A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt

Katelijn Vandorpe, Katelijn Vandorpe

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781118428405
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

An authoritative and multidisciplinary Companion to Egypt during the Greco?Roman and Late Antique period

With contributions from noted authorities in the field, A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt offers a comprehensive resource that covers almost 1000 years of Egyptian history, starting with the liberation of Egypt from Persian rule by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and ending in AD 642, when Arab rule started in the Nile country.

The Companion takes a largely sociological perspective and includes a section on life portraits at the end of each part. The theme of identity in a multicultural environment and a chapter on the quality of life of Egypt's inhabitants clearly illustrate this objective. The authors put the emphasis on the changes that occurred in the Greco-Roman and Late Antique periods, as illustrated by such topics as: Traditional religious life challenged; Governing a country with a past: between tradition and innovation; and Creative minds in theory and praxis. This important resource:

• Discusses how Egypt became part of a globalizing world in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times
• Explores notable innovations by the Ptolemies and Romans
• Puts the focus on the longue durée development
• Offers a thematic and multidisciplinary approach to the subject, bringing together scholars of different disciplines
• Contains life portraits in which various aspects and themes of people's daily life in Egypt are discussed

Written for academics and students of the Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt period, this Companion offers a guide that is useful for students in the areas of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and New Testament studies.

PART I
GRECO‐ROMAN EGYPT EXPLORED

CHAPTER ONE
Unique Sources in an Unusual Setting

Arthur Verhoogt

1.1 A Wealth of Sources

Whoever studies ancient Egypt has to deal with an abundance of available sources, making this region unique among those of the ancient world (Wendrich 2010). In addition to the non‐organic archeological and epigraphical remains that are available for other regions and periods, the desert climate of Egypt also provides a wealth of organic sources such as wood, linen, papyrus, and mudbrick. Taken together, the sources allow for a much more detailed historical analysis for Egypt, although sometimes the abundance causes extra interpretational problems, because the models needed to analyze and explain what is happening are much more complex than those for regions with fewer sources. There is always the chance of an odd text or object not fitting the model.

In order to gauge what exactly an Egyptian site can yield, it is perhaps worthwhile to browse through a preliminary report from a recent excavation. This is not to claim that there is a “typical” archeological yield for sites, including trash dumps, in Egypt, but just to illustrate the abundance of material that is coming from even short and limited excavations. The example is the short 2009 season at the Red Sea harbor site of Berenike (Sidebotham and Zych 2011). Apart from the more typical descriptions of magnetic surveys and trenches excavated, finds are presented in a number of categories: archeobotanical and archeozoological remains, ostraca (and other writing materials, such as papyrus), coins, glass, an intaglio, and pottery. Whatever does not fit in one of these specific categories is presented in a chapter on “Finds.” The 134 individual finds listed here include terracotta oil lamps, a mixture of various items made of wood and basketry, textiles, and a mix of so‐called “personal accessories,” such as beads. All this is the result of “17 days of actual digging” (Sidebotham and Zych 2011, p. 9), showing what Egyptian archeologists have to deal with in number and variety, especially when excavating a trash dump.

The abundance of Egyptian sources is even more telling for the focus of the current volume, the Greco‐Roman and Byzantine Period, from the late fourth century BC to AD 642, when Egypt became part of the Caliphate. Most remarkable about the sources available for this period are the written texts. Not only is there simply a greater variety of written sources (inscriptions, papyri, ostraca, wooden tablets, wax tablets, etc.), there is also a much greater linguistic diversity, with documents surviving not only in various stages of ancient Egyptian (Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic), but also in Greek, Latin, and various other languages, such as Aramaic and Arabic. Many of these languages were in use at the same time, and often by the same people, which has made available Egyptian sources for more theoretical debates about bilingualism and code‐switching (e.g. Adams 2003; Vierros 2012). On a more practical level, it is only because three languages occurred on the same writing surface of the Rosetta Stone that Thomas Young and Jean‐François Champollion were originally able to decode Hieroglyphs (Robinson 2012).

The contents of the written record of ancient Egypt are very varied, especially in this late period. The main distinction is that between literary and documentary texts, with an in‐between category that is commonly called “subliterary,” or “para‐literary.” The latter category contains magical texts, medical prescriptions, prayers, and so on. Literary texts comprise the books of the ancient world, not only the works of Greek (and Latin) literature and Christian biblical texts, but also representative samples of Egyptian literary texts (see Chapter 31). The category of documentary texts is the largest, showing that ancient Egypt, although perhaps not a literate society per se, did function as a semi‐literate one, with many aspects of life being conducted in writing (legal claims, registration of land ownership, census, etc.) (Eyre 2013).

