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Greek Religion And Epigraphic Corpora: What's Sacrae About Leges Sacrae?, Laura Gawlinski
Greek Religion And Epigraphic Corpora: What's Sacrae About Leges Sacrae?, Laura Gawlinski
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Latin phrase leges sacrae and its various translations (sacred laws, lois
sacrées, heilige Gesetze) have been applied since at least the nineteenth cen-
tury to various collections of inscribed documents. It is a modern invention
born out of the German Wissenschaft ideology of systematic, scientific, com-
prehensive methods of inquiry. This rubric and the collecting of Greek inscrip-
tions under it have always been recognized as problematically subjective, and
in the last decade or so a flurry of scholarship has critiqued the corpora more
directly. Much of this analysis has focused on the leges half of leges sacrae:
whether …
Payment Order For Cavalry Fodder: Sb Xiv 12116, James G. Keenan
Payment Order For Cavalry Fodder: Sb Xiv 12116, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Catholic University of America papyrus (Hyvernat inv. 372 = ICOR 75.73) was first edited by Leslie S. B. MacCoull as “An Account of Fodder for Pack-Horses”, ZPE 25 (1977) 155–158 with Tafel IV. It was subsequently reprinted as SB XIV 12116. At the end of the ed.pr., one of the ZPE editors, D(ieter) H(agedorn), proposed a different reading for the former lines 16–17 (now 17–18; see below, line 1 note). This has been accepted as correct and incorporated in the Duke Databank version of the text. Nevertheless, re-examination of the original publication has suggested that other improvements can be …
Il Dossier Della “Domus Divina” In Egitto, James G. Keenan
Il Dossier Della “Domus Divina” In Egitto, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The book builds upon seventy references, certain (SR) or conjectural (12), to the domus divina in Egypt. There are three major parts, labeled A, B, and C. Part A (pp. 4-52) discusses the testimonia according to defined topics. Part 1\ (pp. 53-121) catalogues them in chronological order into what the author calls a '"dossier."' (Numbers and references to assured testimonia are in roman, those to conjectural ones are in italic type.) Part C. (pp. 122·133) provides concordances and indices to the dossier. There are four brief appendices (pp. 134·144). One(!), by T.M. Hickey, provides an edition of P.Giss. inv. 48 …
A Labor Contract For A Pronoetes (P.Lond. Inv. )*, James G. Keenan
A Labor Contract For A Pronoetes (P.Lond. Inv. )*, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The document, the fourth of its kind to be published, is what the editors of the first and still most complete specimen (P.Oxy. I 136 = W.Chr. 383) called a “contract of a farm steward.”
Fragmentary List Of Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Fragmentary List Of Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The papyrus is after all a bit taller than described. There is a kollesis about cm 3,2 in from the left edge. Margins survive at the left, bottom, and right, but the papyrus is torn at the top where the ragged edge shows traces of a damaged first line not accounted for among the seven mentioned in the description.
P.Mich.Inv. 3272: Receipt For Embole From Aphrodito, James G. Keenan
P.Mich.Inv. 3272: Receipt For Embole From Aphrodito, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Edition of P.Mich. inv. 3272, a nearly complete sixth-century receipt for embo/e from Aphrodito.
Federico Morelli, L’ Archivio Di Senouthios Anystes E Testi Connessi. Lettere E Documenti Per La Costruzione Di Una Capitale, James G. Keenan
Federico Morelli, L’ Archivio Di Senouthios Anystes E Testi Connessi. Lettere E Documenti Per La Costruzione Di Una Capitale, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This is the first of two projected volumes whose purpose is to gather together, reassemble, select, and present Greek documents from the GreekCoptic archive of the notarios Senouthios, anystes of the northern skelos of the Hermopolite nome just after the Arab conquest. Most of the 32 documents in this volume are assigned by prosopographical associations, subject matter, and so on (“diversi elementi”) to ca. 643/4, based on a pivotal second indiction (see Introduzione, pp. 22-27), in other words, on the very cusp of the new Arab administration. The papyri are all Viennese. They are also all Hermopolite in provenance, but …
P.Got. 9: The Subscription, James G. Keenan
P.Got. 9: The Subscription, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
P.Got. 9 was published in 1929. It was subject to an immediate run of corrections proposed by distinguished reviewers (Bell, Schmidt, Schubart, and Zucker; see BL 2.2:69), but not until 1966 did it receive detailed re-examination. This was by R. Rémondon, “Papyrologica …,” CÉ 41 (1966) at 173-178 (emendations recorded in BL 5:36) in a discussion praised by Jean Gascou (Fiscalité et société en Égypte byzantine, Paris 2008, 47, n. 23: “son brillant commentaire de P.Goth. 9”), who himself offered a close analysis of the text and some of its difficulties (ibid. 177-178; original discussion dating to 1985).
