Uri Yiftach

A draft of a petition of at least forty-two lines of text, written along the fibres in a skilled cursive hand, which can be identified for reasons of contents and palaeography with that of Ptolemaios son of Diodoros, whose dossier (144–162 CE) stems from the village of Theadelphia.

The papyri from Egypt allow a rare glimpse of the workings of Greek law outside the settings of the polis. The evidence stems from an extremely long period from the Macedonian to the Arab conquest, a period in the course of which Greek law interacted with and was influenced by other legal cultures, most notably Egyptian and Roman. The evidence is also unique: literary sources play a marginal role, as do inscriptions. It is rather private correspondence, texts composed on papyrus for ephemeral purposes, discarded and uncovered millennia later, that provides most of our evidence. Such direct access to everyday documentation is one of the most fascinating features of legal papyrology.

This chapter examines one of the mechanisms used by the Roman administration in Egypt to organize data: ‘all-embracing’ categories, and the manner in which the imperial government divided and categorized the provincial population. The concentration is on taxes and registration. Differences are found in the categorizations most commonly employed in different parts of the province and in different types of document, meaning that individuals could be labelled differently depending on context. While many categories had their roots in the previous regime, there were a few significant innovations, most notably the invention of the category of ‘the Egyptians’ to encompass all who were not Roman or Alexandrian. This has significant implications for the creation of a unified set of rules, applicable to this category of people in all legal cases and thus transformed the legal landscape from that under the Ptolemies.

The following paper 1 presents the preliminary results of a survey of different forms of designation for persons in documentary papyri. For the Ptolemaic period, the survey includes legal documents and lists; our discussion of the Roman period will also include personal notifications, a new type of documentation introduced after 30 BCE. Other documentary genres, in particular petitions and letters, have been left for a future investigation. In this paper, I will (1) posit that, in the Ptolemaic period, there existed both an intricate scheme used for the identification of persons in legal documents, as well as a very simple identification method, consisting of personal name and patronymic, used in lists and reports. I will further demonstrate (2) that the intricate method used in Ptolemaic legal documents was replaced in the Roman period by a new system of identification derived from the simple identification method formerly applied in reports and lists; this system was subsequently developed through the inclusion of additional elements, many of which had already been used sporadically in the Ptolemaic period. Finally, (3) I will argue that, while the identification methods applied throughout the various documentary genres were closely regulated and monitored during the Ptolemaic period, such regulation did not exist in the Roman period; rather, after the introduction of an initial, rudimentary identification format, scribes was allowed to add new identifiers as they saw fit, hence the notion of the 'flexible template'. This type of flexibility is typical of the Roman administrative style.

Transaction costs (TC) are the "friction" in an economic system, and their analysis is vital to understanding institutional design and economic performance. Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy is the first volume to collect specific studies from a transaction cost perspective. The volume offers models of this new way of looking at ancient evidence, and suggests ways in which traditional subject areas might inform problems in contemporary economics and legal studies. After the editors' methodological introduction, the contributors investigate the roles and effects of transaction costs in fourth-century Athens, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Roman Empire, and late antiquity, on the basis of legal texts, papyri, and inscriptions. Collected here are some of the leading voices on TC analysis in ancient history, as well as established scholars , including several who do not usually publish in English: Alain Bresson, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Rudolf Haensch, Dennis Kehoe, Francois Lerouxel, J. G. Manning, Brian Muhs, Josiah Ober, David Ratzan, Gerhard Thur, and Uri Yiftach. This volume will speak to those who identify with traditional subject areas, like epigraphy or Greek law, and will also demonstrate the value of experimenting with this new way of looking at ancient evidence.

This paper presents two studies that investigate how people praise and punish robots in a collaborative game scenario. In a first study, subjects played a game together with humans, computers, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic robots. The different partners and the game itself were presented on a computer screen. Results showed that praise and punishment were used the same way for computer and human partners. Yet robots, which are essentially computers with a different embodiment, were treated differently. Very machine-like robots were treated just like the computer and the human; robots very high on anthropomorphism / zoomorphism were praised more and punished less. However, barely any of the participants believed that they actually played together with a robot. After this first study, we refined the method and also tested if the presence of a real robot, in comparison to a screen representation, would influence the measurements. The robot, in the form of an AIBO, would either be ...

