HISTORIA Y DESARROLLO DE LA EMPRESA

Ann Ellis Hanson

Homer’s Menelaus spent time in Egypt on his way home to Mycenae after the Greeks sacked Troy, and the king of Egyptian Thebes gave him glorious gifts as he departed, including a silver weaving basket for his wife and a golden distaff. Helen kept Egyptian medicaments and anodynes among her possessions, for Homer pictured Egypt a country of fabulous wealth, a treasure trove of the wisdom of the ancients, and, as he had done with the Trojans, he imagined no language barrier to prevent his Greeks from communicating with Egyptians. In the seventh century bce trade flour-ished in and around Naucratis, a Greek enclave on the Canopic branch of the Nile, and by the time of the historian Herodotus’ visit in the mid-fifth century Egypt had been absorbed into the aggressively expanding Persian Empire. Two centuries later Alexander the Great and his Macedonians arrived in Egypt as welcome conquerors of the unpopular Persian king and they became the country’s masters, gradually opening up fertile areas to exploitation by fellow Greeks and building the cosmopolitan city on the Mediterranean coast whose outlines Alexander had merely sketched out before his departure for conquests further east. He never revisited this Alexandria again while still alive. Hellenophones from the islands and the littoral of the eastern Mediterranean eagerly immigrated into Egypt: many stayed near the coast in the first years, as Alexandria developed into a commercial hub that linked the Nile valley and eastern emporia on the Red Sea and beyond to the Mediterranean. A dazzling intellectual and cultural capital came into existence and it speedily eclipsed the glories of Athens. By the middle of the third century bce improved irrigation encour-aged settlements into the country districts and small villages of the Delta and further south into the large oasis called the Arsinoite nome.

Ptolemaic monarchs encouraged Egyptians of the wealthier strata to learn the language of their conquerors, and in the cities and larger towns Greek was the language most often heard on the boulevards and colon-naded streets, although the Egyptian language remained dominant in the

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countryside and its hamlets. Roman influence spread into the eastern Mediterranean during the second century bce along with Roman armies, and interventions became frequent in thefirst century, culminating in the struggle for supremacy among the Triumvirs who assumed power at Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar (44 bce). Cleopatra vii, the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony), were defeated on 2 September 31 bce at the naval battle of Actium by Caesar’s great nephew Octavian, who would become Augustus. Egypt was there-after a province of the Roman Empire, but Romans neither pressured nor encouraged Egyptians to learn Latin. Rather, in common with the rest of the eastern Mediterranean, Greek continued as the language of documents and other written communications, both public and private, and those Egyptians with property to protect needed either to know enough Greek to read texts prepared for them by professional scribes and to append their signature, or, if illiterate in Greek, to engage trustworthy others to read and write for them. Illiterates in Egypt inhabiting peasant villages of the countryside repeatedly relied on the same person, or persons, year after year, chosen from a work environment, from the neighborhood, or from the family, and in the Roman period capable individuals were present in sufficient numbers to do some writing and reading of Greek for those unable to do so for themselves.¹To be sure, a new hierarchy of status was instituted under the Emperor Augustus, with Roman citizens at the top;

also privileged were citizens of Alexandria and the other cities with Greek constitutions and governmental structures (four such, after Hadrian founded Antinoopolis about 130 ce). The rest of the population was lumped together as“Egyptian,” and the special status the Ptolemies had awarded those of Greek and Macedonian descent evanesced and eventually disappeared. The more Hellenized inhabitants of the capital cities, or metropoleis, of the nomes, nonetheless enjoyed tax benefits denied other Egyptians, and they enjoyed a more sophisticated life-style. The Greekness of these metropolitans became more pronounced over time, as local and imperial euergetism fostered the development of the accoutrements of Greco-Roman daily living– aqueducts and baths, gymnasia, theaters, civic buildings of many types.² Most male inhabitants in Roman times were bilingual to some degree, able to understand at least a bit of Greek, as well as their native Egyptian, depending, of course, on how vital what was being said was to an oral conversation. Peasant men of the farming villages

1 Hanson1991: 166–70. ² Lewis1983.

Efforts by Egyptian villagers to write Greek

had greater opportunity to acquire Greek, no matter how poor or disad-vantaged, than did their womenfolk, who sometimes required that letters in Greek even from kin be translated for them.³

