The Tax Law of Palmyra: Evidence for Economic History in a City of the Roman East

Abstract

In the year A.D. 137 the council of the city of Palmyra in Syria agreed to revise and publish the tariff and regulations according to which dues were levied on goods brought into and exported from the city and services provided within it. This was done in order to avert in future the disputes that had arisen between the tax collectors and the merchants, tradesmen and others from whom the taxes were due, and to make the situation absolutely clear the council ordered to be inscribed and displayed in a public place both the new regulations and the old ones which they superseded. The result is one of the most important single items of evidence for the economic life of any part of the Roman empire, and, especially in the taxable services mentioned in the regulations, a vivid glimpse also of the social life of a great middle-eastern city. In ordering the publication both of the old and the new regulations, the council also caused to be preserved crucial evidence for the development of the administrative position of Palmyra in the Roman empire, the old regulations being an accumulation of pronouncements and agreements affecting the city over a period of many years. And lastly, being inscribed both in Greek and in the dialect of Aramaic used in Palmyra and its region, the inscription is an important document in the relations between Classical and local cultures in an eastern province of the empire.

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