Part I: The social world of fourth-century Kellis
Chapter 2: Life in Kellis
2.3 Society in Kellis .1 The populace .1 The populace
2.3.2 Village elites
Local elites and outside influencers
Villages were often less hierarchical than cities.197 However, they could not avoid a degree of social stratification, and Kellis certainly had families with comparatively more wealth and
191 Based on the prosopography in Bagnall, P. Kell. IV, 63–72.
192 The KAB does probably not account for all the landlord’s income from around Kellis. Ibid., 25–27.
193 For the income of the manager, see ibid., 76–80.
194 Colin A. Hope and Klaas A. Worp, ‘Miniature codices from Kellis’, Mnemosyne 59, no. 2 (2006); Klaas A. Worp,
‘A mythological ostrakon from Kellis’, in The Oasis Papers 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, ed. Gillian E. Bowen and Colin A. Hope (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2003).
195 Pointed out by Olaf Kaper, ‘The western oasis’, in The Oxford handbook of Roman Egypt, ed. Christina Riggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 725. See also pkgr.53 (l.2).
196 Worp and Rijksbaron, P.Kell. III; Pasquale M. Pinto, ‘P. Kellis III Gr. 95 and Evagoras I’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 168 (2009): 217–18.
197 For a short survey of empirical studies on landholding in the papyri see Roger S. Bagnall, Reading papyri, writing ancient history (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), 64–68. See also Ruffini, Social networks.
power than others, as attested to by the painted residence in Area B. Among the most visible elites in the papyri are the magistrates and officials, whose influence is seen in the orders they sent to and petitions they received from its inhabitants. The papyri show the existence of several magistrates on both the level of the entire Great Oasis and that of the Mothite Nome:
a logistes (pkgr.25), an exactor (P. Gascou 70),198 a speculator (agent for the Roman army) (P.
Gascou 82), and even a deputy-exactor, who witnessed the appointment of village liturgists (pkgr.23), is attested. As noted, the logistes and the exactor seem to have remained responsible for the entire Great Oasis into the fourth century, for both Dakhleh and Khargeh.
On the level of the Mothite Nome, we find papyri pertaining to council presidents (e.g. P.
Gascou 72, pkgr.25), presumably in Mothis, and a praepositus pagi of Trimithis (pkgr.27).199 An ex-magistrate named Faustianus was petitioned in his capacity as ‘defensor of the area’, either the Mothite Nome or the whole Great Oasis.200
Such high personages were perhaps rather distant to the common villager: they would for the most part not have resided in Kellis. However, one villager is found alleging that Roman soldiers and officials had been turned against him by the local komarch (pkgr.21), indicating some level of regular interaction. Moreover, some magistrates appear to have had extensive dealings in Kellis. Three magistrates are documented for the fourth century, two of them of
198 See the comments in Worp, ‘Miscellaneous’, 447.
199 J. David Thomas, review of Greek Papyri from Kellis, I, K. A. Worp, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 84 (1998): 262. The praepositus, named Serenos, received a reprimand from the governor for unreasonable demands he made of camels and beasts from the local people, a copy of which was probably retained by one of the plaintiffs. Worp broached the possibility that Serenos retired to Kellis as an explanation for the discovery of the rebuke from the governor, pkgr.27, in House 3 (Worp, P. Kellis I, 81.). However, the papyrus is more likely to have belonged to one of the people who had fielded the initial complaint against him. Two other pieces of evidence link Serenos to Kellis: a Serenos officialis mentioned in the KAB (125, 801), and an unpublished correspondence between a Serenos and an Alexander from the mid-fourth century. Still, while they may pertain to Serenos the praepositus, they probably do not evince him living there. A house closely connected to this Serenos has, however, been unearthed in Trimithis; see Bagnall and Ruffini, Ostraka from Trimithis.
