A Roman law scholar has reconstructed and translated a damaged Latin page found among ancient Egyptian artifacts. The parchment offers rare evidence for a small Roman law book from the fourth century.
Matthijs Wibier, an assistant professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, pieced the page together from 50 animal-skin fragments held by the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. Seven of the largest pieces form most of the double-sided page, although gaps still remain.
The museum acquired the fragments from an antiquities dealer in Egypt in 1911. Their survival for more than 1,600 years in Egypt’s dry sands helped preserve parts of a text unknown from other Roman law books.
Wibier’s work suggests the page came from a short collection of imperial laws produced in the later fourth century. The book was likely made for Roman tax officials, landowners, or lawyers who needed access to specific laws while dealing with taxes and public duties.
Most known Roman law codes from the period were much larger. This text appears to have belonged to a smaller handbook, possibly one designed for officials who traveled between different places.
The laws on the page relate to public roads, taxes, food supplies, and the use of public buildings. One section appears to concern wealthy citizens who were required to help maintain roads and supply grain. Another warns against treating public buildings as private property.
Laws about road upkeep, grain supplies, and public buildings also show how the state placed duties on wealthy residents and controlled the use of shared resources.
The page adds evidence from the reigns of Constantius II and Julian, who ruled the Roman Empire between 337 and 363. Few legal books from this period have survived in complete form, so damaged texts often provide key evidence for reconstructing Roman law.
The page also contains clues about how the original book was arranged. Three marks in red ink appear on one side, likely drawing attention to parts of the text. Their absence on the other side helped Wibier work out which side of the parchment came first.
Animal skin has a smooth side and a more textured side. In this case, the textured side appears to have formed an odd-numbered page on the right side of an open book. The other side then faced the reader on the left.
Ultraviolet light helped Wibier see differences in the faded ink. He used those traces to recover parts of the Latin text and produce a translation.
Daniel Markovich, head of the University of Cincinnati’s Classics Department, noted the text does not match any known imperial legal code. This makes the fragment unusual among surviving pieces of Roman legal books.
The Penn Museum holds hundreds of manuscripts from Egypt, many of them surviving only as fragments. They include texts written on papyrus, vellum, and animal skin in several ancient languages.
Wibier’s reconstruction will appear in a chapter of the forthcoming book Il Codice Teodosiano, edited by Detlef Liebs and Dario Mantovani. Pavia University Press is scheduled to publish the volume this year. The work received support from the European Research Council and the Semple Classics Fund.