Order to farm

O.Wilck. 1224 (P. 321)

Scan

Egypt’s wealth relied on the annual flooding of the Nile and its fertile riverbanks; hence, the land was considered the granary of the ancient world. The ancient Egyptians also possessed excellent irrigation systems, further augmenting their prosperity. The following artifact provides insight into the economic organization of grain cultivation.

It is a piece of pottery with writing, an ostracon. Ostraca allow us a better understanding of the daily life of the ancient population. They served as a kind of „ancient scratch paper“ for notes, schoolwork, accounts, receipts, and various short letters.

This ostracon was acquired on March 30, 1859, by the German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch in Thebes through a purchase. Brugsch is considered one of the greatest Egyptologists of the 19th century.

It is inscribed with ten lines of Greek text. The text can be dated to October 17, 695 AD. It was written during the time after the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 AD. The text does not explicitly mention a specific date. Instead, it is dated to the 19th Phaophi of the 9th indiction. Phaophi is an Egyptian month name, with the 19th Phaophi corresponding to October 17th. Unfortunately, the 9th indiction cannot be easily converted into our current dating system. The indiction was a dating system established in the 4th century AD for counting tax years. It had a 15-year cycle and was simply numbered. In the text under discussion here, the 9th year of this cycle is indicated. For the people of that time, it was clear in which year they lived. For us today, conversion without further dating clues is difficult – there were too many 9th indictions. However, the text provides us with a clue. The Pekysios mentioned in the text is also known from other texts that can be dated more precisely. Thus, we can also assign the indiction year and date the text to the year 695 AD.

Regarding Pekysios, we learn that he was a protokometes (a kind of village elder) in the fortress of Memnoneia on the western bank of the Nile opposite Thebes. In the text on the ostracon, he instructs a Josephios, in this capacity, to cultivate leased land, even though it is dried out and overgrown with reeds. The basis for the fertility of ancient Egypt and its status as the granary of the ancient world were the annual floods of the Nile, which brought the nutrient-rich mud that gave the soil its fertility. However, the floods did not always reach all fields or were too low. To counter these unpredictable risks, an extensive irrigation system with canals, waterwheels, etc., was established. Such irrigation devices are also referenced in our text. Josephios is to cultivate the farmland using an irrigation apparatus belonging to a Pouar. With due caution, one can infer that this person’s family was of some importance in this area. Pouar is mentioned again at the end of the text, as the father of a Paulos. He apparently preceded Pekysios as protokometes and probably had a similar agreement with Josephios for the cultivation of the farmland, which is only referred to here.

Unfortunately, we do not learn which plants Josephios cultivated on this farmland. Presumably, however, it was grain. Nevertheless, the text also refers to the lease contract, through which Josephios could cultivate this farmland at all. Through it, he agreed to pay one-third of the yields as rent. This amounts to 1/6 of a gold nomisma, a currency used at that time.

This text not only provides insight into the lives of ordinary people and the administrative structures of ancient Egypt but is also a significant proof that even under Arab rule, other languages such as Greek were used in important administrative institutions and thus continued to exist.

Posted in Object of the Month |

Wisdom or power – who is the moral winner?

BKT IX 38 (P. 6934 V + P. 21137 V)

Scan

The conflict between wisdom and power is an old topic. It is therefore not surprising that stories of many famous wise women and men have been handed down in which such conflicts are reported. A fragmentary example can be found on some papyrus fragments in the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

Not only medical texts have survived under the name of the famous Greek physician Hippocrates of Kos. Letters from him also circulated in antiquity. They purport to be part of his correspondence and could therefore provide valuable insights into Hippocrates‘ thoughts and actions. However, due to many anachronisms, they must be labelled as fictitious and therefore pseudo-Hippocratic. These letters deal with the theme of the conflict between power and wisdom and show the moral superiority of the ideal physician Hippocrates. There are several versions of many letters with the same content but of different lengths. They have been handed down in medieval manuscripts and have also been preserved in copies on some papyri from Roman Egypt.