200 For this question see Worp, P. Kellis I, 65–66 n.2.
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high rank: Gelasios, an ex-logistes,201 Pausanias, exactor and riparius202, and an ex-magistrate of unknown office, Harpokration. Landownership was one channel for their influence. Both Pausanias and Gelasios owned land in the village and/or its surroundings. A distant figure like the landlord of the KAB, who probably resided in Hibis in Khargeh Oasis, would have had some impact on the local level through his landholdings.203 His land managers (pronoētai) in Kellis collected rents and conducted other local affairs on his behalf. They were probably important men and women204 in their own right, perhaps themselves landowners of local stature, but their positions would have been strengthened by ties to his large estate.205 Patronage was another way for elites to make their influence felt. Harpokration had villagers among his employees, one of whom came to him for protection against liturgical service and ended up causing a violent conflict in 353. While elite influence extended down to the villagers, they in turn could take advantage of such influence for their own purposes.
Other villagers of some standing were local property holders who served in important village liturgies.206 A certain Sois son of Akoutis was komarch of Kellis in 321. From pkgr.23 (d.
352) we know that Kellis usually had two komarchs, both appointed by lots under the supervision of the exactor.207 A village scribe, N.N. son of Tithoes208, is documented for Kellis around the same time (pkgr.14, d. 356), indicating a need for record keeping and scribal work.
201 Worp suggested that he may be a Gelasios, ‘strategos or exactor of the [Great] Oasis’, who officiated in 309 (for whom see J. David Thomas, ‘The earliest occurrence of the exactor civitatis in Egypt (P. Giss. inv. 126 recto)’, Yale Classical Studies 28 (1985).); see Worp, P. Kellis I, 46, pkgr.16, ll.1–2n; 85, pkgr.29, l.3n., and the discussion in section 4.2.2. A contemporary actor by this name appears as an associate of the magistrate Serenos in Trimithis; but reservations concerning identifying these two are expressed by Bagnall and Ruffini, Ostraka from Trimithis, 37 n.20.
202 This is an early attestation of this office, previously known from only around the year 340. For the previous earliest occurrence, see Torallas Tovar, ‘The police in byzantine Egypt’.
203 For the connection between Faustianos and Hibis, see now also Roger S. Bagnall and Gaelle Tallet, ‘Ostraka from Hibis in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the archaeology of the city of Hibis’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 196 (2015): 189.
204 For women working as and with the KAB manager, see Bagnall, P. Kell. IV, 79–80.
205 Ibid., 70–72.
206 The size of their holdings could vary considerably, but rich individuals are likely to have served more often.
See Bagnall, ‘Property holdings’.
207 See Worp, P. Kellis I, 71. For its significance, see Naphtali Lewis, ‘Kleros, komarch and komogrammateus in the fourth century’, Chronique d'Égypte 72, no. 2 (1997).
208 For a possible restoration of the name as ‘Pebos’, see section 4.3.2 (below), but also the objections in Worp, P. Kellis I, 43, pkgr.14, l.7n. A later occupant of this office could be Andreas, pkgr.45 (ll.34–35), but see here Bagnall, P. Kell. IV, 63; Lewis, ‘Kleros, komarch and komogrammateus’, 346–47.
The occupations outside of liturgical service are hard to discern. Sois son of Akoutis had a close associate who was a carpenter in another village.209 The komarch who authored pkgr.23, Ploutogenes son of Ouonsis, claimed to be of ‘modest circumstances’ (l.9). However, a certain Ouonsis, probably his father, financed the purchase of transport animals for a trade venture to the Nile Valley in 319/20, with the respectable sum of 12 talents,210 and an oath declaration from 352 (pkgr.24) contains a long list of signatories who he had persuaded to help ostracise an opponent. He was clearly himself a man of local influence.
Cohesion and tension
The elite was not necessarily a unified, cohesive group. Local feuds recur in several documents from the site, ranging from familial to village-wide conflicts. One such conflict appears to have been prevented. The declaration of 352, pkgr.24, shows that conflict had erupted between Ploutogenes211 and a certain Hatres. The exact complaint is unclear, as the body of the document is mostly lost, but it is stated that the ‘enmity’ or ‘hatred’ (ekhthra) of Hatres had caused problems for Ploutogenes. The importance of the conflict (or the influence of the victim) is attested to by the fact that at least 33 men, three of them clergy, were recruited to sign the document, swearing an oath that they had not known about Hatres’ actions and that they would stay aloof from involvement. The declaration was to be sent to the dux as surety, so that Ploutogenes would not suffer any further hardships (pkgr.24, ll.6–7). Such displays helped to restore unity and mutual trust – or at least the external projection of such – in the face of what might have become a damaging conflict.
