A survey of the almost two hundred letters written by Christians and prove-
nanced to Oxyrhynchus and its environs reveals they were sent by a wide
variety of persons. Letters were sent by both large and small-scale land
owners, by servants, entrepreneurs, artisans, adolescents, and in the post-
Constantine era, a number of officials and administrators. While most let-
ters were sent by males, it is notable that a few were also sent (and received)
by females, and lest it be forgotten, since these letters were written by Chris-
tians, that some were also sent by those who held an ecclesiastical office
61 Translation adapted from NewDocs 7.36–37. For some other letters that employ direc-
tions (σηµασία) in the address see: P.Laur. I 20 (Early III); P.Oxy. XIV 1773 (III); P.Oxy. XXXIV 2719 (III); P.Hamb. IV 267 (ca. 336–348). This unique epistolary practise seems to have started in the third century.
62 The editor of the ed. pr. took the person named and who is mentioned in the first
line as the addressee arguing that the genitive form of the name was a mistake and ought to be read as a dative (σηµασία τῶν ἐπιστολίων ῾Ρούφου). Nevertheless, Stephen Llewelyn is probably correct to argue that genitive is correct and the said Rufus is the sender of the letters (NewDocs 7.32).
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or wielded some ecclesiastical authority, such as Bishops, Elders, Priests,
Monks and Nuns. Given the wide variety of Christians sending letters it is
not surprising that the letters themselves are very diverse and treat a num-
ber of different subjects.
Yet, notwithstanding the general diversity of the letters, when it comes
to issues surrounding travel, and more specifically reasons for travel, some
obvious trends readily emerge. Perhaps the most apparent pattern is that
the letters give the distinct impression that a direct relationship often
existed between the motives for travel and one’s vocation, and that peo-
ple often travelled as their occupation required.
63Thus, if one worked as
a merchant, artisan, scribe, soldier, or was performing a liturgy, the letters
often depict such persons as travelling from place to place in direct connec-
tion with their work. On this front the most widely attested occupation in
the letters that required travel had to do with various aspects of agricultural
production and transportation.
64The dominant industry at Oxyrhynchus, as well as the rest of the Nile Val-
ley, was the production of various crops, especially grains. From the time
Augustus annexed Egypt and made it an imperial province in August 30 bce
until the Arab conquest and the last Byzantine garrison had set sail from
Alexandria in September 642 ce Egypt had served as the breadbasket for
both the Roman and Byzantine empires. Every summer huge shipments of
grain left the ports of Alexandria bound for Rome, and later Constantinople,
to feed the vast populations of these two cities, and every spring large ship-
ments of grain made their way into Alexandria from the various Metropoleis
of Egypt.
65It therefore comes as no surprise to see Christians involved in this
63
Kotsifou, “Papyrological Evidence of Travelling,” 57; J. Lindsay, Men and Gods on the Roman Nile (London: F. Muller, 1968), 143–145.
64
Far more people were employed in the various aspects of the agricultural industry than in any other single industry in Egypt. See Bowman, Egypt After the Pharaohs, 99; Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, 133.
65
According to Naphtali Lewis approximately six million artabae, or about 135,000 tons, of grain was exported annually from Egypt. See Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, 165; E.R. Hardy, The Large Estates of Byzantine Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 19–20. In J.Edict. 13.8 it reports that the annual corn export to Constantinople was about 8 million artabae. Cf. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 332, who gives a conversion rate for artaba to kilogram. An “artaba” (ἀρτάβη) was an Egyptian dry measure of wheat that corresponded to roughly 40 χοίνικες or 38.8 litres. It is believed that an average person could live on about 10 artabae of wheat a year. See Roger S. Bagnall, “Practical Help: Chronology, Geography, Measures, Currency, Names, Prosopography, and Technical Vocabulary,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, ed. Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 186–187; Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer, 49. Grain was harvested in the months of Pharmouthi and Pachon (April–May) just before the annual rise and inundation of the Nile.
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industry at various levels of production and transportation and to see them
frequently travelling throughout the Oxyrhynchite to do so.
66In fact, given
that multiple letters are concerned with various aspects of agricultural culti-
vation, production and transportation, they almost give the impression that
little else went on in the Oxyrhynchite outside of agriculture.
67Despite notions that the business of grain production was a fairly seden-
tary one, the letters reveal that travel was frequently involved.