The verso (back) of several fragments of a scroll written on both sides contains the remains of some of these letters. Fragments of a document from the second century AD are preserved on the recto (front). The letters on the verso can therefore be dated somewhat later. The papyri originate from the Faijum, a large oasis south-west of Cairo, later belonged to the private collection of the Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch and came to the Berlin Papyrus Collection in 1891.

In the first letter that has survived on these papyri, the physician is informed by the Persian governor Hystanes on the Hellespont about the offer of the Great King Artaxerxes to come to his court in Persepolis to work there as court physician. In the letter that immediately follows, Hippocrates rejects this offer on the grounds that he would not heal enemies of the Greeks. The rest of the known correspondence on this subject is not reproduced on this papyrus. Instead, it is followed by a letter from Hippocrates containing a reply to a petition from the council and people of the Greek city of Abdera in Thrace, which is also not reproduced here. The doctor promises to help the Abderites by curing the famous philosopher Democritus, who was supposedly suffering from madness. Alluding to his correspondence with the Persians, he refuses any payment.

The combination of these two correspondences makes the theme of the conflict between power and wisdom very clear. While Hippocrates refuses to help the powerful Persian king, immediately afterwards he offers his help to the small Greek town of Abdera for the sick, wise fellow citizen Democritus.

The individual letters were separated on the papyrus by paragraphoi (horizontal lines at the beginning of a line). Such a paragraphos is still clearly visible above the seventh line. The greeting formula and the beginning of the letter are written in ecthesis (hanging indentation) and were also marked in this way.

Due to the reuse of the papyrus scroll and the inscription of the verso with this text, it is probably a private copy of these letters, which were presumably compiled under the aforementioned theme of the conflict between power and wisdom.

Posted in Object of the Month |

11536

P. 8301

Posted in Allgemein |

One receipt’s literary „glow-up“: an anthology from the Kleitorios archive

P. 12311

Scan

First used a receipt, then upcycled as a surface for a writing exercise: this ostracon contains remnants of a receipt as well as being an “anthology” with three short texts! To be precise, three independent texts are recognisable on the ostracon: firstly, a quotation from Aigeus by Euripides, a work which is only fragmentarily attested; secondly, a saying about dietary moderation that has is often attributed to Socrates; and thirdly, a (hacked-up) quotation from a work of New Comedy in which several vices are rattled off.

The first text comprises lines 1–2 and, as mentioned, comes from the lost play Aigeus by Euripides. Its translation reads: “It does happen that the one who has suffered misfortune displays ἀρετή (virtue, virtuousness, …) before death”. But if you look closely, you will recognise that the text continues after this point into line 3: καὶ πάντα ῥαίδια / γίνεται, “and everything becomes easy”. There is consensus among researchers, however, that this is an addition which did not originally appear in Euripides’ work. In the current edition of the ostracon by the researcher Francisca Pordomingo, the addition is neither printed nor included in the line count. On the other hand, it could be seen as a sentential modification of the Euripidean source, e.g. in the sense that whoever shows ἀρετή before death will find it easier to die, or (according to Viereck): “Even if someone has failed, he can still prove through a noble death that he was a good and capable person; then one can easily come to terms with all the bad things that have happened before and consider them insignificant, i.e. it is possible to atone for all mistakes through death.” (It should be noted that this sort of rather broad interpretation is generally avoided nowadays in research.)

The second text is a saying that clearly has the character of a philosophical dialogue. It is also attested in numerous extant sources, in which it is most often attributed to Socrates, although our ostracon does not contain any explicit attribution. The text concerns the appropriate relationship between people and food: Socrates speaks in favour of a moderate diet that is conducive to one’s life (nowadays, we might say a “balanced diet”) and advises against the kind of diet that “most people” follow, which elevates the pleasure of eating, as it were, to the goal of life. His point is: you must eat for the sake of your life, and not live for the sake of your eating. This is by far the oldest testimony to the saying, which probably originally came from an otherwise unknown dialogue about the right way to live, as suggested by several phrases often found in philosophical dialogues, such as the frequent καὶ γὰρ ὁρᾶις, “for you see” (which Pordomingo describes as “obviously the continuation of an inference of the philosopher”), and τά γε τοιαῦτα, “and such things”. This text is an example of the literary genre of the “Logoi Socratici”, the words of Socrates, beyond the well-known elaborations of Plato and Xenophon.

