Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete – Beihefte

How did the late Roman Empire operate in rural areas, where most of its subjects lived? The papyri from Egypt provide glimpses of state activity at the local level, how the countryside responded to it, and thus how "empire" looked on the ground. Since a major motivator for state activity at the local level was tax collection, Taxes and Authority in the Late Antique Countryside homes in on the pagarchs: key fiscal actors at the intersection between provincial, city, and village institutions from the fourth through the seventh centuries CE. The book contextualizes the pagarchs’ dealings, backgrounds, and networks from the imperial sphere to the village level, exploring topics such as tax collection procedures in the villages, central accounting and staffing in the cities, the competition of local aristocrats over the countryside, official careers, and local agency versus imperial policy. The result is an analysis of the social mechanics of the fiscal regime in a region of the imperial periphery. Exploring the abundant and diverse papyrological source material, this book offers a uniquely detailed insight into the dynamic relationship between the Roman Empire and local communities in late antiquity.

One day of December 875, the weaver ʿUmar b. Mūsā, married Ḥalīma bint Nafīs before illustrious witnesses from Fusṭāṭ. Some six centuries later, in the spring of 1411, Lady Fāṭima bint Fatḥ al-Dīn celebrated a second wedding with Ṭūġān, a promising Mamluk officer, and hosted him with her retinue in her Cairene palace. Present-day historians would know nothing of them had their marriage contract not withstood the ravages of time, as have the hundred or so documents that Mathieu Tillier and Naïm Vanthieghem are publishing, translating and studying for the first time in this volume. Rich or poor, free or enslaved, the men and women of Medieval Egypt adopted the habit, from at least the eighth century CE onwards, of having their unions recorded in order to lay down the terms and conditions of their marriage. Dissolution by repudiation (ṭalāq) or amicable divorce (ḫulʿ) were also entrusted to the care of notaries. The hitherto unpublished documents collected here, which span across the Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, provide a unique insight into matrimonial strategies among commoners as well as elite members, and into marital relationships and legal practices, both in the capital and in the Egyptian countryside. After a first part devoted to the editing of marriage contracts and divorces deed as well as a few related documents, the authors offer a detailed study of matrimonial practices in medieval Egypt based on Arabic documents.

This volume brings together articles from Greek-Roman classical studies and Egyptology to remember papyrology Günter Poethke (1939–2020) and his areas of interest and fields of study. Alongside editions and discussions of papyri, archaeological sources, and Greek texts outside of Egypt, the volume sheds special light on classical studies in the GDR in the form of biographical notes.

This volume of Coptic texts from the Papyrus and Ostraka Collection of the Leipzig University Library introduces a new checklist siglum to the world of papyrology – P.Lips. Copt. The volume contains five Coptic literary manuscripts ranging from the fourth/fifth and tenth/eleventh centuries, three legal documents from the eighth century originating in Jême, and two documents from Middle Egypt (Hermopolis, Bawît).

The volume continues the publication of The Rendel Harris Papyri (vol. I, 1936; vol. II, 1985), offering editions, with translations and interpretations, of eighty-one Greek papyri. Three are literary or subliterary, the others documentary. With a few exceptions, the texts included are from Oxyrhynchus. They range in date from the early first to the late seventh/early eighth century, but the majority come from late antiquity, with about twenty of them dating from the fifth century.

Il volume raccoglie 42 articoli, scritti da Lucia Criscuolo in oltre un cinquantennio di attività presso l’Università di Bologna, che spaziano dalla storia all’epigrafia e istituzioni greche, alla papirologia, alla storia economica del mondo antico. La prima sezione raccoglie studi su momenti e personaggi della storia politica dell’Egitto ellenistico. Qui come nelle successive sezioni l’autrice sviluppa un’impostazione, pionieristica nell’ultimo quarto del secolo scorso, volta ad inserire l’Egitto tolemaico, sempre considerato avulso dal resto del mondo ellenistico, nel quadro delle vicende politiche e istituzionali scaturite dall’articolarsi dei territori conquistati da Alessandro Magno. La seconda raccoglie saggi su funzionari e istituzioni dell’Egitto ellenistico nel loro rapporto con il mondo greco classico, con quello macedone e con gli altri scenari della koiné politica e istituzionale ellenistica. La terza riunisce studi di storia economica; la quarta lavori di epigrafia, istituzioni, costume e società, spesso scaturiti dall’analisi di singoli testi. L’opera ha il pregio di proporre in unico volume saggi pubblicati nel tempo in periodici diversi e di fornire uno strumento prezioso per tutti gli studiosi di storia greca.

