BGU III 982 (P. 9791)

Donkeys fulfilled many tasks 2000 years ago that are now performed by cars, motorbikes, delivery vans, etc. And today, just like back then, they were used for trade. It is therefore not surprising that documents have survived that attest to such a change of ownership. The papyrus presented here is one such example.

The small papyrus leaf was found in Dimê in the Fayum, a large oasis south-west of Cairo, and entered the Berlin Papyrus Collection via the Reinhardt Private Collection in 1896. Dimê is the archaeological site of the ancient Soknopaiou Nesos, a place with an important sanctuary north of Lake Moeris in the Fayum. This place is also mentioned in the Greek text on this papyrus, so that its origin can be regarded as certain.

The text dates from the Roman period. The date formula of the Roman emperor Trajan refers to the year 107 A.D. The day of the date is no longer legible due to the loss of material in line 5. However, the month name Epeiph, which is still legible in a few remnants, corresponds to the period from the end of June to the end of July. The text can therefore be dated to the early summer of 107 AD.

The text certifies that a Pekysios, son of Stotoetis, from the already mentioned village of Soknopaiou Nesos bought a white-breasted donkey from a Posidonios, son of Posidonios, and paid the agreed purchase price. Apart from the information given in this text, we know nothing about the persons mentioned. However, the names of the buyer and his father are very typical for the village of Soknopaiou Nesos and would have allowed an attribution even without the explicit mention of the village.

The description of the animal serves to identify the object of purchase more precisely and will certainly have been more detailed in the purchase contract that preceded this certificate. In other purchase contracts for donkeys, the sex and colour of the animal as well as other external characteristics and its age are specified. The latter was also important for determining the purchase price.

The transaction did not take place directly between the two contracting parties. It was brokered by a bank, which is also named in the text of this certificate. It is the bank of an otherwise unknown Heras, son of Akousilaos. We learn about this bank that it was located in Lykion. This is a district of Ptolemais Euergetis, the capital of Arsinoites, as the Fayum was called in antiquity.

The exact sum paid for the donkey in this text has not survived, as the papyrus has been broken off at the bottom. In comparable sales of donkeys at that time, prices of 100 to 150 drachmas were paid. The purchase of a donkey therefore represented a considerable investment in Roman Egypt.

This text is therefore a receipt for the sale of this animal. However, the first two words of the first line give a more precise indication of the nature of this text. It says that it is a copy of a receipt. This was apparently made and archived for administrative purposes. The letters of these two words have been written slightly larger than the rest of the text, so that both words look like a heading for this text.

In addition to these interesting insights into the details of an animal trade 2000 years ago, the text offers another detail about the people of the time. We do not know who wrote this text. But this person wrote some words differently from most of their contemporaries. This is most obvious in the place name Soknopaiou Nesos, in which an ‘e’ was always written instead of an ‘o’. It is obvious that the writer and certainly many of his contemporaries obviously pronounced this name in such a way that it was possible to confuse the ‘o’ and ‘e’. Occasionally, people wrote the way they spoke.