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Pope Francis’ final blessing Urbi et Orbi on Easter Sunday, which included a cancellation of all temporary punishments after death due to sins for all who listened from St Peter’s square or via technical means, reminded me of the two annual meetings held by the Pachomians monks. Once a year, about 2000 monks convened for the celebration of Easter at the main monastery in Pbow (Faw al-Qibli; see the map). This blog, however, focusses on the second annual meeting, which developed from a council during which monastic leaders discussed administrative matters to a collective event for all monks, which also celebrated the forgiveness of sin.

In about twenty-five years (ca. 320-346), Pahom – better known by the latinized name Pachomius – founded the Pachomian koinonia (‘community’), a monastic federation that initially extended over a distance of ca. 300 km, from Panopolis (Akhmim) in the north to Latopolis (Esna) in the south. The monasteries near Hermopolis Magna were founded in the 350s-360s, and the one in Canopus in 391. Each monastery (ca. 200-300 monks on average) and convent (ca. 400 nuns) had a superior, and the one heading the main monastery at Pbow was also the leader of the entire koinonia, starting with Pahom, Horsiesios, and Theodoros. The communities were divided into several ‘houses’, which were supervised by housemasters. Pahom also appointed a steward at Pbow, to whom all housemasters had to report on the manual work done by the monks and their material needs in the month Mesore, the last month of the Egyptian calendar. To prepare for this meeting, also called the ‘time of the great remission of the accounts’ in Coptic, each housemaster counted the number of plaited ropes every week and recorded their amount on a tablet (Rule of Pachomius: Precept 27, only preserved in Latin).

Various sources record the meeting in Mesore: the Bohairic Coptic and Greek versions of the Life of Pachomius and his disciples, (Pahom: Bo. 71, G¹ 83; Horsiesios: G¹ 122; Theodoros: Bo. 144), the Latin version of the Rule of Pachomius (Precept 27, not preserved in Sahidic), and writings attributed to Pahom (Letter 7; TM 62348, in Greek and Latin) and Theodoros (Letter 2; TM 108130, in Sahidic).

As Bernadette McNary (1997: 112-114) already observed, the function and scope of the meeting in Mesore changed. Under Pahom’s leadership, it was a purely practical event, during which housemasters rendered account to the steward and in turn, he arranged the supplies that they needed or he appointed housemasters or other officers (Life, Bo. 71, G¹ 83). In the time of Horsiesios, it was still an administrative meeting, with the addition that Horsiesios took it as one of the two occasions – the other one being the Easter meeting – to appoint superiors, their assistants, and housemasters (Life, G¹ 122). Interestingly, Theodoros organized two related events in Mesore: an administrative meeting, when he appointed many superiors and senior monks to other functions or other communities (a way to stimulate their obedience and flexibility), and a meeting for all brethren that lasted multiple days, during which the records of their manual work were read (Life, Bo. 144).

The date for the administrative meeting was set on Mesore 20 (August 13 according to the Julian calendar), both according to the Life (Bo. 71) and Letter 7 (Latin title). Based on a different date that appears thrice in Theodore’s Letter 2 – Mesore 1 – McNary (1997: 114) hypothesized that the second meeting was held weeks earlier, but two alternative explanations are possible. First, Letter 2 is an invitation to all monks and catechumens (candidates for baptism) and apparently refers to the communal event that Theodore introduced, which took multiple days and may have preceded the administrative meeting. Second, the author seems to mean that everyone invited ‘should have finished all (financial) things, either the buying or the selling’ by Mesore 1 before travelling to Pbow. This early date enabled the monks in the most remote monasteries to arrive on time. By the way, the monks sailing south profited from the strong northern winds and the high level of the Nile, as the meeting in Mesore took place during the flood (López 2016: 199-203).

There is an interesting contrast between the Lives, which focus on rendering accounts in the material world, and the letters, which only refer to a tradition of mutual forgiveness: all monks were exhorted to ‘share their judgements with’ and pardon each other, so that their souls would be ‘cleansed in sanctification and the fear of God’ (Letter 2.1), for if they forgave each other, God would forgive them as well (Letter 2.3, citing Mt 6:14). It should be added that Letter 7 is only linked to Pahom by the title in the Latin version (the – possibly different – Greek title is lost). Even if Pahom delivered an instruction on forgiveness, the connection between this theme and the meeting in Mesore was probably a later development, as it does not appear in the Life. By 404, when Jerome translated a Greek version of the Rule into Latin, it was already an established custom.

Jerome compared it to the Biblical Jubilee (Preface, 8). However, the nature of the Jubilee was more practical than spiritual, as it promoted forgiving debts instead of forgiving sins. Jews were to cancel debts at the end of seven years and refrain from asking payment from their fellows, ‘because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed’ (Deut. 15:1-2; see McNary 1997: 117). Every fifty year (7 × 7 + 1) was a Jubilee year, when the land was not worked and people had to return to their property and clan (Lev. 25:10-17), a custom that is currently not observed on account of the Jewish diaspora.

Literary texts record Pachomian monasteries in the sixth century, but it is unknown when and how the koinonia and the tradition of meeting in Mesore came to an end. However, the theme of forgiveness and the mention of the Biblical Jubilee reminded me of another Christian practice that still exists today: the Catholic Jubilee or Holy Year, ‘a special year of remissions of sins, debts, and universal pardon’, which Popes of Rome have proclaimed every fifty or twenty-five years (depending on need) since 1300. During this period, the faithful are encouraged to make confession, partake of Communion, pray for the Pope, completely renounce all attachment to sin, and make a pilgrimage to Rome. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church is currently celebrating the 2025 Jubilee.

