A Bilingual Papyrus from Byzantine Egypt

Abstract

This bilingual, late-Antique papyrus in three fragments was acquired by purchase for the Australian National University Classics Museum in 1975 from a London antiquities dealer. On the recto there is an unpublished Coptic letter to a bishop, possibly Pisenthios of Coptos. This will be published separately as part of the project directed by F. Calament and J. van der Vliet to produce an edition of the Pisenthios archive. The verso contains a loan contract in Greek, probably dating to the late-sixth or seventh century CE. The contract involves two quantities of grain and a sum of money. There is also mention of interest. The fragmentary state of the document obscures the relationship between the quantities of grain and the sum of money. It is possible that both grain and money are part of the principal, or that the grain is the principal and the money is the interest payable on it, or that the document is actually a loan dressed up as a "sale on delivery". The recto contains a letter in Coptic which appears to be an apology from the elders of the village of Kratos to a Bishop. It may be part of the archive of Pisenthios of Coptos. Several pieces are missing altogether; in the case of the Greek document, this has resulted in the total loss of the first few lines of the document, a narrow strip down the left margin, and most of the signature(s) of the witness(es) at the base. The remaining parts of the Greek document are in three fragments with very irregular margins, which together contain a total of about two-thirds of the text of twenty lines of the contract. Fragment A is approximately 16 x 14 cm and contains the left-hand portion of the remains of lines 1-19. Fragment B, which contains the right-hand portion of the remains of lines 1-8, is approximately 12x4 cm. Fragment C, containing the right-hand portion of the remains of lines 10-20, is approximately 13.5 x 8 cm. Reading the text on the verso is difficult in places because of a series of broad, black strokes, which seem to have been made by a brush (or a thumb) dipped in ink or some other dark substance. The fact that the strokes on fragment A resemble large chis suggests that they could be a crude attempt to cancel the contract by chiasmos. The writing is across the fibres, and the hand is typical of the late-sixth and seventh centuries. Many of the formulae used in the text are very common in similar documents of that period, which is also that during which Pisenthios (AD 569-632) lived. The above description draws upon Benjamin Kelly, 'A Late-Antique Contract in the Collection of the Australian National University Classics Museum,' Zeitschrift f�r Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 161 (2007), pp. 207-214. The first piece from the Australian National University Classics Museum to be collected in digital format, this bilingual papyrus document contributes to the enrichment of knowledge about late-Antique Byzantine Egypt during the time of Bishop Pisenthios of Coptos, especially in relation to financial transactions. Show more