Reconstructing Pathyris' Archives

The small town of Pathyris, modern Gebelein, is located south of Thebes. After a huge revolt suppressed in 186 B.C., a Ptolemaic military camp was built in this town, where local people could serve as soldiers-serving-for-pay. The Government took several initiatives to Hellenize the town, resulting in a bilingual society. The town produced hundreds of papyri and ostraka, discovered during legal excavations and illegal diggings at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century. Katelijn Vandorpe and Sofie Waebens describe the history of the town and reconstruct the bilingual archives by using, among other things, prosopographical data and the method of museum archaeology.