with big ships arriving from all over the Mediterranean in a harbor, which must be the harbor of Alexandria. It is very likely that this ledger once was part of the papers of somebody active on the Mediterranean coast who then took his papers (including books) and moved inland to Karanis. This papyrus (fig. 11.4) preserves a register of cargo ships that arrived in the harbor of Alexandria from various ports in the Mediterranean. The register lists the names of the ships (largely taken from Greek mythology), their tonnage, and cargo (wine, olive oil, and timber). The harbors from which the ships arrived are situated all over the Mediterranean (Italy, Crete, Syria, Turkey) and even on the Black Sea. From Attalion on Crete: boat of [ name lost ] son of Sozomenos, (named) Furies and Fortune, (volume) [ number lost] artabas. From Aigeai, on the 20th: the akatos-boat of Diodoros son of Athenodoros, (named) Sarapis and Fortune, (volume) 2,000 artabas [= about 70 tons]. Transports for the shipowner 700 jars of red (?) wine from [place name lost ] From Aigeai, on the 20th: the plauda?-boat of Demetrios son of [name lost], named Philometor, (volume) [ number lost ] artabas. Transports for the shipowner [ number lost ] jars of red wine from Aigeai. From Ostia, on the 1[.]th: the boat of Lucius Pompeius Metrodoros, (named) [ lost ], (volume) 22,500 artabas [= about 800 tons]. Returns on its ballast (that is, empty). Fig. 11.4. Register of cargo ships Greek on papyrus. 27.8 x 26.1 cm. 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 5760a (TM 78045). Found at Karanis during the 1929–30 season. Edition: P. Heilporn, P.Bingen (2000), no. 77. Page 162 →From Lib(), on the 5th: the akatos-boat of Publius Aelius Anni[-], named [ name lost ], (volume) 2,000 artabas [= about 70 tons]. Returns on its ballast (that is, empty). From Canal (?), on the 26th: the akatos-boat of Basilon son of Libys, (named) Athena, (volume) 1,000 artabas [= about 35 tons]. Transports for our lord Caesar [number lost] half-jars of olive oil. Page 163 →From Paltos, on the 20th: the boat of Zenon son of Protos, (named) Dragon, (volume) 2,500 artabas [= about 90 tons]. Transports for [ N.N. Heliodoros 500 jars of wine.

From Laodicea, on the 18th: the akatos-boat of Cassianus son of Kyros and Dominus son of Agathocles, (named) Hope, (volume) 2,000 artabas [= about 70 tons]. Transports for Dominus [ number lost ] jars of wine. From Gagai, on the 6th: the boat of Neon son of Varus, (named) Asklepios Sarapis, (volume) 1,500 artabas [= about 50 tons]. Transports for Claudius Crispinus 300 jars of first-quality wine from Side and [ lost ]. From Side, on the 7th: the akatos-boat of Gaius Julius Jason, (named) Hope Ourania, (volume) 7,000 artabas [= about 250 tons]. Transports for our lord Caesar 32 (trunks of) pine trees and for Noumenios also known as Kallistratos 216 half-jars of olive oil from Aspendos. From Anemourion, on the 13th: the akatos-boat of Ninos son of Tounes, (named) Zeus, Aphrodite, Selene, (volume) equal amount of artabas. Transports for the shipowner 2,500 jars of wine from Side.

Measuring the Nile An interesting group of texts was discovered in what the archaeologists identified as structure 224 in the B-level, excavated during the 1930–31 season. From this structure and the C-level street in which it was built came many objects, including papyri.8 The papyri have attracted much attention because they contained a number of Greek literary texts but also a number of texts that can be connected with Egyptian priests. The combination of texts from this house is one of the cases supporting the hypothesis that Egyptian priests were actually among the most avid readers of Greek literature in Roman Egypt.9 Figure 11.5 contains recorded measurements of the receding Nile. These measurements cannot have been made at Karanis, which is too far removed from the river. It has been suggested that this text was drawn up in Memphis, one of the places in Egypt where there was a Nilometer, a measuring structure (including basin) with markings that allowed detailed tracking of the rise Page 164 →and recession of the river Nile. Like the previous text, this would be another example of a text written elsewhere in Egypt and then transported to Karanis. This text (fig. 11.5) gives an overview of the height of the river Nile in October (Phaophi 10 to Hathyr 5) of an unknown year. October is the period when the Nile receded after reaching its highest point, and the measurements confirm this. The text measures the height in cubits and digits as it was measured in the reservoir that was part of the Nilometer. An Egyptian cubit measured about 0.525 meters and a digit (1/28 of a cubit), 0.0188 meters. The text is arranged in paragraphs that give the measurements in five-day periods and compare the current measurements with that of the previous year. The recorded total rise of 16 cubits and 22 digits (8.8 meters) for this year is within the range of what was considered by ancient sources a good inundation (16 cubits), and is a little higher than the highest point reached the year before. It is unknown what the purpose of this text was, whether it was a draft to be entered into a more formal document or something that was kept for personal use. Recession of the river. Phaophi 10–17, the river recession remained at the same level as on the 10th. 18–20, the river fell 1 (per day), so that the recession was 3 digits from the river’s total rise of 16 cubits 22 digits. Last year’s recession in the same period: up to the 17th, 4 digits (per day); 18–20, the river fell 3 digits (per day), so that the recession was 1 cubit 13 digits from the total rise in the reservoir of 15 cubits 24 digits. 21–25, the river fell 1 digit (per day), so that the recession was 8 digits from the total rise (recorded) with the reservoir of 16 cubits 22 digits, so that remain 20 16 cubits 14 digits. Last year’s recession in the same period: 21–22, the river fell 4 digits (per day); the next days, 23–25, the river fell 3 digits (per day), so that the recession was 2 cubits 2 digits.

