Postgraduate Work-in-Progress Seminar
Institute of Classical Studies
School of Advanced Study
University of London
Friday 23th February at 17:00 GMT
Silvio di Cello (University of Salento) will present on ‘The friendly neighborhood notary: life and contracts from the grapheion of Sokopaiou Nesos’
See here for details.
Abstract:
The friendly neighborhood notary: life and contracts from the grapheion of Sokopaiou Nesos
The grapheion was a notary office of Graeco-Roman Egypt located in villages. Its purpose was to draw out and record legal instruments. By studying its documentation, socio-economic data about the life of the villagers can be gathered.
The purpose of my PhD thesis is to highlight information regarding the village life of Sokopaiou Nesos through the documents produced in its grapheion. Around 100 papyri from the I and II century CE have been recognized as belonging to this office, mainly sales, loans and leases.
Not only do they shed light on the prices of properties owned and goods exchanged in the village, including its credit economy, but they can also show the social variety of the inhabitants of Sokopaiou Nesos. Priests are the preminent social group, often showing up in transactions and figuring as the richest class. Women are also shown to often have primary roles in the documents, acting as indipendent parties.
All the data collected have also been put in comparison with those regarding other villages, Tebtynis and Karanis above all the others. This has been done to put information in context, especially in matter of the price of goods and the socio-economic conditions of the inhabitants.
One of the goals of the research is the attempt to produce a life table of the society of the village in the first two centuries CE based on the demographic data taken from the grapheion documents, in order to our knowledge of its population even further.