Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 581
581 was discovered, alongside hundreds of other papyri, by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt while excavating an ancient landfill at Oxyrhynchus in modern Egypt.
Measuring 6.3 x 14.7 cm and consisting of 17 lines of text, the artifact represents the conclusion of a longer record, although the beginning of the papyrus was lost before it was found.
581 has received a modest amount of scholarly attention, most recently and completely in a 2009 translation by classicist Amin Benaissa of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
An "inadvertent scribal omission",[1] whereby the stated value of 3,000 bronze drachmas, a largely obsolete currency, was not converted into its equivalent worth in silver, is regarded as an unusual mistake and has served to distinguish the record.
[2] The site was excavated from 1896 until 1907 by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt on behalf of the Graeco-Roman Branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund, which subsequently published the contents of the discoveries and donated them to supportive institutions around the world.
[3][4] Aside from a minority of important biblical and classical literary fragments,[5] the vast majority of the collection is made up of correspondence relating to the private citizens of Oxyrhynchus during both the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305 BC–30 BC) and the successive Roman administration (32 BC–648 AD).
[8] Measuring 6.3 x 14 cm,[8][1] the "rather cramped"[9] document consists of 17 lines and is thought complete at the left, lower, and right sides but is fractured at the top;[9][8] the fragment is the conclusion of a longer message.
[13] The document has featured in a short history by R. A. Coles of the Ashmolean Museum in 1998,[14] a fonds description by Dundee's Deputy Archivist Caroline Brown in June 2003[12] as well as a translation of Oxyrhynchus letters by classicist Amin Benaissa, a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 2009.
(ἔτους) β Αὐτοκράτορος Καίσαρος Νέρουα Τραιανοῦ Σεβα(στοῦ) Γερμανικοῦ μη(νὸς) Καισαρε̣(ίου) ἐπα[γομ(ένων)] ϛ.
[1] Comprising ten magistrates known as agoranomi, these institutions were known in the Graeco-Roman world as arbitrating supervisors in a city's markets, residential areas and shipping ports.
[9] Indeed, females comprised approximately two-thirds of the slave population in Roman Egypt overall, many raised as foundlings in citizen families and documented in contemporary censuses.
[21] The artifact describing a slave-based transaction is confirmed by the price listing of "10 talents 3000 (drachmas) of bronze",[9] opined as a standard charge for Oxyrhynchus juveniles in commentaries by the academics J. David Thomas and William Linn Westermann, respectively citing P. Oxy.
[25] The notary in this case, one Caecilius Clemens, is similarly recorded in four other Oxyrhynchus Papyri as an unspecified official registering transactions within an approximate timeframe of 14 years (86 AD–c.100 AD); P. Oxy.
