An offer by Claudianus, a maker of wine jars, to lease for another year Aurelia Apia's quarter share of a pottery at the estate Metrikon near Sennis in the Oxyrhynchite nome. He undertakes to produce 4,000 jars and smaller vessels, fired and pitched, with the owner supplying clay, water, fuel and pitch, for wages of 36 drachmas per 100 jars.
In English machine translation
[recto]
To Aurelia Apia, daughter of Septimius Serenus, former exegetes, former prytanis of the city of the Oxyrhynchites,
from Claudianus, potter of wine jars, of his own (?) [...] Eudaimon, gymnasiarch, councillor of the same city.
I voluntarily undertake to lease for one further year from 1 Thoth of the present year 3 your fourth share of the pottery for wine jars situated at the estate called Metrikon near Sennis, and of the kiln and vaults in it and all its equipment, on condition that I make for you and fire and pitch, from the winter manufacture, Oxyrhynchite jars called [four-chous jars] to the number of 4,000, [double jars] 100, two-chous jars 15, you providing me at the same pottery, from your stores, the necessary [black] earth, loose earth and sandy earth, and water for the cistern, and for the firing and smoking of the jars the necessary fuel, and for the pitching of the same jars and double jars and two-chous jars, of pitch by weight on the measure of Aline, 12 solid talents, of which half Troadesian and half Seritic, the wage for the making, firing and pitching being 36 drachmas for each 100 jars, and I shall receive the total of the wages, 1,440 drachmas, [...] 100 [...]
[...]
[... lines lost ...]
[...] into the [...]
[...] drachmas [...] hundred and forty,
and I shall receive as extras 1 jar of vinegar, [...] artabas of lentils [...]. If the undertaking is confirmed to me, I shall do [the making] and firing and pitching of the aforesaid jars and double jars and two-chous jars and shall deliver them in the month of Epeiph of the present year at the drying floors of the pottery, from the winter manufacture, well fired and pitched from lip to base, satisfactory, not leaking, apart from those repairable and damaged. And I acknowledge that I owe from the manufacture of the past [year 2] 250 jars, 50 double jars [...] of Seritic pitch 1 plain talent and [...]
[...] present [...] jars [...]
[...]
[... lines lost ...]
[verso]
Phaophi, 100 drachmas
Such pottery leases are really labour contracts: the lessee is paid to produce a fixed number of jars. The verso note records a payment of 100 drachmas in Phaophi.
Working translation of the DDbDP edition, made with Claude Opus 5.5 from the edition and the catalogue records shown below (catalogued as Lease of a Pottery). It has not been reviewed by a papyrologist: check the edition before citing. Restorations follow the edition; […] marks lost text and (?) an uncertain reading.