1 The present paper was written in connection with the project Synopsis: Data Processing and State Management in Early Roman Egypt (31 BCE-284 CE), held in collaboration with Professor Andrea Jördens of the Institut für Papyrologie at the University of Heidelberg and sponsored by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. It was originally presented in the 27th Congress of Papyrologists, Warsaw 29.7.-3.8.2013. A modified version was held in a lecture delivered on 4.8.2014 at Tel Aviv University. I thank the two anonymous readers for their diligent work and highly enriching comments.

In a recent contribution, I argued that in the Ptolemaic period there existed a clear distinction between types of legal acts recorded by different scribes. Leases and labor contracts were generally drawn up in the format of the double document, while hereditary dispositions and documents recording land and slave sales were drafted by the agoranomos, who also registered the act of conveyance in his files, thus allowing the state to gain cognizance of the ownership of these assets and ensure that the conveyance tax was collected.1 In the Roman period, the state continued to take an interest in monitoring land conveyances, but the way in which it achieved this end was different: by the first century CE property rights were recorded in the bibliotheke enktēseon, and the right to landed property could be undisputedly conveyed only upon verification by the bibliophylakes that there were no conflicting

In his règle de droit dans l'Égypte ptolémaïque Professor Mélèze Modrzejewski studied how the law of the Greek city state penetrated the Egyptian chôra in the Hellenstic period. Focusing on a sphere of the law that was left untreated in that seminal paper— the prosecution of delicts—this paper stresses the relyance of Greek courts and state officials in the chôra on types of suits (dikai) originally conceived within the law of the city of Alexandria.

commenting, whereas the volume in question is meant to serve as an archaeological report. In that respect, the author has certainly delivered the goods, insofar as possible, for understanding Churches EA and E, in detail. Indeed, when I read an archaeological report such as this, I look for two things: the immediate gratification of encountering a few new ideas, and the enduring substance of the documentation. In sum, the volume under review modestly provides both, and Churches EA and E may now enter into the discourse on Byzantine architectural history. Because of this, the book will serve as a fitting tribute to the late Hans Buchwald.

planners, geographers, urban scholars and architects. The Mediterranean is explored as a micro-cosmos of emerging agendas that are at the heart of current debates outside the Mediterranean basin. Among them are globalization and immigration, the transformed form of contemporary urbanization (233), the heritage of illegal construction (238), the capacity of cities to adapt and survive (285), cosmopolitanism (325) and technologies of power that shape border regimes (303). These issues are mostly explored as relevant for the here and now. In this respect, this is not a historical book. Even diachronic analyses (as in Leontidou’s account of modern Athens) or overviews of historical plans (as in the essay about Sörgel’s project) contribute to the understanding of the Mediterranean as a contemporary phenomenon. When viewed together, the essays present a multi-scalar and non-hierarchical analysis, in which the notion(s) of the ‘Mediterranean’, ‘city’, or ‘region’ are not taken for granted, thus contributing to what Neil Brenner calls elsewhere the unmasking of the myths, reifications and antinomies that pervade bourgeois forms of knowledge. The strength of the volume lies in the manner in which it reads the ‘Mediterranean’ as a constantly changing entity, affected by clashing power relations, identities and definitions. This reading points to the potential benefits of conflicts; as Herzfeld states: ‘violent conflicts that lead to bloodshed are hard to justify; but the conflict of ideas can allow cities to become places for the expression of a multiplicity of views’ (66). This view not only echoes Richard Sennett’s argument that some disorder, disagreement and conflict are needed in cities, but also presents an optimistic view of an area that was – and still is – shaped by war, competition and struggle.

der Besitz im Stichzeitpunkt der Streitbefestigung erforderlich war oder auch erst später (im laufenden Verfahren) erlangter Besitz genügte. Die Frage ist für die h. p. deutlicher ausgesprochen in D. 5, 3,18,1 und stellt sich gleichgelagert für die Vindikation in D. 6,1, 27,1 (item si-Variante) sowie im Vorweisungsanspruch D. 10,4,7,4 (und auch noch für die a. de peculio D. 15,1,30 pr.). Glücklich gezeigt ist der Wandel im Besitzverständnis. In der Spur von Amelo t t i ua, die den Umschwung im Verständnis der longi temporis praescriptio von einer „prescrizione estintiva" zu einer „prescrizione acquisitiva" aufgezeigt haben, führt M. (364) weiterführend aus : Der Beklagte ist für das iustum initium (die iusta causa) beweispflichtig. Damit liegt ein Fall vor, wo die possessio einen Bezug zum Titel hat und sohin eine Situation, die den Besitzer das Sachenrecht erwerben läßt. Dies paßt vorzüglich zum Ergebnis der Untersuchung, daß iure possidere (iure dominii, emphyteutico iure, perpetuo iure possidere ua) die „titolarità dei diritti reali" bezeichnet (zusammenfassend 382). Kann der Beklagte dagegen das iustum initium nicht beweisen, so stellt dies einen Fall des corpore teneat dar und der Beklagte verliert wegen Fehlens des Titels („in mancanza di titolo") den Prozeß. Auch von daher ist der praktische Gegensatz von iure possidere/corpore possidere (C. 7, 32,10)) erhellt. Insgesamt besticht die eindrucksvolle Arbeit durch stets genaues Abwägen der Argumente und einen scharfen Blick für die Bruchlinien in der nicht ganz einfachen Entwicklung des Besitzschutzes.