The Egyptian language was represented in different scripts over the course of millennia, beginning about 3000 bce with the pictographic hieroglyphs, painted on walls of temples and tombs or incised on blocks of stone for display; the later scripts, such as hieratic and from the seventh bce onward demotic, were better suited to rapid writing executed with a brush on papyrus. Demotic continued to represent Egyptian in everyday communications throughout the Ptolemaic period and into the reigns of Julio-Claudian emperors, but then it peters out as a script of daily use, retreating into temple enclaves for the copying of religious and literary texts.⁴ That the Egyptian language continued to maintain a vigorous presence, even when not being written, is demonstrated by the speedy acceptance of the new Coptic script in the third century ce, based on the Greek alphabet plus letters from demotic to represent Egyptian phonemes not present in Greek. So dominant had Greek become that the statement

“he or she does not know letters” characterized those illiterate in Greek and ignored competence in Egyptian. Employing documentary papyri as a means to investigate levels of literacy in Roman Egypt had its beginnings with Ernst Majer-Leonhard and his catalog of illiterates and semi-literates early in the twentieth century.⁵In the decades that followed, the topic of literacy has been probed with ever-greater intensity and sophistication, drawing literary and subliterary papyri into the equation and problematiz-ing anecdotal evidence from the many documents that continue to accumulate to this day.⁶ The last quarter of the twentieth century, in particular, was crowded with important and nuanced observations, such as R. Thomas’s insistence in 1992 that while the Greek and Roman worlds give the impression of being literate societies, evidence for orality persists at many levels, underscoring its primacy. Equally important for dealing with papyri from the ancient schools have been Raffaella Cribiore’s

3 Rowlandson 1998: 311, papyrus no. 246, translation of SB xviii 13867, TM no. 27679. For bibliographical references to editions of papyri referred to in this paper only by their conventional abbreviations of titles, see Oates et al.

4 Bagnall2011: 32–9, for the writing of Greek and Egyptian in the Hellenistic period, and pp. 74–94, for the emergence of Coptic.

5 Majer-Leonhard1913: 69–73, who isolated the documentary formulae expressing inability to write.

See now Werner2009: 333–52.

6 See Papaconstantinou2010, for a recent overview of multilingualism in Egypt from the Ptolemies to the penetration of Arabic under the Abbasids, punctuated with evidence from individual case studies.

identifications and descriptions in 1996 of the various levels of handwriting, especially the hand teachers used when producing attractive, yet legible models for their pupils to copy. The provocative question with which W. V. Harris began his wide-reaching study of literacy in the Mediterranean basin,“How many people could read, how many people could write in the Graeco-Roman world?,” has remained of necessity unanswered, for Harris’s intention was not to urge a scholarly consensus that would coalesce on a specific percentage.

Rather, he demonstrated beyond shadow of a doubt that modern guesses about literacy levels in the ancient world often lack grounding in the ancient evidence and also tend to be overly optimistic, even for the Roman period, when evidence is most abundant. The vast majority of ancient peoples were unschooled and lacking opportunities for extensive writing and reading. Low socio-political status and poor economic prospects marked those thus disadvan-taged: they were the inhabitants of small villages, hamlets, isolated farmsteads, not those living in large towns and cities; they were borrowers, renters, hired laborers, and women, and not the propertied. There were, of course, excep-tions, and their stories embellish and enliven Harris’s text and footnotes.

Early on Harris alerted his readers to the possibility that not only was some basic learning likely to take place in the home, as literate and semi-literate fathers and mothers, perhaps aware of the role writing and reading played in their own lives, passed on whatever knowledge they had to their own children (pp. 15–16, 274). A cross-generational example has been identified through resemblance between the signatures penned on papyrus by Aurelia Charite, a wealthy landowner at Hermopolis in the middle of the fourth century ce, and the penmanship of her mother Demetria.⁷Demetria has seemed the more skillful writer of the pair, although both women write slowly, giving individual articulation to many of their letters. Neither woman was in the habit of writing on a daily basis, and both mother and daughter took up papyrus and reed pen only when the need arose. Nonetheless, the women were able to read and sign documents for themselves without additional assistance. Copies of ancient school books suggest that beginners, whether children or adults, learned writing separately from reading: of necessity they copied the Greek alphabet over and over again, before going on to master

7 For Demetria’s penmanship as she writes the first eleven lines on the papyrus sheet, instructing a bank clerk to transfer four talents to her daughter Charite, see Bagnall and Cribiore2008: 2B.5, letter no. 168¼ P.Charite 38, TM no. 15617 (legible scan at Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Katalog der Papyrussammlung with inventory no. G 13111þ G 36743). For Charite’s own signature at the bottom of a papyrus sheet, acknowledging receipt of produce owed her as rent, see plate 27, and translation of text 179(b) in Rowlandson1998: 242–3 ¼ P.Charite 8, TM no. 15564; Aurelia Charite employed a professional scribe to write thefirst twenty-three lines of text that preceded her signature.

