SM I 10 (P. 21165)

We all know this stressful situation: it all starts with an elevated temperature, you feel weak, then you get hot and cold… You have caught the fever again and your plans for the next few days go down the drain. How nice would it be if you could get rid of the fever in the blink of an eye by using magic or if you could not get sick in the first place? The writer of this magical papyrus probably thought the same. It is a magical amulet that is supposed to protect a person called Tuthus from fever and chills.

The papyrus fragment, dated to the 3rd–4th century AD, probably comes from the Fayum, a large oasis south-west of Cairo. In ancient times, the area was also known as Arsinoites and was one of the agricultural centres of the country. The papyrus has a light brown colour and is characterised by a dark discolouration on the left side. It is also damaged at all edges and has been folded three times horizontally and seven times vertically. This suggests that the papyrus formed a small package, which Tuthus may have worn on a string around his neck (this was often the case with amulets and protective symbols in Ancient Egypt). The magic symbols and the Greek magic words – in a large font slanted to the right – are found on the recto (front). The verso (reverse side) is blank. The amulet is made up of several components:

On the upper edge of the papyrus, there are two parallel lines of magic words. The first three words of the first line, „Adonai“, „Eloai“ and „Sabaoth“, are Hebrew names of god, angels and aeons. As the terms were ascribed a powerful and mighty meaning, they were frequently used and can often be found together on magical amulets.

It is similar with the two following words „αβλαvαϑαvαβλα“ and „ακραμμαχαμαρι“. They are also of Semitic origin and were used very frequently in magical texts. In the case of the former, this is mainly due to its structure. Αβλαvαϑαvαβλα is a misspelling of αβλαvαϑαvαλβα (ABLANATHANALBA). This is a palindrome, i.e. a word that reads the same forwards and backwards. Such words, especially αβλαvαϑαvαλβα, were repeatedly used in magic texts, as it was believed that reading words backwards would break the spell. Palindromes were used to prevent this and increased the spell even further if a person tried to break it by reading it backwards. As αβλαvαϑαvαλβα was regularly used on gems together with solar deities, the word is attributed a solar meaning. Another possible meaning of αβλαvαϑαvαλβα is „Father come to us!“. However, meanings of palindromes should be viewed with scepticism, as they were primarily formed to mean the same thing when read backwards and forwards. The different spelling of the word on the magic papyrus is probably a mistake. It is unlikely that the author intended that the protective spell could be broken. It seems more likely that he was unaware of the palindromic nature of the word. This phenomenon was not uncommon, which is why αβλαvαϑαvαλβα is actually very often misspelled on magical amulets.

Αβλαvαϑαvαλβα frequently occurs together with the word ακραμμαχαμαρι (cf. line 1). Ακραμμαχαμαρι (AKRAMMACHAMARI) is composed of the originally different magic words ακραμμα and χαμαρι. As the word was often used in connection with the sun, for example in another magic text as the name of the Greek sun god Helios respectively the sun at the third hour, ακραμμαχαμαρι is also ascribed a solar meaning. However, it was not used exclusively in this context and, like many other magic words, stood for power and strength in a more general sense. The same applies to the first word of the second line „σεσενγερβαρφαρανγης“ (SESENGERBARPHARANGĒS), which was often used together with ακραμμαχαμαρι.

This magic word is followed in the second line by the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet: αεηιουω. They are also common for magical texts and are usually interpreted as the seven classical planets, which are all visible to the naked eye and have been known since ancient times. These are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

After the seven vowels, the writer again made use of powerful words to unfold the magic. The first word „Iao“, another name of the Hebrew god, was used on many magical Greco-Roman amulets because of its power. It can also be found once more in the second line (penultimate word). The second word „Φρη“ (PHRĒ) stands for Re, which is Egyptian for „the sun“.

On the left-hand side of the magical amulet, below the two initial lines, there is a column consisting of six lines. In the first line, there are again the seven vowels, while the other five lines each contain an angel’s name, which is supposed to serve as a protective spell. The angels mentioned are predominantly archangels, i.e. angels of a higher status. They are mentioned one below the other in the following order: Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, Suriel, Raphael. Among them, Michael, the archangel with the highest reputation, is regarded as the angel of peace as well as the helper and protector of people before God and on earth. The archangel Gabriel stands for mercy and justice and is regarded as the bringer of good news. Archangel Raphael has the power to heal, which is also reflected in the meaning of his name „God heals“ or „Healer of God“. The author of the text trusted in all these powers of the angels and therefore invoked them to protect Tuthus from the fever.

