~Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 51 (2014) 47-57
A Loan of Money with Interest'
Philip Katz New York University
Abstract
Edition of a fourth-century Greek documentary papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (P.Col. inv 185) recording a one-month loan of thirty talents with built-in interest of 3,000 drachmas.
In 1924, the text published here as P.Col. inv. 185 arrived at Columbia
University through the papyrus cartel of H.I. Bell, who had acquired the piece
from the dealer M. Nahman.2 Although many pieces acquired by Columbia
during this year were found at Karanis, the contents of the text rather suggest
a findspot in the Oxyrhynchite nome (see below). As preserved, the papyrus
measures 24.7 (H.) x 7.5 (W.) cm. The margins at the top (1.3 cm), bottom
(2.7 cm), and left (1.3 cm) survive mostly intact; the right half of the original
document, however, has broken off along the central vertical fold. Each line,
therefore, is missing between 18 and 22 characters. The preserved papyrus,
moreover, displays a prominent vertical fold line down the center, more pronounced at the bottom of the text, indicating that the original document was
folded in half twice.
The 26 lines of Greek on the document's recto run along the fibers and are
written in two distinct hands. The first (lines 1-21) writes large letters with thick
'Preliminary work on this project was begun during a seminar at the Institute for
the Study of the Ancient World in the fall of 2012, and I owe a debt of gratitude both
to my fellow students, for their comments and suggestions, and to Roger Bagnall, for
introducing me to the world of papyri, reading and commenting on several drafts of
this article, and providing me with transcriptions and notes of previous students. Additional work was conducted during a three-week stay at the Institut fur Papyrologie
(Universitit Heidelberg), funded by a grant from New York University's Antonina S.
Ranieri International Scholars Fund. For permission to publish the text, I am grateful
to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. I also wish to thank
Andrew Monson and Michael Peachin for reading and discussing with me various parts
of the text, and the anonymous readers for their many helpful comments. All remaining
errors in transcription and interpretation are my own.
2 Number XVI.13 in Bell's inventory. For Bell's purchases on behalf of American
universities, cf. RPCol. 7, pp. 2-4, and RNYU 1, pp. ix-x.
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