Papyrology On The Threshold Of A New Millennium, James G. Keenan
Papyrology On The Threshold Of A New Millennium, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Papyrologists have met internationally as a group since 1930. Following various complications, including a meeting planned for Vienna for 1939 but never held and, of course, the devastating intrusion of World War II, a custom of triennial meetings was established. Recent meetings have been larger than the early ones, with more participants, more papers, and correspondingly bigger proceedings (cf. BASP 39 [2002] 213-227 on the 1998 congress in Florence). At Vienna in 2001 there were 281 registered participants. The program featured nine specially invited keynote speeches, 126 standard-length papers, and three workshops (with fourteen workshop presenters in all).
Landscape And Memory: Al-Nabulsi's Ta'rikh Al-Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Landscape And Memory: Al-Nabulsi's Ta'rikh Al-Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Uthman b. Ibrahim al-Nabulsi composed his description of Egypt's Fayyum province in the 1240s A.D. His Ta'rikh al-Fayyum starts with nine summary chapters followed by a massive tenth chapter, a geographical gazetteer arranged alphabetically by villages. The text is predominately concerned with the author's present day, leaving no doubt the region's landscape had changed significantly since late antiquity. Almost all the village names were Arabic. The people had been Arabized—and Islamicized: only small Christian pockets remained. The sacred landscape had been correspondingly reconfigured. Additionally, the Fayyum, which had experienced a shrinkage of arable land and a loss of villages in …
P.Lond. V 1876 Desc.: Which Landowner?, James G. Keenan
P.Lond. V 1876 Desc.: Which Landowner?, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
H.I. Bell described P.Lond. V 1876 as follows: Inv. No. 1626 B. Acquired in 1906. Provenance unknown. 4 1/2 in. x 3 1/8 in. 5th (?) cent. In an upright cursive hand, along the fibers. Probably folded right to left. Fragment from the left side of a document of uncertain character, but probably a lease. One party was Φλ(αύιος) [sic] Άπι[, apparently a court official (1. 2, πᾳλατίνου, perhaps but not necessarily miswritten for παλατίου); and Υεουχοὖντι ἐν[αὗθα in l. 2 recalls the Fl. Apion documents from Oxhyrhynchus; but the hand suggests an earlier date than theirs, and in them …
Deserted Villages: From The Ancient To The Medieval Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Deserted Villages: From The Ancient To The Medieval Fayyum, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article, originally delivered as a paper at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, is a development of twin papers given by Roger Bagnall and me at the xxe Congres International des Etudes Byzantines in Paris, 19-25 August 2001, as part of a "Table ronde" on villages in the Byzantine world. On that occasion, we were responsible for Egyptian villages, he for villages as evidenced (mainly) in the Greek papyri, I for the medieval period based on al-Nabulsi's description of Egypt's Fayyum Province, Ta 'rikh al-Fayyiim (c. 1245 A.D.). Thematically, we had agreed to explore such topics …
More From The Archive Of The Descendants Of Eulogius, Todd M. Hickey, James G. Keenan
More From The Archive Of The Descendants Of Eulogius, Todd M. Hickey, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
In P. Oxy, published in 1924, Grenfell and Hunt included a series of documents that seemed to derive from a small archive preserved by the descendants of a palatine official (παλατἷνος) named Flavius Eulogius: P. Oxy. XVI 1876, 1891, 1958-62, and 1994. Grenfell and Hunt reported that all these texts (except 1961) were found together; the circumstances of the find were unfortunately not reported.
Contributions To Columbia Papyri X, Jacqueline Long
Contributions To Columbia Papyri X, Jacqueline Long
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This urgent, secretive letter evidently refers to a planned financial coup. It is the first document to evidence a precautionary approach to the idios logos. The agitated writer's vocabulary, and a few rhetorical flourishes, also deserve notice.
