Unpublished demotic receipts concerning land

الملخص EN

The present study contains the publication of four demotic ostraca with receipts concerning land.

These texts, which are now kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, were discovered in the Oriental Institute's 1929/30 season of excavation at Medinet Habu, (MH 4071, MH 4076, MH 196, and MH 4318 R&V).

Their date can be determined from some interior evidences such as known persons.

The first ostracon is dated to the late Ptolemaic period, while the other ones are dated to Roman; one of them belongs to the reign of Augustus.

Three receipts of them were issued in money while one text concerns a payment in kind.

These receipts concern the delivery of grain, which was always paid in kind and delivered to the granary, and sometimes when the harvest was decreased, the farmer would not be able to deliver the amount of wheat to the granary, so he had to pay its cash value to the bank.

He could pay either in the year following the year in which the grain was due or even in the same year.