Davide Amendola - The Demades Papyrus (P.Berol. Inv. 13045): A New Text with Commentary

In 1923, in the seventh volume of the German series Berliner Klassikertexte (BKT),

From April 1902 to March 1905, Rubensohn conducted three campaigns (including a preliminary survey) in the cemetery on behalf of the Preuisches Papyrusunternehmen. Some concise reports of these excavations edited by Rubensohn and the German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt survive, along with unpublished diaries and records housed in the archives of the gyptisches Museum in Berlin.

Although the missing archaeological information impedes an accurate reconstruction for the context of most of the Ab r al-Malaq cartonnages, a page of Rubensohns excavation diaries indicates that P.Berol. inv.13045 was excavated at nearly the end of the second campaign, on Friday, March 4th 1904. The papyrus was discovered in the humble grave of two children, which was probably located in the northern area of the cemetery in the immediate vicinity of an underground well (Br):

Der groe Steinbir wird auch heute noch nicht zu Ende gefrdert. Dicht daneben aber bringt uns ein ganz kmmerliches Grab, das kaum 2 Meter tief liegt (ganz roher Schacht, Grube ffnet sich nach Westen, der KieselGebbel darber droht fortwhrend einzustrzen) einen pikfeinen Fund. Im Grab lagen 2 Kinder nebeneinander begraben []. ber beide gedeckt lag eine offenbar altbenutzte Hlle in Mumienform nur der Deckel oben und unten Leinwand, in der Mitte 2 Lagen Papyrus, dieser z.T. tadellos erhalten ist ein Buchtext mit schnen groen Unzialen.

From Rubensohns observations of the content of the tomb, it appears that the mummy cover placed over the children consisted of four layers (two internal layers made of papyrus and two external layers made of linen): this is a slight structural anomaly in comparison to Ptolemaic standards (which required two to three layers for each of the individual pieces of the case) and could perhaps be explained by assuming that the two corpses were covered with the lid of a Ganzkrperkartonage of around 150 centimetres in length.

In a 1913 article on the well-known group of Alexandrian papyri from the Augustan period which had been extracted from the Ab r al-Malaq cartonnages (BGU IV 10501059, 10981183), Schubart was apparently sceptical as to whether some literary fragments which were detached from the same mummy covers also came from Alexandria.

The applicability of such an approach to the study of cartonnages from Ab r al-Malaq has been confirmed fairly recently by Lucia Colella. Following in the footsteps of Salmenkivi, she has persuasively connected P.Schub. 4 = P.Berol. inv.13872 and P.Schub. 7 = P.Berol. inv.13873 to the cover containing the documents that appeared in BGU VIII, which was fully dismantled in 1926.

Even though Salmenkivi has ascertained that no record of how the dismantling of Ab r al-Malaq cartonnages was carried out by Hugo Ibscher in the first decades of the twentieth century has been preserved in the archives of the gyptisches Museum in Berlin (neither their number nor their types seem to be known), some documents which she has apparently not taken into account show that this process was already underway in the second half of 1904. Furthermore, a letter from Rubensohn to Annibale Evaristo Breccia, dated Eshmunejn d. 27. XII 1904, which was intended to act as a supplement to his account of the second campaign, proves that the three literary papyri were detached from the same cartonnage:

Gleichzeitig mit diesem Brief sende ich Ihnen meinen Bericht aus dem Archaeologischen Anzeiger, in dem Sie alles wnschenswerte ber meine letzte Grabung finden. Hinzufgen mchte ich noch, was Ihnen vielleicht angenehm zu hren ist, da bei der Auseinanderwicklung der Papyruscartonage in Berlin in einem Sarg mehrere litterarische Stcke sich fanden, von uns soeben in den Berichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften von Berlin unter dem Titel Laterculi Alexandrini von Diels verffentlicht ist [i.e. Diels 1904], den ebenda erwhnten Rest des Alexanderromans werde ich demnchst verffentlichen;

In addition to confirming that P.Berol. inv.13045 was found during the excavations conducted at the beginning of 1904, the document clearly states that these literary fragments were extracted from a mummy coffin (Sarg) which may most likely be identified with the offenbar altbenutzte Hlle in Mumienform mentioned in the excavation diary. Moreover, the archaeological report sent by Rubensohn to Breccia with this letter (namely Rubensohn 1904) clarifies what kind of documents were recycled together with the three literary papyri to manufacture the cartonnage lid, as the Bericht shows that a cover containing both literary and documentary pieces of various types (wills, contracts, ordinances, tax registers) dating between the first century BCE and the first century CE was excavated from the small group of graves located in the northern part of the cemetery: die zu derselben [i.e. Kartonage] verwandten Papyri gehren soweit sie bisher erkennbar waren dem letzten Jahrhundert vor und dem ersten Jahrhundert nach Christi Geburt an. Neben Urkunden Testamenten, Kontrakten, Erlassen, Steuerlisten finden sich auch literarische Bruchstcke.

If one tries to locate the papyri mentioned by Rubensohn within the Berlin collection, it clearly emerges that the documentary categories described in the account correspond to many of the texts that appeared in BGU IV and BGU VIII: among the Testamente one could count BGU IV 1151, 118 (TM18568: Alexandria, 13BCE) = P.Berol. inv.13049v and BGU IV 1131 (TM18575: Alexandria, after the 11th of April, 13BCE) = P.Berol. inv.13085; among the Kontrakte most of the documents in the Protarchos Archive published in BGU IV (above all, marriage contracts, Ammenvertrge and loan agreements);

Although the report seems to refer to a single cartonnage,

These considerations permit the conclusion that, in all likelihood, the cartonnages found at were manufactured locally.

In light of these observations, it is possible to argue on firmer ground that some of the literary papyri found at , among which P.Berol. inv.13044, P.Berol. inv.13045 and P.Berol. inv.13046 are likely to be counted, actually came from Alexandria. A new list, arranged according to literary genres, follows below (an asterisk indicates pieces that are still unpublished):

• epic poetry: *P.Berol. inv.13046 (MP3 903; LDAB 2261: Hom. Il. 13.184314, 317341, 345367, 1st c. BCE); BKT IX 120 (MP3 919.1; LDAB 2260: Hom. Il. 15.531, 1st c. BCE); P.Berol. inv.17002 = Mller 1995, no.8 (MP3 0871.1; LDAB 2306: Hom. Il. 11.116140, 144161, Augustan period); BKT X 5 (MP3 1076; LDAB 1336: Hom. Od. 9.4345, 7592, mid-1st c. BCE) = P.Berol. inv.9964r; BKT V.1, 718 = P.Berol. inv.13044v (MP3 1774; LDAB 6759: paraphrase of a poem on the rape of Persephone, mid-1st c. BCE); P.Schub. 7 (MP3 1785; LDAB 883: Hellenistic epic, Augustan period) = P.Berol. inv.13873;