Renate Dekker

Bibliography

López, Ariel 2016. ‘Life on Schedule: Monks and the Agricultural Cycle in Late Antique Egypt’, in Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (eds), Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown (CELAMA 20), Turnhout, 187-208.

McNary, Bernadette 1997. Pre-Theodosian Ascetic Piety in Fourth-Century Egypt: A Study of the Ascetical Letters of Bishops and Monks, PhD diss., University of Toronto (I did not have access to the commercial version: Bernadette McNary-Zak 2000. Letters and Asceticism in Fourth-Century Egypt, Lanham, MD).

Veilleux, Armand 1980. The Life of Saint Pachomius and his Disciple (Pachomian koinonia 1), Kalamazoo, MI.

Veilleux, Armand 1981. Pachomian Chronicles and Rules (Pachomian koinonia 2), Kalamazoo, MI.

Veilleux, Armand 1982. Instructions, Letters, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and his Disciples (Pachomian koinonia 3), Kalamazoo, MI.

I have been studying late-antique Egypt for a while now, with special attention for the Fayum lately – but I had never actually been to Egypt. From 8 to 16 February, I had the opportunity to participate in the Fayum Winter School, which was organised by the University of Warsaw and the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology. For a little more than a week, I visited various sites together with an international group of PhD candidates from all over Europe to study the archaeological context of the texts we all work with, from Karanis to Theadelphia, and from Soknopaiou Nesos to Deir el-Naqlun and Hawara. How did this sojourn help me in my research? Experiencing the natural environment of Egypt myself truly changed my understanding of late antique lives and my ability to empathise with what is described in the sources. In this blogpost, I will tell a little about it.

One of the central themes of the Winter School was the way in which water was managed in this part of Egypt. The Fayum is a natural depression in the landscape, which allows water from the Bahr Yusuf branch of the Nile to flow in, forming Lake Moëris. In the Middle Kingdom, pharao Amenemhet III had already stimulated agriculture in the Fayum on land claimed from Lake Moëris. The Ptolemies ordered large scale land reclamation in the third century BCE. In the fourth century CE, however, important dams in this infrastructural whole started falling into – apparently – unsolvable disrepair, which was one of the reasons for the gradual abandonment of the northwestern and northeastern edges of the Fayum, where villages like Dionysias, Bakchias and Philadelphia were situated. The twentieth-century dams in the Nile have put an end to the annual Nile floods, but by and large the water in the Fayum seems to flow to Lake Moëris along the same canal routes and drains that existed two thousand years ago. Coming from the Netherlands, which is a river delta as well, I found it very interesting to learn more about the history of Egyptian water management on-site. Precisely because of my northwestern-European origin, I had difficulties imagining what dependence on a river and springs for fresh water in an absence of regular rainfall looked like. The gravity of water theft and the intensity of disputes over water, both of which we encounter in papyrological documentation, are more understandable to me now.

Travelling the Fayum in vans has given me a better sense of the time one must have needed to get from one village to the other, or to travel larger distances. By car, it took us about two hours to get from northwestern edge of the Fayum to the governate’s capital, ancient Arsinoe. In the ancient world, most people making this trip would have gone on foot or with a donkey. These means of transport are still common enough in Egypt today. The fastest donkeys I saw carried children. Those carrying grown men were a bit slower. In any case, it must have taken much longer than two hours to travel that same distance by animal, not to mention how long it must have taken to travel on foot. According to Stanford’s geospatial network model Orbis, the distance between Arsinoe and Herakleopolis took about a whole day on foot, about three days by ox cart. The distance between Arsinoe and Dionysias, in the Fayum’s northwestern corner, was about the same. Travelling by boat probably also was among the faster possibilities on the larger canals of the Fayum, provided one owned a boat or had the means to pay for the trip. Conducting official business in the nome capital was, therefore, a time-consuming business, especially for those people who lived relatively far away from Arsinoe. Likewise, it must have taken quite some time to get from Karanis, Theadelphia or, longer even, from Narmouthis to Soknopaiou nesos, a popular temple island where the crocodile god Sobek was worshipped. Karanis is situated to the northeast of the lake, Theadelphia is found southwest of it, and Narmouthis is found in the southwest of the nome. Whether one sailed over the lake, travelled around its shore, or travelled to the ferry, the trip cannot have been a short one. I found this especially intriguing because my current research is about domestic migration in late-antique Egypt. Texts barely (if ever) mention the exact time of travel. In P. Sakaon 44, for example, Sakaon, Heron and Kanaout must have been away from home for several days when they went on a mission to retrieve fugitive fellow-townsfolk in the Oxyrhynchite and Kynopolite nomes. Again, it must have taken two to three days to travel to Arsinoe and back to have the official petition drafted from which we know of this trip.

On the day we visited the former temple island of Soknopaios ourselves, we drove through the desert north of Lake Moëris. It was a long, dusty drive. Caravans used to take this route as well. Seeing the impressively high temenos of Soknopaiou nesos rise up on the horizon must have been astonishing. The ruins of the temple enclosure already inspired awe from afar. Visiting the places one studies truly is of value for better understanding the sources one works with. This Winter School has given a wonderful impulse to my research and I can only recommend everyone else who studies Egypt to visit the country as well.

