Documentary Snapshots from Seventh-Century Egypt: Local Responses to Regime Transitions

我们时代的第七世纪见证了近东和北非政治、宗教和文化景观的戏剧性事件和变革。埃及没有逃脱动荡和随后的变化。自公元前30年并入罗马以来，它一直相对平静，但世纪带来了一系列的冲击。这个国家被入侵和征服了两次，首先是萨珊波斯人，然后是阿拉伯人，他们结束了前政权。各种语言的叙述性资料相当详细地描述了政治发展的情况，但几乎没有告诉我们这些戏剧性的事件和变化如何影响当地人民的生活，以及他们如何回应。为了深入了解这些问题，我们依赖于保存在埃及沙漠中的书写材料，纸莎草纸和鸵鸟皮。信件和合同，清单和账目，收据和单据提供了古代世界日常生活的独特一瞥。它们构成了行政、社会和经济历史的主要证据，而这种历史很难从古代地中海和近东的任何其他地区获得。一个世纪以来，纸莎草学家一直在破译、翻译和解释这些文本，以造福于更广泛的学术界，但大量的重要文本有待进一步研究和出版。鉴于所涉及的巨大技术挑战，这项工作必然是缓慢和细致的;我们出版新的文本，但也在我们不断增长的经验和技术进步的帮助下审查以前出版的文本。该项目的目标是为各个学科的学者提供大量全新或未充分研究的证据。材料的问题福尔斯分为三组，其中每一个提供了一个不同的快照埃及腹地在第七世纪：1。Theopemptos和Zacharias的档案，包括来自埃及南部Hermonthis市的约60个ostraca，是波斯占领时期最大的文献文本。其中大部分都以某种形式出版，但以只有专家才能有效使用的方式呈现，因此很少引起注意。埃及中部赫莫波利斯地区一个村庄的税收账簿。这是同类中最早的一本，可以追溯到阿拉伯人征服后不久;它记录了拜占庭的税收和阿拉伯人引入的人头税。除了一页之外，现存的手抄本都已出版，但由于缺乏一个可访问的、全面的、最新的版本，这一资源的使用远远低于它的价值。3. Iordanes的档案，在七世纪末的Hermonthis的首席管理员。大约50张未出版的科普特文和希腊文纸莎草纸，构成了7世纪80年代至90年代最大的文献汇编，并说明了哈里发的重大改革的开端及其在地方一级的影响。

The seventh century of our era witnessed dramatic events and transformations in the political, religious, and cultural landscape of the Near East and North Africa. Egypt did not escape the turmoil and subsequent changes. It had been relatively tranquil since its annexation to Rome in 30 BCE, but the seventh century brought a series of shocks. The country was invaded and conquered twice, first by the Sasanian Persians and then by the Arabs, who brought an end to the previous regime. Narrative sources in various languages convey a fairly detailed picture of political developments, but tell us little about how the high drama and changes affected the lives of local people and how they responded. For insight into these questions, we depend on the writing materials preserved in the sands of Egypt, papyri and ostraca. Letters and contracts, lists and accounts, receipts and chits offer unique glimpses of everyday life in the ancient world. They constitute primary evidence for administrative, social, and economic history of a kind that is hard to obtain from any other part of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Papyrologists have been deciphering, translating, and interpreting these texts for the benefit of the wider scholarly community for over a century, but large numbers of important texts await further study and publication. The work is necessarily slow and meticulous given the formidable technical challenges involved; we publish new texts, but also review those published previously, with the help of our ever-growing experience and technological advances. The goal of the project is to make a large amount of completely new or understudied evidence available to scholars in various disciplines. The material in question falls into three clusters, each of which offers a different snapshot of the Egyptian hinterland in the seventh century: 1. The archive of Theopemptos and Zacharias, consisting of some 60 ostraca from the city of Hermonthis in southern Egypt, the largest body of documentary texts from the time of the Persian occupation. Most of these have been published in some form, but presented in such a way that only specialists have been able to use them effectively; as a result, they have attracted little attention.2. A tax account book from a village in the area of Hermopolis in middle Egypt. It is the earliest of its kind, dating from very soon after the Arab conquest; it records both Byzantine taxes and the poll-tax introduced by the Arabs. All but one of the extant leaves of the codex have been published, but in the absence of an accessible, comprehensive, up-to-date edition, this resource has been used much less than it merits.3. The archive of Iordanes, the chief administrator of Hermonthis at the end of the seventh century. Some 50 papyri in Coptic and Greek, all unpublished, make up the largest documentary assemblage from the 680s-690s, and illustrate the beginnings of major reforms in the Caliphate and their effect at local level.