ï~~
274
Reviews
some of the correspondence and lists of the Qurra archive. The longest and
most important single document is 1, a sensational piece for the administrative
topography of the northern Hermopolite (for which see pp. 96-127; cf. 31 and
32 as well as PCol. 9). Also individually significant is 16, with its list of ships
harbored in a particular (though unnamed) port. The remaining pieces, various kinds of correspondence and lists, are important for their associations with
the archive and their cumulative contribution to its range and substance. With
rare exceptions (e.g., 20 recto) they are fragmented, lacunose, tattered, and in
difficult hands, including the standard seventh-century "corsiva inclinata." For
these reasons, the editor's readings, though they often seem to border on the
miraculous, are obviously based on an exceptionally deep familiarity with his
documents' palaeography and contents.
As mentioned, the central figure in all this (Introduzione, p. 18; cf. 3.15
note), the recipient of most of the documents, is one Senouthios, a notary by
training and current anystes ("manager"?) of the northern skelos ("leg") of
the Hermopolite nome. Both administrative terms, though not new, are rare;
thus it is hard to say whether they are carryovers from the end of Byzantine
administration or were newly minted under the Arabs, and whether they were
particular to certain nomes or used countrywide. The anystes was obviously an
official operating above the level of the village but below that of the pagarchy.
The Hermopolite's northern skelos implies a southern counterpart with its own
anystes, each skelos amounting to roughly half the pagarchy (cf. p. 153).
Senouthios' functions as anystes were extensive enough to warrant their
own officium, whose home the editor locates (pp. 18, 112, 198) at Tlethmeos,
a port town north of Hermopolis on the Bahr Yusuf (see map, p. 116). Senouthios' papers were there archived separately from those that came to reside
in the central pagarchal office in Hermopolis and also separately from those
that we imagine came to reside with the officium of the southern skelos. Some
of Senouthios' correspondence was with the pagarch, though this is rarely
clinched by surviving verso addresses. Addresses do not always survive in any
case, and when they do, they tend to be in poor condition. Nevertheless, senders and recipients can be reasonably surmised from contents, handwriting,
and tone or style (registers of discourse?), the last marked, for example, by
the pagarch's bald imperatives and telling adverbs (see, e.g., p. 184). At the
very least the evident power differentials between senders and recipients, in
an archive where the dramatis personae are few and circuits of communication
rather limited, are reasonable indicators as to who is who (see in particular
pp. 208-210 and 219). An especially interesting feature in a half-dozen pieces
is the marking of time of their dispatch (areXi6O(g)) at such-and-such an hour
(1st, 2nd, 6th), or even sunset (8.6). These indications are taken by the editor as
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