Kevin Hoogeveen

Dressing up, wearing masks, parading, dancing, celebrating through the night: these are all elements that quickly come to mind when thinking about carnival. Although the specific traditions vary per region, examples like the parades in Rio, Venetian masks or Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans show that carnival celebrations are easily recognizable as such. Masquerades, processions and all-night parties were also part of several ancient festivals. Like carnival, these were celebrated mainly in winter. It is tempting to find a historical connection between these feasts, but is this justified? What is it with celebrating ‘wild’ feasts in the dark days of winter anyway?

Carnival marks the start of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting before Easter, although this religious meaning has faded into the background in most places. The name is derived from the Latin carnelevarius, a composition of carne (meat) and levare (to remove or take away), which indicates abstinence from both meanings of the word carne: meat to eat and bodies to enjoy. As a last occasion to drink, eat and ‘let loose’ without limitations before the fast, it is understandable that this was a moment people particularly enjoyed and saw as an important marker of time.

This is still the case today, even without the strong connection to fasting and Easter, at least in the places where carnival is popular, since the celebration of the feast is tied to specific areas. In the Netherlands, for example, there is a clear division within the country between regions that participate in the celebrations and those that do not: mainly ‘below the rivers’, but also in other towns where the roots of Catholicism run deeper, carnival is a major event and therefore an important marker of annual rhythms.

It is, however, a curious marker of time, as carnival is a moveable feast through its connection to Easter, which is held at a different date every year. The beginning of the carnival season is fixed, on the other hand, although this date differs per region. In the Netherlands it starts as early as the eleventh of November, whereas in other places the first ceremonies are held in late December or early January. With these early dates in mind, one could say that carnival fills the entire period from Christmas until Lent, resulting in a single long festive period with intermittent feasting. For the festive rhythm of the year the precise end of this period might be less important.

Although the origins of carnival remain obscure, there are many similarities to be found between modern practices and ancient Roman festivals, such as the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia – a fact which has often been pointed out. Besides the above-mentioned processions, a playful atmosphere and social inversion were important elements of these feasts. During the Saturnalia, it is said, masters served their enslaved persons and jesting at the expense of your superiors was allowed without consequences. A contemporary tradition during carnival is the transferal of the key of a city to ‘Prince Carnival’, which goes back to Medieval times, when the poorer population got the chance to rule for a few days. During this period of social inversion, people could criticize the traditional rulers and authorities as well.

Despite these similarities, the historian Max Harris argues against a historical connection between these Roman feasts and the tradition of carnival, emphasizing that ‘resemblance is not the same as historical continuity’ (Harris 2006, 63.)  For one, the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia had since long gone extinct when carnival made its first appearance in early twelfth century Rome. There is, however, another Roman winter feast that could more easily fulfill the role of ancient influencer – the Kalends of January or Roman New Year feast. From the long legacy of this festival, and the continued Christian criticism of it as something immoral and pagan, it is known that the Kalends were still celebrated until the twelfth century, in Byzantium at least. Timewise, therefore, a connection between carnival and the Kalends is more likely, as Harris argues as well. The Kalends celebrations of the Roman Republic had little in common with carnival, but the nature of the festival changed in the fourth century, when it increasingly got a reputation for reputation of licentious freedom, masquerades and social inversion. In this period the Roman Empire had become Christian and the revised Kalends festival slowly became a part of the accepted Christian festival calendar, albeit grudgingly. This reluctant acceptance of the Kalends makes the likelihood of the festival influencing carnival even greater.

Another interesting point is that Christmas used to be more similar to carnival than we would expect from our modern traditions. In 1445, complaints were made at the Faculty of Theology in Paris about behavior of clerics during the 12 days of Christmas, where they were participating in masked dances and such. Of course, the Kalends of January were blamed as malevolent pagan influence in this case, while in some other instances the Saturnalia and Bacchanalia were named (Harris 2006, 61-2). Harris argues that this particular aspect of Christmas, probably influenced by the Kalends traditions, was transferred to carnival on the other end of the winter festive season. On a side note, Harris adds that to this day, in places where carnival did not take root such as England, Christmas is still the time for jesting, singing and dressing up (Harris 2006, 104).

To conclude, it is quite possible that the particularly long-lived Kalends festival influenced the Christian carnival festivities. Harris suggests that the masquerading during the Kalends could be a subtle form of Christian resistance to the power of the Church (Harris 2006, 101). Carnival could be seen appropriating this custom as a Christian answer to older feasts, with the possibility to rebel, just a little bit. It appears to be something that belongs to the long season of cold, dark days, when people look forward to the coming of spring. It is no wonder that most winter feasts were festivals of light, centering on the winter solstice, looking forward to lighter days ahead. Easter as a festival of light fits right into this theme, with carnival serving as a bridge between the winter festivities and spring.  

Elsa Lucassen

References

Harris, Max. “Claiming pagan origins for carnival: Bacchanalia, Saturnalia, and Kalends.” European Medieval Drama 10 (2006): 57-107.

