Kronion Archive
- -Archive of Kronion son of Apion,
nomographos of the grapheion of Tebtynis
- -P Mich. V :
- - director of the grapheion in the time
of emperor Claudius, held office at least by 43 AD, maybe even 36
AD, til as late as Sept. 18, 52 AD -management of the records
office partner between 45-7 AD= Eutuchas, alias Eutucheides
-father Apion was possibly a nomographos, (PM 623 and 645 mention
an Apion who was a nomo, and K's father identified as an Apion in
659 (48 AD) and 663), likely that son would follow dad's
profession -appears to Boak that the nomographos at Tebtynis was
in charge of the activities of the grapheion -Kronion not a
liturgical official, but voluntary -documents from the grapheion
date from 7 AD (623) - 56 AD, (1286), therefore all belong to
Apion and Kronions hold over the grapheion with maybe one
intervening official
- - represent many varieties of
business transactions in the archive -many subscriptions
without the body of the contract (71) and many duplicate
documents (14 contracts or subscriptions have at least one
duplicate) - contracts typically comprise of
- Husselman: A. the body of the
contract
- 1.) date and place
- 2.) context in form of a protocol,
or, more commonly, a homology, with the signalment of each
party following his name
- B.) Subscriptions of either one or
both of the contracting parties
- C.) Not of registration by the
notary, infrequent in these documents
- -seems that subscriptions were drawn up
for use of the contracting parties, therefore more than one copy,
most of contracts with more copies have more parties
involved
- -Boak concludes that grapheion also a
place where documents could be drawn up for a fee, special
scribes who could write both Greek and Egyptian were employed,
(language of abstracts and subscriptions very repetitive and
technical, therefore suggests a trained scribe). Copies of the
abstracts were made for each party and left at the grapheion
with a complete copy of the contract, so that the body could be
inserted in the space left in the subscriptions later and the
parties would pick up their copies - In some subscriptions
space is left for inserting information such as measurements of
land, etc. not known at the time
- -Dockets written on the verso of
documents suggest that they were stored away and the dockets
provided for easy location on demand. Parties involved may have
left their copies of contract at gra pheion because they decided
the copy on hand at the grapheion was sufficient enough - In
Roman era easy to obtain an official copy by the individual from
the state notary -state archives becoming of more importance than
the private.
- -Edgerton: -decline in the use of
demotic language for legal matters shows in the texts, the
handwritings are fine and smooth, showing that the scribes had
been skilled in the language through years of work, however,
their legal formula suggests ignorance or carelessness and the
texts are not many
- -In Graeco-Roman Egypt same name and
patronymic are often not sufficient for identifying two
individuals in separate papyri as the same person because certain
names are so common -spelling often varies for the names or alia
are used, (names are shortened, or two names are used, and often
don't know if it is the patronymic or the alias used).
- -several families come up repeatedly
in the archive: -Lusimachos, son of Didumos and Herkleides the
younger, son of Maron, connected to L by marriage (Arsinoe m.
Lusimachos the younger) together have 14 documents; that of
Psuphis, alias Harpochration has 6; and Eutuchos has 7
documents for his family -A breakdown of these families and
their documents can be found in P. Mich. V, pp 16-22
For a complete list of papyri in the Kronion
Archive at the University of Michigan, click here.
-PMich II