Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

630 21c. egypt
their stables and riders (symmachoi, messengers), and estate boats with their
sailors (na tai) for river travel and transport. 82
The earliest document from the Oxyrhynchite part of the archive, a.d.
497, includes features that show that the Apion estate system was already
fully developed and brings the realization that, despite efforts to the contrary,
83 barring new discoveries, there will never be any way for the historian
to trace its origins or early development. The document in question 84
is of a type common in the archive, a so-called receipt for agricultural
machinery. In its formulaic structure there lies an embedded narrative, a
little drama: 85 an Apion tenant acknowledges that he has found need of a
piece of agricultural machinery, in this case (as in many others: presumably
axles were most liable to wear or breaking) a new axle for a water wheel
(mhcan ). He has ‘gone up’ from his rural hamlet ( po‹kion), part of an
Apion estate (kt ma), to the city, Oxyrhynchus, and received the needed
part. He promises to irrigate faultlessly a plot of land called Thryeis. He
will in due time pay his rents to the estate account.
Typical features include the Apion ownership of the ‘means of production’
– not just the land, but the estate’s more expensive equipment: the irrigation
machines and their spare parts, in addition to the oil presses, mills
and bakeries evidenced in other documents. The Oxyrhynchus estate’s
‘company store’ lies in the city, but the farmlands are outside. Typical is the
formulary on which this specific document is based: the resulting document
turns out to be more like a formal contract between two parties, landlord
and tenant, than would seemingly be required in the normal course of operating
an agricultural enterprise, where a verbal agreement or a short written
receipt should have sufficed. The formula is not only elaborate, but longlasting;
it is found as late as 616. 86 Most significant is that the tenant farmer
is styled an nap gra ov gewrg v in the Greek text, a term which is a linguistic
equivalent to a Latin term found in the late imperial law codes: colonus
adscripticius. The laws proclaim that the status of such individuals was barely
distinguishable from that of slaves. 87 They were, it seems, ‘tied to the soil’;
but this, according to a recent argument, 88 was accomplished, not by public
intervention, but by a process of private registration or listing ( pogra� ).
The tenant first entered upon a contractual arrangement with his landlord
(a work contract, a lease). The landlord then agreed to pay his tenant’s taxes
for him and the tenant came to be registered in his landlord’s census.
Curiously, nearly all enapographoi in the papyri are to be found in documents
from Oxyrhynchus, 89 and most of these Oxyrhynchite documents
82 See esp. P.Oxy. i136(�WChr. 383), contract for hire of a pronoêtês, a.d. 583.
83 84 85 86 Fikhman (1975). P.Oxy. xvi 1982. Hardy (1931) 127–8. P.Oxy. xvi 1991.
87 E.g. CJ xi.48.21 (530), Jones, LRE 801; but for the realities, see Fikhman (1991) and Sirks (1993).
88 Sirks (1993).
89 Exceptions: SB xviii 13949 (541): Oxyrhynchite landlords, two enapographoi from a Herakleopolite
hamlet.
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