Village Networks: The Small World of Fourth-Century Kellis

No family is an island unto itself. For the Pamour family, the village of Kellis was one of the primary arenas of their social life, one where they interacted with larger social entities based on kinship alliances, economic activities, political institutions, and religious practices. The current chapter examines the family’s position within this village world, taking a relational approach. What sort of influence did the family wield? Who were their close associates? How did they interact? These questions are of relevance to the questions that will preoccupy us in Chapter 6, namely the extent of the local Manichaean community and the social networks in which affiliation with it spread. Unfortunately, the Pamour archive itself presents something of an obstacle to gaining a proper sense of the family’s position. The archive looms large among the papyri from the village, its bulk painting a picture in which family members appear more prominent than they in were. Luckily, fourth-century papyri from other find sites do widen our perspective, and the House 1–3 material itself contains documents that pertain to larger village concerns, which together can help to correct this Pamour-centric picture. They reveal other circles of villagers with whom the Pamour family interacted: their neighbours in House 2, Oasis notables who may have acted as patrons, and fellow-traders in Kellis and on the Nile who formed their primary business associates. In the course of this chapter, we shall examine the prosopography, role, and relationship to the Pamour family of these various groups. We conclude with a quantitative network analysis based on the textual material, using the whole spectrum of documentary papyri from the village in order to map the social circles of fourth-century Kellis. First, however, there are some documents that could provide more direct clues as to the family’s position. For one, the family is known to have served as liturgists in the local administration, attested in P.Kellis I Gr. 72 where Horos III is said to have been appointed to a liturgy. Unfortunately, the author of this letter, Pekysis, neglects to mention the nature of the liturgy. In itself, then, it does not tell us much about their wealth and status, apart from that they belonged to the (rather large) upper segment of villagers who were obliged to perform such service.1 More promising are two expense accounts dating to the first half