A detailed archaeological study of life in Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period by a leading scholar Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert is a two-volume set collecting Helene Cuvigny's most important articles on Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period. The fort excavations that she has directed have uncovered a wealth of material, including tens of thousands of texts written on pottery fragments (ostraca). Some of these are administrative texts, but many more are correspondence, both official and private, written by and to the people (mostly but not all men) who lived and worked in these remote and harsh environments, supported by an elaborate network of defense, administration and supply that tied the entire region together. The contents of Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert have all been published earlier in peer-reviewed venues, but almost entirely in French. All of the contributions have been translated by the editor and brought up to date with respect to bibliography and in some cases significantly rewritten by the author, in order to take account of the enormous amount of new material discovered in the intervening time and subsequent publications. A full index makes this body of work far more accessible than it was before. This book brings together thirty years of detailed study of this material, bringing to life the geography, administration, military, quarry operations, life in the forts, and the religion and expressive language of the population who lived in them.
Helene Cuvigny (Author) Helene Cuvigny is Research Director at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and a papyrologist specializing in the eastern Egyptian desert during the Roman period. Over more than thirty years, beginning with the excavations at the quarry site of Mons Claudianus, Helene Cuvigny has played a central role in the exploration of Egypt's Eastern Desert. She has been deeply engaged with the systematic excavation and publication of the texts and other finds from a multitude of sites, including the quarries of the northern zone and the desert forts along the roads from Coptos, in the Nile valley, to the ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike (in the southern part of the desert), which facilitated the Roman Empire's trade with Arabia, India, and East Africa. Professor Cuvigny is the lead investigator for the research program "Ostraca of the eastern desert" at the Institute of Papyrology of the Paris-Sorbonne University and continues to excavate and publish about the exploitation of the Eastern desert under the Roman Empire. Roger S. Bagnall (Editor) Roger S. Bagnall is Leon Levy Director Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. He is author, co-author, and editor of many books including Egypt in Late Antiquity and Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East.
