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clues that the documents in question emanated from the office of the pagarch
(p. 160, note to 6.21; further on times of the day, pp. 154-156, in reference to 5).
13 is unique in also noting the place where it was written (Telbonthis). Unfortunately there are no notations of days or times of receipt or specific notations
for purposes of ancient archival referencing. See, nevertheless, the editor's
reconstruction (p. 215) of how 18-19 came to rest in Senouthios' archive.
Apart from Senouthios, important as second and third actors in the record
are Athanasius the pagarch, directly responsible to the central government,
and his staff employee, Taurinos. A landlord named Menas, a scholastikos, figures prominently in documents concerned with gaining release of his laborers
from state-imposed corvee (see 17-19, perhaps 21, with relevant editorial discussions). The new Arab overlords accordingly hover over but do not directly
participate in the communications published here.
Like other recent editions (C. Zuckerman's RAphrod.Reg. of 2004, where
the text edition seems to stand as a coda to the work as a whole; A. Verhoogt's
R Tebt. 5 of 2005, with its descriptive introduction and contextualized "dramatic reading"), Morelli's volume also experiments with format. The Introduzione
impressively occupies 47 folio-sized pages, but it is the ratio of commentary to
text that is after all the volume's most stunning feature. The most extreme case
is 1, with its 81 pages (pp. 57-138) of commentary to 99 lines of account-style
text, occupying roughly four pages (pp. 50-54). The commentary falls into two
parts. The first surveys the contents of the text (pp. 57-127), amounting in effect
to a series of technical and historical essays, with the pages on ship construction and Nile transport (78-92) being of special interest. Although such surveys
in all cases follow the text, critical apparatus, and translation, the editor in his
index of names and notable things (pp. 267-273) refers to them as "introd."
The second part of the commentary for 1 is the line-by-line commentary on
readings and points of detail (pp. 127-138).
The descriptive introductions prefixed to the individual documents set a
new standard for comprehensiveness, precision, and consistency of presentation. The usual template seems to be: papyrus color, quality, and completeness;
presence of kolleseis; style and direction of writing, color of ink, on recto, then
verso; identification of folds and intervals between; information on acquisition
and inventorying - but of course each papyrus will call for its own, variable,
particular description. Such meticulous attention to each material papyrus is
matched by corresponding sections of the volume's Introduzione. Especially
noteworthy there are the pages (pp. 31-38) on what might be called the economy of the papyrus roll: it turns out that the archive's documents were commonly written transversa charta on papyrus rolls that, in the pagarch's office (p.
158), had before use been sliced so as to create half rolls (as pictured, pp. 38-39).
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