The Aphrodito Murder Mystery: A Return To The Scene Of The Crimes, James G. Keenan
The Aphrodito Murder Mystery: A Return To The Scene Of The Crimes, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Early in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (Chapter III), Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, M.D., who have only recently met and begun to cohabit, find themselves in what becomes their familiar mode of conveyance, a hansom cab, "driving furiously for the Brixton Road" and thence to the scene of an apparent crime at 3 Lauriston Gardens. Watson recalls a morning whose glumness matched his own dismal mood, an edgy mood that was further exasperated by a Sherlock Holmes who, "in the best of spirits," ... "prattled away" about fiddles and violins: "You don't seem to give much thought …
Remarks On Some Tebtunis Papyri In Sb Xviii, James G. Keenan
Remarks On Some Tebtunis Papyri In Sb Xviii, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Twelve Tebtunis papyri from the University of California collection were included in Elbert Wall's 1983 Duke dissertation, New Texts in the Economy of Tebtynis. Previously accessible as P. Tebt. Wall on CD Rom 6 of the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, the texts were recently printed in hard copy in SB XVIII under numbers 1382-1393. I first saw the SB texts during a visit to Leuven in March 1995 and realized that they included some papyri that I had worked on during my years in Berkeley, 1968-1974. They were to be part of a lukewarmly projected fifth volume of Tebtunis …
The Will Of Gaius Longinus Castor, James G. Keenan
The Will Of Gaius Longinus Castor, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The document under discussion has recently been called "one of the very few examples of pure Roman law found in Egypt." It is the will of Gaius Longinus Castor, resident of the Egyptian village of Karanis, veteran of the praetorian fleet of Misenum, who died in the year 194. The will itself provides a freeze frame, a still point in time in Longinus Castor's life; but it also allows for some imaginative extension in space and time. The results are a brief, outline biography of the testator with some speculation on his career and family, and on the special objectives …
Papyrology And Byzantine Historiography, James G. Keenan
Papyrology And Byzantine Historiography, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Egypt of late antiquity, often referred to as Byzantine Egypt, was for years the outcast of papyrological studies. It is only recently, partly in the wake of studies on the reign of Diocletian and his fourth-century successors, that the keen interest of papyrologists and historians in Egypt of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods has carried over into the later period. Perhaps responsible for the old indifference was, as Remondon suggested a generation ago, the scholar's prejudice against those periods that are judged decadent; or, to put the matter as Johan Huizinga did in the preface to his 1919 classic, The …
A Constantinople Loan, A.D. 541, James G. Keenan
A Constantinople Loan, A.D. 541, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Nearly all the Greek papyri from Egypt concern the people of upcountry villages and towns--Syene, Aphrodito, Hermopolis, Oxyrhynchus, to mention several of the most important late antique sites. Rarely do the papyri broach the "exchangist world" of Fernand Braudel or S. D. Goitein with their thriving cities, long-distance trade, and commerical banking.2 Alexandria finds relatively frequent mention in the papyri, but cities beyond Egypt are rarely mentioned, and in the late antique period even the imperial capital, Constantinople, comes into play only a handful of times. No doubt this is because the ancient economy, and Egypt's most especially, was founded …
Evidence For The Byzantine Army In The Syene Papyri, James G. Keenan
Evidence For The Byzantine Army In The Syene Papyri, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
For more than seventy-five years, the standard work on the Roman army in Byzantine Egypt has been Jean Maspero's Organisation militaire de l'Egypte byzantine. Maspero's book was published in 1912, when the contents of the Syene papyri were as yet imperfectly known. At that time, Maspero had available for study of the Syene papyri: one London facsimile; an edition and reduced facsimile of a second London piece; one fully edited Munich papyrus; Wenger's "preliminary report" (Vorbericht) and its Munich papyrus extracts; and some additional information about the London papyri through correspondence with their assigned editor, Harold Bell.
Pastoralism In Roman Egypt, James G. Keenan
Pastoralism In Roman Egypt, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The communications of the IX International Congress of Economic History were recently (1988) published in a volume entitled Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity.1 The volume's papers very much follow, or anticipate, Deborah Hobson's advice to papyrologists in her essay, "Towards a Broader Context for the Study of Greco-Roman Egypt," Echos du Monde Classique 32, n.s. 7 (1988) 353-63. They rely as far as they can on literary and archaeological evidence, but where this fails (and even where it doesn't), they turn to the riches of comparative history and ethnology. Works prominently cited with praise include A.M. Khazanov's brilliant study of …
P. Cair. Masp. Ii 67135, James G. Keenan
P. Cair. Masp. Ii 67135, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The rent receipt, P.Cair.Masp. II 67135, was revised and re-edited by Gertrude Malz, Studi in onore diA. Calderini e R. Paribeni, II, pp. 351-52. The revision was based on parallel texts in P.Cair.Masp. III 67327 and PSI VIII 935 and facilitated by plate II at the back of P.Cair.Masp. II. Unfortunately, an important fragment of the papyrus as reproduced in the plate was positioned too high, see plate (a) below. It is of course possible visually to reposition the fragment when attempting to compare the text--as Malz did with good effect, and as I myself tried when proposing further revisions …
Tacitus, Roman Wills And Political Freedom, James G. Keenan