The cheirographon is the documentation of a legal transaction in the format of a letter. Its author is the prospective debtor, its addressee the future creditor. The cheirographon opens as a rule with the greeting xa¤rein, which is followed by the provisions of the contract. These are ...

The papyri from Egypt allow a rare glimpse of the workings of Greek law outside the set tings of the polis. The evidence stems from an extremely long period from the Macedonian to the Arab conquest, a period in the course of which Greek law interacted with and was influenced by other legal cultures, most notably Egyptian and Roman. The evidence is also unique: literary sources play a marginal role, as do inscriptions. It is rather private correspondence, texts composed on papyrus for ephemeral purposes, discarded and un covered millennia later, that provides most of our evidence. Such direct access to every day documentation is one of the most fascinating features of legal papyrology.

Cooperation in Contracts: (1) a quantitative analysis. (2) focus joint activity by family members as vendors of landed property and as borrowers. (3) analysis of evidence from Delphi (manumission inscriptions), Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. (4) study of the 'approval-clause' in various documentary settings.

an analysis of the hypographai of legal documents allows us to draw statistical conclusions as to the level of literacy among parties to contracts recorded at the grapheia in early Roman Egypt. The results are surpising, in that they show a literacy rate much higher than that assume by most scholars; a distinction is made between those who are able to write just short text, those who can write long by low quality text, and those whose text is not only long but also of excellent quality.

This is a draft of a paper held at the last meeting of the ISPCS at Tel Aviv University. 29.5.19.  I am still going to develop it before publication, of course, asking (1) to what extent the Greek stipulatio, meaning a confirmation of the performance of a past act, can be found in the Roman sphere. I still havent found it, but the corpus is huge and I need to carry it on before reaching some conclusions. (2) The Roman stipulatio, meaning the pledge of a future act is not common on papyrus, but there are some interesting texts, already mentioned in Simon's excellent monograph. I would in particular like to study more carefully how Byzantine law (Basilika, Theophilus) would take the stipulatio.  (3) There is the question of the stipulatio in other laws. I am aware of the coptic scheme, but I have still havent study Jewish, or Syriac law. If anyone can shed light on this, I will be very grateful.

In pursuance of my current effort to create a handbook of clauses in legal documents from Egypt, I prepared for a meeting held last year in Athens a synopsis of types of penalty clauses from Egypt. The subject has not been subject to a thorough analysis since Berger's monograph (Die Strafklauseln in den Papyrusurkunden (Leipzig 1911)). It seems to me especially important to integrate epigraphy,  which I am by no means competent to do. Looking forward for your input!

The introduction of the stipulatio has been seen as the first, immediate sign of the Romanization of local contractual practice after 212 CE. Students can consult abundant literature. The period I present here present the earliest data. The reader should note (1) the pace and context of the first infiltration. (2) some unique formulations, that will later be abandonned.
If the data is cited in publication, please show me the courtesy of citing synallagma as your source.

After long intermission, I send you another sample of the data stored at the synallagma databank. This time I chose legal douments recording Alexandrian citizens.

The databank is available online. Do not hesitate contacting me for futher guidance.

http://synallagma.tau.ac.il/
Collection: glrt
user: guest
password: guest

In a lecture delivered two weeks ago I assembled data on the designation strategy in administrative and legal documents from Roman Egypt. The bottom line was that scribes were usually given certain key elements, which they normally introduced into the documenation, but could also enter aditional ones. This is what I called  a "flexible template". In this respect, the Roman policty was radically different from that of the Ptolemaic administration. I now wish to place the issue of flexibility of the template in a broader context.
I attach both the text of the lecture and the handouts. That labelled "charts" is especially pertinent.

