Talk ‘The agreements of the priests of Soknopaiou Nesos: new sources for the organisation and the economy of an Egyptian provincial temple in the 1st and 2nd c. CE’

Illustration: View of the temple precinct of Soknopaiou Nesos (image: M. Schentuleit)

Sandra Lippert (CNRS, UMR 8546 AOROC, Paris) and Maren Schentuleit (AMES, Oxford University)

During the 1st and 2nd centuries, the clergy of the temple of the crocodile god Sobek, lord of the island (Soknopaios) on the arid northern shore of the Fayyum lake used elaborate documents written in demotic to regulate the rights and obligations of the holders of various priestly administrative offices who were appointed annually. The speakers have identified about forty papyrus manuscripts belonging to this corpus, spread over six different museum collections, all but one still unpublished. They are currently working on a full edition of this material that will constitute the basis for a detailed analysis of the internal organization of the temple and the economic network it had established through affiliated sanctuaries and dependant enterprises in other, more fertile parts of the Fayyum.