26–30, the river fell 2 digits (per day), so that the recession was 18 digits from the total rise (recorded) with the reservoir of 16 cubits 22 digits, so that remain 16 cubits 4 digits. Last year’s recession in the same period: 26–27, the river fell 4 digits (per day); the next days, the river fell 3 digits (per day), so that the recession was 2 cubits 19 digits. Hathyr 1–5, the river fell 1 digit (per day), so that the recession was 23 digits from the total rise (recorded) with the reservoir of 16 cubits 22 digits. Last Page 166 →year’s recession in the same period: the river fell 3 digits (per day), so that the recession was 3 digits cubits 6 digits from the total rise of 15 cubits 24 digits. Page 165 → Fig. 11.5. Report of the recession of the Nile Greek on papyrus. 9 x 25.2 cm. 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 5795 (TM 43209). Found at Karanis during the 1930–31 season. Edition: O. M. Pearl, Transactions of the American Philological Association 87 (1956), 51–59 (= SB XXII 15622).

Music in the Air During the 1924 season a big cache of papyri (167 at current count) was found in what the excavators identified as structure 5006. Unfortunately, during this first season record keeping was incomplete, and there are no detailed drawings of this structure and the surrounding area. Many of the texts from this structure (28) have been identified as part of the family archive of Gemellus Horion.10 It is not known whether the remaining papyri (many of which are still unpublished) can also be connected to this archive or if they are part of other, unrelated archives. One of the finds from this structure stood out immediately by the presence of musical notation, easily recognizable above the lines. This text is part of numerous artifacts and texts found at Karanis that deal with music and that together suggest there was an active musical scene in Roman Karanis.11 Although very fragmentary, this text makes a significant contribution to the history of Greek music in the Roman period. The text (fig. 11.6) is very fragmentary and difficult to interpret. It may be part of one Greek tragedy or two songs from different tragedies. In the latter case, this papyrus would be a fragment of a roll with “greatest hits” from Greek drama. The tragedy or tragedies are otherwise unknown, although the mention of Aegisthus and “homecoming” in the text points at the mythological stories surrounding the Greek general Agamemnon and his return from Troy. In these stories, Aegisthus was the lover of Agamemnon’s wife and aided in his killing. These stories have formed the basis for many Greek tragedies that did survive, such as Aeschylus’s Oresteia. The Greek text is accompanied above the line by musical notation and various signs to indicate rhythm and performance directions. Greek musical signs are based on Greek letters, which can be turned or flipped to indicate different notes. .В .В . o dearest, I supplicate [you]В .В .В . whoever are you or of what? The newВ .В .В . o dearest, these things you sayВ .В .В . on all sidesВ .В .В . I supplicateВ .В .В . o dearestВ .В .В . tell! tell! .В .В .В salvation has come about; what homecomingВ .В .В . of the land here to meВ .В .В . of the appearingВ .В .В . teach! Teach! .В .В .В it is not a delight of unexpectedВ .В .В . before nowВ .В .В . another and again he/she still hastens me towardsВ .В .В . Page 168 →would I had not known these things that are presentВ .В .В . astonishment causesВ .В .В . of your things that have been revealedВ .В .В . you say this of Aegisthus; of theseВ .В .В . strength, having been seized with fear by what sort of terrorВ .В .В . judgementВ .В .В . clearlyВ .В .В . formerlyВ .В .В . or the worstВ .В .В . he has come to what piece of landВ .В .В . for these things Page 167 → Fig. 11.6. Papyrus with musical notation Greek on papyrus. 18 x 30.3 cm. 2nd century CE. P.Mich.inv. 2958 recto (TM 63552). Found at Karanis during the 1924–25 season. Edition: R. Sears, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (2015), 143–79.

(Translation R. Sears) Further Reading A readable overview of the site of Karanis and the work of the University of Michigan is E. Gazda and T. G. Wilfong, Karanis: An Egyptian Town in Roman Times. Discoveries of the University of Michigan Expedition to Egypt (1924–1935), second edition (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2004). Recent research on Karanis is highlighted in Karanis Revealed: Discovering the Past and Present of a Michigan Excavation in Egypt, edited by T. G. Wilfong and A. W. S. Ferrara (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2014).

