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Greeks, Jews and Egyptians:
An Alphabetically Arranged Tax List of a Multi-Cultural Village in Ptolemaic Egypt (P.Vindob. G60514-60518)
British Academy Small Research Grant
Dr Csaba La'da (Classical and Archaeological Studies) (PI)
Professor A. Papathomas, University of Athens (Co-I)
The objective of this project is the scholarly publication of five large papyrus fragments bearing the inventory numbers P.Vindob. G60514-60518 in the collection of the Austrian National Library, Vienna. These fragments, containing several hundred lines of text, originally formed parts of a long roll written in Greek, which was subsequently reused as papyrus cartonnage. The provenance of the fragments is probably Middle Egypt. Preliminary examinations of the handwriting suggest that the document was written in the first half or in the middle of the second century BC. The surviving parts consist of lists of personal names, which are followed by fathers' names in the genitive and by figures, perhaps to be interpreted as sums of money due to be paid in tax by the individuals listed. The personal names are arranged alphabetically, which, if the preliminary dating is correct, would make our papyrus the earliest known administrative document in a European language to use the method of alphabetization. If the hypothesis that the figures should be interpreted as sums of money due in tax is correct, this document appears to be an alphabetic register of the taxpaying population of a particular settlement, which was produced by collectors in an office after the taxpayers had been registered on the ground in a house-by-house register. Thus this document probably comes from a secondary stage in the process of gathering and arranging data about the taxpaying population.