590 DOMINIK OPATRNY ´ ask : “What else could a blind man do in the ancient world than beg ? ” 20. This question of course presupposes a negative answer — he couldn’t do anything, just beg. Our aim is to compare these pre- suppositions with the evidence found in documentary papyri. We will start with the fact that some of the Greek documentary papyri mentioning blind persons indicate their bad financial sit- uation. Two tax lists are preserved in which the word tyflov is ¥ noted next to one of the enlisted names instead of a sum of money. These texts come from Hermopole from the seventh century (CPR IX 50 and 51). In the first case, two persons (whose names were not preserved) don’t pay taxes (one of them owning three fields measuring 6, 4 and 16 arourai, which is about 1.6 ha, 1.1 ha and 4.4 ha), in the second case this tax-exempt man is called Abr(...) Naarau. However, there is also another very interesting fact con- cerning CPR IX 50: in this text the poor and widows (ptwxoı, ¥ Xeırev) are also tax exempt. Investigating these two groups we ˜ find evidence for their tax exemption again right in Hermopole in the seventh century 21. It was either that this custom was temporally and locally limited, or the recordings became more accurate and those who were freed from paying taxes also started to occur in the lists. With regard to the widows, tax exemption wasn’t a generally applied rule, as can be seen from a complaint of a widow (184 AD, Tebtynis) claiming she was charged by tax collectors for the taxes of a man she did not even know (SB XIV 11904). Two other simi- lar cases are documented in the fourth century AD 22. Moreover, one damaged text was found in Hermopole from the seventh or eighth century, which contained a record of a blind man paying tax, although his name and the sum are no longer readable (SB XX 14246). So he must have some possessions from which he paid the MORRIS, The Gospel according to John, 428; K. WENGST, Das Johanne- 20 sevangelium. 1. Teilband (Stuttgart 2000) 358-359; cf. also A.J. KÖSTENBER- GER, John (Grand Rapids, MI 2004) 284. THYEN, Das Johannesevangelium, 462 even states: “so daß zwar nicht alle Bettler Blinde, alle Blinden aber wohl Bettler gewesen sein dürften”. Poor are tax exempted in CPR IX 44, 45, 46, 50, widows in CPR IX 50. 21 CPR VII 15 (Hermoupolis Magna, cca 330 AD) — complain of a widow 22 concerning injury made by tax collectors; BGU II 412 (unknown provenance, 4th century AD) — admonition of a tax collector who taxed a widow three ti- mes.