68Workers
frequently moved from farm to farm for work, absentee landlords would
periodically travel to various estates, especially at harvest time, to person-
ally oversee that operations were running smoothly, and a number of indi-
viduals worked solely in the transport business, by land and by river, to
ensure that the required grain from the surrounding villages made it to
Oxyrhynchus and then down to Alexandria.
69Likewise, Christians work-
ing in various administrative positions, such as scribes or notaries, trav-
elled extensively throughout the Oxyrhynchite nome/pagarchy to register
grain-producing lands, to measure their various sizes and yields, and to help
oversee the transportation of grain from the estates and farms back to the
metropolis.
One of the first and most important tasks to be accomplished annually
at the beginning of every agricultural year was the measuring of the rise of
the Nile.
70Nilometers, as they were called, were set up at various locations
along the river to register how much the river rose so that the expected
intake of grain for that particular year could be calculated in advance.
71This
66
The approximate area of cultivated land in the Oxyrhynchite nome in the fourth century, notwithstanding periodic shifts in size, was about 202,534 arouras. See Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 335; Roger S. Bagnall and K.A. Worp, “Grain Land in the Oxyrhynchite Nome,” ZPE 37 (1980): 263–264.
67
Roger Bagnall makes a similar observation with Karanis and Theadelphia. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 127.
68
On the frequent movement of peasants and day labourers in the agricultural business see Cam Grey, “Letters of Recommendation and the Circulation of Rural Laborers in the Late Roman West,” in Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, ed. Linda Ellis and Frank L. Kidner (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 25–40.
69
To minimise travel landlords might hire πραγµατευταί/pragmateutai (commercial traveller/agent) and φροντισταί/phrontistai (managers) to oversee their estates while they remained in the metropolis. See Rowlandson, Landowners and Tenants in Roman Egypt, 267.
70 The writer of the fourth-century gazetteer Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium (chap. 34)
relates how the annual Nile flood literally covered most of the land: “you have the entire region of Egypt crowned by the river which is thus called the Nile, which going out irrigates the entire surface of the land and without effort it bears forth all fruit.” (Habes ergo omnem Aegypti regionem coronatam fluvio qui sic vocatur Nilus, qui veniens rigat omne faciem terrae, et fructum fert omnem sine oleo.)
71
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required that a number of individuals serving as couriers or land agents had
to frequently travel to and from the Nile during the period of its rising to
publish the measurements to various officials.
72P.Oxy. XVI 1830, a sixth-
century letter sent from the village of Takona to Oxyrhynchus, not only
renders the rise of the inundation over a three day period, attributing it to
“the power of Christ” (l. 6, τῇ δυνάµει τοῦ Χριστοῦ), but also reveals that the
land agents who had carried out the measurements had to make a roughly
30 km round trip to do so (from their village to the Nile and back again).
While the letter does not reveal if they made the trip every day or whether
they only made one trip and stayed at the river for three days measuring the
rise of the river, given the relatively short distance it is conceivable that they
could have made the trip daily for three consecutive days.
Like the measurement of the Nile, another task preliminary to cultivation
was the measurement and registration of various lands. Lands were not only
registered as public or private but were also registered as either “inundated”
or “uninundated,” “artificially irrigated” or “unwatered.”
73The primary pur-
pose of these distinctions was for tax purposes as different types of lands
were levied at different rates.
74In order to accurately assess all the produc-
tive lands, scribes and other officials travelled extensively to register them.
In one sixth-century letter, P.Oxy XVI 1842, certain scribes are specifically
instructed to “go out” and measure the “uninundated and unsown” lands so
that they could be registered. Likewise, in many other letters of the sixth
century, which was a time when especially large estates flourished, various
other estate and land agents even travelled well beyond the pagarchy to far
away holdings in order to properly register and document them.
75various rises in the Nile could signify for the harvest: “The province [Egypt] takes careful note of both extremes: in a rise of 12 cubits it faces famine, at 13 it still goes hungry, 14 cubits brings happiness, 15 freedom from worry, 16 delight.” (Pliny, N.H. 5.58). The most important nilometer was in Elephantine in the far south of Egypt because it was the first to register the annual rise. It would take about three to four weeks for the same rise to be felt in the Oxyrhynchite nome since it was located about 500 km north. In Elephantine the first rise was measured and then it was again measured at the peak time, couriers were then promptly sent out from Elephantine to Alexandria to begin calculations of the expected intake of grain.
72
Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, 109–110.
73 P.Oxy. VIII 1113 (III), the registry specifically points out that the piece of land is unwa-
tered. P.Oxy. XLII 3046 (III), the piece of land is described as uninundated and artificially irrigated. P.Oxy. XLII 3047 (III) also points out that the piece of land is uninundated and arti- ficially irrigated.
