Recensement et organisation civique à Ptolémaïs en Haute-Égypte à la fin du Ier s. ap. J.-C. Réflexions à propos de la provenance des données du P. Oxy. VI, 984

Abstract

The census register P. Oxy. 984 became controversial among scholars since its first publication by R. S. Bagnall, B. W. Frier and I. C. Rutherford in 1997. The main problem that scholars had to face was the location of residence of the declarants who sent their census declaration – preserved in this roll – to the fiscal administration of Upper Egypt. R. S. Bagnall, B. W. Frier and I. C. Rutherford suggested the Greek city of Ptolemais in Upper Egypt as the place from where the census declarations had been gathered. On the contrary, O. Montevecchi and some of her students tried to demonstrate that the declarations comprised in the roll came from Lykopolis and not Ptolemais in Upper Egypt. The reopening of this debate is guided by a particular attention drew to onomastic, toponymic and institutional data gathered in the roll in a comparative perspective with data found in the corpus of Ptolemais. The questions raised by the papyrus do not only concern location issue, but also deal with the meaning of the term προξένοι βουλευτῶν, and even with the purpose of this census compilation.