4care-artefacts – 4care

4CARE-ARTEFACTS

ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS

Artefact ID	335
TM ID	TM 32418
Findspot (DEChriM ID)	34 (Ǧabal al-Ṭārif)
Class	Textual
Material	Papyrus
Writing medium	Sheet/roll
Text content	Documentary
Language	Greek
Archive/Dossier	Archive
Description	P.Nag Hamm. 78: Letter to Sansnos. Non contiguous fragments of a letter from Zaccheos introducing one Herakleios ("our brother") to Sansnos. According to the address on the back, the letter is sent by Zaccheos "priest" to "[his] beloved brother Sansnos, priest". M. Choat notes that "Zaccheos calls himself a presbyteros; on the analogy of the many presbyteroi who we encounter connected to monasteries throughout the fourth-century papyri, he could easily have been a monk" (Choat and Giorda 2017: 54). Sansnos is the same person as the priest in P.Nag Hamm. 77, and most likely also as the monk in P.Nag Hamm. 72 or the "beloved father" in P.Nag Hamm. 68, see M. Choat (in Choat and Giorda 2017: 35-36); about the letters addressed to him, see also Bagnall 2018: 80-85. Recto: written along fibres. Verso: address, along fibres.
Selection criteria	Mention of Christian cult officials/institutions, Christian terms/formulas/concepts, Nomina sacra
Date from	325
Date to	375
Dating criteria	Palaeography. Also, other waste papyri recovered from the same cartonnage used to construct the Nag Hammadi codex VII include contracts dated 341, 346 and 348 (P.Nag Hamm. 65).
Absolute/relative date	Relative date
Archaeological context	The leather covers of eight of the twelve Nag Hammadi codices found in a sealed jar by Egyptian agricultural workers in 1945 (see ID 23) had been strengthened by cartonnage made of waste papyri. This papyrus comes from the richest of these cartonnages, codex VII.
Accession number	Cairo, Coptic Museum Nag Hamm. VII 20 - 21 c

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editio princeps

• Barns, J.W.B., G.M. Browne and J.C. Shelton (ed.). 1981. Nag Hammadi Codices. Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers. Nag Hammadi Studies XVI. Leiden, 75-76: no. 78.

Additional bibliography

• Bagnall, R. 2018. "The Educational and Cultural Background of Egyptian Monks." In Monastic Education in Late Antiquity, L. Larsen and S. Rubenson (ed.), Cambridge, 75-100.

• Choat, Malcolm and Maria Chiara Giorda (ed.). 2017. Writing and Communication in Early Monasticism. Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 9. Leiden-Boston, 33-36.

Authors

Valérie Schram, 2021

Suggested citation

Valérie Schram, 2021, "Artefact ID 335", 4CARE database - Fourth-Century Christian Archaeological Record of Egypt, https://4care-skos.mf.no/artefacts/335

Json data

External links

TM 32418 DDbDP (PN) Sansnos monk (TM Archive 616) Claremont Colleges Digital Library – Codex VII cartonnage fragments (PNH 78-81 recto, 1973) Claremont Colleges Digital Library – Codex VII cartonnage fragments (PNH 78-81 verso, 1973) Claremont Colleges Digital Library – Codex VII cartonnage fragments (PNH 75-79 recto, 1975) Claremont Colleges Digital Library – Codex VII cartonnage fragments (PNH 75-79 verso, 1975)

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