Documentary texts come in all shapes and genres. There are very long texts on papyrus, such as second‐century BC papyri listing court proceedings (P.Tor.Choach. 12 in Greek: 192 cm long, 10 columns; P.BM Siut in Demotic: 290 cm long, 10 columns) and a contemporaneous agricultural account (P.Tebt. IV 1103: c. 286 cm long, 23 columns). And there are short texts on papyrus, ostraca, and other writing materials, such as a late fourth‐century BC order not to enter (SB XIV 11942: three lines of Greek writing on papyrus), an early third‐century BC receipt for burial tax (P.OI Muhs 8: four Demotic lines of writing on potsherd), and a second‐century AD order to arrest (SB XXIV 16005: five lines of Greek writing on papyrus). The contents of the documentary papyri are very broad, ranging from administrative documents (correspondence, accounts, etc.) to private letters and various lists.

In all their variety and broadness, however, it is important to note that texts do not come from all parts of Egypt or from all chronological periods in equal number (Habermann 1998). As most of the writing surfaces are organic, they depend for their survival on dry, desert‐like circumstances, preferably without too much subsequent habitation. Most written sources, then, survive from the desert edge, with virtually no papyri coming from the humid Delta or continuously inhabited and used parts of the country such as the center of the Fayum. This geographical chance of survival has consequences for what we can expect from our written source material. For example, the lack of papyri from the Nile Delta means that almost none survive from the administrative center of Egypt, the capital city of Alexandria. And settlements at the desert edge, as a rule, represent rural rather than urban Egypt (without denying the existence of close connections between villages and the urban centers).

Another thing to realize is that in most cases, the caches of written texts that do survive are not the untouched records of the ancient world, but are the result of selection and choice. Many of the written sources, as was already clear from our summary of the Berenike excavation report, come from trash dumps or have been reused as second‐hand paper in mummy cases or mummified crocodiles. This means that somebody in Antiquity made a decision to discard these texts for whatever reason. We thus find the texts that were no longer needed, rather than the active archive of a person or government official. Texts removed from an archive can then find another use, for example as scrap paper, fuel for burning, or material to construct mummy casings for humans or to strengthen crocodile bodies in the process of their mummification. In this process, as shown by various archeological finds, texts from one archive can be mixed up with texts from another. For example, the cache of papyri found in 1934 in the cellar of a house in Tebtynis consists of texts discarded from at least three separate private (or professional?) archives (Gallazzi 1990; Smolders 2004). The papyri recovered from crocodile mummies in 1899/1900 also contain administrative texts removed from various village offices (Verhoogt 1998). The modern scholar will find the texts in this secondary use context and will be required to actively reconstruct the original discarded groups.

Alternatively, discarded texts can be found thrown away on a local garbage dump. Such dumps may be inside an inhabited space (such as a courtyard or a stairwell that went out of use), close to an inhabited space, or farther removed at the edge of the settlement. The archeological record offers examples of all such possible dump sites in Egyptian towns and villages (Verhoogt 2012). However, it is important to realize that trash is not a static thing and that there may be movement between these sites, such as when one was cleaned out for development and the trash was removed to another dump. Alternatively, the trash may even have been returned to the original site for use in construction projects (Dicus 2014). Modern excavations give ample examples of texts in trash dumps with precise find circumstances (e.g. Berenike, Trimithis, Mons Claudianus), and also many texts found in earlier excavations come from trash dumps (e.g. Oxyrhynchos, Theadelpheia), although here the precise context is more difficult to ascertain (e.g. Rathbone 2009, p. 22 for papyri probably found in a dump in Theadelpheia in the early 1900s).

Admittedly, the difference between “dumping” and “storing” texts is difficult for the modern eye to distinguish, but the archeological record also offers possible examples of the actual storing of documents. There have been a number of finds of papyri that were wrapped carefully and stored in jars in cellars (Vandorpe 2009). There are also groups of texts that were stored in tombs and houses, only to be discovered by modern‐day archeologists or illegal diggers. It is then difficult to establish why the texts were still found where they were found. Is it simply that they were forgotten by their owners? Or did major events contribute to residents moving away without taking their documents? The latter situation seems to be the case for the many Pathyris archives found inside what may have been houses, left behind when the residents fled after a military revolt in 88 BC (Vandorpe and Waebens 2010a).

Another problem with written sources is that they represent not the population as a whole but, more frequently, the literate groups in society, which, in the ancient world, also tend to be the more wealthy and privileged groups. At the same time, the literate elites we see at work in Egypt's documentary record are more varied than the elites we see in the epigraphic record elsewhere in the ancient world, who as a rule represent the top layer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations and Tables
• Note on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chronological Outline
• Maps
• PART I: GRECO-ROMAN EGYPT EXPLORED
• PART II: EGYPT AS PART OF A GLOBALIZING WORLD
• PART III: GOVERNING A COUNTRY WITH A PAST
• PART IV: DEVELOPING THE ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF THE NILE COUNTRY
• PART V: IDENTITY IN A MULTICULTURAL ENVIRONMENT
• PART VI: TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS LIFE CHALLENGED
• PART VII: CREATIVE MINDS IN THEORY AND PRAXIS
• PART VIII: EPILOGUE
• Digital Resources and Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement