The Papyrology of the Roman Near East: A Survey

Not all students of the Roman world may have realized that, following extensive discoveries in the last few years, Egypt has ceased to be the only part of the Empire from which there are now substantial numbers of documentary texts written on perishable materials. This article is intended as a survey and hand-list of the rapidly-growing ‘papyrological’ material from the Roman Near East. As is normal, ‘papyrology’ is taken to include also any writing in ink on portable, and normally perishable, materials: parchment, wood, and leather, as well as on fragments of pottery (ostraka). The area concerned is that covered by the Roman provinces of Syria (divided in the 190s into ‘Syria Coele’ and ‘Syria Phoenice’); Mesopotamia (also created, by conquest, in the 190s); Arabia; and Judaea, which in the 130s became ‘Syria Palaestina’. These administrative divisions are valid for the majority of the material, which belongs to the first, second and third centuries. For the earlier part of the period we include also papyri from Dura under the Parthian kings (Nos 34, 36–43, and 166), since they belong to the century before the Roman conquest and illustrate the continuity of legal and administrative forms; and five papyri from the kingdom of Nabataea, which after its ‘acquisition’ in 106 was to form the bulk of the new province of Arabia, on the grounds that in some sense dependent kingdoms were part of the Empire (Nos 180–184). Both groups are listed in brackets. We also include the extensive material from the first Jewish revolt (Nos 230–256) and from the Bar Kochba war of 132–5 (Nos 293–331), even though it derives from regimes in revolt against Rome. The private-law procedures visible in the Bar Kochba documents are continuous with those from the immediately preceding ‘provincial’ period (that of the later items in the ‘archive of Babatha’ and other documents). What changes dramatically after the outbreak of the revolt is language use: Hebrew now appears alongside Aramaic and Greek. But even as late as the third year of the revolt we find contracts in Aramaic. Our list at this point will supplement and correct that given by Millar in The Roman Near East, App. B.