Page 169 →

Chapter 12 The Future of the Collection At 96 years old, the University of Michigan papyrus collection is already an established and venerable institution. It has contributed widely to various scholarly disciplines and has enriched the life of many individuals on the Michigan campus and beyond. With the first centennial of the collection rapidly approaching, this is definitely a moment to celebrate the accomplishments so far. At the same time, it is also a time to look forward and see this moment as a new beginning. In this final chapter I will provide some pointers as to where this collection can go to best realize its potential. However, this chapter is not meant to provide a blueprint for what needs to happen at the University of Michigan papyrus collection but rather offers a collection of personal musings about some possible directions of activity. One of the most obvious collection needs is the continued study and publication of its holdings. As chart 12.1 shows, after 95 years only 5 percent of the collection has been fully studied and published. It should be pointed out immediately that this number only applies to the collection that is physically present in Ann Arbor. As such it does not reflect the full record of editorial activity in the Michigan collection, because this number does not account for the papyri and ostraca that were published and subsequently returned to Egypt. This chart, therefore, does not imply that it will take another 1,900 years to publish the remainder of the collection. The 95 percent of the collection that remains unpublished are for the most part smaller fragments, which are more damaged and more difficult to read and interpret. The reason we have ended up with these fragments has to do with the publication history of the collection, where scholars were allowed to choose texts themselves rather than be assigned a text. There can be no doubt that what has been published to date are the more readable and complete texts, and in this the Michigan collection conforms to other papyrus collections in the world.1 As somebody who has browsed through the collection myself to find texts worthy of studying and publishing, for my students and Page 170 →for myself, I can attest to the fact that it is much more appealing to choose a readable and more complete text to work on than a small fragment with little indication of producing valuable information. Chart 12.1. The published and unpublished portions of the collection In all frankness, I do not think that it is feasible to approach the final 95 percent of the collection in the same manner as the collection has been approached the first 95 years. Yes, there are still numerous larger fragments with at least one interesting aspect that deserve our full and traditional attention, but the majority consists of small fragments that may or may not contain anything of interest. It remains a question, which will also be asked by any university or library administration, whether it is really necessary to fully study and publish every scrap of writing from the Michigan collection. At the same time, one really does not want to miss the one small piece that can solve an important puzzle from antiquity that has kept scholars occupied for centuries now. Also, especially in the case of Karanis papyri, but with some purchased papyri as well, many small fragments can make a larger document, but they first need to be identified as part of the same text. Middle ground needs to be found, and novel ways to approach and study the collection should be devised. I outline some suggestions below. One of the ways that I have found very useful in my classes is to approach smaller fragments in a collaborative setting. I have found that by reading and studying a small papyrus text in a group it is possible to make much more progress than can be done by sitting in a room alone. The ideas and possible readings that bounce back and forth among all involved trigger the mind in ways I had never realized would be possible. There have been cases of the group reading all 14 lines in a damaged text within an hour. Of course, readingPage 171 → a text is not the same as completely understanding it, but it gives a very good indication whether there is anything in the text worthy to be explored further. Studying texts in a group has become possible through recent developments in projection technology, where a digital presenter projects the original papyrus on a big screen for all to see, and to zoom in or out as needed. Students themselves often had an image of the text open on their laptop and adjusted the image

