... even some all the way from Alexandria. The mummies with the cartonnages were found by archaeologists from Berlin, Germany, in the early twentieth century. They dissolved some of the cartonnages.

The papyri from early Roman Alexandria were recovered from mummy cartonnages found at Abusir el-Melek near Heracleopolis. The “green” mummifiers there recycled government waste paper ...

In the last 25 years more papyri from Alexandria have been identified among the leftovers from the early twentieth century in Berlin, and more cartonnages have been dissolved. More remain to be dissolved.

So far about 120 Greek texts from early Roman Alexandria have been published, mostly without translation and commentary. There are known to be about 60 unpublished texts in addition to this. Under the original arrangement between Berlin and Egypt some papyri from the cartonnages from Abusir el-Melek were returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where they can be inspected upon request. Other papyri were lost when the Berlin papyrus collection was temporarily removed from the city in 1945. A few of the papyri deemed lost turned up in Warsaw where they are kept in two different collections. The bulk of the texts is available for study in the Berlin Egyptian Museum.

These texts are the closest thing to an archive we have from an ancient metropolis. Alexandria was the largest city of the ancient world after Rome. The texts recovered are concerned with just about every aspect of urban life in Alexandria. There are several texts dealing with loans. There are documents of marriage and divorce. There are wet-nursing and other labor contracts. There are leases of workshops and agricultural property outside, but close to, Alexandria. There are petitions and letters. There are records of private clubs and other associations. There is even an apprenticeship contract for a flute player. In sum, a detailed impression of life in ancient Alexandria can be gained from these texts. We have no such material from ancient Rome, Carthage, Antioch or Constantinople.

The texts date from the first years after the Roman conquest of Egypt. The range attested thus far is from 26 to 6 BC. The bulk of the texts come from a single year, 13 BC. This makes these texts even more interesting than they would be for any other period, because this was a time of transition from Ptolemaic to Roman Egypt, from an independent state to a province of a larger empire. The Romans made the first changes in the Ptolemaic administrative system in the very years from which these texts date. The administrative office that produced and – fortunately for us – discarded these texts was located in the old Ptolemaic court, where Cleopatra had resided only a couple of years earlier.

Our specialized bibliography on papyri from early Roman Alexandria

The dossier of C. Iulius Philios

Send your comments to ancient.history@classics.uc.edu.

© Peter van Minnen 2007