Mud from Memphis: P.Berl.Bibl. 6 and Fertiliser Production in Roman Egypt Elena Chepel * Abstract: The article presents a new edition of P.Berl.Bibl. 6 (= SB I 423), which appears to be an acknowledgement of receipt of a leased ammokopregon ship. It is argued that the ship was used for collecting silt fertiliser in the marshy parts of the Nile near Memphis, and that the name of the ship, Myrismos, is a Greek epithet of the Memphite god of the water lily and of fragrance, Nefertem. Keywords: Memphis, fertiliser, silt, vineyards, the Nile, landscape change, ammokopregon, lease of a ship, Myrismos https://doi.org/10.1515/apf-2022-2007 The papyrus re-edited and discussed in this article has had bad luck with regards to its edition history. It was first published in 1865 by G. Parthey, among other documentary pieces coming from the catacombs near Saqqa- ra. 1 The editor attempted to decipher some words in each line, not always successfully, and interpreted the document as a receipt for purchased ob- jects in the form of a letter. In 1915 it was published again by F. Preisigke, together with the re-editions of several fragments of the same group of documents (SB I 421–425). He received this second edition per litteras Preliminary note: This article was written in the framework of the project ‘Roman Memphis. Nome capital and administrative centre between pharaonic and hellenistic tradi- tions and imperial innovations’ (FWF-Projekt M2954). I would like to thank Alexandre Belov, Sergej Ivanov, Ian Rutherford, and Serena Causo for their help and useful comments. I thank the Department of Manuscripts of the Berlin State Library for the high-resolution photo of the papyrus. * Contact: Elena Chepel, Institute of Ancient History, Papyrology and Epigraphy, Univer- sity of Vienna, Austria <elena.chepel@univie.ac.at> 1 ‘Frammenti di papiri greci asservati nella Reale Biblioteca di Berlino’, Memorie del- l’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 2 (1865), 438–462. On the archive, see E. Che- pel, ‘P.Tbilisi inv. 344v: Extract from Memphite Land Register’, Tyche 33 (2018), 44f. Open Access. © 2022 The Author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.