with Adobe Photoshop to try and read difficult spots. Recently developed remote collaboration applications ensure that this collaboration can be expanded beyond the classroom. Not all participants need sit around the same table anymore to discuss a papyrus. We may also need to revisit the idea of what it means to “publish” a text. Especially for the smaller fragments that now make up the majority of the Michigan collection, we should think beyond the traditional format of the book or periodical (as described in chapter 4). As an example, it would make sense to post readings of individual fragmentary papyri online, attached to the online record of the papyrus involved. Projects like the Papyrological Navigator (www.papyri.info) are already experimenting with online publication of papyrus texts,2 and I think the Michigan papyrus collection can provide a leading role in trying out different methods. The main change involved will be a scholarly one: we have to start thinking of such postings as works in progress rather than as final publications. And further along the line it will be necessary to create mechanisms to ensure that individual contributions can be logged and acknowledged so that they can count as scholarly output and university administrations can recognize and reward this activity. It may be clear from chapter 11 that I think there is also great potential in the study of papyri from Karanis. Here there needs to be a concerted effort among scholars in Michigan, Cairo, and elsewhere,3 and among papyrologists, archaeologists, and ancient historians. Here, too, ongoing technological developments will certainly help a project of this size, and ongoing efforts to digitally map the archival material from Karanis with the actual site itself should be mentioned.4 Ideally, all available material should be entered in such a digital platform—the archival photographs of its excavation, the images of papyri and other artifacts found, and the editions, studies, and interpretations of the various objects—with a possibility for others to further contribute to the research.5 For the Karanis papyri in the collection, the main challenge is to study all fragments. To date, only the more complete and readable texts from individual find spots have been studied in full. The numerous smaller fragments that Page 172 →also came from the same spots have not yet received any attention. Examples can readily be gleaned from chapters 10 and 11, where several groups of texts have been presented of which only a small number have been studied. If we are to make any progress about the role of texts in their precise archaeological context, we have to be ready to study every text from that context, even the smallest scrap. Lest we forget, there is also still much to be done with the 5 percent of the Ann Arbor collection that has been published. For one thing, many of these texts were published when the field of papyrology was still very much a profession that dealt with texts, not objects bearing texts. Many of the texts that were published in the 1920s, for example, lack detailed descriptions of the material aspect of the papyrus (and other writing materials) involved. It would be a worthwhile exercise to add such descriptions to the texts that were published in the last century. Also, it is still possible to improve on the readings from these texts by looking at the original papyrus again. There is definitely a need to check the transcriptions of all published Michigan texts (such as those in the Papyrological Navigator) against the papyrus. Because this is also good practice for students, I have often devoted a session to doing this during my classes in papyrology. A search of the editorial history of many Michigan papyri in the Papyrological Navigator will show the result of this activity. Amidst all the exciting new technological developments it is important to remember that continued care needs to be given to the conservation of the collection. This applies to the whole collection, whether published or unpublished. In continuing efforts to digitize library holdings it is easily forgotten that digitization does not remove the need for conservation and storage of the actual physical objects. An unexpected aspect of the continuing development of new and better imaging techniques is that it makes it necessary to return to the actual object each time a better technique becomes available. For this reason alone, original objects need to be preserved in the best possible conditions for future use. Also, in a public institution like the University of Michigan, papyri will be on display regularly, whether on campus or elsewhere. Conservation should be at the heart and center of every papyrus collection, even in the digital age. Many of the possible projects that would use the collection to its full potential go beyond the means of any individual institution. It is not without reason that the big online papyrological projects of the past and present

have been funded largely with money from the National Endowment for Page 173 →the Humanities (Advanced Papyrological Information System) and lately the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (e.g., Papyrological Navigator). At Michigan itself, much of the innovation in recent years has been triggered by the financial support from the Conger Endowment, the Meader Endowment, and the Parsons Fund for Papyrology. There can be no doubt that the realization of any project described above includes the need of public and private fundraising. Finally, I think the University of Michigan as a public institution also has a leading role to play in the moral and legal issues of collecting ancient artifacts. This role is not so much to wield a pointing finger and accusing tone but rather to provide a possible model for how to deal with issues of provenance, even if they are contentious. Important in this respect are transparency, a constructive dialogue with relevant parties, and a readiness to deal with whatever the consequences are. It should however also include the realization that many ideas that are clear and uncontested now were murkier in the 20th century, and that what we consider “wrong” now was not necessarily seen that way back then.

Page 174 →Page 175 →

Notes Chapter 1 1. James G. Keenan, J. G. Manning, and Uri Yiftach-Firanko in the preface to their Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), xxiv. 2. To see these papyri type “1570” or “1571” in the first field in the collection search page at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/apis?page=search 3. A helpful online database that allows people to search for specific ancient authors and all their works on papyrus (and other writing materials), not only from the Michigan collection, is the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/). 4. W. Graham Claytor VI, Mechanics of Empire: The Karanis Register and the Writing Offices of Roman Egypt (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2014).

Chapter 2 1. The main source for Francis Kelsey’s life and dealings with papyri is the biography by John G. Pedley, The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 2. Kelsey’s acquisitions for the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology are discussed in Lauren E. Talalay and Margaret Cool Root, Passionate Curiosities: Tales of Collectors and Collections from the Kelsey Museum (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2015), 17–26. 3. The inventory numbers 771–775 also belong to this purchase but were added later to the inventory of papyri (see p. 26 for this document). 4. The acquisition reports of the various purchases during this period are available online at http://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection/acquisition-reports 5. For this period of Egyptian history see the fascinating study by D. M. Reid, Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015). 6. All laws and decrees dealing with Egyptian antiquities are listed and discussed in A. Khater, Le rГ©gime juridique des fouilles et des antiquitГ©s en Г‰gypte (Cairo: Institut franГ§ais d’archГ©ologie orientale, 1960). Page 176 →7. A recent paper has shown that export of at least one of Michigan’s purchases during this time happened without the required approval of the Egyptian authorities. See B. Nongbri, “The Acquisition of the University of Michigan’s Portion of the Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri and a New Suggested Provenance,” Archiv fГјr Papyrusforschung 60 (2014), 93–116, esp. 100–101. 8. Some of the finds from this excavation are presented in T. G. Wilfong and A. W. S. Ferrara, Karanis Revealed: Discovering the Past and Present of a Michigan Excavation in Egypt (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology 2014), 98–101. 9. The agreement is alluded to several times by Boak in his paper “The Building of the University of Michigan Papyrus Collection,” The Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives 66 (1959), 35–42. For example, on page 35 he states: “some two thousand [papyri] represent a loan for publication from the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.В .В .В .” 10. P. J. Sijpesteijn has published many Michigan papyri that were returned to Cairo from black and white photographs kept in Michigan. Mohamed El-Maghrabi and Cornelia RГ¶mer recently published a volume of Cairo Michigan papyri, Texts from the Archive of Socrates, the Tax Collector, and Other Contexts at Karanis: P. Cair. Mich. II (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014). 11. There is an online gallery of faculty involved in the papyrus collection at http://www.lib.umich.edu /papyrology-collection/papyrology-meet-staff#Tradition 12. See http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.phpURL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

