| Artefact ID | 188 |
| TM ID | TM 10032 |
| Findspot (DEChriM ID) | 50 (Qaṣr Qārūn) | Class | Textual |
| Material | Papyrus |
| Writing medium | Sheet/roll |
| Text content | Documentary |
| Language | Greek |
| Archive/Dossier | Archive |
| Description | P.Abinn. 4, P.Lond. II 236: Letter to Abinnaeus. With "very many greetings in the Lord God" (ἐν κυρίῳ θεῷ πλεῖστα χαίρειν), Aetius informs Abinnaeus, commander of the cavalry (praefectus alae) in Dionysias, that corn, oil, goatskins and other articles have been dispatched to him through various intermediaries, among whom some Libyans. The sender is the same as P.Abinn. 5 but the hand is different. On the question whether Abinnaeus was a Christian and for his relationship with monks and clergy, see Bell et al. 1962: 32-33, Barnes 1985: 373-374, Choat 2006: passim, Luijendijk 2008: 35, n. 42, Kaiser 2015: 383, Choat 2017: 47. Recto: text written along the fibres. Verso: address, along the fibres. |
| Selection criteria | Christian terms/formulas/concepts |
| Date from | 342 |
| Date to | 351 |
| Dating criteria | Dated to ca. 346 in ed. pr. According to Gallazzi (2015: 177-178), all of the dated texts of Abinnaeus archive are dated between 343 and 351 AD, that is, in the period in which Abinnaeus exercised his functions of praepositus of the castra (342-351). |
| Absolute/relative date | Relative date |
| Archaeological context | Purchased as part of a lot comprising Papyri 229-255 from the Reverend Chauncey Murch (b. 1856, d. 1907) on 14 January 1893 (British Library website). While it was previously thought that Fl. Abinnaeus' archive was found in Philadelpheia where he went to live after his retirement, Gallazzi 2015 argued that Fl. Abinnaeus should have left his papers in his office (or in his lodgings), in Dionysias, when he left the army and handed over the command of the castra to others. The material would have been recovered in Qaṣr Qārūn, at the end of the nineteenth century, by antiquities seekers or sebâkh quarrymen and given to merchants of Medînet el-Fayûm, where they would have been intermingled with the documents recovered at Kharabet el-Gerza (Philadelphia), before reaching European collections. |
| Accession number | London, British Library, Pap 236 |
ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS
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