| Artefact ID | 183 |
| TM ID | TM 10040 |
| 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. 5, P.Lond. II 414: Letter to Abinnaeus. Aetius writes to his "master and brother Abinnaeus", greets him "in God" and prays "before our Lord God" for his health. He reports to him on his success or failure in a number of commissions similar in nature to those of his other letter (P.Abinn. 4), but in a different hand – it is likely that this letter (and P.Abinn. 52, 53, 56 and 57) was written by a professional scribe. On the question whether Abinnaeus, commander of the cavalry (praefectus alae) in Dionysias, was a Christian and for his relationship with monks and clergy, see 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 401-447 from the Reverend Chauncey Murch (b. 1856, d. 1907) on 15 May 189 (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 414 |
ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS
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