To the right of the column, a so-called „uroboros“ can be seen. This is a serpent, sometimes a dragon, that bites its own tail. Uroboroi were frequently depicted on magic papyri from Hellenistic Egypt. The word is made up of the Greek terms „οὐρά“ (OURA) for tail and „βορός“ (BOROS) for devouring and therefore means „tail devourer“. As it devours and simultaneously begets itself, the uroboros primarily stands for eternity as well as infinity and symbolises the universal cycle of power consumption and power regeneration. Therefore, it also symbolises nature, recurring time, the year and the course of the sun, the moon, the sky and the universe. Self-sufficiency is another characteristic of the Uroboros: its body forms a closed circle, the most perfect of all shapes. It is independent of perception and locomotion, as there is nothing around it. It also needs no food, as it consumes its own faeces and itself. The circle of the Uroboros on the magical amulet is filled with another common magic word: „σεμεσιλαμ“ (SEMESILAM). It extends over two lines and stands for „eternal sun“ or possibly „shining sun“ in Hebrew. Below this word, separated by a line, are the seven vowels once again.

From the uroboros, the line continues to the right. It is intersected by a cross, three S-shaped parallel lines, a straight line and another cross, which are „signa magica“, which means „magic signs“ in Latin. One of these is the so-called „Chnumis sign“ (also known as the Chnouphis sign or Chnubis sign). It consists of a horizontal line that is crossed by three S-shaped lines. The lines represent snakes. The symbol is associated with the serpent-shaped god Chnumis and the creator and Nile god Chnum, who can also appear as a serpent. In Greco-Roman times, the snake symbolised rejuvenation and the continually renewing year, as it sheds its skin. The Nile was also imagined as a snake, as its flood initiated the new year and the associated renewal. Bearers of amulets with depictions of Chnumis or with a Chnumis sign hoped that they would benefit from the regenerating power and thus solve their (health) problems.

The line with the signa magica ends on the right in an elongated oval filled with further magic words. The term in the first line and the first word in the third line are parts of a formula used in other magical amulets. The Greek letter „Zeta“ (Z) can be seen three times in the middle line, each time crossed by a horizontal line. This could be a symbol of the planet Zeus and Jupiter respectively.

On the right-hand side, there are five lines of magic words with a border around them. The border is in the shape of a „tabula ansata“. The term is Latin for „tablet with handles“ and refers to a rectangular inscription tablet with lateral attachments, which was popular in antiquity. Its purpose was to emphasise the inscription. The words of the magic papyrus bordered by the tabula ansata already appear in the first two lines in the same or in a slightly modified form: αβλαvαϑαvαβλα, αχραμμαχαμαρι, σεσενγενβφαραγης, Iao, and Sabaoth. The first word in the last line of the tabula ansata is made up of „ωρι“ (ŌRI) for „great is Re“, referring to the ancient Egyptian sun god, and „φερ“ (PHER), which was used as the beginning of several magic words.

Below the signa magica, the oval and the tabula ansata is a prayer addressed to the gods and angels, which can be translated as follows: „Protect Touthous, whom Sara bore, from all shivering and fever, tertian, quartan, quotidian, daily or every-other-day. Eloai angel Adônias Adônaei, protect…“ The time indications do not refer to the hoped-for protection, as one might think, but to the fever. This probably refers to the so-called swamp fever/intermittent fever (malaria), which spread in the Mediterranean region in ancient times. Already back then, there were different types, which were differentiated according to the frequency of fever attacks. The naming of the mother in the prayer is also worth mentioning. In Egyptian magic, it was customary to give the name of the mother rather than the father after the recipient of the spell.

The magic papyrus is a very detailed and meaningful example of the magical amulets that were popular in Ancient Egypt and during antiquity. They were worn on the body (like our magic papyrus, often as a necklace) and were intended to bring luck, protection and healing to the wearer. To do this, the magician sought help from deities, angels and other saints and charged the amulet with magical formulas. This becomes very clear in the case of our amulet: the writer repeatedly invokes mighty and powerful words, deities and angels, elements of astronomy as well as symbols of regeneration and eternity to unfold the magic and activate the protective spell. Amulets with spells against fever and chills were quite common. There were also many for clear vision or with love spells. Even newborns were given magical amulets for protection. However, they were intended to protect not only in this world, but also in the afterlife and therefore were buried with the dead. Amulets have survived to this day and are still (occasionally) worn as lucky charms. Ancient amulets such as this magic papyrus are therefore important, as they allow us to trace the development and long tradition of magical and protective amulets.

BGU III 953 (keine Inv.Nr.)

We have probably all written a shopping list at some point. Very few people think that this piece of paper could be found and examined many centuries from now. Nikon, the author of this order of herbs, certainly felt the same way. Unfortunately, the precise examination of the papyrus, which would certainly yield a lot of information, is no longer possible. Unfortunately it burned, along with other papyri, in a fire in the port of Hamburg in 1899.

Ulrich Wilcken and Heinrich Schaefer found this piece and several others during an excavation commissioned by the General Administration of the Royal Museums in Berlin from January to March 1899. The excavation took place in Ehnâs-Heracleopolis, which was located west of the Nile in Middle Egypt near today’s Ehnasya el-Medina, 15 kilometres west of Beni Suef. Ulrich Wilcken copied the list and some other papyri on site, which means that at least their contents are known. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that these copies were made by Wilcken with the idea that he could improve them later (when dealing with the pieces in more detail), which is why they cannot simply be viewed as perfect copies of the writings contents.

