Copying practices in Ptolemaic Egypt

A discussion based on Greek agoranomic contracts from Pathyris

Abstract

The article discusses copying practices in the notarial contracts from Pathyris. The features and differences of copies versus the text copied from are described in detail because they may (or may not) help researchers in identifying copies. The discussion is based on four contracts preserved as duplicates as well as some single copies. The purpose of the article is to study how much the copyist changed his version of the text (intentionally or for other reasons) and to what extent the copyist can be held responsible for the linguistic variation found in a copy.