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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.
About the author
Anna Lucille Boozer is Professor of Roman Mediterranean Archaeology and Ancient History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research focuses on Roman Egypt, Meroitic Sudan, empires, and everyday life. She directs the CUNY excavations at Amheida (Egypt) and MAP: The Meroë Archival Project (Sudan). She has written widely on the social archaeology and history of Egypt and Sudan. Among her books are A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis: Amheida House B2 (2015) and Archaeologies of Empire: Local Participants and Imperial Trajectories (2020).
