Roger S. Bagnall

Landholding in Late Roman Egypt: The Distribution of Wealth

One of the most revealing aspects of any society is the distribution of wealth. In the ancient world, the stratification of landholdings essentially determined the stratification of wealth. There were, to be sure, many other kinds of wealth: funds and commodities for lending, urban rental property, productive enterprises, slaves, ships, and so on. To some extent these were no doubt owned by the same people who owned agricultural land, but the almost total absence of quantifiable data makes generalization difficult. Land, moreover, occupied a unique position in the economy and government of the Roman Empire, both practically and ideologically. The great bulk of taxation fell on the land, and almost all of the burdens of public service both in the cities and in the villages were attached to its ownership. That these disadvantages of land as a form of wealth were insufficient to deter the elite from desiring land is in some measure the result of the enormous ideological preference that all of classical antiquity attached to land as a form of wealth, an ideology connected in part to the relative stability of returns from landed property compared to those from other, more volatile, forms of wealth.

The effects of plague: model and evidence

In the foregoing article, W. Scheidel builds on earlier work, most notably that of R. P. Duncan-Jones in JRA 9, to offer a model for the predicted effects of the Antonine plague and to argue that the model fits the evidence from Roman Egypt reasonably well within the limits of the quantity and quality of the latter. In his second footnote, he encourages critical response, suggesting that it “may either corroborate or undermine my interpretation.” The following pages are intended as a contribution to that discussion, but with lesser ambitions than either corroborating or undermining the model as a whole. They offer some of both, in fact, but more in the direction of undermining it. There are three reasons for not claiming too much at this point and not offering any general conclusion (as I do not). The first is that I do not have any fixed views on the degree to which the plague was the prime mover behind the changes visible in late 2nd- and 3rd-c. Egypt. In the absence of any concerted attempt to formulate and test other hypotheses about the engines of social and economic change, it is hard to say if the degree of fit of evidence to model is impressive or not. The most obvious counter-candidate is the increased municipalization of Egypt during just this period, especially from A.D. 200 onward. It would be useful to generate a model of economic change from this force and see if it is equally capable of accounting for the evidence.

Greek and Latin Documents from 'Abu Sha'ar, 1990-1991

A considerable number of fragments of one or more Latin inscriptions was found inside and just outside the west gatehouse. Since one piece was found just inside the limits of the excavated area, it is entirely possible that more pieces remain in the ground. Rather than attempt any overall reconstruction, therefore, we shall describe the fragments and the circumstances of their finding, making such connections as the excavators found in the field and

The Chronological Systems of Byzantine Egypt 2

Egypt is the richest source of primary documents for the economy, society and everyday life of the late antique Mediterranean world. Its thousands of papyri provide insight into aspects and topics ignored by ancient authors. This handbook is an indispensable tool in navigating these documents, which use a host of complex systems to date legal transactions. Extensive tables and lists help the reader understand the use of consulates, the indiction cycle, eras, and dates by imperial reigns. Other formal aspects of the documents, including Christian invocations and sworn oaths, are also fully covered.

Stolos the Admiral

THE SUBJECT OF THESE PAGES has been known for many years but never studied in detail. He served Ptolemy IX Soter II as courtier and high official in the earlier part of that kings reign. In what follows I present the texts of inscriptions in which Stolos figures, four of them as published, two of them with new restorations. They are listed in what I take to be their chronological order; this scheme is defended in the commentary that follows.

Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt, with an Index of the Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt and Cyrenaica

Preface Introduction Inscriptions Appendix 1: inscriptions not considered to be Jewish Appendix 2: inscriptions from outside Egypt Appendix 3: Jewish names in Pagan inscriptions Indexes to the inscriptions of Egypt Indexes to the inscriptions of Cyrenaica Bibliography Abbreviations Concordance with CIJ and CPJ Plates.

Farming and Trade in Amheida/Trimithis (Dakhla Oasis, Egypt): New Insights from Archaeobotanical Analysis

This paper presents the results of the first archaeobotanical investigation carried out by the University of Salento archaeological team during the 2015 field season at the site of Amheida/ Trimithis in Dakhla Oasis, Egypt. The bulk of the recovered material consists of seeds and fruits from midden deposits that lay under the foundation of an upper class fourth century AD house and the adjoining school, and similar deposits beneath streets that flanked the house. Overall, almost 600 seeds were recovered. The archaeobotanical assemblage includes nine species of fruit trees. Among these species, three belong to the local, sub-arid, vegetation of the Dakhla Oasis, such as the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), Nile acacia (Acacia nilotica (L.) Delile Willd. ex Delile) and Christ´s-thorn ( Ziziphus spina-christi (L.) Desf.), while the rest are allochthonous species that could have been locally grown, or imported as food from other areas of the Mediterranean and the Far East. The olive tree (Olea europaea L.), which was introduced to Egypt from the Mediterranean areas of the Levant, is quite abundant at Amheida/ Trimithis , and its presence suggests that olives were an important source of food between the third-fourth century AD. As we know from the site of Umm Mawagir, in the nearby Kharga Oasis, olives were consumed in the oases already in the late Middle Kingdom (Cappers et al. 2013). Another species, which also comes from the Mediterranean area, is the carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua L.) Delile. Findings of carob seeds are recorded at Amheida/ Trimithis , as well as at the contemporaneous site of Ismant el-Kharab/Kellis, but nowhere else in the New Valley Governorate (Southwestern Egypt), suggesting that this species was introduced, at the earliest, during the Roman period. The presence of black myrobalan (Terminalia chebula Retz.), a species that is native to South Asia, might be indicative of a network of exchanges between Amheida\ Trimithis and localities on the Red Sea coast.

Inscriptions from Tombs at Bir esh-Shaghala

Excavations during the past decade by the Supreme Council of Antiquities have uncovered a number of cemeteries belonging to the ancient city of Mut (Mothis in Greek), which was the capital of the Dakhleh Oasis. At one of these, Bir esh-Shaghala, these excavations have found several large mud-brick tombs which originally had pyramidal superstructures and subterranean burial chambers. The authors publish here, in advance of a full report on the site, the Greek and demotic texts found on and in two of the tombs.

Family Papers from Second-Century A.D. Kellis

Edition of seven Greek 2nd-century C.E. papyri excavated at Ismant al-Kharab (Kellis). These documents (2 census declarations, 4 complete, respectively fragmentarily preserved contracts and 1 tax receipt) illustrate a relatively early phase of the occupation of the settlement. The census declarations suggest the existence of female professional spinners at Kellis.

O.Florida inv. 21: an amorous triangle

Edition of O. Florida Inv. 21 (second/third century), first presented by R.S.B. at the Twenty-Fourth International Congress of Papyrology. The text (in prose, but unmistakably comic in vocabulary and tone) is a piece of speech (mime or erotic epistolary fiction?), and presents a scene involving a sexual triangle (a man, a barbarian woman, and the speaker, who is male or female).