Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800

More than three hundred letters written in Greek and Egyptian by women in Egypt in the millennium from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest survive on papyrus and pottery. Written by women from various walks of life, they shed light on critical social aspects of life in Egypt after the pharaohs. Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore collect the best preserved letters in translation and set them in their paleographic, linguistic, social, and economic contexts. The authors' analysis suggests that women's habits, interests, and means of expression were a product more of their social and economic standing than of specifically gender-related concerns or behavior. They present theoretical discussions about the handwriting and language of the letters, the education and culture of the writers' everyday concerns and occupations. Numerous illustrations display the varieties of handwriting.

History

Bagnall, Roger

Cribiore, Raffaella

Ancient Civilizations

University of Michigan Press

When historians study the women of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquity, they are generally dependent on ancient literature written by men. But women themselves did write and dictate. And only in their own private letters can we discover unmediated expression of their authentic experiences. More than three hundred letters written in Greek and Egyptian by women in Egypt in the millennium from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest survive on papyrus and pottery. These letters were written by women from various walks of life and shed light on critical social aspects of life in Egypt after the pharaohs. Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore collect the best preserved of these letters in translation and set them in their paleographic, linguistic, social, and economic contexts. As a result, Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800, provides a sense that these women's habits, interests, and means of expression were a product more of their social and economic standing than of specifically gender-related concerns or behavior. Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800, takes the reader through theoretical discussions about the handwriting and language of the letters, the education and culture of the writers, and the writers' everyday concerns and occupations, as well as comparing these letters to similar letters from later historical periods. For each letter, discussion focuses on handwriting, language, and content; in addition, numerous illustrations help the reader to see the variety of handwritings. Most of this material has never been available in English translation before, and the letters have never previously been considered as a single body of material.

Literature & Fiction

The thousand years of Egyptian history from the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. to the Arab conquest in A.D. 641 are rich in archaeological evidence and well documented by 50,000 papyri in Greek, Egyptian, Latin, and other languages. However, travelers and others interested in the remains of this period are ill-served by most guides to Egypt, which concentrate on the pharaonic buildings. The dozen leading experts who have contributed to this volume redress the imbalance with clear and concise presentations of the history and documentary evidence from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique periods, enabling the reader to appreciate the fascinating cities, temples, churches, and tombs from these later periods. With specially commissioned plans of sites and buildings and room-by-room tours of museums, this book is both a tourist's companion to the principal sites and an armchair guide to the splendors of a little-known and culturally diverse civilization.

Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians: An Archaeological and Historical Guide

Rathbone, Dominic W

J.paul Getty Museum

This volume publishes the most complete documentary codex from 6th-century Egypt. Known to the scholarly world since 1905 and frequently cited since then, it now appears for the first time in full edition. The codex details money taxes paid by landowners at the village of Temseu Skordon and the hamlet Topos Demeou in the Hermopolite Nome. The language is Greek but with extensive Coptic influence. The text is especially important for its bearing on nomenclature, language, taxation and gold-to-copper monetary conversions.

A Sixth-Century Tax Register from the Hermopolite Nome (Volume 51) (American Studies in Papyrology)

Keenan, James G.

MacCoull, Leslie

American Society of Papyrologists

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