Thousands of documentary and literary texts written on papyri and potsherds, in Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Persian, have transformed our knowledge of many aspects of life in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Here experts provide a comprehensive guide to understanding this ancient documentary evidence.

This is volume 4 of Brill's New Pauly, Classical Tradition, which consists of five volumes uniquely concerned with the long and influential aftermath of antiquity and the process of continuous reinterpretation and revaluation of the ancient heritage, including the history of classical scholarship.

The characterization of Egyptian monasticism as a desert movement arises primarily from the success of certain fourth century literary texts circulated outside of Egypt. Yet recent historical research has demonstrated a whole range of choices for ascetic dwelling in late antique Egypt, where men and women might practice their discipline in households in cities and towns, in abandoned villages, in the outer or inner desert. Archaeological (including papyrological, epigraphical and representational) sources evidence another widely practiced option, which has been surprisingly under-recognized by historians of early Christianity: the reuse of monumental funerary architecture for habitation. In this context, it is crucial to recognize that both Greek oros and Coptic toou can mean not only “mountain” and “desert,” but also “cemetery” and “monastery.” Thus, textual sources can easily mislead historians unaware of the archaeological context of a given “desert” monastery. Using a combination of archaeological sources together with literary texts transmitted through the manuscript tradition, I explore the practical and ideological motivations for monastic occupation of monumental funerary architecture in one geographically circumscribed region--Western Thebes. As the necropolis of ancient Egypt's great southern capital, Western Thebes provides an unparalleled corpus of archaeological material evidencing the establishment of churches, saints' shrines, monasteries and hermitages in adapted pharaonic tombs and mortuary temples. The contents of excavated Greek and Coptic documentary (e.g., legal texts, letters, magical/medical texts) and literary papyri (e.g., saints' Lives) allow multiple points of access to both the physical description and conceptual construction of the ancient Necropolis in Late Antiquity. Texts transmitted through the manuscript tradition record the Lives of saints said to have occupied the region and vividly depict ancient tombs (and their mummified inhabitants). My analysis demonstrates that perceptions might not always be fixed. In texts, the representation of the ancient Necropolis and its ascetic occupants might differ depending on subject, audience, occasion and circumstance. Nevertheless, even in the most “everyday” texts, authors recognized the Necropolis as a place apart from the mundane world; and, I argue, reusing the funerary monuments of the past conferred authority and status upon its Christian residents.

The present book deals with the testamentary practice as seen through papyri, tablets, doctrinal and literary sources, manuscript tradition, etc. mostly in the period after the constitutio Antoniniana. The aim of Wills in the Roman empire: a documentary approach is to reconstruct how people applied law and how testamentary practice looked like in everyday life: how wills were made and opened, what was the meaning of particular dispositions. These questions constitute a part of a wider discussion concerning the level of knowledge and application of Roman law in the provinces after the edict of Caracalla. The book is supplemented with four Appendices, where all wills from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods are collected for the first time in scholarly literature.

This is both a historical detective work -- piecing together an innovative research project of the 1620s -- and a provocative argument, based on the reconstruction of Peiresc's project. Our understanding of the history of historical scholarship needs to be turned upside down. In the "how" and "why" of Peiresc's scholarly practice and, in the chain of those who understood and remembered him, we learn that far from disappearing, antiquarianism (AN) persisted as a major source of historical innovation and renovation, and that this continues up through the present time. Contents: Peiresc and AN; AN and an Archival "Science"; Researching the History of Provence; Peiresc's Medieval Mediterranean in the History of Historiography. Illus.

Indexes the Times, Sunday times and magazine, Times literary supplement, Times educational supplement, Times educational supplement Scotland, and the Times higher education supplement.