Between the 360s and the late second century BCE, Cyrenaean documents attest the importance of a local board of magistrates: the damiergoi, who were in charge of administering some sacred estates and their revenues to fund sacrifices and provide for other city officials. This board of magistrates published their accounts annually on stone in the city’s agora. The thirty-eight surviving accounts can be divided into four different phases and have proved to be an extremely precious source for the evolution of layout strategies, writing media, abbreviations, and numeral systems viewed in a longue durée perspective. From a close examination, further elements stand out, such as how and to what extent other areas – namely Attica and Ptolemaic Egypt – and their administrative traditions influenced the damiergoi’s accounting practices. Moreover, this re-examination of the damiergoi accounts sheds light on an abbreviation found in the early-third-century-CE papyrus Marmarica (P.Marm.), which has so far been misinterpreted as a siglum for an uncommon unit of measurement: the ((hepta))m(etron scil. keramion). Cyrenaean evidence permits an alternative hypothesis, namely that the liquid measure used here is the centuries-old zm(ireus) – i.e., smireus – which is already attested in the accounts of the damiergoi.
University of Perugia, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-0402-1074
Chapter Title
The Evolution of Layout in Cyrenaean Official Documents (4th-2nd Centuries BCE)
Authors
Emilio Rosamilia
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0456-9.06
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2024
Copyright Information
© 2024 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Text, Layout, and Medium
Book Subtitle
Documents from the Greco-Roman World between Epigraphy and Papyrology
Editors
Davide Amendola, Cristina Carusi, Francesca Maltomini, Emilio Rosamilia
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
426
Publication Year
2024
Copyright Information
© 2024 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0456-9
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0455-2
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0456-9
Series Title
Edizioni dell’Istituto Papirologico «G. Vitelli»
Series ISSN
2533-2414
Series E-ISSN
2612-7997