Family Affairs: Guilds and the Family
in the Economy and Society of Roman Egypt

Philip F. Venticinque (University of Chicago)

This paper will examine the relationship between guilds, legal authorities and the family within the society of Roman Egypt based on papyrological evidence dating to the first through fourth centuries CE, with special attention to a set of guild documents from first century Tebtunis (P. Mich. V 243-248). Much of the scholarly discussion of guilds in antiquity has focused on areas of the Roman Empire outside of Egypt despite the large amount of documentary evidence available from this region which can be brought to bear upon important questions of guild operations and activities in the social, religious and economic spheres. More recently, two scholars have made the involvement of guilds and voluntary associations in local civic life in Roman Asia Minor the subject of their studies. Both authors, however, P. Harland in his Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations (2003) and O. van Nijf in his The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East (1997) have based their investigations on the epigraphic and literary evidence available, which only provides a portion of the story, and often a very different one than that supplied by the guild nomoi, letters, contracts and price declarations recorded on papyri which illustrate a great deal about the day to day activities and operations of these professional and religious organizations.

In general, guilds and voluntary associations have been seen as institutions that developed as a result of political and social upheaval in the wake of Alexander’s conquests to compensate for perceived deficiencies in the social, economic and, especially, the religious lives of individuals. The outwardly social and religious aspects of guild life, including communal banquets and feasts as well as provisions for funerals described in any number of guild nomoi, the regulations which governed the operations of a particular group, have been seen as manifestations of these deficiencies in family structures by some scholars and symptoms of general decline which fostered the development of these “mutual aid societies” (Kloppenborg, in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, eds. Kloppenborg and Wilson, 1996; Garnsey and Saller, The Roman Empire, 1987).

There remain, however, few studies focused on the interplay between the operations of guilds and associations and their relationship between the family and society at large, and the economic or legal implications involvement in guilds had for its members, which will provide the focus of this paper. Such a re-examination of guilds and voluntary associations in light of the papyrological evidence will furnish an entry into the larger discussion of guilds and their position in society in an effort to develop new perspectives on the roles played by these organizations in daily life at home, in the workplace, and in the council chamber. Besides provisions for shared banquets and promises to provide funerals for members, I intend to examine the implications of certain precepts outlined in guild regulations aimed at penalties for giving false witness against a fellow member or the corruption of another’s household. Rather than approaching guilds as a supplement to deficiencies in family or polis structures, precepts such as these contained in the guild nomoi point to the complementary relationship between the family, guilds and society at large and the role guilds played in solidifying and maintaining family structures and reinforcing social bonds between members that, in trade associations, certainly had an economic benefit for the guild as a whole.