This volume presents thirty-five papyri from the Würzburg Papyrus Collection, spanning the Ptolemaic era to the Arab age. They are accompanied by a history of the collection’s acquisitions. The collection was founded in the period 1903–1909 with a bequest made by mathematician Friedrich Prym von Ulrich Wilcken. The first and hitherto only edition of Würzburg’s papyri was published by Wilcken in 1934.

This volume is the first in a new series of editions of Coptic-language "magical" manuscripts from Egypt, written on papyrus, ostraca, parchment, and paper, and dating to between the fourth and twelfth centuries CE. Their texts attest to non-institutional rituals intended to bring about changes in the lives of those who used them – heal disease, curse enemies, bring about love or hatred, or see into the future.

These manuscripts represent rich sources of information on daily life and lived religion of Egypt in the last centuries of Roman rule and the first centuries after the Arab conquest, giving us glimpses of the hopes and fears of people of this time, their conflicts and problems, and their vision of the human and superhuman worlds.

This volume presents 37 new editions and descriptions of manuscripts, focusing on formularies or "handbooks", those texts containing instructions for the performance of rituals. Each of these is accompanied by a history of its acquisition, a material description, and presented with facing text and translations, tracings of accompanying images, and explanatory notes to aid in understanding the text.

This book is a re-edition and detailed study of a parchment codex from Egypt of the fourth century CE with Greek and Coptic recipes for healing through magic and pharmacology (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Library Ms. 136). A text and annotated translation were published in a brief journal article by William H. Worrell in 1935, but the codex has been understudied since then. This new edition offers advances in readings and interpretation, a thorough philological commentary, and accompanying studies on the ritual and medical traditions to which the codex belongs and its position in the linguistic landscape of Egypt. The recipes comprise magical rituals for healing and broader personal advancement, pharmacological and related medical recipes, and advice for the management of a household. Traditional Egyptian religion and ritual are illustrated in interaction with medical practices of Hellenic culture more recently introduced to Egypt, and the archaic, even poetic language of some of the Coptic invocations featuring the Egyptian gods Amun and Thoth share pages with an incantation constructed from the verses of Homer.

Script Switching in Roman Egypt studies the hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Old Coptic manuscripts which evidence the conventions governing script use, the domains of writing those scripts inhabited, and the shift of scripts between those domains, to elucidate the obsolescence of those scripts from their domains during the Roman Period. Utilising macro-level frameworks from sociolinguistics, the textual culture from four sites is contextualised within the priestly communities of speech, script, and practice that produced them. Utilising micro-level frameworks from linguistics, both the scripts of the Egyptian writing system written, and the way the orthographic methods fundamental to those scripts changed, are typologised. This study also treats the way in which morphographic and alphabetic orthographies are deciphered and understood by the reading brain, and how changes in spelling over time both resulted from and responded to dimensions of orthographic depth. Through a cross-cultural consideration of script obsolescence in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia and by analogy to language death in speech communities, a model of domain-bydomain shift and obsolescence of the scripts of the Egyptian writing system is proposed.

This volume contains editions of 35 texts, which have been excavated nearly 100 years ago in the ancient Egyptian village of Karanis, and which were still waiting publication.

As all texts written on papyrus from the Egyptian countryside, these texts give a new insight into the life of the people who dwelled in a typical village of the Roman period in Egypt. The texts show the cultural diversity of those who cohabitated, whether they had Greek or Egyptian names, whether their main gods were the crocodiles or Zeus. In the lives of all of them tax-paying played an important role, as well as caring for their cattle and fields, doing business, and fullfilling the obligations of the Roman government. In particular interesting is the personage of Socrates the tax-collector.

Since the ruins of Karanis are still standing (and worth a visit) with two nearly intact temples from the period of the texts, a more complete image of village life emerges from texts and the archaeology behind them. Papyrologists welcome every newly published text as a further stone of the mosaic image that they try to create of the past.

