Wednesday, January 29, 2025

A tax-fraud and forgery trial recorded in a pre-Bar Kokhba Revolt papyrus

ANCIENT GREEK EPIGRAPHY: 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals Gripping Case About Roman Tax Fraud and Forgery. A newly-studied ancient papyrus is so detailed it could be an episode of Law & Order, Roman style (Margherita Bassi, Gizmodo).
Researchers in Austria and Israel have translated the longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert. Previously unearthed, misidentified, and then nearly forgotten, Hannah Cotton Paltiel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem rediscovered the papyrus in 2014. Now, Paltiel and her colleagues have translated the text, revealing it to be prosecutors’ notes for an ancient Roman trial from the early second century CE. The artifact provides unique insight into a case that dealt with tax fraud, forgery, and the fraudulent sale and freeing of enslaved people during a period of tension in the Roman province of Judaea.
As the article notes, the underlying, open-access, peer-reviewed article is published in the journal Tyche:
Forgery and Fiscal Fraud in Iudaea and Arabia on the Eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Memorandum and Minutes of a Trial before a Roman Official (P.Cotton) [link now corrected!]

Anna Dolganov
Fritz Mitthof
Hannah M. Cotton
Avner Ecker

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25365/tyche-2023-38-5
Schlagworte: Papyrus, Iudaea, Arabia, Hadrian, trial, slaves, fiscus

Abstract

The Greek papyrus presented here is a memorandum for a judicial hearing before a Roman official in the province of Iudaea or Arabia in the reign of Hadrian, after the emperor’s visit to the region in 129/130 CE and before the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132. The document also contains an informal record of the hearing in question. The trial concerns the prosecution of a number of individuals, including a certain Gadalias and Saulos, who are accused of forging documents relating to the sale and manumission of slaves in order to circumvent the imperial fiscus. The identity of the prosecutors remains unknown, but they seem likely to have been functionaries of the Roman fiscal administration. The text also mentions an informer who denounced the defendants to Roman authorities. This document offers a unique glimpse of local civic institutions and the workings of Roman provincial administration and jurisdiction in the Near East. It also sheds light on the elusive question of slave trade and ownership among Jews. At the same time, the papyrus provides insight into a cultural and intellectual environment in which Roman law, Greek rhetoric and Jewish life meet. We present an editio princeps with a translation and commentary, while acknowledging that the study of this document is far from exhausted.

The papyrus was not excavated scientifically. It sounds as though there is not a lot of information about its provenance.

UPDATE (30 January): More here.

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