At Home in Roman Egypt
A Social Archaeology

This book draws together a wide range of evidence across disciplines to show how the ordinary people of Roman Egypt experienced and enacted change.

Anna Lucille Boozer (Author)

9781108830928, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 September 2021

350 pages
26 x 18.3 x 2.2 cm, 0.94 kg

'… a brief insight into life as was most likely experienced by a large majority of the Romano-Egyptian population … the book is beautifully written and easily accessible to everyone.' Micaela Langellotti, Minerva

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.

Subject Areas: Egyptian archaeology / Egyptology [HDDG], Archaeology [HD], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]