Based on the edition of nearly 600 Coptic ostraca, Frederic Krueger undertakes a papyrological examination of the Upper Egyptian monastery of Apa Ezekiel. Documents on daily life yield “micro-historical” impressions of socioeconomic aspects of monastic life along with “macro-historical” details of the life of Apa Andrew – priest, abbot, bishop, and “father of all the monks of the ecumene” (apparently: a superregional administrator of the monasteries).

The publication received the 2022 Award for Academic Excellence from the International Association for Coptic Studies.

This volume is a collection of newly compiled editions of papyrus texts, enhanced and elaborated studies on manuscript traditions, and new hypotheses on historical-cultural aspects of Greco-Roman and Byzantine Egypt. The writings are dedicated to Franco Maltomini, Professor at the University of Udine, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.

Il volume raccoglie riedizioni di papiri, approfondimenti sulla tradizione manoscritta e nuove ipotesi su aspetti storico-culturali dell’Egitto greco-romano e bizantino. Gli scritti vengono offerti al Prof. Franco Maltomini, già professore ordinario di Papirologia presso l’Ateneo udinese, in occasione del suo settantesimo compleanno.

Die Universitätsbibliothek in Basel ist im Besitz einer kleinen Papyrussammlung von 63 Papyri aus ptolemäischer, römischer sowie spätantiker Zeit in überwiegend griechischer, aber auch hieratischer, lateinischer, koptischer und mittelpersischer Sprache. Der Freiwillige Museumsverein der Stadt Basel erwarb sie im Jahre 1899 für die Universitätsbibliothek und machte damit Basel zur einer der ersten Universitäten, die im Besitz einer Sammlung griechischer Papyri war. Im frühen 20. Jahrhundert nahm sich zwar der an der Universität Basel als Professor für Rechtsgeschichte lehrende Ernst Rabel (Basel 1906-1910) der Sammlung an und bearbeitete einige ausgewählte Texte. Doch er beließ es bei einer Auswahl von 26 Papyri, die er als „Papyrusurkunden der Öffentlichen Bibliothek der Universität zu Basel" während des 1. Weltkriegs im Jahre 1917 publizierte. Dieser Band bietet nun eine Reedition der bereits bekannten Stücke und eine Erstedition aller weiteren Basler Papyri.

The volume collects papers presented at the International Conference "Greek Medical Papyri - Text, Context, Hypertext" held at the University of Parma on November 2-4, 2016, as the final event of the ERC project DIGMEDTEXT, aimed primarily at creating an online textual database of the Greek papyri dealing with medicine. The contributions, authored by outstanding papyrologists and historians of the ancient medicine, deal with a variety of topics focused on the papyrological evidence of ancient medical texts and contexts. The first part, devoted to "medical texts", contains some new reflections on important sources such as the Anonymus Londinensis and the Hippocratic corpus, as well as on specific themes like the pharmacological vocabulary, the official medical reports, the medical care in the Roman army. The second part collects papers about the "doctors' context", providing highlights from broader viewpoints like the analysis of the writing supports, the study of the ostraka from the Eastern Desert, the evidence of inscriptions and philosophical texts. The third part is entirely focused on the DIGMEDTEXT project itself: the team members present some relevant key issues raised by the digitisation of the medical papyri.

The second volume of the Giessen Papyri (P.Giss. II) includes an edition of two previously unpublished Greek documents. The first one, numbered 127, is a notebook roll from Philadelphia dated to the last years of Vespasian’s reign, containing nine documents concerning overdue rents for land in the ousiac parces; of particular interest is a draft of a complaint regarding peculation addressed to Ammonios, strategos of the Herakleidou meris. The second, numbered 128, is a fiscal codex from the Hermopolite nome, dated to the second half of the fourth century. This papyrus offers direct insight into many taxation issues, including the method of tax assessment based on the concept of kephale, which is still poorly understood; it also provides information regarding key fiscal changes that occurred after the reforms of Diocletian. The editions of these papyri will help scholars to reconstruct specific details of everyday life in Roman and Late Roman Egypt in areas including taxation, monetary systems, land tenure, onomastics, prosopography, administration, and social and economic situations.

Published here for the first time, the administrative records from P. Trier II 15 are comprised of 15 written documents, among them – alongside official correspondence – the legacies of Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII. The documents assembled in the records served the purpose of processing the petitions of a soldier following his return from a campaign, as he seeks to obtain the privileges promised to him.

