At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology
Cambridge University Press, 9/30/2021
EAN 9781108830928, ISBN10: 1108830927
Hardcover, 350 pages, 25.4 x 17.8 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
What was life like for ordinary people who lived in Roman Egypt? In this volume, Anna Lucille Boozer reconstructs and examines the everyday lives of non-elite individuals. It is the first book to bring a 'life course' approach to the study of Roman Egypt and Egyptology more generally. Based on evidence drawn from objects, portraits, and letters, she focuses on the quotidian details that were most meaningful to those who lived during the centuries of Roman occupation. Boozer explores these individuals through each phase of the life cycle – from conception, childbirth, childhood, and youth, to adulthood and old age – and focuses on essential themes such as religion, health, disability, death, and the afterlife. Illuminating the lives of people forgotten by most historians, her richly illustrated volume also shows how ordinary people experienced and enacted social and cultural change.
1. Homelife
2. Settings and communities
3. Conception, birth, and childhood
4. Adulthood
5. Making the home
6. Caring for the body and constructing difference
7. Religion, ritual, and magic
8. Health, disability, and old age
9. Death and the afterlife
10. Homelife in Roman Egypt and beyond.