The assumption is the in every lease, the lessee was expect to present the landlord annually, on a special occasion, with some of the fruits of the estate. This donation was never, as far as I know, stiuplated in the contract before the BP. Why, I do not know. The reader can consult in that connection the references to the term synetheia.

With the formulaic analysis of the documents from Egypt close to completion, we are now able to study the regional and diachronic patterns in the application of different clauses, as well as changes in their formulation. The bebaiosis is an excellent test case: no less than 756 documents recorded in synallagma contain the eviction clause, and the user can study in what types of contracts it is especially common.  I chose to bring here a sample covering the documentation of the second half of the third century CE

Dear All, I decided to add this week a sample of our information relating to a different sphere of legal, and economic activity, that is camel sales. The reader can get notion of the places of composition of these documents, the value of the camels, and naturally also of the structure of the document and the key clauses. A link to DDBDP may give you some idea of the formulation of each clause.  For further inquiries kindly contact me at uiftach@post.tau.ac.il

The databank synallagma: Greek Contract in Context, has now started to incorporate legal documents on inscriptions, in addition to texts on papyri already inserted ub the past. It has also been extended to record petitions (for which the data from Egypt is now exhaustive, I think), decrees, and court proceedings. I will now occasionally upload result pages from the databank, as a way to encourage the viewers to use the databank independent.  For futher inquiries you can contact me per email (uiftach@post.tau.ac.il). I start with metadata on leases of vineyards from Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt.

In 231 documents the scribe records earlier contracts, whose validity is affirmed. While 'background' reports the reason for the composition of the present document (35 documents), 'earlier transaction' (193 documents) reports other acts. Within the groups of 193 documents registered here, we can set apart seven categories: 1) Mostly in the genitive absolute, the scribe states that notwithstanding the present act, earlier contracts remain in force. We distinguish here between two key formulations: (1a) with εἰμί: BGU XII 2188.6-7 (526 Herm): κυρίων | ὀντῶν (l. οὐσῶν) καὶ βεβαίων τῶν προτέρων μου̣ συνγραφῶν "my earlier documents being valid and firm" (13 texts). In 6 cases the clause refers to a concrete (below: "con.") legal act; in seven others generally, to any past contract (below: "gen"). All the cases but one are Byzantine, from the Hermopolite and Oxyrhynchite nomes. (1b) with μένω: P.Mich. XI 603.24-26 (134 ArsN): μενόντων | 25[κυ]ρίων ὧν ἔχομεν ἀλλήλ̣ ων χειρο|[γ]ρ̣ άφων. (13 texts) ("Let the cheirographa that we have towards each-other remain effective"). In 13 cases the clause refers to a concrete (below: "con.") legal act. In two only to any general past contract. The formulation is early Roman, primarily recorded in documents from Alexandria and the Arsinoite nome. 2) The same idea as in (1) but differently formulated: the rights of the contractual parties to claims resulting from earlier acts are not affected by the present contract. Here, too, two formulations are used: (2a) μὴ ἐλαττουμένου: BGU III 741.40-45 (143 Alexandria?)): μὴ ἐλ[α]ττουμένου τοῦ Οὐαλερ[ίου] | Ἀμμωνιαν[ο]ῦ [π]ερὶ ὧ[ν ἄ]λλ[ω]ν [ὀ]φ[ε]ί[λ]ι αὐτῷ ὁ | αὐτὸ[ς Γ]έλλι[ος] Οὐάλης [κ]αθʼ ἑτέρ[α]ν συνχώρησιν | τῷ [διε]ληλ[υθ]ότι ἔτει μηνὶ Και[σ]α[ρ]είῳ ἄ[λλ]ων | ἀργυ[ρ]ίου δραχμῶν [τετ]ρακοσ[ί]ων [ἑξήκο]ν|45τα καὶ τόκων. ("…and let Valerius suffer no diminution of rights in respect to another four-hundred sixty silver drachms plus interest, which Gellius Valens owes him by virtue of another synchoresis, composed in the foregoing year, in the month Kaisareios.") In 18 cases the clause refers to a concrete legal act. In 5 only generally to any past contract. The formula is early Roman, recorded in documents from the Arsinoite and Oxyrhynchite nomes. (2b): μένοντoς λόγου: P.Gen. I 9.1.16-19 (252 Phebichis): μένοντός σο[ι] τοῦ | [λόγου πρὸς] ἐ̣ μὲ καὶ τὸν π̣ [ατ]έ̣ ρα μου περὶ ὧν ἄλ̣ λων | [ὀφείλομέ]ν σοι δανείων̣. (You retaining your claim towards me and my father regarding all other loans that we owe you"). In 5 documents the clause relates to concrete, while in seven others to any past act. The formula is best attested in documents from the third century CE. 3) The same idea, as in the two former groups, that earlier obligations remain unaffected, is expressed through the 'apart from' formulation: IV 1054.15-18 (13 A Alexandria): τοῦτο δʼ ἐστὶν τὸ δάνειον ἐκτὸς | ἑτέρων ὧν ὀφείλει ὁ αὐτὸς Ἀμμώνιος σὺν τῇ μη|τρὶ αὐτοῦ τῷ Ἀπολλωνίῳ καθʼ ἑτέραν συνχώρη[σιν] | δραχμῶν ἑκατόν ("This loan is apart from another hundred drachms which the same Ammonios owes Apollonios together with his wife, by virtue of another synchoresis"), and P.Leid.Inst. 25.10-11 (95/6 ArsN): χωρ̣ ὶς ἄλλω[ν ὧν] | ὀφ<ε>ίλω τῷ αὐτῶι καθʼ ἑτέρας ἀσφαλείας. ("Apart from

