Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt

by Roger S. Bagnall

"More than three hundred letters written in Greek and Egyptian by women in Egypt in the millennium from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest survive on papyrus and pottery. These letters were written by women from various walks of life and shed light on critical social aspects of life in Egypt after the pharaohs. Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore collect the best preserved of these letters in translation and set them in their paleographic, linguistic, social, and economic contexts. As a result, Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 B.C.-A.D. 800, provides a sense that these women's habits, interests, and means of expression were a product more of their social and economic standing than of specifically gender-related concerns or behavior."--Jacket.