Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the contractual relationship between laborers and employers. As it was elsewhere in the ancient world, the economic form that labor took ranged from fully free labor in the household, to paid wage labor, to slavery (Chapter 9). As such, the texts that are presented here are generally concerned with free labor subject to certain contractual restrictions. Those restrictions, documented for example in the paramonê contracts (for which see also 5.5.2–3), included the stipulation to remain in a particular place to work during the length of the contract. The use of contracts to hire labor has an earlier history in the Ancient Near East. There was of course dependent labor particularly in agricultural work and domestic service (Chapter 9). In the periods covered by this volume, most labor arrangements were oral and therefore escape us entirely.

The preserved Ptolemaic contracts – only a few survive – are concerned generally with agriculture and related work, including the clearing of brushwood (8.1.1) and canal maintenance (8.1.3), or specifically with work in a so-called monopoly industry such as beer-making (not represented below). 8.1.2, however, is a private agreement between two parties for the manufacture of a yoke and basket.