SB XVIII 13250 = BKT IX 173 (P. 21269 R)

Two young people, the future still ahead of them – but what will it bring? Is it worth going down this path together permanently? Because you can never be so sure, small decision aids, such as zodiac signs, are still used today to form an opinion about a relationship’s chances of survival.

But it is not only in the 21st century that people do not want to leave anything to chance when faced with this exciting question. Even if, in this case, fickle happiness in love was certainly not the primary measure of a successful marriage (after all, we are in Egypt in the 6th/7th century AD) – is it really surprising that people turned to higher powers when it came to this question back then? But let us let our piece speak for itself:

“God of the Christians: whether it is your will that we give Theodora, your servant, to Joseph? – Yes.”

We are in Christian Egypt, probably as part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Whether it was already conquered by the Sassanids under Khosrow II in AD 619, reverted to Eastern Rome in AD 630 or finally fell to the Arab Empire in AD 642 does not play a significant role in the religious situation, as neither the religiously diverse Sassanid Empire nor the Muslim Arabs initially had missionary intentions.

In any case, the address makes it clear that the Christian god is only one among many in the spiritual milieu of this oracular question. This is all the more astonishing given that the last tolerated pagan temple in Egypt, the Isis sanctuary of Philae, was closed under Justinian in AD 535 or 537 and the Christian churches of the time, above all the Eastern Roman state church, represented an exclusive monotheism. It is therefore not surprising that the Christian historian Eusebius (3rd/4th century AD) in his book “Theophany” does not leave a single good thing to be said about pagan oracles. He even explicitly mentions the topic of marriage in this context. It is therefore a practice that was probably not promoted by any major Christian church of the time. Rather, it is more likely a remnant of the diverse prediction practices from pagan times.

But what exactly prompted the guardian or father of Theodora mentioned here to resort to a practice that is questionable from a Christian point of view can only be speculated about – in any case, the choice of a husband for Theodora was obviously very important to him.

The question of the procedure for getting an answer from the “Christian God” seems more promising. What is interesting about our piece is that we are also given the answer to the question on the papyrus. This is special compared to similar pieces from the same period.

Palaeographic observations have identified the scribe of the question and the answer as one and the same. This suggests that either the lot itself was cast and the result noted immediately afterwards, or that there may have been two different question papyri with opposing, pre-formulated answers, each of which then functioned as a lot, or were submitted separately to a questioning point. Such a procedure is suggested by another example where the positive and negative variants were found (P.Harr. I 54 and P.Oxy. XVI 1926). But in this case only the question was formulated positively and negatively and there is no answer as in our case. It has also been speculated whether the questioner perhaps submitted just this papyrus to a certain institution and only received it back if it was correct.

But why it has to be someone else questioning the fate? A travelogue by Pausanias shows that there were already “self-service oracles” in the 2nd century AD, where the questioner only had to throw the dice. In the “Sortes Astramspychi”, the best-preserved Lorrery book in antiquity, the questioner ultimately arrives at the answer to his question to fate himself through the inner inspiration of a number via detours.

But however the answer to the question was determined – our piece, which on my first reading somewhat cheesily suggested the beginning of a marriage willed by fate, on closer inspection only indicates that the father or guardian was apparently not sure about Joseph from the outset. Unfortunately, we can only speculate as to what the oracle actually revealed and, even more so, what the person in charge ultimately decided due to a lack of further evidence.

Unfortunately, the only positive thing that can be said is, that Joseph seemed to have been considered a serious option for Theodora by the questioner.