Zenon Papyrus

The Zenon papyri, a cache of more than two thousand papyrus documents, were discovered in Egypt during the winter of 1914–1915. The documents contain records written by Zenon, an Egyptian official who worked as a clerk for the dioiketes (administrator) Apollonios. The papyri are in Greek and demotic (ancient Egyptian) and cover a span of about forty years (276–229 BCE). In this document, Zenon mentions a visit to the estates of “Tobias the Jew” in Transjordan, possibly the same “Toubias” who penned a letter in 257 BCE.