Papyrus Bingen 45
Papyrus Bingen 45 is a 1st-century BC manuscript in Koine Greek, which is now part of the Berlin Papyrus Collection and displayed in the Neues Museum, Berlin.
Being an official ordinance, it mainly grants certain tax exemptions for wine and wheat to a Roman citizen, whose identity is disputed; some scholars argue it is Publius Canidius Crassus, the commander of Mark Antony's land forces in the Battle of Actium.
The papyrus is the last extant dated ordinance of a Ptolemaic monarch. It is well known because since 2000 some historians have argued that its concluding subscription "γινέσθωι" is an autograph of Cleopatra, the last queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. The papyrus would thus contain the only surviving autograph of a major figure from antiquity.
There exist, however, many points of ongoing scholarly contention regarding itincluding the authorship of its concluding subscription.
Description and content
Description
The manuscript is with handwriting on one side. The main body of it was written "rather carelessly in the large, straight book hand" of a court scribe. The text starts with the date of its receipt written by a different personand the name of the recipient follows, but it is not legible. The manuscript does not name its author.Content and context
Current scholarly consensus sees Papyrus Bingen 45 as a prostagma, an official ordinance of a Ptolemaic monarch. It grants extensive relief from taxes and costs to a beneficiary, whose identity is disputed, with some scholars identifying Publius Canidius Crassus while others read Quintus Cascellius. The ordinance exempts him and his heirs from all taxes related to- the annual exportation of 10,000 artabas of wheat,
- the annual importation of 5,000 Coan amphorae of wine,
- all lands owned in Egypt and
- all his tenants, animals and boats.
Text and translation
The papyrus has been translated into English multiple times, inter alia by the American scholars Roger S. Bagnall and Peter Derow in 2004 and Steve Reece in 2017. A German translation was provided by the German scholar Eva Christina Käppel in 2021. According to the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, the papyrus can be transcribed as follows ; the translation was done by Reece in 2017:History
Excavation
Papyrus Bingen 45 was found between 1903 and 1905 during excavations led by Otto Rubensohn in Abusir el-Meleq. An ancient cemetery was excavated and large quantities of mostly documentary papyri from the second half of the 1st century BC were found that had been re-used as mummy cartonnage in the 1st century AD. Old office papers found during the excavations stem from Alexandria and have been published in part in Berliner griechische Urkunden Volume IV.Publication and autograph discussion
The papyrus was not edited or published until 2000 and until then remained in storage at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin still attached to mummy casing. In 2000, the Greek scholar Panagiota Sarischouli published the editio princeps of the papyrus in a Festschrift for the Belgian papyrologist Jean Bingen, thereby naming the document Papyrus Bingen 45. Sarischouli did not, however, associate the document with Cleopatra and interpreted the manuscript as a private contract rather than an official ordinance.The view that the papyrus was an official ordinance and contains an autograph by Cleopatra was put forward first in the same year by the American historian Peter van Minnen in the journal Ancient Society. The fact that the papyrus arguably contains an autograph of Cleopatra was announced to the public on 22 October 2000 in the The Sunday Times and on 24 October 2000 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
A special exhibition of the papyrus commenced on 26 October 2000 in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. The papyrus was later part of the exhibition "Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth" at the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, at the British Museum in London and the Field Museum in Chicago. In 2010, the exhibition "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt" featured the papyrus again in the United States.
Points of contention
Partly due to the lacunae of the manuscript, several points of contention exist regarding it with no clear scholarly consensus:Cleopatra autograph
The papyrus ends with the subscription "γινέσθωι", arguably written by a different person. Van Minnen sees this subscription as an autograph of Cleopatra. This would be remarkable as no other autograph of a major figure from antiquity exists. He argues that "nly a ruler can sign a text into law. To leave that to a trusted scribe would be an open invitation to bribe that scribe." Adding further, that "power must be based on an exclusive prerogative" and that "in Ptolemaic Egypt it appears to have been the prerogative of the kings to subscribe in their own hand the official documents they issued".The view that Cleopatra is the author of this subscription is shared by the American classicist Margaret M. Miles and the German historian Klaus Zimmermann. Duane W. Roller, the American archeologist, also supports it with the argument that countersigning documents was a known practise of monarchs of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
Antonia Sarri, a professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, disputes this. She sees no change of hand between the subscription and the main body of the text; in her view the subscription was authored by the same person as the text above it. She points out that the density of the ink remains the same, suggesting that the pressure on the pen did not change, and furthermore that the personal characteristics of the handwriting do not vary between the subscription and the main body of the text. The American historians Roger S. Bagnall and Peter Derow also see the authorship of Cleopatra as "less likely". The French historian Bernard Legras is sceptical as well and considers a high-ranking Alexandrian official as its more likely author.
In her study of the prostagma of the Ptolemaic rulers, the German scholar Eva Christina Käppel joins the view that no change of hand happened between the concluding "γινέσθωι" and the main body of the text. In her view, the letters of the subscription are indeed smaller, but displaying the same idiosyncrasies as the main body of the text: a slightly angular epsilon, a left-facing serif at the bottom of the iota and a superfluous iota adscript in the imperative, which also appears one line earlier in the main body of the text.
Monarch attributed as sender
There is academic consensus that the official ordinance must be attributed to a Ptolemaic monarch, as they had the sole authority to grant tax relief. There exists, however, dispute on whether Cleopatra alone or her together with her son Caesarionthe only biological son of Julius Caesar and co-ruler in 33 BCare the rulers the ordinance is to be attributed to. Van Minnen argues that Cleopatra is the only monarch attributed, focussing on the fact that the double date on top of the papyrus refers exclusively to Cleopatra, and the use of the first-person plural should thus also refer only to her. Käppel disagrees and sees the letter as attributed to Cleopatra and Caesarion together, because both were nominally co-equal rulers and should thus only be authorised together to issue ordinances.Beneficiary
The identity of the beneficiary of the extensive tax relief is also contested. Scholarly consensus holds that the beneficiary was male and one person and that his name starts with "Κα-". Van Minnen argues that the well-known Publius Canidius Crassus, the commander of Mark Antony's land forces in the Battle of Actium, was the beneficiary. Roller supports this reading.Zimmermann disputes this view and has identified the name Quintus Cascellius in a close reading of the papyrus; a person otherwise unknown to history. This view is shared by Bagnall and Derow. Käppel also sees Quintus Cascellius as the beneficiary; she identifies the form found in the text as Κ̣ο̣ί̣ν̣τωι Καϲκι̣, arguing that even though the lower curve of the sigma in the name has almost completely faded, the kappa still seems sufficiently clear to her.
Addressee
A further point of contention is the addressee of the papyrus, meaning not the beneficiary of the ordinance but the person to whom the letter is nominally directed. Zimmermann sees Caesarion as its addressee. His argument for this mainly rests on his reading of lines 7 and 8 dealing with the tax accounts from which the beneficiary should be exempt.Legras and van Minnen contest this, the latter arguing that an unknown high-ranking official was the addressee. Käppel also rejects this view, noting that the concluding imperative "γινέσθωι" seems entirely unfitting for a letter addressing a co-ruler.