Finally, the third text is an excerpt from a work of the New Comedy (which began ca. 321 BC; the main representative of this movement is Menander, although in this case no definite attribution to an author can be made). Both verses are incomplete judging by the metre: the first starts after the beginning of the verse, the second ends before the end. Human weaknesses that often go arm in arm are listed, in particular “rashness, negligence, vanity and thousands of other such things”.

But what are ostraca actually? Ostraca are shards of clay containing writing. For a long time in antiquity, such clay fragments were an inexpensive and abundant writing material for quick notes, lists, invoices and writing exercises: everything that we would jot down on a scrap of paper or the back of an envelope today. As soon as the list or invoice was no longer needed, the writing could be scraped or washed off and the shard reused, a common practice at a time when suitable ‘formal’ writing surfaces were not a matter of course as they are today, while pottery shards must have been everywhere to hand in a time when the streets of towns and villages were littered with them.

This ostracon was found in the town of Philadelphia, founded in Ptolemaic times and located in the oasis-like Fayum Basin south-west of Cairo. It belongs to the “Kleitorios Archive”, an archive consisting of 68 ostraca dating from the late 3rd to early 2nd century BC. In addition to a total of five ostraca with literary or paedagogical content (including this one) which can be placed in a school context, the written finds in this collection document the day-to-day operations of a large estate. They detail field work, wage payments, the sale of wine and linen – in other words, all the business that was the bread and butter of such an estate.

Around 1900, several excavations were carried out in Philadelphia, mainly with the aim of discovering papyrus remains. Among other things, the site is known for the so-called Zenon Papyri, a collection of over 2,000 documents by the secretary Zenon of Kaunos (floruit ca. 240 BC). The “Fayum portraits”, mummy portraits on wooden panels or mummy wrappings, also originate from this region. However, these artistic gems date from later times, having been created in the Roman imperial period (1st–3rd century AD).

Four of the five “paedagogical” or “literary” ostraca mentioned in the Kleitorios archive are so-called anthologies. What was the purpose of such anthologies? Copying out sentences which were considered edifying was a common school assignment at the time – as it also was throughout more recent history, up until a few decades ago. The ostracon contains three independent verse texts, written without separation in a scriptio continua (‘continuous writing’), a common style of writing at the time. We can see from the manuscript that it was no beginner’s hand who wrote these lines: the handwriting has been described by scholars as “fluent and regular with some cursive elements” (Cribriore), possibly that of a γραμματικός, i.e. a scholar or, perhaps, an advanced student (Pordomingo).

Ultimately, a task like this was primarily intended as a handwriting exercise, but it was also about upholding and inculcating values such as virtue and moderation – in eating as well as in general. Why the five ‘literary’ ostraca in the collection were included in the otherwise documentary Kleitorios archive in the first place must ultimately remain a mystery, one of history’s countless little secrets.

Posted in Object of the Month |

Christmas with Thorns? Two Christian Hymns

P. 8687

Scan

Most definitely, you have heard of Christmas, perhaps you often even celebrated it and sang carols while doing so. But what have thorns to do with Christmas? What was it like 1400 years ago? Were there the same religious traditions and topics as today and what did religious hymns look like? Are there any parallels to now and then? You can find out this and much more by looking at a papyrus with two Christian hymns on it, which is in the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

Three fragments of the original papyrus text have survived, whose position to each other is secured due to the text. The papyrus is broken on all sides; thus, no complete line has survived. Both sides were written in Greek. There are two sides, with 12 lines of remnants on the reverse (verso) side and 9 lines of remnants on the front (recto) side. The text on the recto is heavily rubbed and therefore not easy to read. Based on the writing, both texts can be dated to the 7th–8th century.