13. Reference to the arrest and conviction of the dealer involved, Faruk el Shaer, is mentioned at http://www.e-c-h-o.org/news/illegalantiquities.htm

Chapter 4 1. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=apis&page=search 2. Cassandra Borges and J. Michael Sampson, New Literary Papyri from the Michigan Collection: Mythographic Lyric and a Catalog of Poetic First Lines (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 3. H. C. Youtie, Textual Criticism of Documentary Papyri; “Text and Context in Transcribing Papyri, ” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966), 251–58 (= Scriptiunculae I [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973], 25–33). 4. http://www.papyri.info/browse/ddbdp/ 5. These stable identifying TM numbers are listed for each text in this book. 6. http://sites.lib.byu.edu/scholarsarchive/byu-multi-spectral-imaging-project/ 7. For the latest state of affairs, see V. Mocella a.o., “Revealing Letters in Rolled Herculaneum Papyri by X-ray Phase Contrast Imaging,” Nature Communications 6, Article number 5895 (2015), http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1038/ncomms6895

Page 177 →Chapter 5 1. The collection contains two lead tablets, as the chart shows, but they derive from the dubious portion of the 1982 purchase (see pp. 13–14) and are not presented here. The “bits of lamp wick” are not strictly writing materials but were found among papyrus fragments belonging to the collection and therefore form part of it. The 39 clay items are not tablets like those known from ancient Mesopotamia but pieces of clay that were used to seal papyri: they carry not writing but the impression of a seal ring. 2. The few ostraca from Karanis that remain in Ann Arbor are part of the collection of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, not the Papyrus Collection, although the ones with writing in Greek are on long-term loan to the collection.

Chapter 6 1. http://www.pappal.info 2. See, for example, P. Orsini and W. Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88 (2012), 443–74. 3. Other examples of Ptolemaic handwriting in this book are figures 5.1 and 10.1, also from the Zenon archive. 4. Writing examples from the 1st century CE can be found in figures 9.3–9.5. Examples from the 2nd century CE can be found in figures 4.2, 8.3, 9.6, 9.8, 9.9, 10.2–10.5, and 11.1–11.6. For 3rd century CE examples see figures 5.4, 6.5, 7.3, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.7, and 10.6. 5. This is archive no. 149 in the online project listing all archives from Greek and Roman Egypt, see chapter 10. A description is available at http://www.trismegistos.org/archive/149 6. Other examples of Byzantine handwriting can be found in figures 5.2, 5.5, 5.7, 7.4, 7.5, 8.4, and 9.10.

Chapter 7 1. W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 2. K. Hopkins, “Conquest by Book,” in Literacy in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1991), 133–58.

Chapter 8 1. Recent rumors about a possible 1st-century CE papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Mark made it into various news outlets; see, for example, the report in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com

/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/20/biblical-scholar-says-hes-found-the-oldest-known-gospel-inside-amummy-mask/ Page 178 →2. William Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 3. See also http://www.lib.umich.edu/reading/Paul/ 4. N. Peter Fullen, The Camel is Judas: A Study of Ancient Christian Allegorization and its Uses in Teaching (University of Michigan Honors Thesis, 2013).

Chapter 9 1. P. Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2. Apart from the discussion in J. Rowlandson, Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 292–93, see A. E. Hanson, “The eighth months’ child and the etiquette of birth,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61 (1987), 589–602. 3. In the text of the contract, the father’s name is given as Lysimachos. This may be a mistake by the scribe. 4. In the Greek text, this man’s name is Eutychos. 5. The standard work is still R. S. Bagnall and B. W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), since 2010 available as ebook at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017 /CBO9780511584053 6. Trismegistos ArchID 325 at http://www.trismegistos.org/arch/archives/pdf/325.pdf 7. S. M. Burstein, “An Elephant for Anastasius: A Note on P.Mich.inv. 4290,” Ancient History Bulletin 6 (1992), 55–57.