The ancient typology of Greek vases has long been a difficult and important issue of discussion for the scholars of the ancient world. The gap between verba and realia is great, as objects usually come without labels and labels without objects. Thus, not a large number containers may be satisfactorily identified with the corresponding objects. At the same time, the analysis of the technical vocabulary of the containers in the papyri is a desideratum in papyrology. The present study provides a detailed analysis of a representative sample of terms denoting containers used for the transport and storage of spices, food, and medicinal drugs. Papyri are the starting point, as they are a treasure-trove of concrete linguistic information and yield new insights into the nature and the diachronic development of Greek vocabulary. The methodology employed in this study is interdisciplinary. It involves critical and comparative examination of the written sources (papyri, literary passages, inscriptions, tituli picti) and the archaeological artefacts, and allows the revaluation of the entire material at our disposal. This interdisciplinary approach provides a useful tool for the study of the language and material culture of the Graeco-Roman world.

Quella dei nomina vasorum è da sempre una questione delicata quanto importante per gli studiosi dell’antichità. Questo studio analizza un campione rappresentativo di angionimi attestati nei papiri, preziosa risorsa di informazioni linguistiche. L’approccio interdisciplinare, che offre una dettagliata panoramica di ciascun lemma, mette criticamente a confronto le fonti testuali (papiri, passi letterari, iscrizioni) e i manufatti archeologici.

The new court records from the Dikasterion in Heracleopolis include summons, witness testimonies and contracts dated to the beginning of the 2nd Century BC. The Greek papyri edited by B. Kramer are prefaced by an extensive juristic introduction by C. Sánchez-Moreno Ellart, stressing the similarities and differences between the Hellenistic and the Attic Law.

This volume of Papyri contains a selection of 25 pieces which were excavated in the village of Karanis in the north-eastern Fayum (Egypt) by American archaeologists between 1924 and 1926.

Many of the texts published here come from the archive of a well known figure in the village life of Karanis in the 2nd century AD: Socrates, son of Sarapion, was a tax collector here for many years, serving the Roman Empire collecting taxes due in money and in kind. Besides his successful economic activities - Socrates certainly belonged to the upper stratum of society in Karanis - the tax collector was a lover of Greek literature; for sure, he did not venture into high philosophy and the like, but he read Homer, comedies, and tried to be up to date about mythology in plays.

Half of the new texts published here are literary, mostly from Socrates’ library; other texts were found in the immediate neighbourhood of where Socrates lived, such as a surgical treatise about remedies of shoulder dislocations, which perhaps belonged to a doctor. The other half of the papyrus texts in this volume are documents that can shed new light on the activities of the tax collector, or of other inhabitants of Karanis. Altogether they give us a vivid picture of village life in Graeco/Roman Egypt in the 2nd century AD.

In 1904 Wilhelm Schubart published the best-preserved texts from an Egyptian papyrus codex. These papyri include reports of legal actions, receipts for provisions requisitioned for the Roman army, an official collection letter, and texts dealing with magic. The pages containing lists are edited here for the first time and all other texts are presented in revised editions with commentary.

This volume assembles contributions from the fields of papyrology, ancient history, and Egyptology that examine diverse aspects of life in Egypt and its vicinity between the mid-first millennium B.C. and the mid-first millennium A.D. Special attention is paid to the issues of slavery, taxes, and tenancy, supplemented by essays devoted to political, military, and reception history.

The private property of the imperial family is a subject of great importance for the study of the Byzantine Empire. The papyri prove to be a fruitful source for the reconstruction of previously uncertain aspects of the administration and extension of imperial domains. The volume presents the papyrological dossier of the domus divina, and undertakes an analysis of the administrators’ tasks as well as an identification of the estates and their employees.

La proprietà privata della famiglia imperiale è un tema di particolare importanza per lo studio dell’impero bizantino. I papiri si rivelano un terreno privilegiato di ricerca per la ricostruzione di aspetti ancora oscuri della gestione e dell’espansione delle proprietà. Il volume propone il dossier papirologico della domus divina, l’analisi dei compiti degli amministratori, l’individuazione delle località egiziane di proprietà imperiale e dei loro lavoratori.

