Agnitio bonorum possessionis

Description

The first column of text is a latin petition submitted in September 269 by Aurelius Thonis, of Oxyrhynchus, to the prefect of Egypt, concerning an inheritance from his deceased sister, Aurelia Saraheus. The petitioner acts not only in his name, but also on behalf of his two half-brothers, Aurelius Thonis (II) and Aurelius Theoninos alias Petronius, perhaps because these are still minors or are absent. Their sister died childness and intestate, and Aurelius Thonis requests that the three of them be allowed to come into possession of her property. The document contains no description of the property and is silent on how Saraheus came to possess it; she may have inherited it from her parents or from a husband deceased before her even as a result of a divorce. The latin petition is followed by a subscription in Greek, not written by Aurelius Thonis himself, as he was illiterate, but by Aurelius Dioskoros. The petition was certainly submitted in two copies to the prefect, who must have added his signature of approval to one of them which was then retained as a record in his office. On the copy which has survived to us, a member of his staff copied his subscription, with a reference to the location of the original in the prefect's records and return it to Aurelius Thonis. The latter, then, had the Latin text (and its Greek subscription!) translated into Greek on a second sheet, which was glued to the first one. The presence of another subscription in the name of Aurelius Thonis shows that he took one more step, that of requesting that the local authorities have the property transferred as approved by the prefect and originally registered in his name.