As soon as papyri from Egypt started to be excavated, their merit as a source for the study of legal history was recognized. Many sources of documentary papyri provide legally relevant information: texts of legislative activity and other collections of regulations, court rulings, and court proceedings, accounts, reports, petitions, letters, all provide precious information that cannot be ignored by anyone attempting at understanding the operation of law in Greco-Roman Egypt. Among these sources, some record certain spheres of legal activity better than others: criminal law and the law of tort are especially well documented in petitions and court proceedings; administrative law in administrative correspondence and decrees; law of persons in collections of regulations, administrative correspondence, applications for admission into certain status groups and others (Bauschatz 2013; for a sourcebook with introductions to these types of legal documents, see Keenan, Manning and Yiftach-Firanko 2014). At the same time, it is primarily the law of contract, or to be more precise, the law of private legal institutions that is best documented on papyrus: parties recorded their contracts in writing, and were naturally interested in keeping this documentation for future reference. This interest resulted in high numbers of contracts among documentary papyri and in archives. People also referred to contractual activity in letters, petitions and court proceedings, thus extending o w acquaintance with this type of legal activity further. We will study here this type of "legal documents"-meaning from now on "all papyri whose purpose of composition was to record a legal act, contractual (loan, lease, etc.) or other (e.g. hereditary dispositions)". We will discuss the legal traditions of the two dominant population groups, Greeks and Egyptians, with due attention to possible interactions and the minor impact of Roman law. We start with the Greek documentation, the largest group (4770 texts), the formulary of which can be followed over more than 900 years, and continue with the Egyptian legal documentation (1383 texts) which survived only for about 400 years since Alexander's conquest. The small

The following paper 1 presents the preliminary results of a survey of different forms of designation for persons in documentary papyri. For the Ptolemaic period, the survey includes legal documents and lists; our discussion of the Roman period will also include personal notifications, a new type of documentation introduced after 30 BCE. Other documentary genres, in particular petitions and letters, have been left for a future investigation. In this paper, I will (1) posit that, in the Ptolemaic period, there existed both an intricate scheme used for the identification of persons in legal documents, as well as a very simple identification method, consisting of personal name and patronymic, used in lists and reports. I will further demonstrate (2) that the intricate method used in Ptolemaic legal documents was replaced in the Roman period by a new system of identification derived from the simple identification method formerly applied in reports and lists; this system was subsequently developed through the inclusion of additional elements, many of which had already been used sporadically in the Ptolemaic period. Finally, (3) I will argue that, while the identification methods applied throughout the various documentary genres were closely regulated and monitored during the Ptolemaic period, such regulation did not exist in the Roman period; rather, after the introduction of an initial, rudimentary identification format, scribes was allowed to add new identifiers as they saw fit, hence the notion of the 'flexible template'. This type of flexibility is typical of the Roman administrative style.

A third meeting of the research group on ancient formulae in ancient documentary texts took place at the university of Warsaw last week. My focus was on the paramone clause, and its interaction with other clauses securing the attachment of the employee to the employer. The enclosed paper would allow the reader some overview of the relevant clauses.