This volume contains 30 articles covering papyrological topics that provide important contributions to the history of Romance language studies. Among the topics dealt with are the relevance of papyrology for other disciplines (Romance and German studies), the Greek and Latin ‘Sprachbund,’ the word history of ‘papyrus’ in ancient and modern European languages, evidence from papyri for the pronunciation of Latin, the history of 20 Greek and Latin words as more precisely revealed in papyri, and the principles of editions in classical philology, papyrology and Romance studies. The contributions represent updated revisions of previous articles; access to the various works is now provided by several indices.

Arabic letters on papyrus challenge the modern reader. There are few to no diacritical dots to distinguish homographs, no systematic spacing between single words, and in the majority of cases a low degree of graphical structuring. However, contemporary readers usually read and understood these documents easily – probably because the recipient of a letter knew what to expect. The letters are formulaic, and their information packaging follows an algorithm typical for their time and content. Here formulaic letter writing means not only the reuse of the same formulae or topoi but expressing thoughts in a predictable linguistic way and order, both as a matter of readability and as one of adequacy and politeness. The main concern of this work is to discover these unwritten rules and norms behind Arabic letter writing on papyrus.

The Artemidorus papyrus, originating from Alexandria at the beginning of the 1st century A. D., contains on its verso 41 drawings by one hand, thereof 38 sketches of animals (some comprising two species each, thus resulting in 44 species), most of them labelled with their Greek names. As visible from the ‛title’ on the papyrus itself, it presents terrestrial tetrapods as well as birds, fish, and whales. No ordering principle can be identified, except the preference of especially rare and impressive creatures. They belong to different animal taxa, i.e. crustaceans (1), fish (5), reptiles (6), birds (11), and mammals (17). The work as a whole stands in the tradition of Hellenistic animal pictures, beginning with Aristotle, developed further by the forerunners of the Nile Mosaic of Praeneste (Palestrina), and continued in Hellenistic and Roman artwork (wall paintings, mosaics) as well as in ‛scientific’ Byzantine codices. Most probably, this part of the papyrus was used as a collection of specimen.

This festschrift contains some two dozen papers on variegated topics from the field of papyrology and epigraphy in Graeco-Roman Egypt. The studies deal with aspects of regional administration, the economy, contract law, antique literary works, temple consecration, the legal status of women, Greek vocabulary and Christian Egypt. The papers include both new publications of papyri and more in-depth studies of previously published texts. The book is of particular interest to papyrologists, epigraphers, ancient historians and Egyptologists.

Claudius Tiberianus represents a typical situation for the possibilities of Greco-Egyptians how to advance socially through the service in the Roman army and then how to obtain therefore the citizenship after having finished with the honesta missio. In the first place we see him as a speculator at the time of the rule of Trajan, later as a veteran: he had socially advanced and operated together with his companion veterans and also with the still serving soldiers in the navy and in the land army. His friends were for him economic and social partners, they had common affairs and common opinions. These documents open a view of the living in the country (Fayum and elsewhere) and in the city of Alexandria, which allow us to reconstruct a lot of private and public relations. Here even the nearly silent world of women informs us about economic and legal items. A very interesting tale concerns the murdering of a slave reported by the mother of the culprit. Another quite actual aspect of those days is represented by relations such as between patroni and their clientes. From a more technical point in the field of papyrological work it should be remembered that the results have been obtained through a continous interrogation of the archaeological background.

The volume contains an edition of c. 1,300 ostraca excavated in Abu Mina, Egypt, under the directorship of Peter Grossmann. Most of these ostraca comprise a partially surviving record of the pickings of grapes and of wine deliveries in the first half of the seventh century AD, before the Arab conquest in 642. Also, a small number contains some Christian texts, writings on pots or flasks, designs and writing exercises. They provide information on the community, the economical and agricultural activities, the prosopography and onomastics of this pilgrimage centre. This volume will be of interest to Greek papyrologists and to ancient historians.

This volume contains the contributions to the 1st International Workshop on the Restoration of Papyri, which was held in Leipzig in September 2006. It provides insights into everyday practices of restoration, exceptional works of restoration, the problems posed by the materials as well as those involved in removing them, and the dissolving of the cartonage of mummies. There are also papers on technical matters, as well as on the production of papyri and the techniques used in folding manuscripts. The documentation of restoration work, including the digitalization of objects and a new wet cleaning method, is also presented.

