Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt

This volume publishes fifty-four Ptolemaic papyri from the Fayum and Middle Egypt, with English translations and extensive commentaries. The texts, dating from c. 250–150 BC and written in either Greek or Egyptian demotic, record lists of adults, ordered by village, occupation and social group, and by household, together with the taxes paid on their persons, their livestock and trades. Some are more than twenty columns long. All texts have been studied on the originals by an international team of scholars. Many are published here for the first time; the others have been extensively revised with numerous new joins between fragments. Lists of tax-payers and their payments provide a wealth of information on population and family structure, administrative practice, social and professional groups and naming practices. Providing the documentary basis for the historical studies of Volume II, P. Count is essential for any serious evaluation of that account.

• The texts (in both Greek and Egyptian demotic), together with the historical studies, provide a broad picture of Hellenistic society
• These volumes illuminate many aspects of the relations (and differences) between immigrant Greeks and the existing majority Egyptian population
• The rich demographic material from third-century BC Egypt allows family reconstruction and the analysis of ethnic differences