Jane Rowlandson – författare

Oxyrhynchus in Egypt is the best documented city of the Roman Empire. This book uses the thousands of papyrus documents found there to examine how its urban landowning class derived its wealth from the rural hinterland. After an introductory chapter discussing the topography and agricultural conditions of the region, the book analyses the conditions of tenure under which land was held; the social composition of landholders (who included both men and women) and the nature of their holdings; the transmission of ownership by inheritance and sale; and finally the role of short-term leasing among methods of land management. The system of land tenure, rules of inheritance, and law of sale and lease, together with social convention formed a complex web articulating the social relationships between landowners and tenants. The papyri from Oxyrhynchus, by illustrating in detail how individuals negotiated their way throug this web, provide unparalleled insight into the character of landownership in a Roman province.

The period of Egyptian history from its rule by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty to its incorporation into the Roman and Byzantine empires has left a wealth of evidence for the lives of ordinary men and women. Texts (often personal letters) written on papyrus and other materials, objects of everyday use and funerary portraits have survived from the Graeco-Roman period of Egyptian history. But much of this unparalleled resource has been available only to specialists because of the difficulty of reading and interpreting it. Now eleven leading scholars in this field have collaborated to make available to students and other non-specialists a selection of over three hundred texts translated from Greek and Egyptian, as well as more than fifty illustrations, documenting the lives of women within this society, from queens to priestesses, property-owners to slave-girls, from birth through motherhood to death. Each item is accompanied by full explanatory notes and bibliographical references.