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Abstract

The dissertation is an edition of a selection of twelve Greek documentary texts of Roman Egypt. All the papyri are deposited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, most of which under the inventory number of the Special Register (SR) 3049. It is stated that the pieces were brought to the museum in 1927 by certain people who allegedly found all of them in the ruins of Theadelphia in Fayum. Indeed, most of the papyri come either from Theadelphia or Fayum. Yet, the formulae used in the contracts edited as text no. 2, 3 and 11 are not typical of this provenance, but of Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt. Moreover, a letter (12) that belongs to the famous archive of Heroninos, was found under this inventory. Heroninos was an estate manager in Theadelpheia from 249 CE to 268 CE. However, most of the texts of his archive, dispersed now in more than twenty collections of papyri worldwide, were discovered, not through the successive expeditions (1899-1913) to the site, but through clandestine diggings by local workers who continued the search for papyri after the respective expedition has left the site. Offered for sale in the antiquities market, the workers, well aware of the idea of a coherent find, said that they found the artefacts together, which is surely not the case. A similar scenario could be conceived in the case of the papyri of SR 3049. They were not discovered in situ together as a single lot, rather they were collected over a long-time period of illicit diggings mainly in Theadelphia, but also from far remote areas like Oxyrhynchus.

Nevertheless, the dissertation has brought to light a significant amount of texts that illustrate the internal workings of four important, and interrelated, Roman institutions and processes in the administration of Egypt, namely the publication of private documents (δημοσίωσις), registration of property and real rights in the property record office (βιβλιοθήκη ἐγκτήσεων), consensual contracts, and taxation. It is well-known that the property record office was established by the Romans in each nome metropolis of Egypt and aimed in particular at increasing the efficiency of the control of legal transactions concerning landed and other immovable property. Equally known also was that the publication of private documents was a legal procedure that entailed registration and deposition of legal instruments through the two central archives of Alexandria; the library of Hadrian and the library of Nanaion. The formalities of the applications of these two sophisticated and intertwined processes of publication and registration are illustrated in intricate details through the examples of a private purchase contract of a house property (1), a default summons, to which the private loan agreement is appended (2) and a lien (3). Through the texts of a bank statement recording the transfer of taxes in money (4) a receipt of poll-tax payment (5) an account of grain-tax collectors (6) and an order to provide linen (7), the effectiveness of the Roman system of collecting, recording and transferring taxes in money and in kind are exhibited. The conventions of drafting stipulations and clauses of consensual contracts are exemplified by a divorce agreement in a form typical of Alexandria (the so-called synchoresis) (8), a sale of a land (9), and a cession of property rights on a public land (10), both in the form of a records office document (the so-called grapheion-document, and a rent contract of a cellar in the form of a contractual offer (hypomnêma) (11). The letter from Syros to Heroninos (12) is incorporated in the edition due to its importance to the acquisition history of the papyri of SR 3049 (see supra), not because of its thematic affinity with the other texts. The manuscript, in addition to the bibliography (pp.3-15), consists of an introduction (pp. 16-28), the edited texts (pp. 29-191) and plates of the papyri (192-203).