Chapter 10 1. The archives can be found by doing an “advanced search” on the Trismegistos website (http://www.trismegistos.org/arch/index.php) and entering “Michigan” or “Ann Arbor” in the Collections field. 2. Trismegistos ArchID 256 at www.trismegistos.org/archive/256 3. W. Clarysse, “Egyptian scribes writing Greek,” Chronique d’Égypte 68 (1993), 186–201. 4. Trismegistos ArchID 116 at www.trismegistos.org/archive/116 5. Trismegistos ArchID 407 at www.trismegistos.org/archive/407 6. Trismegistos ArchID 182 at www.trismegistos.org/archive/182 7. http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/NRWakademie/papyrologie/ 8. http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/NRWakademie/papyrologie/PPetaus/bilder/PK328r.jpg 9. http://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.petaus;;53dupl 10. Trismegistos ArchID 167 at www.trismegistos.org/archive/167 Page 179 →

Chapter 11 1. The archival sources present at the University of Michigan campus are presented and explained in T. G. Wilfong, “Notes on Three Archival Sources for the Michigan Karanis Excavations: The Record of Objects Books, the Division Albums, and the вЂPeterson Manuscript,’” in Karanis Revealed: Discovering the Past and Present of a Michigan Excavation in Egypt, edited by T. G. Wilfong and A. W. S. Ferrara (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2014), 15–24. 2. T. G. Wilfong, “The University of Michigan Excavation of Karanis (1924–1935): Images from the Kelsey Museum Photographic Archives,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, edited by C. Riggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 223–43.

3. For the 2004 conservation of this roll see the online slideshow by the Michigan conservator Leyla LauLamb at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~laulamb/karanis/Karanis.html 4. P. van Minnen, “House-by-House Enquiries: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Roman Karanis,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100 (1994), 227–51. 5. Trismegistos ArchID 109 at http://www.trismegistos.org/archive/109 6. Trismegistos ArchID 63 at http://www.trismegistos.org/archive/63 7. There is an online prosopography of every person listed in the tax registers available as part of the Oxford Roman Economy Project at http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/databases/karanis_tax_rolls_database/ 8. T. Landvatter, “Archaeological and Papyrological Inquiry at Karanis: Problems and Potentialities, ” in Proceedings of the XXVII International Congress of Papyrology (forthcoming). 9. Peter van Minnen, “Boorish or Bookish? Literature in Egyptian Villages in the Fayum in the GraecoRoman Period,” Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28 (1998), 99–184. 10. Trismegistos ArchID 90 at http://www.trismegistos.org/archive/90 11. T. G. Wilfong, “The Sonic Landscape of Karanis: Excavating the Sounds of a Village in Roman Egypt,” in Karanis Revealed, 169–77.

Chapter 12 1. As Sir Eric G. Turner remarked in his Greek Papyri: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 72: “Pieces awaiting publication will tend to be the smaller, less complete, less straightforward ones.” 2. See, for example, the online publication of P.Got. 54 at http://papyri.info/ddbdp/ddbdp;2015;1 3. We should not forget the ongoing excavations at Karanis by a team from UCLA and the University of Groningen. For recent results, see H. Barnard a.o., “The Fourth Century AD Expansion of the GraecoRoman Settlement of Karanis (Kom Aushim) in the Northern Fayum,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 101 (2015), 51–67. 4. A. Wilburn, J. Cook, and J. Gates-Foster, “The Karanis Project: A New Approach Page 180 →to an Old Excavation,” in Karanis Revealed: Discovering the Past and Present of a Michigan Excavation in Egypt, edited by T. G. Wilfong and A. W. S. Ferrara (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2014), 157–60. 5. A first attempt that focused on Karanis structures C137 and C65 took place in May and June 2016 as part of the Michigan Humanities Collaboratory initiative; for first impressions and results, see http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/karanis-collaboratory/

Page 181 →

Source Index O.Mich.inv. 9010, 86 O.Skeat 14, 44 P.Mich.inv. 2, 27, 94, 95 3, 99 56, 27 57, 27 62, 27 65, 27 66, 27 73, 112 147, 125 158a, 120 263, 122 340, 108 502, 72 533, 81 607, 77 621, 88–89 762, 47 763, 85 766, 110 917, 3–4 918, 49 1267, 118

1271, 115 1320, 74 1362, 146 1367, 70 1570, 3 1571, 3 1638, 68 2755a, 94, 95 2841, 127 2958, 167 3106, 66 3119, 42 3160, 94, 95 3198, 135 3250, 26–27 3498, 27 3524, 59 3527, 38 3718, 101 4008, 129 4171, 152 4172, 154 4244 (4), 62 4290, 130 4453a, 37 4527, 158 4528, 160 4533 (9), 45 4536 (12), 50

4694, 29, 31 4733, 92 4936, 52 4951, 56 4953, 87 5635, 78 5760a, 162 5795, 165 5883, 138 5900, 140 6827, 3 6838, 96, 97 6862, 54 6871, 143 6872, 142 6873, 142 6874, 144