Two different writers have written the two texts on the papyrus. They begin on the verso with a Christmas hymn, which is written in a rather cursory, right-slanted and irregular script. From the eleventh line on the same page a hymn dedicated to the virgin Mary (theodokion) starts, which is probably continued on the other side of the papyrus. It was written carefully and in a small font. Striking is, that at the end of line 3 on the front page the last letters have been rewritten. The writer obviously used the rest of the ink in his calamus (pen) to write these letters, then picked up the ink and traced the same letters again.

The first is a Christmas hymn. This is indicated by several points that are to be located in the context of the birth of Jesus. For example, the virgin Mary is mentioned (l. 8). A celebration is called for (l. 10). Finally, it speaks of a joy for the world (l. 2) – presumably, because the Son of God now lives on earth. Episodes from the later life of Jesus Christ are mentioned, e.g. his forty-day retreat into the desert, where he resisted the temptations of the devil, which is recorded in the New Testament in the Gospel of Luke (4:2). In the text and its formulations, several parallels can also be found in other biblical texts, especially in the psalms.

Also interesting about this text are numerous markings that can be found over various letters and syllables. These could initially be accents or bookmarks. Presumably, however, this is a musical notation. This can also be recognized by the fact that numerous consonants have been written twice and the words thus orthographically incorrect. Letter doublings are typical for musical notations and indicate the rhythm in which the text was supposed to be sung. Normally, the vowels are duplicated, as for example in another Berlin papyrus with Christian hymns (P 16595) from the same time period. However, in this text the consonants are duplicated. This phenomenon is very rare. The musical notations occur mainly in the first text and less frequently in the second one.

The virginity of Mary, which is mentioned in the text (l. 8), is the main theme of the second text. Here the burning thorn bush from (Book Exodus 3:1–6) is mentioned, which was a metaphor for the virgin birth of Jesus in early Christian art. Just as the thorn bush withstood the fire, Mary remained a virgin even though she had become a mother. There are numerous parallels to other biblical text on this papyrus side as well. Due to its fragmentary state of preservation, the details of the text’s content can no longer be determined. Nevertheless: This text has survived once again on a papyrus in the Vienna collection and can therefore be interpreted with the help of this parallel.

Both texts are interesting examples of the prevalence of hymns in early Christian liturgy and the long continuity of Christian religious traditions to today. The musical notation as indications of the way the hymns were to be recited make this papyrus special despite its poor preservation.

Posted in Object of the Month |

Puzzle of a Multiplication Exercise

SB XXII 15312 (P. 11702)

Scan

An odd drawing, a multiplication-table and a bird! All of this can be found on a Berlin papyrus and gives puzzles. What does that mean? In what context are these elements related to each other? What does a bird have to do with mathematics? Who wrote them?

The papyrus was acquired in the Middle Egyptian Ashmunein, the ancient Hermupolis, and came to the Berlin papyrus collection in 1908. It is likely, that the papyrus is from Hermupolis as well. Both sides have writing. However, no edges on the paper are preserved, so that the original extent of the text is no longer determinable. Because of the content of the text one can assume, that only a little part of the original papyrus has survived. Two columns in Greek have survived on both sides of the papyrus, along with drawings whose connection to the text remains unclear. The text can be dated to the 5th century due to the writing. At the end of the text, the writing becomes more and more hurried and careless. The spacing also decreases increasingly and appears more unstructured.

The text is a multiplication exercise, which shows us, from the writer’s perspective, the functioning of the decimal system. For this purpose, the writer of this exercise used the so-called Milesian numerals. For the digits, not own symbols are used, as it is done nowadays, but the letters of the alphabet and a few special characters. The tens and hundreds had their own letters and characters. Thus, α stood for 1, β for 2 and ξ for 60. Numbers, which were higher than nine, but were not tens or hundreds, were attached to the closest, smaller tens, hundreds, etc. and appended with the corresponding desired units. Therefore 63 was written with ξ for 60 and γ for 3.

