A father's letter to his children, 246-222 BCE

Introduction

Somethings never change, no matter how far into the past you look.  Children (even adult children) need to be bailed out by their parents, and in turn, parents will send the needed support along with some "advice."  This familiar (pun intended) drama is how I interpret P. Lille 17 (also catalogued as P.Sob.3.100).

This papyrus, dating to 246-222 BCE, was preserved as cartonnage, and as such, is rather fragmented.  The name of the sender (presumably the recipients' father) is lost.  The middle lines of the letter are too fragmentary for me to venture a translation.  I originally translated the text found in the Logos module of the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, but in the course of my research, I found an more recent edition of the text with a different reading of the final lines.  In my translation, I have retained elements of both translations.

Translation

... to Aristarchos my son and Mikkala my daughter, greetings.  While Philon is carrying a letter concerning the bits of corn, I have removed for you eight artabas, which he leaves behind to Gorginios for my daughter; for Philon sails back to Alexandria.  Since you would like to work well, give him a token of your ... [4 fragmentary lines]; and the bits of corn are for one manger ... for you to have (?) dispatch to him a certain ..., so that the corn which is near you might be salvaged.

To Aristarchos

Textual Comments

An artaba was an Egyptian unit of measure for corn and wheat (akin to a bushel).
Gorginios is a male name yet is referred to as "my daughter."  The greek word for daughter can also mean a maidservant or slave.
συνβολον appears in this text instead of the standardized spelling of συμβολον.  The confusion of n/m sounds is common, and is a routine issue for the Hebrew/Aramaic transliterations in the Septuagint.

Additional Resources

One of my favourite things about my excursion into papyrology is the discovery of really neat online tools and resources.  Trismegistos allows for searches of people's names that occur in the papyri and will generate a list of the texts that attest to the name in your search.  Currently Trismegistos has close to 20,000 inscriptions and papyri in their database, so it is an incredibly useful and powerful resource.

What was my major anyway?

In high school, I was a total science nerd.  I figured why stop a good thing so I went to university to study science.  Like many science students, I mocked my friends that were doing their BAs.  I made the obligatory jokes about their glim employment prospects and derided their life-choices.  In hindsight, I was a bit of a jerk.  But by the middle of my third year, it was abundantly clear that physics would not play a large role in my future (which is not to say that I haven't taken anything away from physics -- for proof see my previous post).  The unthinkable had happened; I registered for some Arts electives... and I liked them.

Now undergraduate students are not, by and large, known for their unwavering dedication to lectures and coursework.  I was no exception especially when it came to physics.  Sometimes my mind would wonder during the lectures.  Sometimes I didn't even bother showing up to class.  On more than one occasion I even fell asleep (this is even worse than it sounds because the average enrolment of a physics class at UNB was 5-7 total students).  

On those days when I had a full night's sleep, but didn't feel in a physics-y mood, there was only one distraction I turned to -- not Facebook, not twitter, not even the proverbial comic book hidden in the textbook.  For me, Greek and Latin translation exercises were my guilty pleasure.  Only ancient language could scratch my itch and float my boat.

To this day, when I have some time on my hands, I crack open some Greek text and go to town.

Relativity, postmodernism, and the ancient world

As a university physics student, I learnt that the way in which we observe an experiment ultimately determines a large portion of the experiment's outcome (this is especially true of quantum and relativistic physics).  At first, this principle seems goofy, silly, and downright unrealistic.  But eventually, with enough professorial and mathematical encouragement, the unintended impact of observation became my established world-view.

Applying this trait of physics to the real world, I reason that since everyone perceives reality differently we will all have a different experience of reality.  And because we measure/understand reality based on our experiences, the whole concept of "reality" or "the real world" quickly dissolves into an infinite spectrum of realities that can only be grouped by their commonality.  Every individual "reality" being determined, at least in part, by the observer, his or her background, ideology, and personal history.

I am not the first to see the connection between Einsteinian physics and post-modernity.  The power of observation, which is what I understand post-modernism to be, drove notable physicist/mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, to turn to philosophy and theology after the collapse of Newtonian physics in the early 1900s.  Whitehead's book Religion in the Making is well worth the read for the way it tackles comparative religious study, and if I recall correctly, one of the first books of that academic discipline.

But what, I can hear you asking, is the connection with antiquity?

I was reminded of Einstein and the importance of one's perspective when I compared two books I am currently reading: Egypt After the Pharaohs 332 BC-AD 642, and The Last Pharaohs - Egypt Under the Ptolemies, 305-30.  The former views the Ptolemaic dynasty as a break from Egypt's pharaonic tradition while the latter sees them as a continuation of that tradition.  Both studies take into consideration the same histories, the same papyrological evidence, but their approach to the Ptolemaic kingdom differs, one from the shores of Greece and the other from the temple in Memphis.  They agree on the facts, but disagree about their interpretation and their meaning.

So, which study reflects the reality of Ptolemaic Egypt?  Well, that all depends on your perspective.

A bureaucrat begins to fall out of favour

This letter, P.Eleph.10, was found on the island of Elephantine, which was the site of a Jewish military garrison during the Persian rule of Egypt.  Even though it came to rest on Elephantine, the letter, and 31 others found with it, concerns the finances of the nome capital Edfu 100km to the north.  All 32 letters make up the Milon Archive, which is named after the final recipient and collector of the letters.  On the whole, the archive illustrates the tangled mess of the temple finances and the attempts to set it right.  All letters in this archive date between 225 and 222 BCE.

A fuller description of the Milon Archive can be found here.

In P.Eleph.10 Euphronius writes to Milon, his representative in Edfu, to make sure that the temple payroll is correctly recorded and passed out.  At the end of the letter, Euphronius instructs Milon to have the payroll checked by two men, one whose name is lost and the second, Andron, who is either a friend or brother to Milon.  Andron wrote a personal letter to Milon, P.Eleph.13, and I may tackle a translation later.

The only published translation of the Milon Archive seems to be in Edfu, an Egyptian Provincial Capital in the Ptolemaic Period, to which I couldn't find access, so my translation originates solely from my own devises.  Reader beware!

Euphronius to Milon, greetings.  As it were, you read my letter.  After you take the pay from the bankers in the temples into the temple of Apollo in the great city, and in like manner of the grain that had been delivered from those near the stores from the very first time until it had been put in place according to month and to year.  Then let him make an order for payment into which years he had paid, and carefully send this work concerning the successors off to us, that according to these things we may not be hindered to send down into the city the words of those who were remaining at hand; but the pay is through Th[...]os and Andron so that they check it.

Year 13.  Pauni 15.

To Milon