Ostraka

This paper presents three ostraka discovered during excavations at Otranto conducted by the British School at Rome in 1978. One of the ostraka is very interesting and is discussed in detail. Incised on the body sherd of an amphora probably dating to the 10th or 11th century and of likely local origin, it mentions the angel Arlaph and regards a magic/medicinal formula apparently aimed at protecting the health and life of a newborn child or its mother, more likely both, against the nefarious actions of a demon. The formula also refers to the curative properties attributed to the plant Meum athamanticum or spignel and lead, which effectiveness would have been enhanced or made possible solely by divine mediation.

This thesis provides an overview of the Roman correspondence on papyrus, ostrakon and tablet.
Communication was very important in Roman army, as in the armies of every time. The Roman military letters show a world where Latin and Greek are both official languages of the soldiers and where barbarians and provisioning are the most pressing matters.
This overview will mainly deal the four largest corpora (the Vindolanda tablets, the ostraka from the Eastern Desert of Egypt, the Dura Europos papyri and the ostraka from Bu Njem) and many texts from these corpora will be analyzed. A specific section will also focus on the mail management and transportation.

The British Library holds one of the largest collections of Greek ostraka outside Egypt. The paper presents the history of the collection from its beginnings in the early 19 th century up to its present status, surveying the various attempts to catalogue it from early facsimiles to digitized images. It highlights the crucial importance of cross-institutional collaboration for future research on the collection with examples of successful projects.

This article focuses on a critical revision of two tax receipts, offering new readings and interpretations of the texts. They allow in the case of O.Edfou I 195 a different date which fits better to the chronological frame of the dossier it belongs to, and lead in regard of O.Edfou II 258 to a discussion of the unusually high sum paid for the tax on watchtowers.

This article presents two Greek letters written on ostraca which had been found during the excavations recently conducted in the two Roman praesidia of Dios and Xeron, in the Eastern desert of Egypt, in 2007 and 2012. They are a letter and its answer exchanged between the two praesidia in the second century AD concerning a tool called mulokopion. The two ostraca are of notably interesting as being the first examples of letter and reply found in its intended destination. The edition is supplemented by a discussion about the possible meaning of the word mulokopion.
Keywords: Greek ostraca – Correspondance – Roman Egypt – Eastern Desert – Praesidium – Dios – Xeron – Military – mulokopion – Mill.

Nell'ambito de "Le Conferenze | Percorsi di storia militare antica" organizzate da Casus Belli - Arma Mater Studiorum, presento una disamina generale sulla corrispondenza militare romana a partire dalle lettere rivenute su papiri, ostraka e tavolette.

https://www.facebook.com/CasusbelliArmamater/videos/609755059643731

A striking feature of the standardization imposed by Roman bureaucracy on official documents from all over the Empire is the presence of a most recognizable Roman formula written in a large number of those documents: the date, mostly consular, sometimes augmented with the Emperor’s regnal year. A distinction must be made, however, between documents where the date is organic, i.e. is part of the document itself (and therefore, predictable: see for instance the business-like documents such as cheirographa, or military pridiana and lists); and documents, either Latin or Greek, where the dating formula has been added after the document was written. This custom, very likely rooted in bureaucratic and official practices of Roman high chancery, was probably widespread all over the Empire; most attestations, as it happens, come from the East. Dating formulae are normally written at the end of the document by a different hand, a custom well established in Late Antiquity. It may also happen, that they are written at the beginning or in the middle of it – always detached, however, from the main document; the dockets inserted in the libri epistularum from Dura Europos are the principal attestation of this practice. Eventually, the medieval Imperial custom of writing the dating formula ad latus, i.e. in the margin of the writing frame, has some early representatives in Latin papyri from Late Empire.
This paper will take into accounts all Eastern papyri and ostraka from 1st to 6th AD (about 20 manuscripts) witnessing additions of Roman datings after the document was written. It will attempt at clarifying the reasons of the addition and the relevance (or lack thereof) of the position of the formula within the document. Eventually, it will try to find out the history and nature of the legal requirements (if there were any) of such a practice.

"Epigraphy and the powers of the Internet (on the findings of Iruña-Veleia)". For English readers not familiar with the issues and debate on these strange ostraca, or even with the same archaeological site, it can be interesting to read this report by journalist Mike Elkin: "The Veleia Affair", in the journal Archaeology (a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America), Volume 62, Number 5, September/October 2009: http://archive.archaeology.org/0909/insider/ (pictures are expandable). Furthermore, you can get a wealth of information since June 2006 (in Celtiberia.net) through this huge dossier, existing on the website Terrae Antiqvae: "El caso Iruña-Veleia. Documentos y debates" http://terraeantiqvae.com/page/el-caso-iruna-veleia#.UzfdV84zebQ

I propose to establish a connection between the dead forest (on the left side of the frieze), the flourishing sacralized tree and the pillar with the aniconic steles on top, that allude to worship of the Mother of Gods, ensuring the perpetuation of the wild nature as well as the royal power of the king.

Sobre las cerámicas encontramos gran variedad de textos, ya sean impresos, grabados o pintados. Esa diversidad de mensajes está bien atestiguada en un conjunto numeroso como el recuperado en la acrópolis de Atenas, en el que aparecen alfabetos, nombres de amantes y de enemigos, indicaciones de propiedad, dedicatorias, inscripciones relacionadas con el simposio, anotaciones comerciales (capacidad, tara, fecha), etc . Todas ellas tienen relación con la vida útil del objeto, sin embargo, en este trabajo nos interesa la reutilización de la cerámica como soporte de escritura tras la amortización del recipiente, principalmente para anotaciones que tienen que ver con los usos cotidianos de la escritura e informaciones de carácter efímero (recibos, cuentas, listas, cartas, etc.), una documentación similar a la que también podemos encontrar sobre papiro. En este trabajo se reúnen las inscripciones ibéricas que están realizadas sobre fragmentos cerámicos que se pueden clasificar como ostraka. Los criterios para identificarlos son formales dada la dificultad de interpretación de las inscripciones ibéricas: 1. la ubicación de la inscripción, pues si está grabada sobre la pared interna de una forma cerrada, como un ánfora, solo pudo escribirse tras romperse el recipiente; 2. la maquetación del texto, si se adapta a los márgenes del fragmento cerámico o si se distribuye en varias líneas superpuestas, algo que es poco común en los grafitos realizados durante la vida útil de las cerámicas; y 3. si el mismo fragmento está escrito por ambas caras, pues es algo difícil de concebir antes de la ruptura de la pieza.

Im Schatten der Pyramiden und weit entfernt von den Palästen der Pharaonen, lebten die meisten Ägypter ein gewöhnliches Leben am Nil. Dank des trockenen Wüstensandes Ägyptens sind auch ihre Geschichten nicht im Laufe der Zeit verloren gegangen. Tausende und Tausende antiker Texte, die im Sand gefunden wurden, geben uns faszinierende Einblicke in das Alltagsleben der Antike. Während Papyrus vielleicht das bekannteste Medium ist, auf dem Texte geschrieben wurden, schrieb man auch auf Holz, auf Leder, auf Pergament und auf sogenannten Ostraka: Topfscherben oder sogar kleinen Steinstücken. Das Museum Ägyptischer Kunst besitzt rund 200 Ostraka vom Zeitalter des Neuen Reiches bis zur Entstehung des Islam.