Chapter 3 Telling Them by Their Hands: What Palaeography Has to Offer Prosopography

Rodney Ast

Greek papyri furnish prosopographical information in dif- In addition to these methods of prosopographical research ferent ways.* Census documents and onomastic indicators there exists a further tool, namely the study of hands. At such as patronymics, matronymics, etc. can tell us about the moment this is more difficult to automate than sna, genealogies. We learn of familial and non-familial relation- partly because prosopographical guides typically do not ships through related texts in archives. Analysis of social track things such as an individual’s ability to write. Literacy networks, be it computer-aided or not, can supplement is not a category found in Trismegistos or any of the print what we know about individuals and their acquaintances, prosopographies related to Roman Egypt.2 There are his- giving us an idea of a common milieu even when people torical reasons for this: papyrologists traditionally privi- are not seen to be in immediate contact. For example, leged the content of the text itself over external features knowing that persons A, B, and C were contemporary mu- such as hands. As a result, sections of documents that nicipal officials, we are not surprised to learn that A knew often provide important palaeographical information, C, when our previous evidence showed connections only such as signatures, were accorded less attention.3 One between A and B and B and C. Charting complex connec- need only observe early P. Oxy. volumes, where the names tions of this type has been made easier for papyrologists of signers and witnesses were regularly omitted from by computer-aided Social Network Analysis (sna). Among translations. P. Oxy. III 490, a will and testament dated other things, sna has allowed us to visualize relationships December 1, ad 124, is a case in point. The body of the more clearly, thereby creating more nuanced understand- Greek document ends with the statement ‘this will is valid,’ ing of interpersonal connections, although its biggest con- ἡ διαθήκη κυρία, followed by the signatures of the parties to tribution thus far has probably been to onomastics.1 the will and the six witnesses. In the translation, Grenfell and Hunt summarize the signature section thus: ‘There * This article results in part from research that I have conduct- follow the signatures (1) of the testatrix and her guard- ed in the context of my subproject, TP A02 ‘Antike Briefe als ian, written for them by a third party, (2) of the usual six Kommunikationsmedium,’ within the University of Heidelberg’s Sonderforschungsbereich 933, which is funded by the Deutsche witnesses with details of their ages, distinguishing marks, Forschungsgemeinschaft. I am indebted to Graham Claytor for mak- and seals’. This information did not bear directly on the ing photos kept in Michigan’s archive available to me and to Julia will itself, but rather on formal procedures, and the editors Lougovaya for her comments on an earlier draft. 1 See the important, early application of Social Network Analysis in G. Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt (Cambridge 2 Of print onomastica and prosopographies, the most relevant etc., 2008); Y. Broux has been very active in sna research, as evi- for the period covered by this paper are A.H.M. Jones (ed.), The denced by her list of publications at https://kuleuven.academia.edu/ Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (= plra). Vol. I, ad 260– YanneBroux – see, for example, Y. Broux, ‘Graeco-Egyptian Naming 395 (Cambridge, 1971); J.R. Martindale (ed.), PLRA ii, ad 395–527 Practices’, grbs 55 (2015), pp. 706–720. A more traditional form of (Cambridge, 1980); J.M. Diethart, Prosopographia arsinoitica, I prosopography-oriented network description can be observed in (mper ns 12, Wien, 1980); F. Preisigke, Namenbuch enthaltend the chapter on the ‘Circle of Serenos’ in O. Trim. II (pp. 95–97) and alle griechischen, lateinischen, ägyptischen, hebräischen, arabischen ‘Circle of Philokles’ in H. Cuvigny, ‘La société civile des praesidia’, und sonstigen semitischen und nichtsemitischen Menschennamen, in: H. Cuvigny (ed.), La route de Myos Hormos, 2 (Cairo, 2003), soweit sie in griechischen Urkunden (Papyri, Ostraka, Inschriften, pp. 376–382. M. Depauw and Y. Broux explore the potential for Mumienschildern usw) Ägyptens sich vorfinden (Heidelberg, Named Entity Recognition and SNA to aid the creation of prosopog- 1922), which is still very useful despite its age; D. Foraboschi, raphies in ‘Developing Onomastic Gazetteers and Prosopographies Onomasticon Alterum Papyrologicum: Supplemento al Namenbuch for the Ancient World through Named Entity Recognition and di F. Preisigke (tdsa 16, Milano – Varese, 1971). plra unfortunately Graph Visualization: Some Examples from Trismegistos People’ in: confines itself to the upper echelon of late antique society. L.M. Aiello – D. McFarland (eds), Social Informatics. SocInfo 3 There are notable exceptions to this, such as J.M. Diethart – 2014 Workshops, Barcelona, Spain, November 11, 2014, Revised Selected K.A. Worp, Notarsunterschriften im byzantinischen Ägypten (mper Papers (Heidelberg, 2015), pp. 304–313. ns 16, Wien, 1986).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi:��.