| Artefact ID | 195 |
| TM ID | TM 32673 |
| 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. 35; P.Gen. I 54: Report to Abinnaeus. Paesios reports to Abinnaeus, commander of the cavalry (praefectus alae) in Dionysias, about vain recruitment in Karanis, the arrest of the irenarch and payment of money. Numerous references to god ("God is my witness that..."; "this works well with all men and with god"; etc.). 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 fibres; end of the letter written in the left-hand margin, from top to bottom. Verso: address, along fibres. |
| Selection criteria | Christian terms/formulas/concepts |
| Date from | 342 |
| Date to | 351 |
| 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). |
| Absolute/relative date | Relative date |
| Archaeological context | 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 | Geneva, Bibliothèque P.Gen. inv. 7 bis |
ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS
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