Only a small proportion of the few written ancient vulgar Latin texts are to be found on their original medium. A number of these are presented in this volume, each of them with a bibliography, text, translation, drawing of the original written document and a detailed linguistic commentary. The collection includes four numbers with letters (ChLA 43, 1241c; Tab. Vindol. 2, 310; P. Mich. 8, 471; O. Bu Njem 76-79), a list of soldiers (SB 22, 15638), five graffiti from Pompeii, two inscriptions from the Rhineland (CIL 13, 7645; Gauthier Nr. 45), three bilingual documents (SB 3, 6304; P. Amh. 2, 26; Folium Parisinum) and the annexe to the Appendix Probi.

The central section of Empedocles, On Nature I is reconstructed by combining the Strasburg Papyrus of Empedocles with a series of quotations from Simplicius that comes from the same section. The reconstructed portion of the text begins by demonstrating the principles (four elements, Love, and Strife) and proceeds to a description of the Cosmic Cyle. The edition of the original Greek text is provided with an interlinear German translation.

The volume, published to mark Herwig Maehler's 70th birthday, contains 19 of his articles and papers, offering a selection from the research contribution of a Classicist who has explored very diverse areas of the Ancient World, combining them in productive and imaginative ways. The papers reprinted here (some in slightly revised and updated form) concern Homer, Greek, lyric poetry, Attic tragedy, the ancient novel, Hellenistic poetry, Greek palaeography, art and sculpture under the Ptolemies and various other aspects of daily life in Graeco-Roman Egypt. This selection will be of interest not only to Classical scholars but to anyone interested in the culture of Graeco-Roman-Antiquity.

This is the first publication of the stele Cairo TR 27/11/58/4 dating from the 19th year of the reign of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes (186 B.C.). The editor presents a new version of the decree known as Philensis II, located in the temple precinct of Philae in the southern part of the outer east wall of the Birth House. It is one of the so-called synodal decrees from the age of the Ptolemies, which are of great importance to scholarship both for their historical contents and for their system of writing. The priestly synod reports on one of the most serious political problems of the time, the revolt in Upper Egypt which lasted for 20 years, and the victory of Ptolemy over the rival king Anchwennefer in Thebes. It decrees honours for the royal couple and their ancestors as well as annual celebrations of the victory. These are to be understood as a reward bestowed on the king by the gods of Egypt for all the good deeds he has done them. The decree sheds light on the situation in Hellenistic Egypt, the position of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the relationship between the Ptolemaic rulers on the one hand and the priests and general population of Egypt on the other.

Volume 19 of the series "Berliner Griechische Urkunden" (BGU) contains papyrus documents exclusively from Hermupolis, as did volumes 12 and 17. Of the 80 texts in the new volume, 76 are here published for the first time, while four are revised re-editions. They cover a time-span from the middle of the first century B.C. to the beginning of the 7th century A.D., with the majority of the texts dating from the 4th to the 6th century. beginning with a fourth-century petition to the Emperor with a request for the restitution of a dowry (the only document in Latin), followed by other official texts, such as petitions and other documents either addressed to or issued by the authorities. The second part of this volume contains private documents, such as contracts of lease, sale, loan etc. These texts provide a large amount of new information on details; taken together, however, they also offer a vivid picture of the social and economic life in an important provincial capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

A commentary and historical analysis of a trilingual synod decree by Egyptian priests, in honour of Ptolemy III and his family. The 'Kanopos-Decree' refers to two texts, united as one, and comprising of the resolutions passed by an Egyptian synod in 238 B.C., in honour of Ptolemy III and Queen Berenice II and the deceased princess Berenice, in Kanopos (near Alexandria), dedicated to. In accordance with the will of the synods, inscriptions of the decree were to be made in all Egyptian temples in Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. This work is a historical analysis of the most important document of the early period of Ptolemy. The basis thereof is an evaluation, in the form of annotated sections, treating all three languages equally. Central to the evaluation are: the analysis of a description in the decree, of how the danger of an imminent Egyptian famine was overcome, on the one hand. And, using the decree, ruler worship, introduced to the Egyptian temples by the priests, is analysed on the other. Finally, this work demonstrates the obvious intention of the priests who wrote the decree, to bind the king and his family into the religion of the Egypt; this was to be achieved by granting the Regent the status of an Egyptian god in the course of regular festivals and perpetuating the apotheosis of the deceased daughter Berenice.