1985 is a long time ago. Forty years, to be exact. Or rather, the author of this blogpost, a twenty-seven-year-old Dutch PhD Candidate, thinks it is a long time ago. One could say forty years equal the working life of one generation. In the proceedings of a court case dated 339 CE from Egypt (SB XVI 12692 = P. Col. VII 175), we encounter a law from the emperor Constantine I according to which working land for over a period of forty years makes one the responsible owner of land in case of the absence of a deed of sale or cession. This case illustrates how the passage of (a long period of) time normalized claims of ownership that on the short term might have been disputed. Also, it allows for a more socio-cultural observation regarding what was considered a ‘long’ period and what implications of this qualification were in social reality.

Let us start off by explaining the technicalities. Constantine’s law concerning forty years, the praescriptio quadraginta annorum, was based on a principle first found in a rescript by Caracalla and Septimius Severus, the longi temporis praescriptio, which protected landowners against the possibility of creditors having an eternal claim on one’s lands. If proof of right to a piece land was available, the claim was only valid for a period of ten years if the two parties involved lived in the same village. If they lived in different villages, the claim was valid for twenty years. According to Kehoe, the goal of this praescriptio was to provide landowners with an incentive to invest in land, because it protected ownership (Kehoe 2007, 135-142). A period of forty years appears to be the threshold in the absence of a titulum, a claim to the land in the form of, e.g. a loan contract or a deed of sale. The court case found on SB XVI 12692 shows the praescriptio also had a fiscal dimension, as has been elaborated on by Bianchi (2018, 78-101).

During the spring of 339, two sisters from Karanis, Thaësis and Heraïs, daughters of Atisis, took legal action against ‘the heirs of Atisis’ because the sisters denied being the inheritors of the farmland which had previously been cultivated by their father Atisis. There have been several theories on who is who in this court case. After a re-editon of the first column, Kramer and Hagedorn proposed the sisters were resisting the wrongful ascription of another Atisis’s possessions next to that of their homonymous father’s (Kramer & Hagedorn 1982, cf. Bagnall & Lewis 1979, 173-175). Whether this ‘other Atisis’ truly wasn’t the father of Thaësis and Heraïs remains in the dark.

It might come across as all rather complicated, so I will start with a summary of the facts. Approximately six years before the trial, the sisters fled the village after their father’s passing because they were unable (or so they said) to pay the taxes on their father’s lands. After five years, a government official in charge of the pagus (a late Roman administrative unit) in which Karanis was situated assigned local farmers to work the fields of Atisis. The village community had to pay taxes over this land instead of the delinquent sisters.

One year after this emergency measure had been in place, Heraïs returned to Karanis with her husband Neilos and her sister Thaësis. She demanded the people who had been working and who had harvested from Atisis’ land to pay rent for the past year. They refused. The community reminded them of their obligation to pay taxes, after which the sisters started denying they owned the land at all. They petitioned the prefect of Egypt and asked him to protect them against this ‘unjust claim’ of the villagers. The prefect then ordered the judge and public prosecutor (defensor civitatis) of Arsinoe, the district’s capital, to look into the matter.

The plaintiffs are the two sisters, of whom one is represented by Neilos, who claim the villagers have no proof of the sisters’ ownership of the land. They point to the fact that villagers had farmed the land as proof that they, the villagers, are the heirs of Atisis in terms of responsibility for paying taxes. Their stressing of the fact that villagers had farmed the land would not have made sense if they were disputing ownership of only part of the inheritance, as Kramer and Hagedorn (1982) suggest. Germanos, a village headman, testified before the judge in Egyptian. An interpreter’s translation of this testimony has been written down in the court proceedings. According to Germanos, Atisis had been working the disputed fields for over forty years. The rhetor (solicitor) speaking on behalf of the village calls upon the abovementioned law of Constantine I. According to this law, forty years is a threshold after which no deed of sale or cession or other sort of proof is needed: forty years make one the legitimate owner. Consequently, the passing of time plays a large role in the judge’s verdict. The villagers had only been working the fields of Atisis for one year; too short a period of time. Thaësis and Heraïs lose their case. The judge orders they are the owners and therefore have to pay the taxes due on the land, both theirs and that of the ‘heirs of Atisis’.

The determination of what is a ‘long’ period by the emperor in the longi temporis praescriptio was probably influenced by many factors. One could think of archiving practice, the average lifespan of people, or even, considering Constantine’s flirtations with Christianity, the Biblical significance of the forty-year Hebrew sojourn in the Sinai and Deuteronomy 2.14 in which a generation has a length of 38 years. What is considered ‘long’ is also conditioned by space and time, as it is a concept born from human experience in the Mediterranean world of the fourth century. It is, in any case, an anthropocentric definition of ‘long’ if we bear in mind the shorter lifespan of a flower and the longer period of rock formation. One could add socio-economic and technical layers as well, considering the fact that old age and the possession of land are usually the prerogative of the wealthier; as well as the limits of fourth-century technology with respect to possibilities of long-term archiving.

All in all, this one mention of a law proves a starting point for asking many questions about the ways in which people experienced time and ways in which this experience of few potentially impacted many others who might have experienced time differently. Constantine’s lived time determined the course of the lives of the villagers of Karanis and the way in which they used time. SB XVI 12692 does not only contain an interesting law by Constantine, but it also proves to be for reflections on the socio-cultural structure it is a part of, beyond its événementalité.

