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Zenon of Kaunos

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Zeno (or Zenon, Template:Lang-el; 3rd century BC), son of Agreophon, was a citizen of Ancient Greece. He was a public official in Ptolemaic Egypt around the 240s-220s BC. His writings are known from a cache of papyrus documents which was discovered by archaeologists in the Nile Valley in 1914.

Biography

Zeno was a native of the Greek town of Kaunos in lower Asia Minor. He moved to the town of Philadelphia in Egypt, a busy market town that had been founded on the edge of the Faiyum by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in honour of his sister Arsinoe II. From the 3rd century BC until the 5th century CE, Philadelphia was a thriving settlement that relied on agriculture for its economic success.[1][2] At Philadelphia, Zeno became a private secretary to Apollonius, the finance minister to Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes.[3]

Drimylus and Dionysius, two Greek employees under Zeno, were known for their involvement in selling women as sex-slaves in the areas that Zeno was visiting.[4]

The Zenon Papyri

A cache of over 2,000 Greek and Demotic letters and documents written on papyri by Zeno were discovered in the 1900s and are referred to as the Zenon Archive or Zenon Papyri.[5] The papyri were translated into English by the British papyrologists Campbell Cowan Edgar and Arthur Surridge Hunt.[6][7][8]

A substantial part of the Zenon Papyri are now online and grammatically tagged at the Perseus Project hosted at Tufts University.[9]

References

  1. ^ "Philadelpheia (Gharabet el-Gerza)". www.trismegistos.org. TM Places. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  2. ^ "Where do the Zenon Papyri come from?". apps.lib.umich.edu. University of Michigan. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  3. ^ "Who was Zenon". apps.lib.umich.edu. University of Michigan. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  4. ^ PSI 4.406 - attalus.org.
  5. ^ About the Zenon Papyri - University of Michigan.
  6. ^ Bierbrier 2012, p. 171.
  7. ^ Guérud 1939, pp. 3–10.
  8. ^ "Edgar plot". Rectory Lane Cemetery. Friends of St Peter's Berkhamsted. 2021. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  9. ^ P.Cair.Zen., Zenon Papyri, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire

Sources

  • Bierbrier, M.L. (2012). Who was who in Egyptology. Egypt Exploration Society. ISBN 9780856982071.
  • Guérud, O. (1939). "Campbell Cowan Edgar (1870-1938)". Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte. Cairo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)



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