The Organization of Gilds in Greco-Roman Egypt

Abstract

Although we have numerous references to gild associations in Greco-Roman Egypt, examples of Greek nomoi or laws which regulated their organization are extremely rare. For the Ptolemaic period there is only P. Lond. 2710, the incomplete nomos of the gild of Zeus Hypsistos, dating from the late first century B.C., published by Roberts, Skeat, and Nock in 1936, and for the Byzantine epoch the fragmentary law of a fifthcentury gild, apparently of bankers (TrparWeDrat), edited during the current year by Miss Medea Norsa under the title Elezione del Ke0aXatwcr's di una corporazione.' To these we may now add three nomoi from the early Principate in the University of Michigan collection, which are to appear shortly in P. Mich. v, Papyri from Tebtunis, Part 2. One of these, the nomos of the gild of salt merchants at Tebtunis for 47 A.D. was published in the American Journal of Philology last April.2 The others are the law of an unnamed gild of the time of Tiberius (P. Mich. 243) which is complete except for the opening formula, and the law of an association of awroXbutoL of an estate of the emperor Claudius, practically intact and dating from 43 A.D. All three documents come from the archives of the grapheion at Tebtunis. A parallel series of texts is found in the regulations of the native Egyptian cult associations illustrated by Demotic texts of the second and third centuries (H. Sottas, Papyrus demotiques de Lille i, no. 29; W. Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Papyrus, Cat. Cairo 39, Nos. 30605, 30606, 30619 a and b, 31178, 31179, and P. Berl. 3115). It is the purpose of this paper to present an analysis of the Greek nomoi from Tebtunis and to compare their provisions

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