Kevin Hoogeveen

References

Bagnall & Lewis 1979: Roger S. Bagnall and Naphtali Lewis, ‘Introduction to P. Col. VII 175′ in: idem, Columbia Papyri VII. Fourth century documents from Karanis (Missoula 1979) 173-175.

Bianchi 2018: Paola Bianchi, Effetti del passaggio del tempo nelle leggi imperiali e nella prassi da Constantino a Giustiniano. Evasione fiscal e possesso, inerzia dei creditori (Canterano 2018).

Kehoe 2007: Dennis P. Kehoe, Law and the rural economy in the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 2007).

Kramer & Hagedorn 1982: Bärbel Kramer and Dieter Hagedorn, ‘Zum Verhandlungsprotokoll P. Columbia VII 175′, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie and Epigraphik 45 (1982) 229-241.

How many hours did civil servants work a hundred years ago and did they experience stress? What did the introduction of a weekly day of rest mean for crowd control in the Roman bathhouses? How did sex workers in early modern Japan manage to charge by the hour? And how did merchants schedule their business ventures during the insecure period of the Black Death? These are just a few examples of the questions addressed during the international Lived Time conference held here at Amsterdam from 26 to 28 November 2024.

For three days, 16 international experts discussed with our project team aspects of Lived Time: Routines, Temporal Norms and Identities from Antiquity to the Modern World. This gathering of specialists from different countries and different fields of expertise (history, sociology, religious studies, archaeology, literature studies, etc.) and with specialisms ranging geographically from Britain to Japan and chronologically from ancient Egypt to the present) offered a vivid illustration of the surging academic interest in temporality (how people are in time or experience time) in the humanities. This so-called ‘temporal turn’ has led to a wave of new publications on people’s relation with time in the last 15 years or so, building on a pre-existing and more gradually developing philosophical and sociological interest in this topic. The specific focus of the Lived Time conference was on everyday experiences of time: how people’s routines and everyday responses to societal norms about the timing of activities affect their performances of the self and the workings of societies.

The conference started with a general introduction and case study by the project team (Sofie Remijsen, Eugenio Garosi), followed a more conceptual introduction to the structures of social time by the experienced sociologist of time Ignace Glorieux. The remainder of the conference was organized around thematic clusters: the experience of time during historical epidemics (Jeroen Puttevils, Kristine Johanson), festivals (Stefan Feuser, Elsa Lucassen), rhythms of bathing and the lack thereof (Uta Heil, Anna Geurts), work schedules (Daniel Soliman, Gerrit Verhoeven, Mark Hailwood, Renate Dekker), sleep and idleness (Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Brigitte Steger, James Ker) and instruments for timing (Matthew Champion, Angelika Koch). The final session looked at modern experiences of time connected to the use of fossil fuels (On Barak, Peter van Dam).

In each session, as well as across the sessions, there were interesting points of convergence in the research of specialists from different fields. Daily rhythms, for example, persist and turn out to be quite conservative despite societal change. This has been observed in modern time use studies but is equally visible in the slow take up of Sunday rest or in what is now increasingly interpreted as a continuity in the hours spend in the early age of industrialization. Both in the first Egyptian monasteries and in the daily work of civil servants around 1900, to give another example, leaders allowed scope for individual adaptations to – at first sight rigid – institutionalized work schedules. Resemblances where also noticed in how people experienced the special qualities of non-active time.

Much has been written about our modern relation to time as a unique distinguishing feature. Rather than confirming this opposition between ‘modern’ and ‘premodern’ time, the diachronic nature of the conference allowed for identifying recurring elements in everyday experiences of time across cultural divides as well as the cultural specificities of each temporal experience. One of the central conclusions is, no doubt, that studying temporality is not (only) a goal in itself. It offers a new lens to sharpen our image of the cultural norms prevailing in historical societies and of the ways such norms and societies change.

Sofie Remijsen

What is the right time to arrive at a party? Arriving too early, even only a little, is kind of awkward, on time is fine, but it is definitely cooler to arrive ‘fashionably late’. Much later, however, is also not done. Luckily, most partygoers are able to navigate these unwritten social rules regarding time. These kind of mundane questions seem to us a modern luxury problem, but are they really something new? This is the topic of a lesson our team developed for secondary school children (ages 15-17). The outcome is clear: also in Rome, there were plenty of social conventions about appropriate timing.

The universality of the theme makes it of interest to audiences outside universities as well, such as adolescents. Roman time, moreover, is recognizable, as so many of the structures we use today find their origin in antiquity, such as the names of the months, the week and the 12-hour day. Even without much background knowledge, students can recognize Roman elements of time in their own daily lives. This is not typically part of the school curriculum, however. Of course, some handbooks do pay attention to the Roman calendar or the pagan origin of the week, but they typically present this information in a rather encyclopedic way. In our lesson, we want to reflect on the social experience of time as well, and invite the adolescents to reflecting on the role of time – and social conventions around time – in their own lives.

This past autumn I tried out this lesson at several schools in Amsterdam, in classes 4 and 5 VWO (ages 15-17). I gave these lessons to students as part of their Latin classes, but the material could easily be adapted to be well suited for a history course as well.

As an introduction the students were asked about their associations with the word time, which lead to a conversation about clock time, calendars and concepts such as ‘history’ or ‘the future’. Based on their input we spoke about the different possible rhythms in a year and how individual rhythms can differ between classmates. Ambiguities came up, such as school hours not measuring 60 minutes like a regular hour. And when we talk about the beginning of the year, do we mean the calendrical year or the school year? By speaking about time in an open dialogue, the theme of the lesson became clearer to the students.

