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Andrew Connor
formulae, as the clauses concerning the starting date of the lease, the location
of the property, and the contracting parties are all lost, aside from the references in line 5 to the lessors in the plural and in line 9 to the lessee as a woman.
The unnamed female lessee joins the few women who appear as lessees
in the papyri. Leases by a woman are uncommon but not exactly rare. For
others, see Aurelia Paesis (from the substantially similar P. Giss. 52) in 397,
Aurelia Eirene (PBerl. Zill. 5) in 417, both of Hermopolis, Aurelia Didyme
(POxy. 16.1957) in 430, Aurelia Nonna (SB 4.7445) in 382, Aurelia Sophia
(SB 24.15925 = POxy. 16.1963) in the 6th century, and Herais, daughter of
lakinthus (PSI 6.709) in 566, all of Oxyrhynchus, Aurelia Ama Rachel (P.Cair.
Masp. 3.67302) of Aphrodito in 555, and Aurelia Tasia (PRHaun. 3.55) of Dinneos koite in 325.5 Aurelia Tasia held the ius liberorurn and acted without a
guardian. Two Hermopolite women in the 6th century did the same according
to a similar formula, Xc0pi KupioU kv6p6Â~ xp atTri@oU a.6 The other women
named above seem to be acting with a fair degree of freedom, but, following
Arjava, we might expect most women in 6th century Egypt to be without a
formal guardian, though perhaps with an unofficial ouverchb.7 Unfortunately,
without the critical earlier sections listing our lessee's name and, possibly, her
guardian, we cannot decide the matter in this case.
P.Vindob. inv. G. 13349 W x H = 8.5 cm x 10 cm Hermopolis, 6th century
The document has been damaged at the top, left, and bottom, with text
missing on all three sides. At the bottom, at least the witnesses and the notarial
subscription are lost. The surviving papyrus has been slightly damaged, but is
largely intact. The verso is blank. The text is written with the fibers, in a fluid
cursive hand, with substantial vertical elements above and below the line. A
second, similar, but more compact hand in lines 9-10 displays the traditional
formula of a literate writer signing on behalf of an illiterate contracting party,
in this case, the unnamed woman.
Twenty-one of twenty-three uses of np6 XpilmV are Hermopolitan. In comparison,
leases from the rest of Egypt display different - at times, very different - legal formulae.
SAurelia Nonna features more notably in SB 4.7449. See R. Frakes, Contra potentium inurias (Munich 2001) 212-215. For a woman leasing rooms in the earlier Roman
period, see now A. Benaissa, ZPE 172 (2010) 177-178.
6 SB 16.12864 (= P.Lond. 3.867) from 506 and PFlor. 3.323 from 525. Both of these
are of type J described by J.Beaucamp in her Statut de lafemme d Byzance, Vol. 2 (Paris
1992) 197-212, esp. 201. The formula is partly reconstructed in SB 16.12864, but appears
nearly complete in PFlor. 3.323.
7 A. Arjava, "The Guardianship of Women in Roman Egypt," Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses (Stuttgart 1997) 1:25-30, esp. 29-30.
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