The exhibits come from a unique collection of more than 6,000 Greek papyrus fragments from Egypt, which originally belonged to the prominent Austrian papyrologist Karl Wessely (1860–1931). The NLCR acquired them for its collection in 1934.
A Rental Agreement 6 April 578 AD
Herakleopolis, Egypt
10.5 × 13.3 cm, Greek
NK ČR, sign. P.Prag. I 39 (Gr. I 88r)
This fragment is the lower part of a lease under which a woman named Aurelia Maria rented two rooms in a house from a certain Epimachos. The upper part, kept in Florence, was published in 1906 (P.Flor. I 15); Bärbel Kramer showed that the two pieces belong to the same document.
Several people were involved in drawing up this lease. Aurelios Theophilos penned the main body of the contract on behalf of Aurelia Maria, who was illiterate. In order to authenticate the document, the ‘scribe’, a notary named Maximinus, signed it. The signature occupies the last two lines on the front side of the papyrus and consists of the same Greek phrase, ‘by me, Maximinus’, rendered first in Latin characters and then repeated in Greek letters: di emu Maximinu | δ(ιʼ) ἐμοῦ Μαξιμίνου. In Late Antique Egypt, Latin was intrinsically connected to
Roman law. The change of alphabet is an example of code switching. It imitated imperial chancery practice and lent the document legal prestige. It was thus the symbolism of the script that mattered.
A Letter from Appianus to Heroninus
249–259 AD
Theadelpheia, Egypt
8 × 8 cm, Greek
NK ČR, sign. P.Prag. I 103 (Gr. II 35 b)
A fragment of a letter from the wealthy landowner Aurelius Appianus (attested 231–259 AD) to the junior estate manager (phrontistes) Heroninus (active 249–268 AD), in which he informs Heroninus that the senior manager (oikonomos) Herakleides had reminded him that 40,000 reed poles had been, or were to be, sent for work in the vineyards. Aurelius Appianus belonged to the provincial elite as a member of the equestrian order and a councillor in the provincial capital, Alexandria. He owned approximately 4,500 hectares of land in the Arsinoite nome (today’s Fayyum) alone, and he directed its exploitation through a hierarchically organised
network of estate managers. Heroninus thus managed around 100 hectares of land for Appianus, consisting mainly of vineyards around the village of Theadelpheia. The papyrus stems from Heroninus’s office and belongs to the largest surviving archive from Roman Egypt, much of which is held in the National Library of the Czech Republic. Hundreds of documents from the Heroninus archive, the majority of which are letters and accounting records, reveal the complexity of large Roman estates in the 3rd century AD and, in particular, the rational approach to their administration, which aimed to maximise profits.
A Land Lease Agreement
4 January 88 AD
Poteu, Egypt
17.5 × 15 cm, Greek
NK ČR, sign. P.Prag. I 36 (Scat. A, var. 27)
Thanks to the dating formula at its end (‘in the seventh year of the reign of the emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus, on the eighth day of the month of Tybi’), we can date this
well-preserved contract precisely to 4 January 88 AD. The contract is between Hermias, son of Hierax, and Imout, son of Apollonios, and concerns the lease of land. Hermias leases an unspecified area of land belonging to Imout’s wife, Eudaimonis, for a rent of seven artabas each of wheat and barley, which he is to pay to Imout in June or July of the same year. The document also specifies that the measured grain must be clean, unadulterated, and sifted. Greek names such as Apollonios and Eudaimonis attest to the growing influence and prestige of Greek culture even in the countryside. Sometimes, however, a Greek name indicates the survival of indigenous Egyptian traditions. Thus, Hierax, meaning ‘falcon’, alludes to the falcon-headed god Horus. The name Hermias, derived from the Greek god Hermes, exemplifies the Greeks’ tendency to interpret Egyptian religion in terms of their own gods, since, for the Greeks, Hermes was the equivalent of the Egyptian god Thoth.