The multiplication exercise is divided into several series and sections, some of which are marked by horizontal lines, so-called paragraphoi, at the beginning of the line. The remnants of the series with the factor 2, 3, 4 and 5 have survived. It can be assumed that the original list ranged up to a factor of ten. The series were divided into several sections, in which the first factor is multiplied with the numbers ranging from one to ten and the tenfold, hundredfold and thousandfold of this number. An entry has the following scheme: δ ϡ Γχ (in our digits: 4 900 3600, so 4 x 900 = 3600). The above already mentioned hastiness of the writer is thereby confirmed, that the second to last entry (ε ϡ Δφ[in our digits: 5 900 4500, so 5 x 900 = 4500]) was recognizably corrected.

On the right to the next column on the verso (back side) a 6 cm high and 2.4 cm wide drawing can be identified, which is neither part of a decorative strip, nor can it mathematically be explained. The drawing consists of two parallel, vertical lines, which are flanked on either side by irregularly jagged lines. The space between the prongs is filled with dots as well as semicircular ones. The drawing could be a cartographic depiction of the Egyptian eastern desert. The parallel lines would then be a wadi resp. a path, which demonstrate the jags flanking hills or mountains. The drawing must have been made after the multiplication list, as it partially overwrites it and the ink has a different iron content.

On the recto (front page) a frontal depicted bird, with raised wings, can be seen by looking at the bottom left of the multiplication exercise. Over the bird a small line can be found – an indicator for another, previous column or drawing. The drawing was carelessly drawn and due to the rough styling the zoological classification is very difficult. Possibly it’s the drawing of an eagle or a pigeon. Against an interpretation as a pigeon speaks that is represented in antiquity rather rarely frontal and with outstretched wings. On the contrary, eagles are often represented like this and symbolize something holy, like e.g. the revival of Jesus Christ. If the drawer was aware of this motive tradition can only be assumed, but normally he should have been aware of the meaning. The star above the head of the bird could, regarding this theory, be a christogram. The drawing of the bird and multiplication list were probably made in a timely manner, since there are no visible differences between the ink.

The correlation between the drawing and the multiplication list remain unclear. Mathematic and cartographic skills were needed in administration and the military in antiquity. Thus, this papyrus could be a reminder note or even a smear sheet from an apprentice in one of these areas. At last, the speculations remain uncertain and the papyrus a puzzle.

Posted in Object of the Month |

Babylonian planetary calculation in Greco-Roman Egypt

P. 16511 V

Scan

Anybody who is eager to determine the precise position of stars or planets in the sky, can nowadays open their computer and find everything they seek with a few clicks through modern software. In antiquity, this was a little harder. Astronomical data were used in first instance to determine the fate of kings and empires, later also for the construction of horoscopes for private individuals. In the Berlin Papyrus Collection, multiple horoscopes are preserved as well (see for instance the oldest preserved, Greek horoscope on papyrus).

The philosopher Sextus Empiricus (2nd century AD) described in his work Πρὸς ἀστρολόγους “Against the Astrologers” (26-28), how the Babylonians performed the observation of planetary positions during childbirth. An astronomer sat on a mountain peak, whereas an assistant sat next to the woman in labor. When the delivery occurred, the assistant sounded a gong and the astronomer directly noted all relevant observational data. This tale is embellished by fantasy, but does not correspond to reality. Observations were often impossible: not all planets are always visible. For this reason, algorithms were employed to create astronomical tables. The positions in the horoscopes were then computed using the tables.

