Deadline and Whereabouts

This chapter focuses on the time and place of the execution of the recto text of the Muziris papyrus, which is a loan contract signed by a single borrower and a single lender. In the extant column of the recto text, the borrower promises to transport a cargo, first with a camel caravan from the Red Sea to Coptos, then on a ship from Coptos to the customs warehouse of the quarter-tax in Alexandria, where he will put the cargo under the lender’s control. The evidence for ancient maritime loans consists of only a few contracts or texts which somehow summarize their terms. The agreements show differences that are sometimes merely formulaic, sometimes consequential. Despite this variety, however, they show a common feature: they never specify the deadline for the loan repayment with an a priori calendric date. In fact, the elusiveness of the repayment deadline—or, to be more accurate, the dependence of the deadline on the date of the ship’s return—has been a typical characteristic, throughout antiquity, of ‘two-way’ maritime loan contracts.

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