After these copies were made, many of the finds were loaded onto a ship in the spring of 1899. The ship was supposed to bring the approximately 80 boxes of papyri (two boxes of which already contained 250 layers of smoothed papyri wrapped in plant paper) safely to the port of Hamburg. From there it was planned to bring most of the load to Berlin. Unfortunately, shortly after the ship arrived, a fire broke out, causing the entire cargo to burn.

Thanks to Wilcken’s copy, we know that the papyrus consisted of six lines. The first line probably referred to the sender or the person who ordered, namely Nikon. The following five lines each consisted of an herb and a quantity, which was located to the right of the product and written out in full. In addition to the copy made, Wilcken dated the piece to the 3rd/4th century AD.

Just as we measure milk and flour in different units today and usually write them down on our shopping lists, you will also notice different measurements on Nikon’s order. In the second line of the list, the measure of five weight staters is used, which corresponds to approximately 8g. Staters were actually coins, but in addition to being used as a means of payment, they were also utilized as weights. Since the weight of coins has changed over time, but not staters as a unit of measurement, it is no longer possible to convert them reliably to today’s weight. In addition to the stater, the ounce is also used as a unit of measurement in Nikon’s order. This unit of measurement appears in lines two, four and six and corresponds to approximately 30g each. In the fifth line, the obol is listed as a unit of measurement.

To the left of the units of measurement were written various herbs. Andrea Jördens and Antonio Riccardetto translated these from Greek as follows: In the second line of the list, there is talk of Malabathron or Cinnamomum malabathrum, in the third of Costus or Costus arabicus and in the fourth, of Cassia or Cinnamomum iners (a type of cinnamon). The fifth speaks of Sesel, which can be understood as both Tordylium officinale and Blupleurum Fruticosum (“Shrubby Hare’s Ear”). Andrea Jördens assumes the second meaning. Back then, this herb as well as the others in the order, was apparently obtained from the southern and eastern trade. Finally, balsam woods are mentioned in the sixth line.

Two of the five herbs are easily identifiable as medicinal herbs, as there are some recipes for remedies from this period. On the one hand, the Costus arabicus, whose root was used as a versatile medicine, for example as a remedy for “knocks” (presumably fever).

On the other hand, the herb “spiral ginger” or Bupleurum fruticosum also appears in some recipes. It is believed that the present order is of spiral ginger, which may have been imported from Nubia. In addition to the use of the branches of this herb in worship, it sometimes was used for eye remedies, for uterine pain, for sunburns, to promote menstruation and so on. After Jean-Claude Goyon examined the Blupeurum in detail, he attributed to it a pain-relieving and antispasmodic effect due to its coniine content.

The three other herbs, however, are not necessarily known as medicinal plants. Although, some mentions and descriptions can be linked to two of the three plants. Some texts mention a spice that could be associated with cassia or cinnamon. For example, it is mentioned as a raw material imported from Punt (Somalia). In the Ebers Papyrus it is described as looking like “beans of Crete”, which unfortunately hardly helps with identification. However, some recipes mention parts of the plant, such as the root, the sawdust or flour and the wood. These parts can be associated with the cinnamon tree. The plant is used in different ways. The wood, for example, can be used to make the smell of clothes or the house more pleasant. The “sawdust” can be applied externally with other ingredients, to revitalize the vessels. Moreover, the roots are known as a chewing agent against tooth abscesses and to promote gum growth. When describing the embalming of the deceased, there might be a mention of cinnamon, which prepares the corpse with other fragrant herbs. The balsam wood, which is mentioned in the sixth and last line of the order, is unfortunately not specified in more detail. Most people talk directly about balsam or the “sap of the balsam tree”, which suggests a kind of resin product. The balsam wood or the balm is preferably used in products for the eyes. It is usually mixed with black eye make-up (mixture with galena) and other mineral substances.

A medical benefit of Malabathron cannot be ruled out, but a specific recipe or documentation of a specific application is not yet known of.

About the value of the individual plants in the 3rd/4th century AD nothing more precise can be said, although the import of the listed merchandise alone certainly had its price.

Although most of the herbs on the list have a medical use, their quantity and their different applications indicate that this is actually only an order and not a recipe nor a prescription. This means that we can deny Wilcken’s assumption that it may have been a recipe for a magic potion.

The importance of this single list may not seem very significant by today’s standards. But this piece harbours many unsolved mysteries. Is it actually a list, and if so, for what purpose? Who was Nikon? Had he perhaps invented a new cure? Was he researching something specific? Although this piece raises so many questions, it is valuable. It could give us, in conjunction with other lists and recipes, an impression of how rare and valuable some herbs were. It could also give us a clue which trade relationships were necessary for their procurement and perhaps how their meaning and value has changed over time. Therefore, this piece forms another small part of an infinite mosaic of information about the past.

O.Wilck. 1224 (P. 321)

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.

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

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.

P. 12311

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.