Original Documents from Ancient Alexandria

Alexandria in Egypt is the only major city of the Graeco-Roman world for which original documents survive. None of these papyri were actually found in Alexandria itself – the Mediterranean climate does not favor the preservation of such perishable material. But up country, in the Nile Valley, many archaeological sites have yielded a mass of reasonably well-preserved papyri from the ancient world. For the Graeco-Roman period we have recovered over a million such papyri – with only a fraction published to date.

A sizeable portion of the published texts from Alexandria consists of letters or administrative documents written from Alexandria to someone or other in the Nile Valley. They document in a unique way how a big city such as Alexandria was linked to the country that sustained it – the documents are the “life-lines” thrown out to the rest of Egypt to ensure a steady supply of food and taxes to sustain the capital and even the wider world beyond. Under Greek and Roman rule Egypt’s grain surplus supported a large urban population elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

The most intriguing stack of texts, however, does not document the links between Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, but addresses directly what was going on in Alexandria itself. These texts were recovered from mummy cartonnage, a kind of papier maché made from papyrus with which the ancient Egyptians covered part of their mummies. Occasionally they recycled used office paper for this, and in one unique instance in the early Roman period they mixed in waste paper from a government office in Alexandria. This office was located in the Ptolemaic court – yes, Cleopatra's palace, then run by the Romans under the emperor Augustus. The documents retrieved from the recycled waste paper are mostly drafts of contracts between two parties. These texts are formatted as if they were the settlement of a dispute, but were in fact drawn up by the clerks in the office to which they were addressed. There are also some petitions and letters, all drafts and all Greek.

O.Wilcken online

O.Wilcken 1



O.Wilcken 2

Thanks to Michel Cottier (and Robarts Library, U Toronto)

Papyrus Portal (Bonn, Giessen, Halle, Heidelberg, Jena Koeln, Leipzig, Trier, Wuerzburg

The 'Papyrus Portal' is a project that aims to provide the user with both the opportunity of an efficient and effective search of all digitized and electronically catalogued papyrus collections in Germany and an unified presentation of the search results with the most important information on the particular papyrus. This includes links to the local home databases in order to provide the user with more detailed data on each piece. The 'Papyrus Portal' equalizes the different information technologies of the original databases and presents the search results in a standard format. A standard to record the metadata has been established. The 'Papyrus Portal' is compatible to the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) and other meta-databases. Using the Open Source Software 'MyCoRe', and incorporating the experience from the 'Papyrus Project Halle-Jena-Leipzig', work on the 'Papyrus Portal' took place with the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Minutes of the AIP Working Party on the commerce of Papyri

The minutes themselves begi
Minutes
The Working Party’s terms of reference from the Comité International de Papyrologie, as approved by the Assemblée Générale of 4 August 2007, are “to study the complex legal, ethical and scholarly questions connected with the commerce in papyri and to make recommendations ... on measures that may appropriately serve the purposes of scholarship, support the development of papyrological studies in Egypt and further the preservation of the documentary heritage of Egypt and other countries.”

Etc. and the AIP

E.M. Grob, A. Kaplony, Documentary Letters from the Middle East

Documentary Letters from the Middle East:
the Evidence in Greek, Coptic, South Arabian, Pehlevi, and Arabic (1st–15th c CE),
ed. by Eva Mira Grob and Andreas Kaplony,
Bern: Lang, 2008, 236 p., 33 pl.
= Asiatische Studien 62/2008, fasc. 3, p. 671-906. ISSN 0004-4717.


