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

我们这个时代的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。埃及未能逃脱动乱和随后的变化。自公元前30年并入罗马以来，它一直相对平静，但在7世纪带来了一系列的冲击。这个国家被入侵和征服了两次，第一次是萨萨尼亚波斯人，然后是阿拉伯人，他们结束了前政权。各种语言的叙事来源相当详细地传达了政治发展的图景，但很少告诉我们这场戏剧性的高潮和变化如何影响当地人民的生活，以及他们如何回应。为了洞察这些问题，我们依赖于保存在埃及沙地、纸莎草纸和介形虫中的文字材料。信件和合同，清单和帐目，收据和收据提供了古代世界日常生活的独特一瞥。它们构成了行政、社会和经济史的主要证据，这是从古代地中海和近东的任何其他地区很难获得的。一个多世纪以来，纸像学家一直在为更广泛的学术界破译、翻译和解释这些文本，但大量重要的文本有待进一步研究和出版。考虑到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，但也审查以前发表的文本，这得益于我们不断增长的经验和技术进步。该项目的目标是向不同学科的学者提供大量全新的或未被充分研究的证据。这些材料分为三组，每一组都提供了7世纪埃及腹地的不同快照：1.西奥普普托斯和撒迦利亚档案，由来自埃及南部赫蒙特市的约60份鸵鸟组成，这是波斯占领时期最大的文献文本。其中大多数都是以某种形式出版的，但提出的方式只有专家才能有效地使用它们；因此，它们几乎没有引起注意。一本来自埃及中部赫莫波利斯地区一个村庄的税务账簿。它是同类中最早的，可以追溯到阿拉伯征服后不久；它既记录了拜占庭税，也记录了阿拉伯人引入的人头税。除了一页之外，所有现存的食典叶子都已经出版，但由于没有一个可访问的、全面的、最新的版本，这一资源的使用远远低于其应有的水平。约尔丹的档案，他是7世纪末赫蒙斯的首席行政长官。大约50份科普特和希腊文的纸莎草纸都没有出版，组成了680-690年代最大的纪录片集，说明了哈里发国重大改革的开始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.