Susan Rahyab (Columbia University)
Introduced in Egypt by Ptolemy I, the agoranomoi functioned as public notaries and, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Greek world, as regulators of the marketplace until the fourth century CE. These officials in Egypt are mostly known to us from their presence on contracts and studies of the office and its officials have tended to focus on the duties of the official as a consequence (Rahyab 2019, Rodriguez 2009, Vandorpe 2004, Pestman 1985, Raschke 1974). This study aims to fill a scholarly gap and uncover the socio-economic status of the agoranomoi in Greco-Roman Egypt prior to the office’s conversion into a liturgy ca. 200 CE. This alteration to the nature of the office ensured that it was held exclusively by wealthy landowners from 200 CE onward, but what of the individuals who took up the magistracy before wealth became a prerequisite?
Pestman (1978) masterfully uncovered a family of Egyptian agoranomoi in the Ptolemaic Pathyrite nome but our knowledge of the individuals who were entrusted with such record-keeping has been relatively confined to this family. Exploiting both public and private documents that uncover fragments from the lives of agoranomoi, I argue that the office was held by the landowning elite since its very introduction in the early Ptolemaic period. Sales contracts, business letters, official lists, and private letters that note current or former agoranomoi reveal marriages between elites, personal purchases and sales, pricy and prestigious office-holding, and other clues that can be utilized to trace the few individuals who appear outside of the bounds of their office. The use of men who are visibly wealthy for the office, the integration of the local priestly elite into the Greek notarial tradition instituted by the Ptolemies, and the creation and subsequent exploitation of the metropolite landowning elite by the Romans ensured that the office was unofficially reserved for the elite. This study contributes to our understanding of municipal offices and important mechanics of empire – record-keeping and the use of provincial elites in municipal administration – as well as aspects of the lived experience of the ancient metropolites vital to this empire of records.