| Accounts |
| Unknown |
| The front side of P.Corn. inv. II 38 (= SB VIII 9907) is an offer made by a farmer
to Aurelios Taurinos, son of Akylaos, councilman of Hermou polis, to lease an orchard
belonged to his epoikion, situated somewhere around Timonthis of the Hermopolite nome.
The document is dated in September 19, A.D. 388. The time of the lease is three years,
which means that by the end of this term, about September of A.D. 391, the document
was not needed to be kept further more. Therefore, the other (and blank at that time)
side of papyrus was reused by someone for writing down accounts upside down in relation
to the text on the front. N. Lewis in his edition of the front side made no reference
to this document of the back side.;The accounts are private and provide information
on expenses expressed in quantities of knidia of wine. The purpose of these expenses
is not stated, but it could be either in the procedure of private affairs (cf. e.g.
P.Ant. I 42, 23-24; BGU XII 2178, with the parallels mentioned there) or of annona
(cf. e.g. the receipts in F. Mitthof, Annona militaris, Firenze 2001, no 156, also
pp. 254-257). The interest lies on the noun mer��dew (probably in the Hermopolite
nome), mentioned in lines 2, 3, 5 and 6, and their two unattested names, on one more
(rare) instance of the tax dipl(a) (l. 4) in the Byzantine period, on the calculation
of naulon as a 5% of the total load, on two very rare attested nouns in lines 20-21,
and on a city, in lines 8, 11, 14, 15 and 18 (probably Hermou polis). The service
of a settlement guard (l. 21) points to an epoikion and, because of the large amounts
transported, it could be only an assumption that the person involved in these transactions
is the owner of the epoikion, Aurelios Taurinos or one of his steward. Considering
this possible connection of the front and back side and the use of some rare words,
the following remark does not imply anything, and therefore, it should be also considered
just as it is said, a remark without further comments, and nothing else: In the document
of the front side we find (as in the present document on the back) rare or addenda
lexicis words (see N. Lewis' notes on ll. 15, 18-19, 19, 23 (twice!) and 24); on the
contrary, a few days later than this lease was written, another person from Timonthis
made a leasing agreement with a beneficiarius (P.Lips. I 22 = M.Chrest. 277) without
"unusual" details in the phraseology. |
| Litinas N, In: J. FrȵsȨn, T. Purola, E. Salmenkivi, Proceedings of the International
Congress of Papyrology Helsinki, 1-7 August, 2004, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum
122:2 , Volume II, 559-567, 2007, plate XXIII |
| P.Corn. Inv. II 38 |
| 1 papyrus ; 24 x 12.5 cm |
| The papyrus is now mutilated at its top right side, at a point where is almost no
writing. There is a manufacture's kollesis of c. 3 cm in breadth: considering the
front side (where the join is clearly seen) the right piece was pasted on top of the
left one. It seems that, when the scribe wrote the text on the front side, took into
consideration the peculiarly cut right hand side (see plate I of ed. princ.), and
the lease seems to be complete. The papyrus might had been folded in the middle once
vertically and once horizontally, as the preserved foldings can show. In that case,
since the upper half is 13 cm and the bottom preserved half is 10.5, from the latter
a piece of c. 2.5 cm at the bottom is lost. This assumption is supported by the fact
that the fibers of the bottom edge are somewhat frayed, pointing that the papyrus
was not regularly cut there, as it happens in the other sides. Therefore, although
there are practically no top and right margins, we have to assume that the bottom
margin was c. 3 cm. In that case the total lost lines of the back side seem to be
small. Line 5 calculates the total amount of the previous two lines, 3 and 4. Line
2 is also a total amount, probably of other two lost lines. Moreover, we should take
into account a possible head title (e.g. logos analwmatos; cf. line 7) making a total
lost of three lines at the top, therefore c. 1.5 cm writing surface plus c. 1 cm top
margin. |
| 21 |
| Source of description: Verso |
| The handwriting is neat, with almost complete absence of cursive features. Parallel
examples are P.Mert. II 93, dated in the fourth century A.D; P.Mȭnch. III 99, dated
in A.D. 390. The scribe always abbreviates �ǣoinou knidia�ǥ as oin/ kn/ and the iota
is made larger projecting both above and below the line with loops at its finals.
In line 5 the blank space between these two words is 0.8 cm, leaving the impression
that the scribe wanted to write the abbreviation kn and the following digit just below
the same details of the line 4. This practice, actually, works well in line 6 without
any need to leave blank spaces again. Below the figures in lines 2 and 6 in the right
column the scribe drew a stroke (c. 1.5 cm in length) and below �ǣomou�ǥ in ll. 2,
5 and 6 L-shaped paragraphi. |
| Hermopolite nome, province of Egypt (?)
|
| Greek |
| (late) IVth century A.D. - (early) Vth century A.D. (between 388 or 391 AD and (early)
V century A.D.)
|
| Location: Ann Arbor |
| Pub. status: recto - verso |
| Silbanos meris< hermopolite nome, Egypt;;Bek( ) meris, Hermopolite nome, Egypt; Documentary; Papyrus |
| Phoibammon; Nepheros |
| Verso thumbnail |
| Verso medium |
| Verso large |
 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License. |