Part of such a table can be found on the object presented here, a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus in Greco-Roman Egypt. The fragment consists of five columns with black lining and is written in a small, rapid, cursive documentary script from the 1st century AD. The table is broken on the left, bottom and right sides; the upper part however is complete. A second fragment of the same table, which consists of parts of columns 3, 4 and 5, is kept in Oxford. The reverse side, the front side of the papyrus, contains a legal proceeding. After this had lost its relevance, this astronomical table was written on the backside, until this as well had lost its importance and was thrown away. As all papyri from Oxyrhynchus, the papyrus originates from a landfill.

The third column consists of year numbers, which are represented by the Greek L-shaped ἔτος („year“) sign together with a number. The year numbers usually increase by 1, but sometimes also by 2. Thus, in the first four lines we find the years ιϛ, ιη, ιθ, κ: 16, 18, 19, 20. These are regnal years of Roman emperors, and in line 7 it also becomes clear of which emperors. Here column 3 does not contain a year number, but only Γαίου, which is clarified by the addition of κγ το κ(αὶ) α in column 2, which together means „23, also 1 of Gaius“. The described year is year 23 of emperor Tiberius’ reign, 37 AD, which is also year 1 of emperor Gaius’ (Caligula’s) reign. The remainder of the second column contains horizontal strokes only and, apparently, its function is to separate column 1 from the other columns.

Column 4 contains Egyptian month names in Greek script, with full spellings for short names such as Θωύθ „Thouth“ (line 2), Ἁθύρ „Hathyr“ (line 4) and Τῦβι „Tybi“ (line 5); as well as abbreviated ones for longer names such as Φαῶφ „Phaoph“ for Φαῶφι „Phaophi“ (line 3), and Φαρμο „Pharmo“ for Φαρμοῦθι „Pharmouthi“ (line 8). The ο in Φαρμο is written in superscript to indicate that the word is an abbreviation.

Column 5 always starts with a number between 0 and 29, followed by one or often more numbers. These indicate the days of the month and subsequent fractions of these days in the Babylonian sexagesimal system. This notation clearly results from computation and already shows that we are not dealing with a purely Egyptian table. Another unusual characteristic is the use of day 0, instead of day 30 of the preceding month, in lines 5 and 6.

In summary, each line contains a time entry, with intervals of around 13 months each. This time period is characteristic for the planet Jupiter and analysis based on modern data shows that the denoted dates are moments in which Jupiter is located at its so called first station: the place where the planet’s motion becomes retrograde. The letter α above the table could represent the number 1 and thus refer to this; this interpretation, however, is uncertain. Interestingly, for astronomical calculations the unreformed Egyptian calendar, which does not contain leap days, had been kept in use for a long time, as this calendar was easier for calculation. In everyday life, the reformed Egyptian calendar had been in use for a century and a half already at the time when this papyrus was written.

Most tables of this type did not only contain time entries, but also the related planetary positions, expressed in the zodiacal coordinate system. In this case, these positions were probably included in column 6 and the following. But what were the contents of the first column? It is evident that it contained numbers, but since the beginning is broken off and the numbers are mostly fractions, it is complicated to draw a conclusion. They could be related to another celestial phenomenon of Jupiter, or maybe represent positions of the same phenomenon, but prior to year 16 of Tiberius’ reign. The fact that the table begins arbitrarily with year number 16 without mentioning the name of Tiberius supports the hypothesis that something else may have preceded it.

It was surprising to find tables in Egypt which were created by Babylonian methods. Transferring Babylonian algorithms to Egypt is not trivial: the complicated Babylonian algorithms had to be adapted to the Egyptian calendar and local observations had to be used for the planetary positions due to the change in geographical location. This shows that there was advanced knowledge of Babylonian algorithms in Egypt. The table is also surprisingly accurate: the date never deviates from the phenomenon by more than 2 days, while Jupiter can be seen by observation up to about 10 days before or after the calculated date.

Posted in Object of the Month |

18002

P. 12614 Text 2

Posted in Allgemein |

18001

P. 12614 Text 1

Posted in Allgemein |

18000

P. 3211 R

Posted in Allgemein |