Menches was an ancient Egyptian scribe who lived during the Ptolemaic period. He was the village scribe () of Kerkeosiris from before 119 BCE until 110 BCE. His family were likely descended from Greek settlers in Egypt, and he was also known by the Greek name Asclepiades.
Menches lived during the Ptolemaic period, after ancient Egypt had been conquered by Alexander the Great. After the death of Alexander the Great, Egypt was ruled by Alexander's general Ptolemy I Soter and his descendants the Ptolemaic dynasty. The circumstances of Menches' life have been reconstructed based on papyrus letters that he wrote or received in his occupation as a scribe. Few personal details about Menches are preserved in these documents, and his birth date is unknown. He lived and worked in the village of Kerkeosiris, the location of which has not yet been discovered by archaeologists. The village was founded in the Faiyum Oasis in the early Ptolemaic period, when the Ptolemies began large-scale land reclamation projects in the Faiyum. During this period, the Ptolemies granted allotments of farm land to Ptolemaic soldiers who settled in villages like Kerkeosiris.
Menches was one of several sons born to Petesouchos and Thasis. His brothers included Polemon, a man identified from personal correspondences in the Menches archive. Another man named Mestasutmis has been identified as a possible brother of Menches, as they were business partners and both had a father named Polemon. However, papyrologist Arthur Verhoogt stated that the identification of Mastasutmis with Menches was uncertain because Polemon was a common name. Menches and his father are both described in surviving documents as a "Greek of the country", which appears to be derived from an Egyptian term describing Greeks born in Egypt. Because of this, the family is believed to be descended from Greek settlers.
The name Menches means "He who is perfect" in Egyptian. He was also known by the Greek name . It was common for people in Ptolemaic Egypt to have a double name; they used a Greek or Egyptian name depending on the situation. Village scribes typically used Egyptian names, and Menches used his Egyptian name primarily. Other male members of his family also used their Egyptian names more frequently than their Greek ones.
Menches is known to have held the office of village scribe (). It was a prestigious office that gave Menches considerable influence in his community. A scribal administration had existed in Egypt since the Old Kingdom and this system was mostly unchanged in the Ptolemaic period. The highest levels of the Ptolemaic government were under Greek control, while most scribes were native Egyptians who were required to be bilingual in Egyptian and Greek.
Scribes were responsible for managing the agricultural land in Egypt on behalf of the pharaoh. Village scribes like Menches answered to a network of superiors, including the toparchy scribes (topogrammateus) and the royal scribe (basilikos grammateus). Menches' primary personal responsibilities as scribe were to record and manage agricultural taxes owed within his village. He was obligated to create a complete registry that catalogued agricultural land in the village, including records of what crops were grown and the outcome of the harvest. He supervised sowing and harvesting so that he could write reports on their progress. He also supervised irrigation projects and other public works.
It is unknown when Menches was first appointed to the position of village scribe, but he was the incumbent scribe by 119 BCE. A document written by Menches mentions the appointment of a new scribe for an unnamed village in 123 or 122 BCE, which may refer to the date that he first became scribe. Menches applied to be reappointed as komogrammateus on May 25, 119 BCE. In the document, Menches pledged to pay a large amount of grain upon his reappointment, and to rent and cultivate land owned by the royal government. Cultivating and reclaiming unproductive land is thought to have been a prerequisite for being appointed as a scribe. Menches was financially supported by Dorion, a wealthy and influential person in the state administration. On August 20, 119 BCE, the basilikos grammateus instructed a regional official to provide Menches with his papers of office, effectively renewing his term.
Many of Menches' fellow scribes went on strike in 118 BCE, during a period of civil unrest stemming from an Egyptian civil war that lasted from 132 until 124 BCE. The war was fought by the forces of Ptolemy VIII Physcon and Cleopatra III against Cleopatra II, and caused a period of anarchy that lasted for several years after the war. Many farmers abandoned their land to become brigands as local officials were exploiting the peasantry. As the economy worsened, the price of basic items increased due to inflation. In 118 BCE, Ptolemy VIII issued a broad amnesty decree that forgave all debts and pardoned all crimes committed during the war with the exception of murder and sacrilege. This decree helped to gradually restore social and economic stability.
