Beginning of a contract in which two vinedressers, Iakybios and Menas, lease for five years an orchard with fruit trees and date palms near the village of Magdola Mire from Aurelius Basileides of Hermopolis. They undertake the cultivation of the orchard, including digging around the plants five times a year; the terms of payment are lost.
In English machine translation
[recto]
[…]
at Hermopolis in the Thebaid.
† To Aurelius Basileides, the most esteemed, son of Ioannes of blessed memory, from the city of the Hermopolitans, † from the Aurelii Iakybios son of Loulous, his mother being Kako, and Menas son of Konstantinos, his mother being Tinouthia, vinedressers from the place called Anilou, under the jurisdiction of those from the village of Magdola Mire in the Hermopolite nome. We acknowledge that we have voluntarily and of our own free will leased from you, for a period of five years reckoned from the crops of the ninth indiction, which with God's help is coming, and of the indiction itself, the orchard belonging to you, with various plants and date palms and every right, lying in the plain of the same village of Magdola Mire in the same place Anilou and under its jurisdiction, for the manual and orchard work of the same orchard and for digging around (the plants) five times a year without neglect, on condition that you, the landowner, [receive] […]
[…]
[verso]
Lease of an orchard made by Menas son of Konstantinos […]
The lease runs from the ninth indiction, a 15-year fiscal cycle, so the exact year cannot be fixed. The phrase translated "under the jurisdiction" (parafylake) refers to the fiscal and policing district of a village.
Working translation of the DDbDP edition, made with Claude Opus 5.5 from the edition and the catalogue records shown below (catalogued as Pacht eines Obstgartens). It has not been reviewed by a papyrologist: check the edition before citing. Restorations follow the edition; […] marks lost text and (?) an uncertain reading.