Chapter The Evolution of Layout in Cyrenaean Official Documents (4th-2nd Centuries BCE)

Overview & Synopsis

Between the 360s and the late second century BCE, Cyrenaean documents attest the importance of a local board of magistrates: the damiergoi, who were in charge of administering some sacred estates and their revenues to fund sacrifices and provide for other city officials. This board of magistrates published their accounts annually on stone in the city’s agora. The thirty-eight surviving accounts can be divided into four different phases and have proved to be an extremely precious source for the evolution of layout strategies, writing media, abbreviations, and numeral systems viewed in a longue durée perspective. From a close examination, further elements stand out, such as how and to what extent other areas – namely Attica and Ptolemaic Egypt – and their administrative traditions influenced the damiergoi’s accounting practices. Moreover, this re-examination of the damiergoi accounts sheds light on an abbreviation found in the early-third-century-CE papyrus Marmarica (P.Marm.), which has so far been misinterpreted as a siglum for an uncommon unit of measurement: the ((hepta))m(etron scil. keramion). Cyrenaean evidence permits an alternative hypothesis, namely that the liquid measure used here is the centuries-old zm(ireus) – i.e., smireus – which is already attested in the accounts of the damiergoi.