Then I moved to a mainly instructive part where I taught them about Roman time measurement for hours, days, months and years. They could identify the remains of an older Roman calendar in our contemporary calendar and understood why the week is fundamentally different from days and months. We spoke about the introduction of a fixed day of rest on Sunday, and the possibly non-Christian predecessor on Thursday, illustrated by a papyrological source.

In the next part we looked at archeological sources regarding time, such as ancient clocks and a mosaic on being late and ended the lesson by reading three poems by Martial (Epigrams 2.27; 4.8; 8.67), in which he discusses everyday life and its rhythms. The students answered questions on these poems in small groups, and were asked to connect themes from the introduction to the texts. For instance in Epigram 8.67, where it is made clear that being on time for a dinner appointment is important, but it is equally not done to be so early, that you are almost on time for breakfast. To wrap up, we considered on which occasions the students desperately wanted to be on time (school!) and when it was actually better to be a little late (parties!), illustrating the close connection between time use and social norms.

The object was to make students reflect on the use of time and its connection to social norms, in the time of the Romans and now. They learned more about the Roman way of measuring time and structuring the year, and were invited to consider their own rhythms and customs as well. This combination of information and reflecting on personal experience proved well suited for the age group.

I was struck by the interest of many students, who kept asking relevant questions about the subject.

Making the connection to their own personal time use worked quite well, I think, although not all were eager to share information about their weekly rhythms – which was of course not mandatory.

The part of the lesson were I simply talked about historical time measurement and explained how the Romans structured their year was clearly the favorite element of the lessons for most students. They were intrigued by the differences regarding time to what we are used to in our time, and I think this is mainly to be ascribed to the aforementioned universality of the subject.

The question remains how this lesson can be logically embedded in the curriculum. It would fit well into a lesson series on daily life, or could provide more background information when reading Martial.

In the near future, we hope to publish a didactic article in the journal Lampas on the lesson including historical background information, meant primarily for secondary school teachers. The material for the classroom (in Dutch) will be published around the same time on this website.

Elsa Lucassen

Experiences of teaching Dutch primary school children about time and going to school in the Roman world

What was it like to be a Roman schoolchild? A few months ago, the project team designed an interactive tutorial about the life of Roman schoolboy and the ways of knowing time in the Roman world for school children aged 9-12. From June one, we (research assistant Kevin Hoogeveen and student assistant Hugo Oostdijk) have practiced and perfected the tutorial in primary schools in Bussum, Amstelveen and Rotterdam. In this blogpost, we share our experiences.

The goal of the lesson was to teach children about the ways in which Romans used and experienced time. A child’s morning routine and school day served as an example. We hoped that, by the end of the class, children knew more about:

1. how Romans measured time;
2. how the rhythm of people differed depending on their place in society (wealth, class, gender, being enslaved, etc.); and
3. inequality in the Roman world in general. Many children did not go to school at all, people could be enslaved and women were considered inferior to men.

For each school group, we started off with a small introduction into the Roman world with a lot of input from the children themselves. Caesar and Cleopatra were the best-known celebrities. Some were even familiar with the concept of Roman imperialism. Pointing out the fact that the Roman empire included modern-day Turkey and large parts of North Africa, and stretched all the way to Britain and Rumania, visibly fostered a sense of involvement and enhanced engagement in classes with a relatively diverse demographic.

Next, we turned our attention to a fourth-century colloquium text which describes the day of a Roman schoolboy, from the moment he gets up until the end of his school day when the teacher accidentally sends the children home early, in the conviction that the next day was going to be holiday. The text was originally designed for children who were practicing the colloquial use of Latin and Greek. Because it is written from the point of view of the child itself, it is easy for children to relate to the Roman schoolchild and compare their day with his.

The children also acted out the colloquium texts. This created an opportunity to discuss the questions related to the text that the children answered earlier, but the little plays wre above all a fun way for them to reflect better on what happened in the story and also on how the lives of characters in the text had different rhythms.

In two more practical blocks of the class, the children learnt how to make a rudimentary sundial. We took them outside to see how the gnomon’s shadow moved throughout the day like that of a modern clock.

Hugo: “I had no prior experience with teaching in any way, let alone groups of young children. I learned a lot throughout so this project was probably more educational for me than for any of the children we encountered, but I really liked to try to enthuse children for the discipline that we all feel so enthusiastic about. Aside from the general challenges of getting some of the children to listen and actively partake (the intensity of which also differed per school) the try-outs of the lesson presented us with an opportunity to run into some more specific challenges that allowed us to finetune the end product. A great example is the sundial experiment for which we planned to go outside until we had to teach a class in the pouring rain, which forced us to come up with an alternative approach for those (many) days that it rains in the Netherlands.

The most challenging aspect however, was the fact that we were developing this lesson in a way that it could be taught by a primary school teacher, and they usually don’t have such an extensive knowledge of the Roman world as people working in the ancient history department of a university. It felt nice but problematic at the same time when teachers after class complemented us on how we could answer the questions of children about a plethora of different subjects concerning the Roman world, because this is exactly what a normal teacher would not be able to do. By writing an introduction document for the teacher and an extensive step by step plan of the lesson we hope to have overcome this challenge as much as possible and I think the end product has turned out to be indeed both accessible as well as educational.”

