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Introduction

Medical recipes (SB XXVI 16458 = PSI VI 718). Parchment sheet (5.6 x 7.7 cm) likely from either a short roll or a codex containing three medical prescriptions (the last line of the first one and two complete ones) and the beginning of a "geoponic" recipe to make old wine good. Marganne 2014, pp. 218-9, discusses the possibility that it could have come from a parchment notebook. The reverse side is blank, with ink traces coming from the other face. The sheet was folded three times as it appears from two extant vertical folds. Palaeography suggests a datation to the first half of the 4th cent. AD (cf. P.Vind.Sijp. 1, 338 AD). Particularly noteworthy are the paratextual devices employed: a number centered in the top margin, likely indicating a column or page count; paragraphoi separating the recipes from each other (ll. 1-2; 4-5; 12-13; the first one is not transcribed in the ed.alt. but appears correctly in the ed.pr. and in the Sammelbuch); filling marks at the end of each text block (ll. 2, 5, 12). The filling marks deserve a closer attention. The first editor (A. Olivieri, PSI VI 718) considered them as indications of weight measures (abbreviation for drachmas + number, overlined in one case: ll. 2 and 12) and tachygraphic marks (l. 5; cf. also McNamee, Abbreviations, 82 where it is transcribed as part of the preceding abbreviation). The second editor (F. Ronconi, SB XXVI 16458) correctly reads them as graphical devices aimed at separating different recipes and describes them as shaped in the same way: an S-shaped sign followed by a horizontal line, ending in a curl, the length of which depends on the blank space to be filled. However, from the photo of the sheet it appears clear that at the end of l. 5 we have three signs: the S-shaped one; a curled one, which resembles the preceding one pretty much; and the horizontal line. The combination of the first two is the same as ll. 2 and 12. We may infer that we are dealing with two different sets of signs: (1) a double "curl", for which the old definition of "Koronis", advanced by U. Wilcken, APF 7, 1924, 86, is quite appropriate; (2) a horizontal line acting as a filler mark. At any rate, it is surprising that the scribe filled the blank at the end of the line with this sign in one case, and simply started the next recipe at the end of l. 12.

(This papyrus has been digitally edited by Nicola Reggiani (with former contributions by Erica Angolani) as part of the Project "DIGMEDTEXT - Online Humanities Scholarship: A Digital Medical Library based on Ancient Texts" (ERC-AdG-2013, Grant Agreement no. 339828) funded by the European Research Council at the University of Parma (Principal Investigator: Prof. Isabella Andorlini). The digital edition is mostly based on the previous editions (ed.pr. = A. Olivieri, PSI VI 718; ed.alt. = F. Ronconi, SB XXVI 16458; corr. Marganne 2014 = M.-H. Marganne, Une témoignage sur les éclegmes, in Expressivité du lexique medical en Grèce et a Rome, eds. I. Boehm and N. Rousseau, Paris 2014, 217-227)

Notes

• 5.

  According to Wilcken APF 7 (1924) 86 (= BL 2. 141), πῖν stands for πεῖν and has to be corrected with πιεῖν.