The Senouthios Archive: Between Ancient and Arab World

The rapid expansion of the Arabs from the year 633 A.D. and the subsequent, gradual Islamization of the countries on the southern and eastern shore of the Mediterranean bring epochal changes. A part of the ancient and then Christian world passes into the world of Islam. The cultural and political unity of the Mediterranean area, which was characteristic of the ancient world, was broken. From the centre of an economic and cultural area the Mediterranean sea becomes a frontier, which divides two different worlds with displaced geographical barycenters. Egypt shared the fate of the other southern and eastern areas of the Eastern Roman Empire: in 639 A.D. the Arab general `Amr ibn al-s enters Egypt; in 641 A.D. the capitulation treaty of Babylon sanctions the Arabic dominion on the country. Only a couple of years later some high officials in the middle Egyptian district of Hermopolis are witnesses of the changes which the Arab conquest had brought, and of the reactions of the indigenous population to these changes. New taxes, a new requisitions system for the provisioning of the occupying army, the building of a new capital, the resistance and the flight of the natives in front of these innovations as well as a series of other issues fill the communications, orders and letters that were sent to or archived by a certain Senouthios. The bulk of this correspondence, this Senouthios archive`, lay neglected and unpublished in the papyrus collection of the Austrian National library for over 100 years and was recognized as an archive only a few years ago. At the same time, another small group of texts was identified in other collections - chiefly in the British Library. This large archive is the only extensive group of original documents from this turning point in the history of the Mediterranean world. A first group of documents was studied in the course of the project Late Antiquity to Islam. Edition of the Senouthios Archive (P17897-G02) and will appear in a volume of the Corpus Papyrorum Raineri. The follow-up project intends to continue the publication (transcription, translation, introduction and commentary) of the Archive: further texts should now be prepared for a second volume of the Corpus.

The rapid expansion of the Arabs from the year 633 A.D. and the subsequent, gradual Islamization of the countries on the southern and eastern shore of the Mediterranean bring epochal changes. A part of the ancient and then Christian world passes into the world of Islam. The cultural and political unity of the Mediterranean area, which was characteristic of the ancient world, was broken. From the centre of an economic and cultural area the Mediterranean sea becomes a frontier, which divides two different worlds with displaced geographical barycenters. Egypt shared the fate of the other southern and eastern areas of the Eastern Roman Empire: in 639 A.D. the Arab general `Amr ibn al-s enters Egypt; in 641 A.D. the capitulation treaty of Babylon sanctions the Arabic dominion on the country. Only a couple of years later some high officials in the middle Egyptian district of Hermopolis are witnesses of the changes which the Arab conquest had brought, and of the reactions of the indigenous population to these changes. New taxes, a new requisitions system for the provisioning of the occupying army, the building of a new capital, the resistance and the flight of the natives in front of these innovations as well as a series of other issues fill the communications, orders and letters that were sent to or archived by a certain Senouthios. The bulk of this correspondence, this `Senouthios archive`, lay neglected and unpublished in the papyrus collection of the Austrian National library for over 100 years and was recognized as an archive only a few years ago. At the same time, another small group of texts was identified in other collections - chiefly in the British Library. This large archive is the only extensive group of original documents from this turning point in the history of the Mediterranean world. A first group of documents was studied in the course of the project Late Antiquity to Islam. Edition of the Senouthios Archive (P17897-G02) and will appear in a volume of the Corpus Papyrorum Raineri. The follow-up project intends to continue the publication (transcription, translation, introduction and commentary) of the Archive: further texts should now be prepared for a second volume of the Corpus.