Kevin: “Until now, I had only been a teacher at Sunday school. Teaching Roman history to children at this young age was a whole new experience to me. I thoroughly enjoyed their enthusiasm and found joy in stating that the history of the Roman empire is a shared history of many people of diverse backgrounds. The sundial demonstration proved to be most interesting element of the class, followed by the short plays with the colloquium text as script. I hope Hugo, I and the rest of the project team will prove to have been able to share our knowledge with as diverse a public as possible by developing a class suitable for use in all primary schools.”

Kevin Hoogeveen and Hugo Oostdijk

The teaching material (in Dutch) is found here.

For those interested in the origin of monastic routines, Bentley Layton’s book The Canons of Our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute (Oxford, 2014) is highly recommended. It presents the first edition of a very early collection of monastic rules written in Coptic, 595 entries in total. These rules were not transmitted as a group, but abbot Shenoute of Atripe (ca. 347-465) and his successor Besa quoted them in their writings, and Layton carefully collected these quotes.

In ca. 385, Shenoute, the most prolific author in Coptic in late antiquity, became the supreme leader of a monastic federation on the west bank of the Nile, at the edge of the desert near the ancient village of Atripe and the modern city of Sohag [see the YMAP-South map]. According to Layton, the federation was founded when Pcol, the founder of a monastery (in ca. 360), and Pshoi, the leader of an eremitic community that transformed into a monastery, decided to link their congregations. Pcol, who also founded a third monastery for women in the village of Atripe, became the first archimandrite (superior abbot) of all three congregations and male and female ascetics associated with them, while remaining the abbot of the main monastery. His successor Ebonh combined the two offices as well, but Shenoute, who lived as a hermit after leaving the main monastery, only succeeded Ebonh as archimandrite of the federation, while two abbots and an abbess directed the monasteries. In the course of time, the communities have been referred to by various names:

1. The central monastery for men was later called the Monastery of St Shenoute, but is best known by its modern name, the ‘White Monastery’, as the monumental church was built of white limestone. The church is still in use today.
2. Similarly, the northern monastery for men is officially named the Monastery of St Pshoi, but often called the ‘Red Monastery’, on account of the red limestone used in the church building. The church is still in use today and admired for its polychrome decoration.
3. Themonastery in the village, a cloistered community for women, no longer exists today, but has been excavated by Yale University.

These communities could include small children and youths, who participated in the daily monastic routine as much as possible like the adults. Each monastery comprised an unspecified number of houses, where monks or nuns slept and attended communal activities, including prayer and handwork sessions and instructional meetings.

In his nine-volume work called Canons, which is largely preserved and meticulously reconstructed, and in some fragmentary writings, Shenoute quoted monastic rules (nos. 1-581) written by himself or by Pcol. The latter also appears to have revised and supplemented the rules of Pachomius (ca. 292-347), who was the first monastic leader to define monastic rules (from 329 onward). Just as Shenoute added new rules in the course of time in response to practical situations, his successor Besa discussed a number of supplementary rules in two of his works (nos. 582-595). These rules do not discuss the weekly and daily schedules systematically – as these were self-evident to the monks, the most basic routines are least likely to be preserved. But all the information together does enable us to get a detailed impression of the routines in the monastic federation (see the table).

In each monastery the Eucharist was celebrated twice a week, on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Both services were mandatory, unless someone was seriously ill or instructed to stay behind. After the Saturday mass, the monks and nuns went to sleep and got up hours before dawn for the collective prayer. During the winter, when the hours were shorter than in summer, the time to get up was 3 hours before sunrise, to ensure that the siblings recited 51 prayer units. Children attended the collective prayer as well, but they were allowed to sleep during the event. At dawn, the superiors of the three monasteries gave catechesis, after which the Eucharist took place early in the morning. During the rest of Sunday, nobody was allowed to do difficult tasks, and only easy or urgent tasks were acceptable.

On other days than Sunday, the monks and nuns got up 1,5-2 hours before sunrise. The daily prayer schedule consisted of collective prayer before dawn and in the evening, either in the churches or other communal spaces, and prayer sessions in the houses: after waking up (not noted by Layton, but implied in rule no. 169), at the first hour (dawn), at the fifth hour or the sixth (noon) at the latest, and at the ninth hour (ca. 3 PM) or the tenth at the latest. During the collective meetings, the monks and nuns usually prayed twelve rounds, while being engaged in handiwork: the monks plaited reeds, the nuns worked with wool. However, during the colder months, they prayed six rounds in the evening and did not have to work, out of concern for those who were tired of fasting or working outside, so that they could eat their bread in peace. The prayer sessions in the houses included 18 units, or 24 units in summer. Layton previously thought that they were occasions for handiwork as well, but later indicated that this was perhaps not the case (compare Layton 2007 and 2014, p. 72).

Each change of activity was signaled by the striking of wooden instruments. Except on Sunday, the monks and nuns worked in the morning and afternoon. The daily meal was normally served in the refectory at noon (once a week it was cooked), and extra bread was distributed for those who needed to eat in the evening, which they could do in private at the time for reading. The rules do not clarify whether the daily meal was postponed to the evening on the two fast days, i.e. Wednesday and Friday, and at which moment of these days the superiors of each monastery and the house leaders gave catechesis.