Efforts by Egyptian villagers to write Greek

more difficult material. Repetition and rote learning were prominent fea-tures in ancient education, yet not all language learners were children. The later Roman period witnessed the widespread use of educational materials that would have catered more to the needs and interests of adults, particu-larly important of which are the bi- and trilingual glossaries well-attested in papyrus examples.⁸ Curricular materials available to those beginning the study of medicine were likewise in plentiful supply, in addition to appren-ticeship with a practitioner.⁹Galen tells us something about the curricular paths available, while papyri likewise provide examples of texts designed for those beginning the study of medicine– medical definitions and catechisms, or question-and-answer exercises, that not only played a role in the medical education of antiquity, but continued to serve for more than a millennium thereafter in Latin translations. Adults with sufficient motivation for acquiring the rudiments of a second language may have turned to friends and family members of greater linguistic accomplishment and they also listened carefully when in the presence of others speaking the target language. Of the more than seventy-five examples of Greek alphabets written on papyri and ostraca catalogued by Cribiore in 1996, some were written more skillfully and others less so. There is no way to tell from the writing alone whether the writer was a child at school, or a struggling adult, although when text is copied, what is written may distinguish the boy from the man, the girl from the woman.

When Harris was probing the evidence for the diffusion of literacy among adults in the Roman world, he appealed to Artemidorus’ Dreambook and Artemidorus’ claim that the dream in which the sleeper was learning his letters had one meaning for the literate person and a different meaning for an

8 For bi- and trilingual glossaries on papyrus, see initial collections by Kramer1983: 7–27 (introduction) and Kramer2001: 1–30 (introduction); for the important republication of C.Gloss.Biling. i 2 Kramer (¼ P.Sorb.inv. 2069 verso, MP³3006, LDAB 5438), see Dickey and Ferri2010: 177–8. For antecedents and developmental history of P.Sorb.inv. 2069 verso, see Dickey2010a: 195–201. For the re-publication of C.Gloss.Biling. ii 8 Kramer (¼ P.Prag. ii 118, MP³3004.22, LDAB 6007), see Dickey and Ferri2012, 129–32. This latter papyrus contains a bilingual Latin-Greek sermo cottidianus, part of the so-called Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana with textual connections to the Colloquium Harleianum, see Dickey 2012: 7–10 (#32 on figure 1.1), 18. Dickey2012re-edits the Colloquia Monacensia-Einsidlensia, 100–84, Colloquium Leidense-Stephani, 185–215, and Colloquium Stephani, 219–45, equipping each edition with introduction and description, translation, and critical commentary. Thus she makes these texts more accessible to a modern audience than do the presentations by G. Goetz in his Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum vols. 2 (1888) and 3 (1892). See also Dionisotti1982aand Schironi2009: 14–24.

9 For study materials directed toward beginners, see Hanson2010: 192–7; of particular interest are PSI xii 1275 (MP³ 2345.1, LDAB 4608) and P.Oxy. lxxiv 4970 (MP³2354.11, LDAB 119315), both seemingly proëmia to medical manuals advising beginners about the appropriate subject matter with which to initiate their medical studies– learning either the names of the parts of the body in the PSI text (also advocated by Rufus of Ephesus), or the Hippocratic Oath in the papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (also urged by Scribonius Largus, Compositiones praef. 5). For Latin versions of Greek medical catechisms on papyrus, see e.g. the Pseudo-Soranus, Quaestiones medicinales.

illiterate one (pp. 274–5).¹⁰Artemidorus neglected to clarify in which way the meanings differed, and Harris himself – although he appealed to Lucian’s sarcastic remark about widespread ignorance among orators and teachers, and though he emphasized Soranus’ assertion in his Gynaikeia that the best midwife should know letters and be able to read, so as to combine medical theory with her knowledge of gynecological practices – probed papyrus documents for evidence on ancient literacy only on occasion. Thus, in what follows I examine two adults, each living in an Arsinoite village during the early and middle years of the Roman Principate, and sketch out what I think can be said about their attempts to enhance their writing skills on the basis of the papyri on which they wrote. I also think it very likely that both benefitted from the influence of a close family member.

