A recently analyzed 1,900-year-old papyrus from the Roman Empire has shed new light on ancient tax systems—and tax evasion. The document, originally discovered in the Judean desert in the 1950s and now fully deciphered, outlines an elaborate tax evasion plot involving the sale and manumission of enslaved persons.
“It was an incredibly lucky rediscovery that brought this publication to light eventually,” said Anna Dolganov, a Roman historian and papyrologist at the Austrian Archaeological Institute, in an interview with CBC’s As It Happens. “It’s one of those documents that very few scholars get to work on in the whole of their career.”
The scroll describes a case involving two men, Gadalias and Saulos—names that suggest Jewish heritage—who exploited the lack of communication between two Roman provincial administrations to hide the sale of slaves and dodge a slew of taxes. At least five types of taxes applied to slavery at the time, including a four percent tax on sales and five percent on manumission.
“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,” Dolganov explained.
Intriguingly, one of the accused was the son of a notary, granting him access to tools needed to forge legal documents. Dolganov suggests that beyond financial gain, motives could include religious obligations or personal relationships with the slaves.
Roman punishments for tax evasion were severe, ranging from hard labor to death. “The Romans did not joke about tax evasions,” said Dolganov. “In the worst case, one could be made an example of and executed in an imaginative way—like being thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheatre.”
Ancient tax woes, it seems, are not so distant from today’s reality.
