DEMOTIC PAPYRI AND OSTRACA
BY WILHELM SPIEGELBERG
The two papyri which I propose to call in future Papyrus Carnarvon I and
II are of great importance on account of their date.[21] They both bear
the protocol of a local king who reigned in Upper Egypt under Ptolemaios
Epiphanes (205-181 B.C.). The king is named Harmachis, and so far there
are known to exist only three other contracts of his time, two in the
Berlin Museum (Demotic Pap. Berlin, Nos. 3142-4, 3145), dated in his
third and sixth years, and another mentioned in the _Revue
Égyptologique_, I, p. 121 (the collection in which it is preserved not
being mentioned), is dated in his fifth year.
The two Carnarvon papyri are dated in the fourth year, and their
protocol reads: ‘Year 4 in the month of Athyr of King Harmachis, living
eternally, beloved of Isis, beloved of Amonrasonter, the great god.’
In the first papyrus (Pap. Carnarvon I, Pls. XXXV, XXXVI) a woman
Senobastis sells 1½ cubits of waste land (about 40 square metres),
situated in the endowed land of the god Amon near a place
P-ohi-n-p-mehen, to a herdsman (?) and slave of the god Amon, Psenesis.
The second papyrus (Pap. Carnarvon II, Pls. XXXVIII, XXXIX) concerns a
sale of arable land in the same region between the herdsman (?) and
slave of the god Amon, Pachnumis and Paos bearing the same titles.
Paos and Psenesis were brothers, a fact which makes the two papyri part
of the acts of the same family. They are signed by the same public
notary, ‘Petamenophis, the son of Petemestus, ... who writes in the name
of the priests of the god Amonrasonter,’ and among the sixteen witnesses
on the verso of the papyri eleven are identical in both texts (Pl.
XXXVII. 1 and 2).
These two documents concern two different sales of temple land in the
same Theban region between different contractors, of whom two are
members of the same family. As we know that in Ptolemaic and Roman times
every sale was concluded by two documents, the agreement for sale
(συγγραφἠ πρἁσεως) and the contract of cession (συγγραφἠ ἁποστασἱου), it
is evident that we have only half of the complete acts of the two
sales, viz. the sale agreements. Now in Pap. Carnarvon I on the right
margin opposite line 4 there is a part of a sign (not given in the
plate) which may be the end of a line of another text. This may belong
to the lost contract of cession written upon the same roll as the
existing written agreement. At any rate the two documents are not
complete, they are only the sale agreements, and their juridical
complements, i.e. the Cession Acts, may still turn up some day.
OSTRACA.
Among the thirty-three demotic ostraca, i.e. demotic inscriptions upon
potsherds and limestone flakes, found among the Ptolemaic remains in the
upper stratum of Site 14, and all of the Ptolemaic period, only one has
a definite date.
It is of ‘the year 21 of the kings Ptolemaios son of Ptolemaios and of
Ptolemaios, his son,’ i. e. of Ptolemaios II, Philadelphos, and his son
Euergetes I (about 265-264 B.C.). The texts contain tax receipts,
contracts, accounts, and lists of workmen.
One ostracon is of a quite unusual type (Pl. XXXVII. 3). Perhaps it is
the receipt for the fee of a contract concerning a sale of land; the
text is signed by Thothmosis, and has the date of ‘the year 4 the 30th
(?) Choiak’.