Page 182 →Page 183 →

Subject Index acid-free folder, 21 Agamemnon, 95, 166 Alexandria, 5, 73, 104, 109, 145, 147, 161 allegorization, 101–2 Amundsen, Leiv, 43, 86 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 173 antiquities dealer, 7, 9, 13, 134, 152, 176n13 market, 46, 94–95, 133, 149 laws, 9 Antiquities Service (Service des antiquités), 8, 9–10 Antonine plague, 152 APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System), 14–15, 18, 27, 32, 173 Apolinaris, 157–60 Apollinarius, 137, 139 Arabic, 7, 53, 58, 77–78, 79, 80, 106 archaeology, 2, 148–49, 151 archive, 69, 111, 117, 124, 132–33 family, 71, 132–33, 137, 145, 166 personal, 133 professional, 133, 141 Arlt, Carolin, 50 Bagnall, Roger S., 14 Baker, Cathleen A., 19 Bell, H. Idris, 25 birth certificate, 46, 103, 109, 110 Bishop, William W., 11

BL (Berichtigungsliste), 33–34 Boak, Arthur E. R., 10, 47, 85, 122, 125, 127 Bonner, Campbell, 10, 99 Book of the Dead, 2, 59–60 box, 2, 3, 20, 21, 30 Brigham Young University, 37 British Museum, 8, 18, 20, 25, 26, 51 Browne, Gerald M., 11, 56, 68, 77 Byzantine period, 65, 69, 106 Callimachus, 153 cargo ships, 161–62 census, 105, 119–20 Chester Beatty Library, 98 Claytor, W. Graham, 5, 140 codex, 3, 49, 76, 80, 96–98, 100–101 Cologne papyrus collection, 12, 13, 141, 142 Columbia University, 8 column number, 153 computerized tomography (CT), 39 Conger endowment, 15, 173 conservation, 8, 13, 15, 18–24, 172 consortium, 8, 18, 132, 133 Coptic, 4, 7, 16, 27, 53, 56, 76, 77, 79, 106 Cornell University, 2, 8 correction, 74, 94, 114 damp treatment, 22–23 Daniel, Robert W., 14, 87 De Robertis, Francesca, 49 death notice, 127

Decius, 121, 123 deletion, 114 Demosthenes, 49 Demotic, 28, 50, 61, 62, 104, 117, 118 digital imaging, 35 Dime (ancient Soknopaiou Nesos), 9 Diocletian, 106 Dioscorides, 99, 100 dispute, 74–75, 128, 129 Donker van Heel, Koen, 64 dossier, 133 dowry, 61, 63, 107, 113, 114 drawing, 130–31 Page 184 →Edgar, Campbell C., 42, 66, 135 Edgerton, William F., 118 edition, 14, 32, 34, 36 Egyptian Museum (Cairo), 8, 9, 10, 12 elephant, 130–31 El-Maghrabi, Mohamed, 176n10 environmental room, 1, 21–22, 30 estate, 47, 106, 134 excavations, 9, 149–51, 156 Fackelmann, Michael, 13 fold, 22, 96, 136, 157, 159 fractions, 88–90, 116 Frantz-Murphy, Gladys, 78 Gagos, Traianos, 14–16, 23, 72, 129, 130 glass, 19–21, 22, 30 Goodspeed, Edgar J., 25

Grandinette, Maria, 21 Greek. See passim Grenfell, Bernard P., 6, 25 Hagedorn, Dieter, 143, 144 Hagedorn, Ursula, 143, 144 handwriting, 25, 27, 64, 65–73, 152, 157 documentary, 29, 64–65 literary, 28, 64 Hanson, Ann Ellis, 69 Haug, Brendan J., 16 Hebrew, 2, 7, 80–81 Heilporn, Paul, 27, 162 Henrichs, Albert, 101 Hieratic, 7, 16, 59–60, 61 Hieroglyphs, 28, 59–60, 61 Homer, 4, 27, 94, 95, 161 Hunt, Arthur S., 25, 26 Husselman, Elinor M., 11, 29, 32, 54, 101, 115, 118, 136, 138, 149 Ibscher, Hugo, 18 Iliad, 4, 27, 94–96 infrared photography, 1, 36, 37 inheritance, 74–75, 128 ink, 55–56 carbon, 36, 55 iron gall, 55 red, 50, 55, 60, 139, 140 inventory number, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 29–30, 32, 94 Inventory of Papyri, 2, 25, 26 Janko, Richard, 16

Johnson, William A., 93 Karanis (modern Kom el Aushim), 2, 5, 9–10, 29, 43, 86, 92, 94, 127, 132, 137, 138, 140, 148–68, 170, 171 structure B1, 156 structure B17, 152 structure C123, 136 Kaye, Marieka, 19 Kelsey, Francis W., 6–8, 9, 10, 58, 80, 94, 110, 150 Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 6, 10, 11, 16, 25 Koenen, Ludwig, 12–14, 16, 18, 23, 57 Kom Abou Billou (ancient Terenouthis), 9 Koptos, 71, 145 Latin, 73–74, 105, 109, 110 Lau-Lamb, Leyla, 16, 18, 19, 23 leather, 45, 51–52 letter writing, 157 Leuven Database of Ancient Books, 175n3 ligature, 67, 68 limestone, 50 literacy, 83, 103 liturgy, 105, 141, 143 Loehndorff, Louise, 140 Lüddeckens, Erich, 62 marriage, 61, 62, 113, 119 Martinez, David, 14, 52 math, 88–90 McCarren, Vincent, 14 Meader endowment, 15, 173 Menander, 92 Miller, Julia, 18

