Reflexe kaiserlichen Wirkens in ägyptischen Papyri und Ostraka

Abstract

As much as the emperor is at the heart of everything in our literary sources, little is generally said about his actual activity and its perception by the provincial population, at least beyond the military campaigns. This paper uses the evidence available from Egypt to study the areas in which imperial activity was felt by the provincial population to such a degree that it had a significant impact on our evidence. For this purpose, all the imperial statements in the papyri are systematically reassessed, with the result that several major areas or themes come to the fore: imperial communication with one of the leading cities of the Empire, here Alexandria; constitutions of more general significance, such as the Constitutio Antoniniana; the complex of appellation; grants of privileges, such as to the members of the agonistic associations or to Hadrian’ s city of Antinoupolis; and last but not least evidence of jurisdiction, especially on occasions when the emperor was present in the province. In provincial everyday life, of course, all this was of import only indirectly and concessions to the Egyptian rural population
remained highly exceptional. Both distant and familiar from cult and coinage, the emperor must therefore
have appeared as a truly godlike being, that was in the end inaccessibly enshrined above all else,
but nevertheless potentially promised help in all, and especially difficult, situations.