Guards (Greek Phylakes) were common in antiquity and can be understood as forerunners of modern police men, and till nowadays guard duties are part of police activities. In all times endangered persons, buildings or properties as well as precious goods or funds needed protection, which was provided by different kinds of guards. In Graeco-roman Egypt with its deep agrarian character Phylakes were a widespread institution and left their traces in the numerous papyri of this time. The present study systematically analyses all testimonies beginning with the rule of the Ptolemies until the fourth century A.D. and draws a picture of the development of this security service, which - after having been predominantly privately organized in the ptolemaic era - was enlarged by the Romans and integrated into the compulsory public service as the lowest level of the public police service. Additionally a special tax was introduced, the Phylakon-tax, whose numerous receipts for payment demonstrate, by which means the government drew the population to the financing of the public security service.

The volume is representative of the diverse papyrological research which was encouraged and stimulated in the Institute of Papyrology at Heidelberg University between 1982 and 2004, a period in which it attracted numerous papyrologists, philologians, ancient historians and theologians from both home and abroad. The varied content includes literary papyri, ancient medical texts, palmomancy and lexicography. Furthermore there are documentary papyri from the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine and Arabic periods concerning the history of Pagan and Christian religion, political history, tax raising, administration and agriculture as well as articles on onomastics, prosopography, the transmission of communication, manuscript tradition, Church history and, last but not least, the trail of Socrates.

In recent decades, the relation between Egyptian and Greek praises of the goddess Isis has received much scholarly attention. The present study, however, focuses on six Demotic hymns and praises directed to this goddess: P. Heidelberg dem. 736 verso, O. Hor 10, Theban Graffiti 3156, 3462, 3445, and P. Tebt. Tait 14. These texts from the second century BC to the second century AD are re-edited in facsimile, transliteration and translation. A commentary to each document discusses philological matters, providing improved readings in some instances. For the first time, the six texts are analyzed comparatively in regard to formal features and content. The concept of Isis that is outlined by the Demotic sources is set against Isis' role as described by other Egyptian sources (such as temple inscriptions or theophoric personal names) and by Greek eulogies of the goddess. An appendix offers an overview of other Demotic hymns and praises addressed to various divinities.

In den dokumentarischen Texten aus dem spätantiken Ägypten begegnen häufig Kirchen und Klöster, Mönche und Kleriker. Aus diesem reichen Quellenmaterial für die Kirchengeschichtsschreibung hat der Verfasser zunächst eine Datenbank von über 6000 Texten zusammengestellt, davon rund 1200 Texte ausgewählt und an ihnen die Aktivitäten der Bischöfe, Priester und Diakone untersucht. Die Ergebnisse umfassen ein sehr weites Spektrum kirchlichen Lebens: Themen sind sowohl die Durchführung der Gottesdienste und die Ausübung der Kirchenzucht als auch Fragen des wirtschaftlichen Lebens der Kirche und der weltlichen Tätigkeiten der Kleriker. Ein Exkurs zur "Leitung der Dörfer" beschäftigt sich mit den Verwaltungsstrukturen der untersten Stufe im byzantinischen und früharabischen Ägypten; die Einleitung geht detailliert auf die Herkunft und den archäologischen Kontext der Papyri und Ostraka ein.

Der Band ist einer Gruppe von Erlanger Papyri gewidmet, deren besondere Bedeutung für die Papyrologie bzw. Kodikologie sowie für die Geschichte des spätantiken Ägypten bislang nicht erkannt worden ist. Im Mittelpunkt der Gruppe steht ein Papyruskodex, der in Zweitverwendung als Wirtschaftsbuch diente. Aus dem oberägyptischen Diospolis Parva stammend - einem Ort, der aus Mangel an Papyrusfunden zu den weißen Flecken auf der papyrologischen Landkarte zählt - und kurze Zeit nach dem sogenannten Toleranzedikt des Licinius (Juni 313 n. Chr.) verfaßt, geben die Texte Auskunft über das Verwaltungs-, Fiskal- und Militärwesen der civitas, aber auch über den Grad der Christianisierung jener Region Ägyptens, in der wenige Jahre später der Heilige Pachom wirken sollte. Der erste Teil des Bandes enthält eine papyrologisch-kodikologische, philologische und historische Einleitung, der zweite Teil revidierte, gegenüber der editio princeps erheblich verbesserte Fassungen des altgriechischen Textes nebst deutscher Übersetzung, Zeilenkommentar, Indizes und Abbildungen. Interessant für: Papyrologen, Althistoriker, Philologen, Ägyptologen, Kirchenhistoriker, Byzantinisten.

