Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History

by Roger S. Bagnall

The ancient Mediterranean world brought to us by Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus is one of politics, war and the power elite of Greece and Rome. There was another ancient world, in which ordinary people made a living, sold land, ran their towns and sued one another. This is the world that the papyri bring to life; this book is about how they do so.Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History demonstrates how historians can put together information from scattered and often badly damaged documents to build up a picture of the society, economy and culture of the multicultural world of antiquity. Through discussion of contemporary historical work on the documents, Roger Bagnall scrutinises alternative ways of approaching these sources. He shows how the ancient historian can use the methodologies of anthropology, comparative history and statistics alongside more traditional tools to turn these texts into questions and answers.Students and teachers of ancient history will find Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History an indispensable guide to using these ancient texts in their own work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Ancient History, History

168 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 5, 1995

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Papyrology is, of course, one of the most arcane sub-disciplines of what most people consider an arcane subject areas (Classics). The specialized skills that one needs to do papyrology is daunting for anyone even contemplating using papyrus. What this slim book tries to do is both to de-mystify how papyrology is done as well as demonstrate how it might be used to enrich the study of ancient history. That is, of course, a laudable objective because the documents found in papyrus archives are uniquely different to texts preserved in other media. It is with papyrus fragments that we stand a decent chance to build up a statistical framework, albeit mostly of one province, but, nevertheless, a valuable contribution to our understanding to the running of the Roman Empire.

Bagnall's discussion of papyrus is a good one. It clearly explains the techniques and unique concerns of papyrologists as well as gives excellent examples of the scholarly use of the information gleaned from these sources. His discussion is a bit idiosyncratic because of his insistance that Egypt was not as much of a special case in the Roman Empire as usually argued. His discussion is persuasive, but it is always good to know when one's source is swimming upstream in the academic river.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read most of it but it just got to be something i had to force myself to do. Its less about general papyri study and maintenance and translation and more about using specific examples from Roman occupied Egypt papyri to create hyper specific databases. Its very very academic which if thats your thing this is for you! But i got 95% of the way through it and just couldn't pick it up anymore without trepidation :').

[Beth Bauman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the first part. Really interesting description of the history of writing on papyri.