Reading Layton’s edition of the rules and combining details scattered throughout the collection strongly improved my understanding of how daily life in the monastic federation was organized, especially with regard to the moments reserved for prayer, work or a combination of both. As disciplined life in the cenobitic communities may have been, especially in view Shenoute’s reputation as a very strict monastic leader, the rules show room for variation depending on the season and moderation for the sake of child monks, the weary, and the sick.

Renate Dekker

Table: monastic schedule

Further reading

On the rules

Layton, B. 2007, ‘Rules, Patterns, and the Exercise of Power in Shenoute’s Monastery: The Problem of World Replacement and Identity Maintenance’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15.1, 45-73 [on the organization of space, time and offices in the monastic federation].

Layton, B. 2014, The Canons of Our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute, Oxford: Oxford University Press [edition of the preserved monastic canons compiled by Shenoute].

On Shenoute

Behlmer, H. 2022, ‘Shenoute: Update’, Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia, available online at https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2178/rec/1.

Bell, D.N. 1983, The Life of Shenoute, by Besa, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.

Brakke, D., and A. Crislip 2015, Selected Discourses of Shenoute The Great: Community, Theology, and Social Conflict in Late Antique Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gabra, G., and H.N. Takla (eds) 2008, Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt, vol. 1: Akhmim and Sohag, Cairo: AUC Press [on Shenoute and the monastic federation].

On the monasteries

Bolman, E.S. 2016, The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt, New Haven–London: Yale University Press [on the church decoration in the ‘northern monastery’].

CCP Staff 2020, ‘’Elizabeth Bolman Interview: The Red Monastery Church. A Multi-Decade Project Brings a 5^th C. Coptic Church in Egypt back to Vivid Life, Cultural Property News, available at https://culturalpropertynews.org/elizabeth-s-bolman-interview-the-red-monastery-church/.

Yale Monastic Archaeological Project South (YMAP-South), ‘The History and Goals of the Project’, available online at Yale Egyptology, with links to the sub projects ‘Shenoute and the History of the Monastic Federation’, ‘The White Monastery’, and ‘The Women’s Monastery near Atripe’.

The payment of rent in kind, the delivery of pre-paid wine, and the repayment of a loan in kind; all depend on the not always predictable outcome of a harvest – especially in premodern societies. Agricultural entrepreneurship was a risky business, as one was dependent on the vagaries of natures. Nature’s pace was relatively predictable – yet one could never know when impactful deviations from the common agricultural calendar, like a belated Nile flood, would occur. Agreements about future payments and deliveries nevertheless keep an economy going. In this blogpost, we will have a look at how late antique Egyptians dealt with the uncertainty of the future in their day-to-day transactions.

It was not uncommon for city dwellers to pre-order some wine from the vineyards surrounding their city. They would pay upfront and agree with the supplier on a delivery later on, like in papyrus SB 16 12486. Likewise, the payment of rent in kind by a tenant would often be scheduled after the harvest. In case of a loan of seed, for instance, the repayment was planned to take place after the borrowed seed had come to fruition and was harvested. What connects these transactions is their promised execution in a relatively loosely defined future. Wine deliveries often specify the month in which delivery is due, but the rent and loan (re)payments sometimes only refer to the moment of repayment as occurring ‘after the harvest’.

For this short survey, we will not dive into the specific contract types of Roman private law, nor into the difference between transactions determined by a strict interpretation of the law (stricti iuris) or made in good faith (bonae fidei). Of concern here is the imagination of the future in the time clauses (dies) we find in various kinds of agreements. The clauses we are dealing with in this blogpost are all dies a quo, postponements of a due date. This means that an obligation to e.g. repay seed loaned out for sowing is due from the moment the contract exists but is postponed to a later date. Time clauses always refer to an event that will surely happen, either at known moment in time, dies certus, or inevitably, but surely, dies incertus quando.

Both types appear in the examples above. At first sight, the dies certus clause seems to be vaguer in contracts that speak of a month rather than a day. Mentioning a month instead of just one day is, however, a clever dealing with an uncertain future that testifies to knowledge of agricultural reality. The last day of that month in this case is the ultimate dies a quo after which the creditor could give the debtor a default notice. The delineated month protects the rights of the creditor. The ‘month dies’ is also beneficial to the debtor. First of all, one has to always keep in mind that, in Roman law, the payment of a debt before a due date does not automatically absolve the debtor of his obligation towards the creditor without the explicit consent of the latter. Additionally, one can hardly plan a harvest so precisely that a debtor with a fair amount of certainty can live up to the promise of delivery on one specific day. By choosing a dies (literally: day) with a month’s length and choosing the month in which comparable deliveries usually take place, the debtor can more realistically fulfill his obligation and he prevents possible additional storage costs for his wares.

The same logic applies to the vaguer ‘after the harvest’-clauses, which are dies incertus quando. This more flexible clause is more favorable to the debtor since the harvest is the point of reference and determines the possibility of the creditor to give notice of default.

In both situations, in the ‘after the harvest’-clauses even more so than in the ‘month’-clauses, agricultural reality plays a major role in how contracts parties envisage the uncertain future. Contracts concerning future deliveries shows how the agricultural rhythm and human knowledge thereof deeply influence the use of time in legal agreements and the imagination of what is to come.

Kevin Hoogeveen