Slaves in Sixth-Century Palestine in the Light of Papyrological Evidence

Greek papyrological evidence from the Palestine area is scarce; thus, the main source material for the sixth century ce consists of only two papyrus dossiers: one from Petra and the other from Nessana. The recent publication of the Petra papyri provides some long-awaited data on the onomastics of slaves and their existence in households of the elite and in the Christian community of Petra. The more abundant papyrological corpus from Egypt does not give a clear image of slaves this late in time. This article provides the first detailed and contextualized study on the evidence for slaveholding in the Greek documentary papyrological material of the Palestine area in the sixth century.Slavery in the Late Antique World, 150 – 700 CEPeer reviewe