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ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS

Artefact ID192
TM IDTM 14440
Findspot (DEChriM ID)50   (Qaṣr Qārūn)
ClassTextual
MaterialPapyrus
Writing mediumSheet/roll
Text contentDocumentary
LanguageGreek
Archive/DossierArchive
Description

SB XIV 11380: Petition to Flavius Abinnaeus

A petition to Flavius Abinnaeus, commander of the cavalry at Dionysias, from someone whose name is partially lost, from the village of Hermopolis (Arsinoites) concerning the looting of his house. He presents as a witness the priest of the village (τὸν πρεσβύτερον τῆς κώμης).

On the question of 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 runs along the fibres; end is lost. Verso: blank.

Selection criteriaMention of Christian cult officials/institutions
Date from346
Date to346
Dating criteria

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).

This is one among similar petitions from the same archive which are dated to 346 (Remondon 1974: 34).

Absolute/relative dateAbsolute date
Archaeological context

Purchased by Wilhelm Ludwig Schubart in Mellawi in 1912 (BerlPap 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

Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung P. 11624

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editio princeps:

· Rémondon, Roger. 1974. "Un Papyrus inédit des Archives d’Abinnaeus (P. Berlin inv. 11624)", Journal of Juristic Papyrology 18, 33-37.

Additional bibliography:

· Barnes, Timothy D. 1985. “The Career of Abinnaeus.” Phoenix 39, 368-374.

· Choat, Malcolm. 2006. Belief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri. Studia Antiqua Australiensia 1. Turnhout: Brepols.

· Choat, Malcolm and Maria Chiara Giorda. 2017. Writing and Communication in Early Monasticism. Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 9. Leiden-Boston.

· Gallazzi, Claudio. 2015. “Dove è stato ritrovato l’archivio di Abinneo?” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 61, 170-179.

· Kaiser, Anna Maria. 2012. “Die Fahndung nach Deserteuren im spätantiken Ägypten.” In Actes du 26e Congrès international de papyrologie, Genève 16-21 août 2010, ed. Paul Schubert. Genève: Droz, 381-390.

· Luijendijk, AnneMarie. 2008. Greetings in the Lord: early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press.

Authors
Valérie Schram, 2021
Suggested citation
Valérie Schram, 2021, "Artefact ID 192", 4CARE database - Fourth-Century Christian Archaeological Record of Egypt, https://4care-skos.mf.no/artefacts/192
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