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An Egyptian Village in the Age of Justinian1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

H. I. Bell
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Extract

If you should ever attempt to motor from Assiût southwards to Baliana and Luxor—an enterprise I do not recommend, for the roads are vile—and, after some twenty-five miles of bumping and shaking, should decide, as my companion decided, to try your luck on the opposite side of the Nile Valley, you will come, after a few miles of a straight but evil road leading west, to another which runs southward again beside a canal separated by about a hundred yards of sandy plain from the great cliffs which form the escarpment of the Libyan Desert. The road which you have reached is no better than the one you have left, the dogs of the district are of a ferocity I found nowhere else in Egypt, and the human inhabitants are surly and hostile; but the natural amenities are considerable. The ordinary Egyptian canal, and so, by consequence, the road which normally runs along it, stretches without a bend for miles, but this particular canal at this point, conforming to the line of the cliffs, which here swing out eastwards, curves round in a great arc, and the road follows. The bank is shaded by a long line of palm-trees, and the view westwards, the reddish-brown trunks and feathery green fronds of the palms seen against a background of yellow sand and red cliffs, is delightful. Turning to the east one sees, stretched out in long perspective, the utter flatness of the Nile valley, clothed in the exquisite green of the young crops, out of which villages rise here and there like islands in a great lake. One such village, seen not far from the road shortly after we have turned to the south, makes a particularly charming effect.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 64 , November 1944 , pp. 21 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1944

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References

2 Lefebvre, , Fragm. d'un manuscrit de Ménandre, p. ix fGoogle Scholar.

3 P. Lond. 1674.

4 P. Cairo Masp. 67019.

5 P. Cairo Masp. 67002, II, 18.

6 The main motive was very likely the desire for something to counterbalance the power of the nobility, but it is not possible to say why particular villages were selected.

7 See, e.g., P. Cairo Masp. 67138, 67139, 67140, etc. The 5th–9th indictions mentioned in the accounts are probably the years 526–531 rather than 541–546. Arguments for the earlier date: Hand of accounts; Apollôs, father of Dioscorus, appears to have been his ὑποδέκτης (P. Cairo Masp. 67138, IV, 2; cf. 67062, 67323, 67347), and Apollôs was dead in 547 and very likely several years earlier; in 67140 (republished P. Cairo Masp III, p. 1) reference is made to the codex of the censitor John as if he were alive (in later papyri he is dead). For a big feudal domain at Aphrodite, perhaps this one, see also Aegyptus IV (1923), 43–8Google Scholar, dated . A first indiction began in 537, Tybi began on 27th December, A.D. 537 was the second post-consulate of Belisarius, Flavius Johannes becoming consul in 538. Apparently, despite the consulate, this contract is to be dated in January 538.

8 P. Lond. 1691.

9 Ferrari, G., Tre Papiri Inediti, 3, in Atti R. Ist. Ven. lxvii, 1190 fGoogle Scholar. = P. Flor. 280.

10 P. Flor. 280.

11 P. Cairo Masp. I 67124.

12 P. Cairo Masp. 67060 = Wilcken, , Chrest. 297Google Scholar.

13 The magni possessores.

14 Sic.

15 If the Bêsarion of P. Cairo Masp. 67124 (see above, note 11) was indeed our Bêsarion, it may well be, since he is there prôtocômêtês, whereas Apollôs was only boêthos, that he was the elder.

16 He appears in P. Cairo Masp. I 67107, which Maspero dates tentatively in 540, but his reason for doing so is not conclusive. It is perhaps more likely to be of 525.

17 P. Flor. III 283.

18 P. Cairo Masp. II 67126.

19 P. Cairo Masp. 67126.

20 P. Cairo Masp. I 67096.

21 P. Cairo Masp. I 67108. Maspero, , Rev. ét. gr., xxiv, 1911, 461Google Scholar, dates the death of Apollôs in 542, but the documents he cites in proof merely show Dioscorus entering into legal contracts independently, which of course he would do after his father had retired from the world and before his death. Apollôs is not referred to in either of them as ‘the late.’

22 P. Lond. 1702; P. Cairo Masp. III 67319, 16. The second passage suggests that Menas was on bad terms with Dioscorus.

23 P. Cairo Masp. I 67108, 7; II 67134.

24 P. Lond. 1677, 23. I neglect P. Cairo Masp. 67026, 67028, which are Imperial rescripts copied by Dioscorus and relating to a person of that name. The facts there stated (certainly in the first and probably in the second) are so utterly irreconcileable with all we know from other evidence about the family that one must assume one of three things: (a) the Dioscorus concerned is a different man; (b) the rescripts are not genuine but a literary exercise; (c) the rescripts are translations of genuine Latin documents, done for practice, and Dioscorus substituted his own name for the original one. The first or last supposition seems the likeliest.