On December 7, 118 BCE, Menches, his brother Polemon, and a group of other people were arrested. They were charged with attempting to poison a man named Haryotes, who was a citizen of Krokodilopolis, They were tried before the chief of police and acquitted on December 9. After their acquittal, Menches continued to fear slander and reprisal over the incident. In May 117 BCE, he sent a petition to Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III, asking them to instruct the strategos Apollonius to protect him from reprisal. He may have wanted to clear his name before an investigation of village scribes that was scheduled to take place that summer.
In 113 or 112 BCE, Menches was granted 20 arouras of cleruchic land. This was unusual in the Ptolemaic period, as cleruchic land grants were generally given only to members of the Ptolemaic army or police forces instead of civilian officials. Beginning in 111 BCE, Menches shared the position of scribe with a man named Petesouchos, who might have been his brother or nephew. Petesouchos succeeded Menches as scribe in 110 BCE.
The archives of Menches contain roughly 200 documents, most of which were produced during the tenure of Menches and are related to his scribal duties. It also includes some documents from Menches' predecessor, and his successor Petesouchos. The majority of documents from the Menches archive were produced between 119 and 110 BCE, with a smaller number dating from before or after this period. These papyri were discarded by the scribe's office and then reused as writing material by other people between 105 and 99 BCE. The scrap papyri were reused as cartonnage for mummies after 91 BCE.
The papyri were sent to the temple of the crocodile god Soknebtunis in the city of Tebtunis, where they were used to wrap mummified crocodiles. While crocodiles were hunted and held negative cultural associations in many parts of Egypt, they were worshipped as divine animals in some regions, where they were associated with the Egyptian deity Sobek. Cults centered around the worship of crocodiles were established in cities like Faiyum, Kom Ombo and Thebes. Some temples raised crocodiles and considered them to be living manifestations of a god. A small basin at the temple in Tebtunis is believed to have been used as a crocodile habitat.
After their death, the crocodiles at the temple of Tebtunis were mummified by the priests and buried in a necropolis southwest of Tebtunis. Most of the crocodiles were stuffed with sticks and reeds before being wrapped in linen, while a small number were wrapped in papyrus. At least 10,000 mummified crocodile specimens have been found at the cemetery, including complete and partial animals.
The discarded documents were discovered by English archaeologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt during their excavation of the Tebtunis archive between 1899 and 1890. Grenfell and Hunt had been hired by American archaeologist George Andrew Reisner to excavate the site on behalf of the University of California, Berkeley. Their excavation began at Umm el-Breigat, the location of the ancient city of Tebtunis. Grenfell and Hunt initially considered the temple's necropolis of mummified crocodiles to be unimportant. On January 16, 1900, one of the workmen on the site became at frustrating at only finding mummified crocodiles instead of human sarcophagi. He broke one of the crocodiles open by kicking it and discovered that it had been wrapped in reused papyri. Archaeologists did not know that the ancient Egyptians had occasionally wrapped mummies in papyrus before this accidental discovery.
Grenfell and Hunt found 31 crocodiles which had been wrapped in papyri, and Italian archaeologist Achille Vogliano found 5 more during a separate expedition in 1934. At least 21 crocodiles contained papyri from the Menches archive. They were found alongside a smaller number of unrelated papyri from the 2nd and 1st century BCE.
Grenfell and Hunt presented the results of their excavations to Reisner in mid-1900, and shipped the majority of the artifacts that they found to the University of California. The papyri were shipped to Oxford, England where Grenfell and Hunt could translate and publish them. The first volume of the Tebtunis Papyri, containing many documents from the Menches archive, was published in 1902. The second volume, published in 1907, contained documents from the priests of Soknebtunis, and mostly dated to the Roman period. The remaining papyri were not published until nearly 30 years later, owing to Grenfell's chronic illness.
Grenfell experienced a mental breakdown in 1907, and was unable to assist Hunt, who continued editing the volumes of papyri by himself. Grenfell recovered enough to work in 1914 and resumed editing the papyri. Grenfell's mental health issues resulted in him being hospitalized at St. Andrew's sanatorium in 1920 and then at Murray Royal Hospital in Perth, Scotland. He died in 1926. The third volume of the papyri was published two parts; the first part was published in 1933 and the second in 1938. The second part had to be finished by J. G. Smyly and Campbell Cowan Edgar, as Hunt had died in 1934. The papyri were moved from London to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley in 1938.
These papyri are an important source of information on daily life in villages during the late Ptolemaic period. They also contain general information about government, land ownership, agriculture, and populations in Egypt in the late 2nd Century BCE.