Die Fiskalverkäufe von Land im kaiserzeitlichen Ägypten und ihre Dokumentation

The article deals with the bureaucratic procedures by means of which the Roman administration of Egypt used to sell arable land placed at the disposal of the state by way e.g. of confiscation. The land was sold at a fixed price and under the condition that the buyer was granted a period of tax exemption after the acquisition. One of the most important categories of land sold in this way was the „land of reduced revenue“ (hypologos) because it had not been cultivated for some time. By establishing the procedure described above the government aimed at attracting potential buyers by reducing their investment costs for the recultivation of the land in order to resume the collecting of the taxes. Besides the analysis of the bureaucratic procedures which were necessary on the various level of the administration for the execution of such sales the contribution also investigates the problems connected to the fixing of the purchase price of the land in question

Proposal for three Greek papyrological characters

This is a proposal to add three Greek characters to the international character encoding standard Unicode, needed to represent text on papyri. The characters were published in Unicode Standard version 7.0 in June 2014

Particle-usage in documentary papyri (I – IV AD): an integrated, sociolinguistically-informed approach

In this article, I discuss the semantic and syntactic properties of different types of particles. I argue that it is worth taking into account yet another descriptive dimension, that is, the social dimension. By making reference to three social parameters, that is, ‘social status’, ‘social distance’, and ‘agentive role’, I argue that the particles under analysis can be considered ‘social markers’: together with other linguistic elements, they indicate that a text belongs to a higher social stratum. The corpus used for this study consists of documentary papyri from the Post-classical period (I – VI AD), more in particular letters and petitions contained within so-called ‘archives’

La importancia económica y teológica del lugar de nacimiento de el ibis

The article gives a new explanation for the masses of sacred ibises and their remains inside the Egyptian ibis burial places (Ibiotapheia) especially in Ptolemaic times. We find no traces of a continuous flow of pilgrims visiting sanctuaries of Thot and offering single ibis mummies to venerate Thot privately. The many new Ptolemaic nourishing places of the ibis (Ibiotropheia/Ibion) are economically closely connected to the distribution of new Fields of the ibis, sold by the administration also to foreigners like kleruchoi-soldiers. This happened in combination with the installation of many new cult places and cult statues of Ibis- and Baboon-gods, all maintained by an Ibion-organisation. Every newly founded local ibion in the Nile valley delivered selected sacred ibises to a new local Greek-Egyptian Hermaion where they fulfilled roles of gods during feast days and oracle procedures. Collection of dead ibises from the Ibion and their deification, then the mass burial of all animal remains and finally the rebirth of young sacred ibises inside an Ibion secured the immortality of the Ibis-god. This Ibis-god protected all over Egypt the pharaoh’s New Year feast and his enthronisation corresponding to the mythological role of the ibises as supporters of Thot during the first creationEl presente artículo ofrece una explicación nueva de las inmensas cantidades de ibis sagrados y sus restos en el interior de los enterramientos de ibis (Ibiotapheia) egipcios, sobre todo en época ptolemaica. No hallamos restos de un flujo continuo de peregrinos que visiten los santuarios de Thot y que ofrezcan una momia de ibis para venerar a Thot de manera privada. Los numerosos lugares de cría de los ibis (Ibiotropheia / Ibion) de nueva creación en el periodo ptolemaico se encuentran estrechamente conectados desde el punto de vista económico con la distribución de nuevos Campos de los ibis, vendidos por la administración incluso a extranjeros como soldados clerucos. Esto ocurrió en combinación con la instalación de nuevos lugares de culto y estatuas de culto de dioses ibis y babuinos en gran cantidad, todos ellos mantenidos por una organización Ibion. Cada nuevo ibion local que se fundaba en el Valle del Nilo proporcionaba ibis sagrados seleccionados a un nuevo Hermaion local grecoegipcio, donde desempeñaban el papel de dioses durante los días de fiesta y los procedimientos oraculares. La reunión de ibis muertos desde el Ibion y su deificación, luego el enterramiento en masa de todos los restos animales y, finalmente, el renacimiento de ibis sagrados jóvenes en el interior de un Ibion aseguraba la inmortalidad del dios Ibis. Este dios Ibis protegía la fiesta del Año Nuevo del faraón en todo Egipto y su entronización, en correspondencia con el papel mitológico de los ibis como seguidores de Thot en el primer momento de la creació

ἔγραψέ μοι γάρ ... τὰ νῦν οὖν γράφω σοι. οὖν and γάρ as inferential and elaborative discourse markers in Greek papyrus letters (I – IV AD)

I analyse the use of the particles οὖν and γάρ in a corpus of documentary texts ranging from the first to the fourth century AD. I attempt to answer three main research questions: (i) with what frequency are οὖν and γάρ used; was one of these particles used more frequently than the other?; (ii) what are the functional/syntactic similarities and differences between the two particles; (iii) are there signs of functional development? My observations are framed within ‘discourse marker theory’, whereby οὖν and γάρ are viewed as ‘inferential’ and ‘elaborative’ discourse markers