��63/9789004375277_004 28 Ast therefore suppressed it in the translation. Moreover, be- has not been employed as extensively as one might expect, cause it was financially unfeasible and thus uncustomary perhaps because of the tedious and subjective nature of for editors to publish photographs, readers could not easily the work, which can discourage people from this type of study the hands for themselves. They were at the mercy of approach. An additional hurdle is the fact that there is an the editors. This is not to say that papyrologists were not implicit bias in our discipline that works against prosopo- interested in palaeography or did not draw connections graphical identifications based on script. Even when all between ancient persons on the basis of their handwrit- else related to an individual in separate documents is equal ing. They did. It is very common to find statements buried (that is, the texts are similarly dated, come from the same in the commentaries and introductions of papyrus edi- place, involve homonymous literate individuals), the state- tions concerning the similarity of specific hands or the ment, ‘these two hands are different’ typically holds greater likely identity of homonymous individuals as revealed by authority than the opposite assertion, ‘these two hands are their handwriting. What has been lacking is an attempt to the same’, although, in many cases, they spring from the surface this information and present it in any formal way, same place: the observer’s gut, supported by more-or-less so that (il)literacy might even become an attribute of the experience staring at hands. In other words, critical assess- individuals that we study. ment based on the observation of differences is generally Now that photographs of manuscripts are more readily more persuasive than that deriving from observed simi- available than they once were, palaeographical work is eas- larities. One reason for this is that individual letterforms ier to do. By looking closely at individual hands and gen- produced by a single hand can show a deceptive range of eral writing practice, we learn more about people in the variation, and it is sometimes difficult to know when varia- documents than the texts reveal. Recognizing a hand in tions are indicative of different writers and when they exist one papyrus can help us identify a homonymous individ- along the spectrum of a single individual’s writing style.5 ual in another. We might find, for example, that the liter- Given the biases and overall subjective nature of our work, ate Horion who penned a contract in year X was the same we should, I contend, pursue a broader strategy when Horion who authored other documents in previous or sub- using handwriting as a basis for prosopographical stud- sequent years. If this Horion bore professional titles in any ies. What I mean is that we should still look at traditional of these documents, then we can start to piece together a elements, such as individual letterforms (these are doubt- sort of curriculum vitae for him. By looking at his hand- lessly important), but also pay attention to other features, writing, we also get a sense of his ability to write. After all, such as ligatures, diacritical signs, section markers (e.g., not all writers were very experienced. This, in turn, might say something about writing proficiency in particular plac- es at particular times. As a methodological approach, the study of hands in C. Arlt – M.A. Stadler (eds), Das Fayyûm in Hellenismus und papyrological texts is not entirely new. It has been used to Kaiserzeit (Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 19–28; and in W. Clarysse’s re- examination of the Zenon archive, ‘The Zenon Papyri Thirty Years elucidate aspects of archival material, for example.4 Yet, it on’, in: G. Bastianini – A. Casanova (eds), 100 anni di istituzioni fiorentine per la papirologia. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze 12–13 giugno 2008 (Studi e testi di papirologia, nuova serie 11, 4 Examples can be found in R. Cribiore’s treatment of writers in Firenze, 2009), pp. 37–43; cf. too R. Daniel’s interesting discussion the Apollonios archive, ‘The Women in the Apollonios Archive and of the possible effects of aging on the handwriting of a single indi- Their Use of Literacy’, in: H. Melaerts – L. Mooren (eds), Le rôle vidual, as observed in a group of four papyri that span just over forty et le statut de la femme en Egypte hellénistique, romaine et byzantine: years, ‘Palaeography and Gerontology. The Subscriptions of Hermas actes du colloque international, Bruxelles-Leuven, 27–29 novembre Son of Ptolemaios’, zpe 167 (2008), pp. 151–152. 1997 (StudHell 37, Leuven etc., 2002), pp. 149–166; in J.-L. Fournet’s 5 A. Sarri has shown how narrow focus on individual letter shapes detailed analysis of the hand of Dioskoros, Hellénisme dans l’Égypte can mislead people into assuming the presence of multiple hands, du VIe siècle. La bibliothèque et l’œuvre de Dioscore d’Aphrodité, 1 when in fact the same hand employed different styles, in Material (Cairo, 1999), pp. 245–258; in studies of the Gemellos’ archive and its Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World (500 BC–AD principal literate agents, G. Azzarello, ‘Alla ricerca della ‘mano’ 300) (Berlin, 2017), pp. 146–190. See too J.-L. Fournet’s comments di Epagathos’, AfP 54 (2008), pp. 179–202, R. Ast – G. Azzarello, on the need for a more holistic approach to culturally significant ‘A Roman Veteran and His Skillful Administrator: Gemellus and features in documentary papyri in ‘Culture grecque et document Epagathus in Light of Unpublished Papyri’, in: P. Schubert dans l’Égypte de l’Antiquité tardive’, jjp 43 (2013 [2015]), pp. 148–160; (ed.), Proceedings of the 26th Congress of Papyrology (Geneva, while Fournet is not concerned specifically with palaeographical 2012), pp. 70–71, R. Ast – G. Azzarello, ‘New Perspectives matters, he also encourages a more nuanced and less text-centric on the Gemellus Archive: Sabinus and His Correspondence’, in: appreciation of papyrological witnesses.