Der Königliche Schreiber war ein bis auf die Zeit des Alten Reiches zurückgehendes Amt im pharaonischen Ägypten, das von den Ptolemäern und Römern übernommen, umgeformt und in das von ihnen etablierte System der Verwaltung des ägyptischen Landes eingegliedert worden ist, wo er an der Seite des Gaustrategen in römischer Zeit an der Spitze der Verwaltung eines jeden ägyptischen Gaus stand. Das Buch versteht sich als umfassende Untersuchung zur ägyptischen Gauverwaltung in der römischen Kaiserzeit aus der Perspektive des Amtes des Königlichen Schreibers. Er ist die erste monographische Behandlung des Themas seit 90 Jahren und erfüllt damit angesichts der seitdem beträchtlich vermehrten papyrologischen Quellen zur Geschichte dieses Amtes ein dringendes Desiderat der Forschung. Behandlet werden u.a. die folgenden Aspekte: Die Attribute des Amtes, die Kompetenzen des Amtes (Bevölkerungskontrolle, Finanz- und Steuerverwaltung, Verpachtung und Verkauf von Fiskalbesitz, fiskalische Buchhaltung, Kontrolle von Tempeln und Priestern etc.) Büroorganisation und Büropersonal, die Stellung des Amtes in der administrativen Hierarchie, soziale Stellung und soziale Rekrutierung der Amtsträger, das Verschwinden des Amtes im 3. Jh. Ferner enthält das Buch eine vollständige Prosographie der Königlichen Schreiber der römischen Kaiserzeit.

Der Königliche Schreiber war ein bis auf die Zeit des Alten Reiches zurückgehendes Amt im pharaonischen Ägypten, das von den Ptolemäern und Römern übernommen, umgeformt und in das von ihnen etablierte System der Verwaltung des ägyptischen Landes eingegliedert worden ist , wo er an der Seite des Gaustrategen in römischer Zeit an der Spitze der Verwaltung eines jeden ägyptischen Gaus stand. Das Buch versteht sich als umfassende Untersuchung zur ägyptischen Gauverwaltung in der römischen Kaiserzeit aus der Perspektive des Amtes des Königlichen Schreibers. Es ist die erste monographische Behandlung des Themas seit 90 Jahren und erfüllt damit angesichts der seitdem beträchtlich vermehrten papyrologischen Quellen zur Geschichte dieses Amtes ein dringendes Desiderat der Forschung. Behandelt werden u.a. die folgenden Aspekte: Die Attribute des Amtes, die Kompetenzen des Amtes (Bevölkerungskontrolle, Finanz- und Steuerverwaltung, Verpachtung und Verkauf von Fiskalbesitz, fiskalische Buchhaltung, Kontrolle von Tempeln und Priestern etc.), Büroorganisation und Büropersonal, die Stellung des Amtes in der administrativen Hierarchie, soziale Stellung und soziale Rekrutierung der Amtsträger, das Verschwinden des Amtes im 3. Jh. Ferner enthält das Buch eine vollständige Prosopographie der Königlichen Schreiber der römischen Kaiserzeit.

In 30 BC, Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) conquered Egypt, after which he appointed his friend, the poet and general Gaius Cornelius Gallus as first prefect of the new Roman province. Following the defeat of native insurrections in the south of Egypt and after securing the Nubian border, Gallus dedicated a trilingual stela that combines Egyptian, Greek, and Roman iconographic and textual traditions. The book is the result of a multiyear project conducted within Ancient History and Egyptology in order to discuss this victory monument. The Egyptian (hieroglyphic), Latin, and Greek texts have been reviewed and collated with the original and they are presented in a new translation with commentary. With this publication, one of the most important historical sources from the beginning of Roman rule over Egypt is presented in a reliable complete edition.