584 DOMINIK OPATRNY ´ 1. The character of the evidence Before we focus on these characteristics, I should describe my method and add some preliminary notes. In the first stage of my research, I researched texts containing the word tyflov (“ blind ”). There are 28 of ¥ them in the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP) 5 with 36 occurrences of the word. With regard to this corpus, 10 texts (13 occur- rences) mention a “blind street” (tyflh rymh, tyflon rym¥on, tyflon ù Ω¥ ùΩı ù ryme¥on and tyflov porov) 6 and one is too fragmentary. Leaving them Ω ı ù ¥ aside, 17 texts with 22 occurrences remain. This material dates from the first century BC to the seventh/eighth century AD. Unlike the authors of Papyrologische Kommentare zum Neuen Testament 7 I have decided not to limit the selection to the be- ginning of the fourth century from the outset, but will instead take ac- count of the chronology in each case separately. The texts were found in the following localities in Egypt: Heracleo- polis, Hermopolis, Eileithyiaspolis, Karanis, Aphrodito, Philadelphia, Ox- yrhynchus, Alexandria and Arsinoites. Fourteen texts were written on papyrus, two on ostraca and one on parchment. Unfortunately, the evidence is too fragmentary to give us a general impression or even catch the local and spatial differences. All we can expect is a set of distinct special cases, which show the possible scena- rios 8. Last but not least, there is also one “philological” question: Does the word tyflov always designate a totally blind person, or could he or she ¥ be just partially blind (i.e. partially sighted) 9 ? In this respect there is an ostraca and parchment) as is usual; cf. P.W. PESTAMEN, The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden 1994) 1. The DDbDP contains all papyri published up to 1996. For material publi- 5 shed later I checked Dieter Hagedorn, “Wörterlisten aus den Registern von Pu- blikationen griechischer und lateinischer dokumentarischer Papyri und Ostraka: 13. Fassung vom 7. Februar 2010”, http://www.zaw.uni-heidelberg.de/hps/pap/ WL/WL.pdf (cited 17th March 2010). CPR 17B.18, P.Lond. III 870 bis, P. Muench. I 11, P. Muench. I 12, P.Oxy. 6 I 99, P.Oxy. XXXIV 2722, SB I 1974 bis, SB X 10571 and SB XXIV 16000 bis. Cf. ARZT-GRABNER, Philemon, 47. 7 Eric G. TURNER, Greek papyri. An Introduction (Princeton 1968) 147- 8 148, explains the importance of such incidental and causal information in re- gard to larger questions on the example of Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum. T.M. HICKEY, “Writing histories from the papyri”, The Oxford handbook of pa- pyrology (ed. R.S. BAGNALL) (Oxford 2009): 507-508, connects papyrology with microhistory. In this respect, the Greek and Roman jurists knew the term nyktalwc / ¥ 9