Dating early Ptolemaic salt tax receipts: the Egyptian tax year

A striking feature of third-century BCE Egypt is the complex dating practice applied in documentary papyri and ostraca. Under the reigns of Ptolemy II, III and IV, no less than three dating systems were in operation simultaneously: the Macedonian, the Greek financial and the Egyptian civil year. In 1994, while editing early Ptolemaic tax receipts mainly from Elephantine, S.P. Vleeming made some pertinent observations. For in the Demotic texts, the years for which and in which a payment was made, often do not match and the phenomenon cannot be explained by assuming payments in arrears or advance. Notwithstanding their potential, Vleeming’s observations have received little attention. In this article, we argue for the introduction of a fourth dating system, the Egyptian tax year (different from the already known dating systems), applying it upon the large corpus of salt tax receipts.

Publication year:2019