209 See Worp, P. Kellis I, 66, pkgr.21, ll.11–12n.
210 For prices in the early fourth century, see Roger S. Bagnall, Currency and inflation in fourth century Egypt, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Supplements (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 27–35.
211 The identification of the Ploutogenes here and the son of Ouonsis in pkgr.23 seems clear. The fragmented pkgr.24 features both a ‘[son of] Ouonsis’ (l.3) whose name is lost, as well as an ‘aforementioned’ Gena (short for Ploutogenes) (ll.7–8), although Worp is hesitant with identifying the two. Worp, P. Kellis I, 74, pkgr.24, l.3n.
Still, the contemporaneity of the documents and prosopographical connections between them (note in particular Pebos and Horion, sons of Tithoes, see section 4.3.2) make an identification of the two Ploutogenes very probable. However, see also section 9.4.1.
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Pamour (I) son of Psais (I), the earliest known member of the Manichaean ‘Pamour family’ at Kellis, is found petitioning the governor over a conflict with Pollon son of Psais.212 Pollon had unlawfully stolen a donkey from Pamour, who was an adolescent at the time, prompting Pamour’s petition some time later (pkgr.20, d.300–320). Pamour petitioned the governor again in 321, this time over a conflict with a komarch, Sois, who had broken into his house and assaulted his wife. Pamour alleged that Sois had been a long-time enemy, who had turned soldiers and local officials against him.213 The underlying causes for this enmity is not made explicit; the involvement of local officials points perhaps to a wider backdrop for the conflict. An ex-magistrate of the city of Hermopolis in the Nile Valley had helped write Pamour’s petition, and so he was not as defenceless as he sought to project.
One large-scale conflict took place in 353, the year after family heads swore their oath in pkgr.24, documented in a petition written by Ploutogenes son of Ouonsis, pkgr.23. It pitted two komarchs, Ploutogenes son of Ouonsis and a colleague, against an ex-magistrate, Harpokration. According to Ploutogenes, the conflict started when the villager Taa refused to serve his allotted liturgy and was apprehended by the komarchs. Harpokration sent his supporters (his son Timotheos214 and ten allies)215 to attack Ploutogenes and his co-komarch, stealing their goods and beating them severely. In turn, they mobilised supporters of their own.216 They probably had strong allies themselves: Harpokration’s supporters were later disarmed, apparently without incident. As Ari Bryen notes, it is difficult to assess the relative power balance between the disputants, or the true course of events, on the basis of the
212 Rather than Psais and Pollon, as originally read by Worp, see Jean-Luc Fournet, ‘Notes critiques sur des pétitions du Bas-Empire’, The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28 (1998): 8–10; Nikolaos Gonis, ‘Notes on miscellaneous documents’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 143 (2003): 160–61. For Pamour I and his family, see chapter 3.2.
213 The presence of Psenamounis, neither liturgist nor fellow-villager, was particularly egregious, see Naphtali Lewis, ‘Notationes legentis’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 34, no. 1–4 (1997): 28–29.
214 Worp noted that ‘[i]t would seem slightly more attractive to assume that Timotheos is Harpokration’s own son rather than a mere slave’ Worp, P. Kellis I, 72, pkgr.23, l.15n. Bryen, however, takes him to be a slave; Ari Z.
Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: a study in legal interpretation, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 98. However, the occurrence of a Timotheos son of Harpokration in a different document (pkgr.8, ll.16–17) strongly supports an identification of Timotheos as Harpokration’s biological son.
215 Termed symmakhoi. Bryen takes them to be assistants of the riparius, implying perhaps a conflict between nome and village administration. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt, 98.
216 Psais son of Pateminis and Psekes son of Psennouphis, who could attest to the behaviour of Timotheos son of Harpokration; Pebos son of Tithoes, who relieved Harpokration’s associates of their clubs; and the witnesses Horion son of Tithoes, Sarapodoros son of Eros, as well as an unnamed daughter of Gena son of Pakysis.
sided portrayal we have preserved in Ploutogenes’ petition.217 At any rate, it vividly illustrates how village tensions could spill over into violence, and how local power brokers could be drawn into conflict with each other. The village elite was not a homogenous group.218