1,900-year-old Roman papyrus details elaborate tax evasion scheme, research suggests | CBC Radio (2025)

Samritha Arunasalam · CBC Radio

· Posted: Apr 16, 2025 2:38 PM EDT | Last Updated: April 16

If you thought you would find few parallels between today's world and the world of 2,000 years ago, or you feel like you're the only one dealing with taxes on seemingly everything, think again.

According to a recent analysis of a1,900-year-old papyrus from ancient Rome, taxes and taxevasion have existed for millenia.

"It was an incredibly lucky rediscovery that brought this publication to light eventually," AnnaDolganov, a historian and papyrologist of the Roman Empire with the Austrian Archaeological Institute, toldAs It Happenshost Nil Köksal.

"It's extremely historically substantial. It's one of those documents that very few scholars get to work on in the whole of their career."

The papyrus, found in the Judean desert in the 1950s, includesa tale of two men wholived in aborder region between two Roman provinces. The scroll, written by a prosecutor in preparation fora tax evasion trial,accuses the menof an elaborate schemeinvolving the bogus saleand then manumission of enslaved persons.

There were at least five types of taxes associated with the trade, sale, ownership and manumission of slaves in the Roman empire. The earliest evidence shows fourper centtax was charged on the sale of slaves and fiveper centtax on manumissions, according to the research.

"What they seem to have done is weaponize the fact that the administrative systems of the two Roman provinces did not routinely communicate with each other," she said.

Dolganov says it appears the sales of slaves on one side of the border were not verified by the other provincial administration.

"And this appears to have been instrumentalized by them to make the slaves effectively disappear on paper from the view of the officials."

Two of the men,GadaliasandSaulos, have biblical names which indicate very strongly that they are Jewish, Dolganov said.

"The one who was instrumental in the forgeryhappened to be the son of a notary. So he was involved in his father's notarial business and therefore had access to the instruments that one needs to create forged legal documents," shesaid.

Possible motives

The details of the case are seen through the lens of the prosecution, which argues the menare criminals whoshould be condemned.

It is possible, however, to eke out a bit of the background story, Dolganov said.

One puzzling element to the whole story, Dolganov said, was that at some point after the sale of the slaves took place, one of themwas freed by the original owner who was no longer the owner on paper.

"If the point is to evade taxes, why was the risk of manumitting the slave taken?Because when a slave is manumitted, their manumission has to be registered," she explained.

She believes that this may have been when officials became suspicious that something was going on.

Dolganov has several theories as to the men's motives beyond mercantile tax evasion.

The slaves automatically became Jewishif they had Jewish masters, and Jewish lawhasrequirements surrounding the treatment ofslaves. She says it's possible that the men were trying to evade their own law.

Another possibility, according to Dolganov, could be that the accused men had a humanrelationship to these slaves, and in the Roman world it was customary to reward faithful household slaves with manumission.

Capitalpunishment

Rules for tax evasion were not specific to Jewish subjects. They were universaland extremely harsh.

"The Romans did not joke about tax evasions. They saw this, essentially, as a crime against the state," Dolganov said.

The punishment could include significant fines,temporary or permanent exile,or hard labour in mines or stone quarries — withthe latter essentially a death sentence, she explained.

"In the worst case, one could be made an example of and executed in an imaginative way. For example, being thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheatre," Dolganov said.

Thetext mirrors what Roman legal literature says about the way that these types of cases ought to be handled, Dolganov said.

"It shows that these local lawyers in these borderland provinces were extremely competent in both rhetoric and Roman law,and this is a huge discovery because it shows that Roman legal knowledge was actually very widespread throughout the empire."

'Sound piece of scholarship'

One history expertapplauded the research, saying it is an impressive piece of legal history from a lesser-known time period. The papyrus dates back to theeve of a poorly documented revolt by Jewish people against the Roman Empire in Judea — a period researchers have struggled to document.

"I think it's a really sound piece of scholarship … it's a really important piece of evidence from a time and place that we just don't know much about otherwise," said Seth Bernard, a professor of ancient history at the University of Toronto.

He says two aspects of the research stood out:the history of slavery in the Empire, and the political history of a time and place that historians have had trouble accessing.

He compared the findings to today's world,where taxes on many goods and services are commonplace.

"You have to pay a tax when you buy a slave, you have to pay a tax when you own a slave, you have to pay a tax when you manumit them andyou pay a tax when you export them," he said.

"It's likethis is just one activity, and it seems like they're paying taxes on everything … it's kind of nice to know that we're not the first people dealing with taxes on everything."