A letter from 114 BC

In my last post, I gave my favourite anecdote about one papyri discovery in the ancient town of Tebtunis, so it seemed fitting to follow it with a translation of one of the Tebtunis papyri.

An explanation of the official naming scheme:

P.Tebt. 17 -- The first letter of the official name gives the type of material the document is on (P for papyrus, O for ostraca).  Next comes an abbreviation for either the place it was found, the individual or institution that first owned it, or the archive to which it belongs.  Finally is the numeric document number.

So, P.Tebt. 17 is the 17th papyrus found in Tebtunis.

An image of P.Tebt. 17 (accessed from papyri.info)

My translation:

Polemon to Menchis, greetings.  Since it has been determined that the manager come at daybreak on the 15th into Berenikis then on the 16th to pass by your kome into Theogonis, endeavour that all the things owing around your kome will be in order lest you detain him so you may not be thrown into further expenses.  Farewell.  Year 3 Pauni 11.

To the kome scribe, Menchis

Notes:

Berenikis and Theogonis are both towns in south eastern Egypt.
Pauni is the Egyptian month corresponding to May 26 - June 24.
"kome" was the smallest administrative unit in Ptolemaic Egypt, an unwalled village.
"manager" is left untranslated in the APIS Translation where it is simply rendered as "epimeletes".

Whenever I do a translation, I like to consult and compare my work with a more professional translation.  This time, along with one fairly hilarious misreading of the word δαπάνας as δα πάνας (a particle and the word for an Egyptian fish), my mind was turned to the question of translating versus transliterating.  For example, I decided to translate the word for "manager" but transliterated "kome" whereas the professional translation did just the opposite, translating "kome" as a village and transliterating "epimeletes".

In my next post, I want to discuss the possible reasons why certain words are transliterated instead of translated and the effect that choice can have on the reader.