74 Roger S. Bagnall, “Agricultural Productivity and Taxation in Later Roman Egypt,” TAPA
115 (1985): 299–300.
75
P.Oxy. LVI 3870 (VI/VII) Thmoenepsis and Heracleopolis; P.Oxy. LVI 3871 (VI/VII) Heracleopolis.
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At this time the most notable large estate of the Oxyrhynchite in the sixth
century belonged to the family of the Flavii Apiones.
76The various estates
belonging to this aristocratic family extended well beyond the borders of
the Oxyrhynchite to include land in the Heracleopolite and Arsinoite. While
it was once thought that at its height this family’s estates occupied some
112,000 arouras (ca. 75,000 acres),
77more recently it has been argued that
their holdings were probably around 21,000 arouras (ca. 14,065 acres) at
most.
78Nevertheless, even with the substantial reduction in the calculations
for this family’s holdings they still possessed a massive estate. Among the
many documents that currently belong to the archive of the Flavii Apiones
are a number of letters, and given that this family was Christian and many
of their servants and employees were also Christians their extant letters
are useful for this study.
79While these letters disclose very little specific
information about the Christianity of the persons who sent them, or reveal
next to nothing about larger Christian issues in the Oxyrhynchite from
the late fifth to the early seventh centuries, the letters are particularly
76
Roberta Mazza, L’archivio degli Apioni: Terra, lavoro e proprietà senatoria nell’Egitto tardoantico (Bari, 2001), 20–38, who tabulates that published material from the archive of the Apiones includes almost 250 texts covering the period between 436 to 620/21. An additional twenty documents relating to this archive have come to light since the publication of Mazza’s work, most of these appearing in P.Oxy. LXX. For a general introduction see Peter Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17–28. Cf. Hardy, The Large Estates of Byzantine Egypt, 25–38.
77
Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602, 1.784, whose estimates amount to about 35 % of the total land in both the Oxyrhynchite and Cynopolite nomes. More recently Peter Sarris has drawn a similar conclusion to Jones arguing that the Apiones “owned at least a third of the cultivable land around Oxyrhynchus.” See Sarris, Economy and Society, 85–86.
78
Todd M. Hickey, “Aristocratic Landholding and the Economy of Byzantine Egypt,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300–700, ed. Roger Bagnall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 296.
79
Letters where Christian authorship is demonstrable and that are part of the archive of the Apiones include (listed chronologically): P.Oxy. XVI 1932 (early VI); P.Oxy. I 155– 157 (VI); P.Wisc. II 67 (VI); SB XVI 12485 (VI); P.Oxy. XVI 1830 (VI); P.Oxy. XVI 1829 (late VI); P.Oxy. I 158 (VI/VII); P.Oxy. XVI 1844–1861, 68 (VI–VII); P.Oxy. XVI 1936–1937 (VI/VII); P.Oxy. LIX 4006 (VI/VII); P.Oxy. VI 943 (ca. 612–618). The dates given for these letters are based upon the current dating in the HGV. Only these letters are considered as part of the archive of the Apiones since they are listed s.v. Apiones in the Trismegistos “Papyrus Archives in Graeco-Roman Egypt.” In Sarris, Economy and Society, 71 n. 1, he arranges the letters in a different chronological order and does not include certain letters and adds others. He does not include either P.Oxy. I 155 or SB XVI 12485 (VI) and adds P.Oxy. I 177 (late VI/early VII); P.Oxy. XVI 1941 (V); P.Oxy. XVI 1925 (VII) (this is not a letter, strictly speaking, but a list). Elsewhere he talks about the letter P.Mert. II 96 (VI) being a part Apionic Archive but this is not included in his list. See Sarris, Economy and Society, 26 n. 81.
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useful at this point.
80Primarily, because they show the close connection
between travel and vocation as they depict a number of lesser employees,
clerics, officials and administrators, crisscrossing the Oxyrhynchite nome
fulfilling everyday responsibilities having to do with agricultural production
and transportation and the maintenance and administration of the various
estates of the Flavii Apiones.
81During tax time, which conveniently coincided with the harvest in the
spring, the letters reveal that travel volume was especially high. Not only
were large shipments of grain being moved about by various individuals, but
tax collectors as well as landlords relentlessly traversed the chora collecting
dues.
82Additionally, this was the time when those evading or unable to pay
their taxes or rents most often took to their heels and illegally fled to other
regions to escape their debts.