25 P. Cairo Masp. 67064.

26 P. Cairo Masp. 67026, 67027, 67028; see above, note 24.

27 P. Cairo Masp. 67172–4.

28 All these three edited by G. Lefebvre.

29 P. Cairo Masp. 67175.

30 P. Cairo Masp. 67176 verso.

31 P. Cairo Masp. I 67089 recto, B.

32 That is, the danger of the Duke's justice.

33 The private mercenary troops kept by the semi-feudal nobility.

34 P. Cairo Masp. III 67316 verso, 1–8.

35 P. Cairo Masp. III 67353 verso, C.

36 Milne, H. J. M., Cat. of Lit. Papyri, 100 AGoogle Scholar.

37 Ibid. 100 B.

38 P. Cairo Masp. I 67097 verso, F.

39 P. Cairo Masp. II 67183.

40 P. Cairo Masp. II 67188.

41 P. Cairo Masp. I 67024 verso. As an illustration of the curious jumble of pagan and Christian which characterised the period in general and the mind of Dioscorus in particular I may mention that this is preceded by a prayer, strongly tinged with gnosticism.

42 P. Cairo Masp. I 67097 verso, F.

43 Milne, op. cit. 98.

44 Ἠελίωνι, possibly indeed used for Helios, but more probably a patronymic, referring to Phaethon.

45 Dioscorus must have thought that ἐπίηρος had a bad sense.

46 P. Cairo Masp. III 67295 (1).

47 I ought to explain that this part of the papyrus is mutilated and that the restorations of lacunae are conjectural; but the general sense is fairly certain.

48 Ed. Bell, and Crum, , Aegyptus, VI (1925), 177–226Google Scholar.

49 Ll. 247–9.

50 Ll. 250–1.

51 P. Lond. 1718.

52 P. Cairo Masp. III 67283.

53 P. Cairo Masp. I 67024.

54 τῆσδε [τῆ]ς κώμης; ὅδε is often used in drafts as = ὁ δεῑνα and probably this is the sense here. As the document was a draft it was not thought necessary to insert the name.

55 This suggests that Dioscorus made two journeys to Constantinople. The context makes it unlikely that this is a loosely worded reference to his father's visit.

56 P. Cairo Masp. I 67087 (A.D. 543), etc.

57 P. Cairo Masp. I 67032.

58 For autopragia see also the petition in P. Cairo Masp. I 67019.

59 Martin, , Journ. Eg. Arch. xv (1929), 96–102Google Scholar.

60 P. Lond. 1692.

61 P. Cairo Masp. I 67097 verso, A. For the date see P. Lond. v p. 57.

62 P. Cairo Masp. I 67170, 67171. Or A.D. 564 (see Maspero's note); 565 seems the likelier (see Comfort, H., Aegyptus, xiii, 1933, p. 604Google Scholar). Maspero takes the two papyri as duplicates of the same contract; Comfort plausibly suggests that one may be a renewal of the other for a different year. In that case, in view of the events following 565, it is probable that 67170 (in which the numbers are lost) is the earlier, perhaps 564.

63 P. Lond. 1686.

64 P. Cairo Masp. I 67002.

65 It is not very clear what is meant by this phrase and Maspero does not explain. Was Justin Prefect of the Praetoria of the Orient, to whose authority the Duke of the Thebaid was no doubt subject?

66 Dioscorus here reaches a rotundity of utterance which makes his exact meaning somewhat obscure. ‘Amendment’ is my rendering of περιπέτειαν, here apparently used in a good sense, a change from bad to good fortune.

67 P. Lond. 1677.

68 See P. Lond. V p. 56.

69 P. Cairo Masp. II 67131 verso, A.

70 P. Lond. 1677.

71 P. Lond. 1708, 1709.

72 P. Lond. 1674.

73 Ll. 93–8.

74 P. Cairo Masp. III 67291.

75 See P. Lond. V p. 57.

76 P. Cairo Masp. III 67325; see fol. viii verso. Maspero takes this Apollôs as Dioscorus's father, who, he holds, died some time about 542, but it is most improbable that documents so old (tax-receipts and so quite ephemeral in importance) would be copied in a book containing documents of 585. This is the very end of the book; hence the 8th indiction, for which the payment is made, may be the year 589–90. In that case these receipts were perhaps addressed, after Dioscorus's death, to his son. It would be normal to give the grandfather's name to the son.

77 Except the 8th indiction mentioned in the preceding note; the receipts are not in Dioscorus's hand.

78 P. Lond. IV 1380.