Contents:
Eva Mira Grob, Andreas Kaplony: Introduction, 671-675
Raffaele Luiselli: Greek Letters on Papyrus First to Eighth Centuries: a Survey, 677-737
Tonio Sebastian Richter: Coptic Letters, 739-770
Peter Stein: Correspondence by Letter and Epistolary Formulae in Ancient South Arabia, 771-802
Dieter Weber: Sassanidische Briefe aus Ägypten, 803-826
Philippe Gignoux: Lettres privées et lettres d’affaires dans l’Iran du 7ème siècle, 827-842
Werner Diem: Arabic Letters in Pre-Modern Times: a Survey with Commented Selected Bibliographies, 843-883
Geoffrey Khan: Remarks on the Historical Background and Development of Early Arabic Documentary Formulae, 885-906

BASP 44 (2007)

Contents BASP 44 (2007)
John F. Oates (1934-2006) ..............................................................................5
A Papyrus with Mathematical Problems
Marja Bakker ....................................................................................................7
P.Vindob. G 26079: LXX Ecclesiastes 1:14-17
Lincoln Blumell ..............................................................................................23
Three Unpublished Documents
George Bevan ................................................................................................27
The von Scherling Papyrus Collection and Some von Scherling Texts in
Minnesota
Marja Bakker, Alette Bakkers, and Klaas Worp ................................................41
An Estate Overseer’s Work Contract
Amin Benaissa ...............................................................................................75
Une lettre copte du monastère de Baouît
Alain Delattre ................................................................................................87
Leinenhändler im Herakleopolites in arabischer Zeit
Lucian Reinfandt ...........................................................................................97
A Medical Treatise On Remedies? P.Turner 14 Revised
David Leith .................................................................................................125
Environnement et fisc dans le nome mendésien à l’époque romaine
Katherine Blouin .........................................................................................135
The Case for 8,000,000 Modii in Justinian’s Edict 13.8
Philip Mayerson ..........................................................................................167
Grain Yield Ratios in P.Ness. 3.82
Philip Mayerson ..........................................................................................175
New Light on the Patermouthis Archive
Jitse Dijkstra ...............................................................................................179

Reviews
S. Torallas Tovar and K.A. Worp, To the Origins of Greek Stenography
(A. Papathomas) ....................................................................................... ..211
K. McNamee, Annotations in Greek and Latin Texts from Egypt
(E. Dickey) ...................................................................................................219
T. Hägg and B. Utas, The Virgin and Her Lover
(J. Alvares) ...................................................................................................223
T. Gammacurta, Papyrologica scaenica
(J. Whitehorne) ............................................................................................229
P. Schmitz, Die Giessener Zenonpapyri
(J. Whitehorne) ............................................................................................233
S. Lippert and M. Schentuleit, Ostraka
(R. Jasnow) ..................................................................................................235
C. Armoni, J.M.S. Cowey, and D. Hagedorn, Die griechischen Ostraka der
Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung
(R.S. Bagnall) ...............................................................................................239
W. Diem, Arabischer Terminkauf
(G. Frantz-Murphy) .....................................................................................243
M.M. Terras, Image to Interpretation
(W.A. Johnson) .............................................................................................245
L.W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts
(W.A. Johnson) .............................................................................................249
J. Bingen, Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture
(J. Whitehorne) .............................................................................................253
K. Blouin, Le conflit judéo-alexandrin de 38-41
(S. Gambetti) ................................................................................................257
C. Adams, Land Transport in Roman Egypt
(A. Jördens) ..................................................................................................261
E. Bresciani, A. Giammarusti, R. Pintaudi, and F. Silvano (eds.), Medinet
Madi. Venti anni di esplorazione archeologica, 1984-2005
(P. van Minnen) ............................................................................................267
R. Tomber, K. Knowles. D. Bailey, and R. Thomas, Mons Claudianus, vol. 3
(C. Meyer) ....................................................................................................269
C. Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt
(J.H.F. Dijkstra) ............................................................................................273
J. Dijkstra and M. van Dijk (eds.), The Encroaching Desert
(J.E. Goehring) .............................................................................................277
C.T. Schroeder, Monastic Bodies
(J.E. Goehring) .............................................................................................281

Books Received ............................................................................................285

ASP Resolution ............................................................................................289

Advertisement .............................................................................................291

Papyrological Navigator announced

papyri.info is dedicated to the study of ancient papyrological documents. It offers links to papyrological resources and a customized search engine (called the Papyrological Navigator) capable of retrieving information from multiple related sites. The Papyrological Navigator currently retrieves and displays information from the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS), the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP) and the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis (HGV).