Two records of an ancient port

An original fictional classroom packet imagines an ancient Mediterranean port. A merchant record lists twenty pottery containers delivered to one warehouse during a particular week. A commemorative inscription praises the ruler for making the entire region prosperous. A student uses the merchant record as proof that every household traded the same goods, while another treats the inscription as a complete statistical account. The packet supplies no household register, population count, prices or independent description of other ports. The class must identify what each invented source could establish and what comparison would require further evidence. These texts are teaching models, not translations of actual ancient documents, and their small numerical record cannot establish the history of a real polity.