BGU VI 1211: A prostagma for the private priests of Dionysus 

The papyrus BGU VI 1211 has posed various questions to scholars for over a century. Among these, the main one concerns the identification of the so-called telountes, who are requested to go to Alexandria for a census, declaring to a central office, the katalogeion, their sacred things, transmitted by three generations, and delivering the sacred text, sealed and signed. They were probably private cult practitioners, maybe linked to associations. The edict was issued so that the royal authority could oversee the characteristics and diversity of Dionysian unofficial cults in the Egyptian countryside. 

Keywords: Ptolemaic Egypt, Dionysus, Prostagma, Private cults, Sacred texts.