I 137) is the fifth in a series of Oxyrhynchus papyri (133–139) concerning the family affairs of Flavius Apion, his heirs, or his son.
[1] The document consists of an acknowledgement given by Aurelius Ptollion, a cultivator, to the heirs of Flavius Apion, of the receipt of an axle for a water wheel used in irrigation.
There are some internal inconsistencies in the document which force Grenfell and Hunt to speculate slightly in order to arrive at a plausible date.
[2] Having lately had occasion to require an axle for the appliance belonging to the landlord under my charge which is called by the name of Gedius Anianus and supplies water to arable land, I went up to the city and asked your magnificence to order the axle to be provided for me.
Whereupon your magnificence with due regard for the state of your property credited me in my accounts with the value of a new, proper, serviceable, and satisfactory axle, which I have received as the complement of all the machinery this fifteenth day of Tybi of the present second indiction for the water supply of the crops of the third indiction by God's help approaching.