Tacitus, Roman Wills And Political Freedom, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
In a well-known letter to his friend Rufinus (8.18), Pliny the Younger opens with, and then develops, a remark about the will of one Domitius Tullus. There seems to have been a popular belief (quod creditur vulgo), formulated as an aphorism, to the effect that "men's wills are a mirror of their characters" (testamenta hominum speculum esse morum). But Tullus, a man of low repute who had assembled his estate by shady practices and who had tempted the legacy hunters, turns out to have made a fine will, characterized by pietas toward his adopted daughter whom he named heir, by …
Confidential Business: P. Col. Inv. 316, Jacqueline Long
Confidential Business: P. Col. Inv. 316, Jacqueline Long
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The papyrus is a medium buff color. Almost complete, the page misses its lower right corner (approximately 7 x 3.5 cm. along the margins), and grows increasingly worn and gappy towards the bottom edge. It was folded twice vertically about 4 cm. In from the margins: the righthand fold is particularly worn. No horizontal fold is evident. The papyrus is written along the fibers on both sides, having been rotated 90° for the address on the back. The front looks neat and professional. The top margin measures 2cm., the left .5 cm. and the right 1 cm.; continuation-strokes keep the …
Notes On Absentee Landlordism At Aphrodito, James G. Keenan
Notes On Absentee Landlordism At Aphrodito, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
In two recent articles, I tried to establish the existence in 6th-century Aphrodite of a cadre of local worthies who, in the system of village land management, while owners and acquirers in their own right, served also as middlemen for absentee landowners and for landowning churches and monasteries. One article centered on Aurelius Phoibammon, son of Triadelphus, the other, on Apollos, son of Dioscorus; but it was suggested in the second article that more than just these two Aphroditans filled this middleman role. A more limited case--because there is less evidence--might be made for Apollos' brother, Besarion; a stronger case, …
The Aphrodite Papyri And Village Life In Byzantine Egypt, James G. Keenan
The Aphrodite Papyri And Village Life In Byzantine Egypt, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The nearly one thousand years during which Egypt was characterized by a Greek-speaking elite have by papyrologists and historians traditional;y been divided into three periods: the Ptolemaic, which marks its beginning with Alexander’s invasion in 332 B.C.; the Roman, which begins with Octavian’s reduction of Alexandria in 30 B.C.; and the Byzantine, which starts with Diocleatian’s accession in A.D. 284 and ends with the Arab invasion of A.D. 639. The Greek papyri recovered from ancient Egypt’s cemeteries and waste heaps, whether by supervised excavations or by the less formal ‘excavations’ of the sebakh-diggers, especially toward the end of the nineteenth …
An Afterthought On The Names Flavius And Aurelius, James G. Keenan
An Afterthought On The Names Flavius And Aurelius, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
It has been ten years since publication in zpe (11 [1973] 33-63; 13 [1974] 283-304) of the long article on "The Names Flavius and Aurelius as Status Designations in Later Roman Egypt." During the past decade, papyrological colleagues seem to have approved, by word and in print, the article's theses; at the same time they have been kind enough not to throw too glaring a light on the occasional anomaly that requires attention or the occasional modification in detail that must be made. The general system by which the name Flavius was restricted to definite categories of Egypt's population, with …
Victor, Son Of Psaios, And Three Aphrodito Rent Receipts, James G. Keenan
Victor, Son Of Psaios, And Three Aphrodito Rent Receipts, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
PSI VIII 935, a receipt acknowledging payment of rent for land near the village of Phthla, was published in 1927. The editor in commenting on the text sought to connect it with two other papyri, both of them Phthla land leases: P. Flor. III 281 (A.D. 517) and P. Cair. Masp. I 67113 (dating clause lost at top). A third, related land lease is P. Lond. V 1689 (527). These three papyri form a small archive not obviously integral to the main set of papyri issuing from Aphrodite (modern Kom Ischkaw) and preserved in the sixth-century archive of Flavius Dioscorus. …
Aurelius Phoibammon, Son Of Triadelphus: A Byzantine Egyptian Land Entrepreneur, James G. Keenan
Aurelius Phoibammon, Son Of Triadelphus: A Byzantine Egyptian Land Entrepreneur, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
It has since the early days of papyrology been noted, and hardly needs repeating before this assemblage, that the documentary papyri bring the scholar closer to the common man of antiquity than can ever be possible through the literary sources that have been transmitted through the medieval manuscript tradition. The papyri provide numerous, if scattered, unselfconscious testimonies to the everyday activities of life, while the literature tends to focus on the deeds and to reflect the biases of men of power, wealth and literary culture. An example of that truism, striking (paradoxically enough) because probably so ordinary, is furnished by …
On P.Oxy. Xxvii 2479, James G. Keenan
On P.Oxy. Xxvii 2479, James G. Keenan
Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works
P.Oxy. 2479 is an unusual document in that, while it concerns an ?vaixOYpacpoe yecopyo?, it does not fit into either of the two classes of documents to which mentions of evaTioypacpoi yecopyot are otherwise almost exclusively restricted ? sureties and receipts for parts of agricultural machinery. ' It is instead a petition to his landlord from an evajioypacpoQ yecopyo? who had absented himself from his farm for three years and who has now asked for re-instate ment. The body of the text is written, as the editor observes, "in a straggling sixth-century hand with a marked inclination to the right." …