83In P.Oxy. XVI 1840 (VI), a tax official writes to
a lesser administrator to inform him to, “send the administrators to the fields
to collect the dues, exhorting them to have many solidi ready for me. For as
the Lord lives (ζῇ γὰρ ὁ κύριος), if I do not find that they have shown much
zeal in collecting, I will punish them well.” In another letter, of similarly
harsh tone, the sender informs the addressee, “Ammon the Boy arrived in
these parts bringing twenty-five artabas of wheat by the measure of the lord
Pamuthius, … Say to Apollos the boy, ‘send me the remainder of the barley,’
since, God who is master of all things knows (θεὸς οἶδεν ὁ πάντων δεσπότης),
80
Beyond showing that the sender, and in most cases the addressee, was a Christian, since these letters frequently employ distinctly Christian symbols and Christian titles of address, they are not overtly Christian as they overwhelmingly deal with the realities of everyday life. On the Christianity practised by the Apiones see Hardy, The Large Estates of Byzantine Egypt, 29–36.
81
Those seeking a detailed treatment of these letters in terms of what they specifically reveal about the Apionic estate’s accounts, revenues, maintenance, etc., should see Sarris, Economy and Society, 71–80, who notes generally of these letters, “In addition to illustrating aspects of life on the Apion estates already encountered in the contractual papyri and accounts, the letters that we possess from the archive provide further evidence concerning the administration of the family’s properties.” According to Mazza the Apiones had holdings or are attested in 130 different toponyms within the Oxyrhynchite. See Mazza, L’archivio degli Apioni, Appendix 6. For an excellent study of the Apionic social networks that resulted from the maintenance of their large estate holdings see Ruffini, Social Networks, 41–146, who attempts to argue (pp. 94–146) that the Apionic bureaucracy had ties to roughly 15 % of the nome’s population.
82
For a detailed examination of the different facets of agricultural distribution and tenant and landowner relations in the Oxyrhynchite see Rowlandson, Landowners and Tenants in Roman Egypt, 123–124, 136–138, 266–272.
83
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if it turns out that I come, I will exact four times the amount from him.”
84Not
surprisingly, some letters ask for a temporary reprieve from taxes and rent
until they could procure the sufficient amount due.
85Apparently this was
sometimes granted as other letters depict tax officials returning to gather
taxes that are in arrears.
86The shipment of grain from various estates and farms to Oxyrhynchus
and then to Alexandria in the summer likewise required considerable travel
by a number of individuals. However, this task was considerably easier in
Egypt than elsewhere because of its topography, as almost every major city
in Middle and Upper Egypt was located in the Nile valley and was therefore
no more than twenty kilometres from the Nile waterway. Once the grain
from the various farms and estates had been collected and transported to
the granaries at Oxyrhynchus it was promptly loaded on ships bound for
Alexandria. P.Oxy. XVI 1929 (early VI), a fragmentary letter from a sailor to
a scribe named Abonas, informs him that he is in the process of procuring a
number of boats so that he can transport the grain immediately.
87In another
letter, P.Wash.Univ. I 8 (VI), a sailor, or possibly some other shipping officer,
entreats the official in charge of the transport of the grain at Oxyrhynchus
to have the ship loaded faster than usual and to be cleared for departure so
that the ship can return to Heracleopolis for some grain that was not loaded
previously.
While the letters, especially those from the Byzantine period, reveal
that Christians travelled extensively in connection with the various facets
of agricultural production, and subsequent taxation, they also reveal that
travel was frequently associated with a number of other occupations out-
side of the agricultural industry. Christians serving as local guards or soldiers
were frequently instructed via letter to move to different villages to put
down unrest and establish order.
88Likewise, those engaged in various busi-
ness pursuits travelled extensively looking to sell their wares. For example,
in one letter, dating from the late third or early fourth century, a certain
entrepreneur named Boethus informs his associate that he is travelling from
84 P.Oxy. LIX 4007 (VI/VII). 85 PSI VII 835 (late VI). 86 P.Oxy. XVI 1855 (VI/VII).
87 According to J.Edict. 13.24 the tax grain from the Thebaid was to be loaded on the river
boats no later than August 9. Since Oxyrhynchus was north of the Thebaid its shipments conceivably could be made later. In two other letters, P.Oxy. XVI 1871 (late V) and P.Oxy. VII 1071 (early), requests are being made for “immediate” access to boats so that grain can be shipped promptly.
88