Petaus, son of Petaus, has oftenfigured as a poster child for illiterates in the Roman world, becoming something of a celebrity in the years after 1966, when H. C. Youtie introduced him to the scholarly world as the scribe who did not know how to write.¹¹That is, Petaus was appointed the village scribe, komogrammateus, of Ptolemais Hormou and nearby villages in the southern Arsinoite nome for a three-year period beginning in 183/184 c e, and his archive of some 130 business documents and other records reveal him repeatedly practicing the essential phrase a village scribe was required to append to a document he then forwarded to government officials in the capital of the nome; his signature guaranteed that the proper authority in the village had scrutinized the text prior to its being dispatched. He had to be able to write“I Petaus, village scribe, submitted [this],” and was aiming for Πεταῦς κωμογρ(αμματεὺς) ἐπιδέδωκα, or the shorter version, “I Petaus submitted [this],” Πεταῦς ἐπιδέδωκα.¹²

10 Artemidorus, Oneirokritika 1.53.

11Youtie1966, as he and his colleagues were preparing Petaus’ archive for publication in 1968. Two additional articles by Youtie elucidated the language papyri employed for varying degrees of literacy, from the person illiterate in Greek,ἀγράμματος and μὴ εἰδὼς/εἰδυῖα γράμματα, to the slow writer, βραδέως γράφων/γράφουσα, and underscored the general tolerance toward illiteracy: Youtie1971a and1971b. For the edition, see U. Hagedorn et al.1968, Das Archiv des Petaus.

12The parentheses indicate that the word komogrammateus was not written out in full, but was abbreviated in a conventional manner. Petaus continued to practiceΠεταῦς κωμογρ(αμματεὺς) ἐπιδέδωκα and Πεταῦς ἐπιδέδωκα, and his practice sheets were kept along with his business papers:

P.Petaus 122d (TM no. 12634, scan not available) and P.Petaus 114 (TM no. 12624), image of the latter online www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/NRWakademie/papyrologie/PPetaus/bilder/PK366r.

jpg, in which Petaus (line 2, hand 2) wrote out no more than his name and thefirst two letters of κω(μογραμματεύς), but he did not even attempt the verb ἐπιδέδωκα. The version of his name on P.Petaus 115 (lines 4–5, TM no. 12625) was written more expansively, so perhaps Petaus was employing a different model from which to copy, image online atwww.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/

NRWakademie/papyrologie/PPetaus/bilder/PK378r.jpg. Here, however, Petaus allotted the available space poorly and was forced to set thefinal two letters of the verb on a second line.

Efforts by Egyptian villagers to write Greek

The largest sheet of papyrus on which he practiced, P.Petaus 121, TM no. 12630, reproduced inFigure 2.1but with the blank space in the lower half truncated, shows him copying, and his efforts amply display the difficulties he has when manipulating papyrus and reed pen.¹³ He wrote

Figure 2.1: P.Petaus 121, TM no. 12630

13 This sheet on which Petaus practiced his signature has often been reproduced: Youtie1966: 127–43, with plate of P.Petaus 121, TM no. 12630, image online at www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/

NRWakademie/papyrologie/PPetaus/bilder/PK328r.jpg. For Petaus’ subsequent fame as the scribe who could not write, see Turner1968: 83; Lewis1983: 81; Montevecchi1988: 255, 400; Harris1989: 278–9; Hanson1991: 171–4; Cribiore1996: 150–1; Horsley1989: 12–13; Kraus2000: 329, 334–8;

Cribiore2009: 327; Vandorpe2009: 217 andfig. 10.1.

the beginning of his name twice in both lines 1 and 9, and then excising thefirst letters and starting anew; in the ninth line as in the first he seems to have noticed he omitted the second letter of his name (having written Πτ, instead of Πετ). In line 3 he also became aware of his omission of the third letter from the verb (writing ἐπδέδωκα, instead of the correct ἐπιδέδωκα) and squeezed in the missing iota in between the two letters he had already written. In line 4, however, he failed to observe his omission of the right leg of theπ in ἐπι- and wrote ἐτι- instead. More serious, he was never aware that he dropped the initial vowel from the verb ἐπιδέδωκα beginning in line 5, continuing to the end with only πιδέδωκα.

A thumbprint appears to the right at the point where Petaus abandons his task in frustration after his twelfth try, leaving the bottom half on the front of the papyrus still blank. One supposes that Petaus got ink on his right thumb, making the thumbprint when turning over the sheet to the reverse side, where he twice tried to write out the practice sentence, again botching it.

Petaus’ penmanship in his practices is ugly, marred by unevenness and unnoted omissions; his letters are large and awkward, his writing some-times moving erratically up and down. While practice never made perfect, the seven papyrus documents from the archive to which Petaus appended

Petaus’ penmanship in his practices is ugly, marred by unevenness and unnoted omissions; his letters are large and awkward, his writing some-times moving erratically up and down. While practice never made perfect, the seven papyrus documents from the archive to which Petaus appended