Moyer, Ian S., 16 multi-spectral photography, 36–37 mummy label, 45, 46, 50–51 musical notation, 166–67 Nahman, Maurice, 7, 8 NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities), 15, 37, 172–73 Nile, 40, 163–65 Page 185 →Nilometer, 163–64 nome, 104 nomen sacrum, 51, 98, 101 notary, 5, 72, 73, 114, 117, 133, 137 Oates, John F., 14 Ostia, 157, 161 ostracon, 12, 29, 43–44, 86, 156, 177n2 Pack, Roger A., 11 Paniskos, 70, 71, 145 paper, 18, 41, 53, 54, 80, 81, 96 Papyrological Navigator (www.papyri.info), 15, 32, 33, 34, 171, 172, 173 papyrus, 40–41, and passim cleaning, 22 parchment, 49, 55, 56, 78, 91, 93, 96 Parsons Fund for Papyrology, 15, 173 Pauline Epistles, 3, 15, 96–98 I Corinthians, 56, 57 II Corinthians, 97, 98 Pearl, Orsamus M., 11, 31, 32, 112, 165 Petaus, 12, 141–45 Peterson, Enoch E., 11 petition, 67, 123–24, 125, 135

Petra (Jordan), 13, 15 Philadelphia, 69, 134 Ploutogeneia, 70, 71, 145–47 poll tax, 105, 109, 119, 121, 127, 153 pregnancy, 107–8 priest, 45, 83, 141, 163 Priest, Nancy E., 14, 95 Princeton University, 8 Ptolemaic period, 13, 65, 104, 123 publication number, 30, 32 recto, 41, 94 reed pen, 57 regnal year, 25, 65, 100, 104, 105 Renner, Timothy, 14 repair tissue, 19 Robbins, Frank E., 89 roll, 2, 16, 27, 32, 38, 39, 41–43, 46, 88–89, 93–94, 96, 100, 152, 166 Roman army, 5, 137, 157 law, 73, 75, 105 period, 65, 67, 74, 83, 105, 119, 123, 166 Rome, 137, 151, 157, 159 Römer, Cornelia, 176n10 RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), 38, 46 rush pen, 57, 59, 136 Sabinus and Apollinarius, 136–37, 139 sacrifice, 121–23 Sahidic, 53, 76 salt, 22

Sanders, Henry A., 10, 74, 97 SB (Sammelbuch), 30–31 Schironi, Francesca, 16 school texts, 43, 45, 84–90 Schuman, Verne B., 112 Schwendner, Gregg W., 14 Sears, Rebecca A., 167, 168 sebbakh, 94, 134, 149, 150, 152 Shelmerdine, Cynthia W., 95 Shepherd of Hermas, 3–4 sibling marriage, 113 Sijpesteijn, Petra M., 106 Sijpesteijn, Pieter J., 12, 129, 176n10 Soknopaiou Nesos (modern Dime), 9, 16 Sokrates (tax collector), 152, 157 Special Collections Library, 6, 21 Stegmeyer, Randal, 39 strategos, 124, 126, 142 stratigraphy, 150–51 subscription, 114, 117, 124, 139, 159 syllabary, 84–85 tape, 19 tax collector, 69, 152, 153, 157 farmer, 111 receipt, 43, 76 rolls, 5, 12, 152–56, 179n7 taxation, 105, 127, 152 Tebtunis, 5, 114, 117

Terenouthis (modern Kom Abou Billou), 9 textual criticism, 91, 98 TM. See Trismegistos tours, 1, 15, 16, 21, 104 trisagion, 51 Trismegistos (www.trismegistos.org), xi, 32, 82, 133–34, 147 Turner, Eric G., 12, 179n1 Page 186 →UNESCO, 13 University Library, 1, 6, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 25, 60 University of California, Berkeley, 25 University of Wisconsin, 8, 26 Vandorpe, Katelijn, 132 verso, 41, 76, 94 wax tablet, 39, 46–47, 109–10 weaver, 107, 111 Whitehorne, John G., 120 Wilfong, Terry G., 16, 59, 60 Winter, John G., 10, 27, 49, 70, 95, 146, 158, 160 wood, 18, 44–45, 46, 84, 85, 109 Worrell, William H., 11, 54 writing exercise, 46, 85–88, 133 Youtie, Herbert C., 11–12, 28, 32, 34–35, 44, 85, 108, 143, 144, 153, 154, 158, 160 Youtie, Louise, 11, 45, 143, 144 Zachary, Shannon, 21–22 Zenon, 43, 67, 134–36