Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

618 21c. egypt
house to a religious institution (one half ), his wife (one quarter) and
another woman (one quarter). His wife receives, in addition to her own
clothing and personal ornaments, all the household furniture. The mystery
woman receives specified articles, including a platter, three spoons and a
third share of the testator’s winter and summer clothing; two of Pousi’s
fellow couriers are assigned the rest of his wardobe. One half of his
pension is set aside for burial expenses and, by a common practice, for
endowment offerings (pros ora‹ ) for requiem masses and eucharists
( ga* pai) for his soul’s repose. 18 The other half goes to his wife. Pousi’s
elaborate autograph signature to his will, recapitulating its essential terms,
is full of mistakes, suggestive of serviceable but unrefined training in
letters. Among the witnesses is Pousi’s ‘boss’, the chief ( primicerius) of the
provincial office’s school (schola) of heralds. 19
The second will, from several indications a draft, not a final copy, was
drawn up in Antinoopolis on 31 March 567. 20 The testator is Flavius
Theodore, stenographer (exceptor) on the ducal officium of the Thebaid, son
of a deceased lawyer (scholasticus) of the Forum of the Thebaid. 21 The will,
in prolix style, names as heirs (1) the monastery of Apa Shenoute in the
Panopolite nome, (2) a subsidiary monastery named for Apa Mousaios and
(3) Theodore’s maternal grandmother, Heraïs. By its provisions, the
Shenoute monastery is to receive the bulk of Theodore’s landed property,
in the Hermopolite, Antinoopolite and Panopolite nomes (and elsewhere),
and urban properties in Antinoopolis and Hermopolis, the yearly income
and rents from all these to be expended on ‘pious distributions’. A house
in Antinoopolis, with its stable, inherited from Theodore’s father, is to be
sold by the monastery, the proceeds to go for the ransoming of prisoners
and other ‘pious distributions’. Property that had come to Theodore by
inheritance from his deceased wife is to be sold off to finance good works
in her name. Theodore’s movable property is assigned to the Apa Mousaios
monastery and is at least partly to be devoted to the remission of his sins.
Grandmother Heraïs is to receive a farm (kt ma) whose name and location
are left blank in the text. Theodore frees all his slaves; they get to keep
their ‘nest eggs’ (peculia) and are assigned cash legacies of six solidi apiece.
Finally, by another legacy, Theodore’s nurse and her daughter are to receive
by way of trust a yearly pension of twelve solidi from his monastic heirs.
The contrast between the estate of Pousi, a non-clerical official on a civil
staff, and the estate of Theodore, a stenographer on a ducal staff, can hardly
18 For the practice and for the link between offerings and masses: Wipszycka (1972) ch. iii, esp.
65–70.Cf.P.Cair.Masp. i 67003. 19 P.Oxy. xvi 1901.
20 P.Cair.Masp. iii 67312; PLRE iiib.1253 (Fl. Theodorus 27).
21 Theodore’s name and his position in the ducal officium are badly damaged in the papyrus. The
editor considered the one ‘probable enough’, the other ‘doubtful’; there is no doubt that, whatever his
position, the man was a civilian official on the duke’s staff. For convenience’ sake the name and title are
retained in the discussion that follows.
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