Accounts

Description

The front side of P.Corn. inv. II 38 (= SB VIII 9907) is an offer made by a farmer to Aurelios Taurinos, son of Akylaos, councilman of Hermou polis, to lease an orchard belonged to his epoikion, situated somewhere around Timonthis of the Hermopolite nome. The document is dated in September 19, A.D. 388. The time of the lease is three years, which means that by the end of this term, about September of A.D. 391, the document was not needed to be kept further more. Therefore, the other (and blank at that time) side of papyrus was reused by someone for writing down accounts upside down in relation to the text on the front. N. Lewis in his edition of the front side made no reference to this document of the back side.;The accounts are private and provide information on expenses expressed in quantities of knidia of wine. The purpose of these expenses is not stated, but it could be either in the procedure of private affairs (cf. e.g. P.Ant. I 42, 23-24; BGU XII 2178, with the parallels mentioned there) or of annona (cf. e.g. the receipts in F. Mitthof, Annona militaris, Firenze 2001, no 156, also pp. 254-257). The interest lies on the noun mer��dew (probably in the Hermopolite nome), mentioned in lines 2, 3, 5 and 6, and their two unattested names, on one more (rare) instance of the tax dipl(a) (l. 4) in the Byzantine period, on the calculation of naulon as a 5% of the total load, on two very rare attested nouns in lines 20-21, and on a city, in lines 8, 11, 14, 15 and 18 (probably Hermou polis). The service of a settlement guard (l. 21) points to an epoikion and, because of the large amounts transported, it could be only an assumption that the person involved in these transactions is the owner of the epoikion, Aurelios Taurinos or one of his steward. Considering this possible connection of the front and back side and the use of some rare words, the following remark does not imply anything, and therefore, it should be also considered just as it is said, a remark without further comments, and nothing else: In the document of the front side we find (as in the present document on the back) rare or addenda lexicis words (see N. Lewis' notes on ll. 15, 18-19, 19, 23 (twice!) and 24); on the contrary, a few days later than this lease was written, another person from Timonthis made a leasing agreement with a beneficiarius (P.Lips. I 22 = Chrest.Mitt. 277) without "unusual" details in the phraseology.