Linguistic varieties such as female speech, foreigner talk, and colloquial language have not gone unnoticed when it comes to Classical Greek, but little is known about later periods of the Greek language. In this collective volume leading experts in the field outline some of the most important varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, basing themselves on a broad range of literary and documentary sources, and advancing a number of innovative methodologies. Close attention is paid to the linguistic features that characterize these varieties, with in-depth discussions of lexical, morpho-syntactic, orthographic, and metrical variation, as well as the interrelationship between these different types of variation. The volume thus offers valuable insights into the nature of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, laying the foundation for future studies of linguistic variation in these later stages of the language, while at the same time providing a point of comparison for Classical Greek scholarship

Die beiden Orte Tebtynis und Soknopaiu Nesos sind aufgrund ihrer reichhaltigen griechischen und demotischen Papyrusfunde und der in jungster Zeit wiederaufgenommenen Grabungen dafur pradestiniert, als Ausgangspunkt fur interdisziplinare Forschungen zum Fajum im 1. und 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. zu dienen. Doch lange Zeit fand so gut wie kein Austausch zwischen Agyptologen, griechischen Papyrologen und Archaologen, die sich mit dem hellenistischen und romerzeitlichen Agypten beschaftigen, statt. Das interdiszi-plinare Symposion, das vom 11.-13. Dezember 2003 in Sommerhausen bei Wurzburg stattfand, fuhrte Wissenschaftler aus aller Welt zusammen, um aus deren aktuellen Forschungen ein umfassenderes Bild der wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und kulturgeschichtlichen Zusammenhange sowie Impulse fur eine kunftige engere Zusammenarbeit der Nachbardisziplinen zu gewinnen. Aus dem Inhalt (14 Beitrage): M. Capasso, Libri, Autori e Pubblico a Soknopaiu Nesos. Secondo Contributo alla Storia della Cultura letteraria del Fayyum in Epoca Greca e Romana I W. Clarysse, Tebtynis and Soknopaiu Nesos: The Papyrological Documentation through the Centuries P. Davoli, New Excavations at Soknopaiu Nesos: the 2003 Season A. Jordens, Griechische Papyri in Soknopaiu Nesos A.v. Lieven, Religiose Texte aus der Tempelbibliothek von Tebtynis - Gattungen und Funktionen.

This book presents the first detailed study of Tebtunis, a village in Egypt within the Roman Empire, in the first century AD. It is founded on the archive material of the local notarial office, or grapheion, which was run by a man named Kronion for most of the mid-first century. The archive, unparalleled in antiquity, includes over two hundred documents written on papyrus which attest a wide range of transactions made by the villagers over defined periods of time, in particular the years AD 42 and 45-7 under the reign of the emperor Claudius. This evidence provides a unique insight into various aspects of village life: the level of participation in the written contractual economy; the socio-economic stratification of the village, including the position of women, slaves, priests, and the role of the elite; the functions of associations; the types and importance of agriculture; and non-agricultural activities. This multitude of data reveals a highly diversified village economy, a large involvement in written transactions among all the strata of the population, and a rural society living mostly above subsistence level. Tebtunis provides a model of village society that can be used to understand the majority of the population within the Roman Empire who lived outside cities in the Mediterranean, particularly in the other eastern and more Hellenized provinces.

This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.

The present volume contains twelve chapters authored by specialists of Asian, African and European manuscript cultures reflecting on the cohesion of written artefacts, particularly manuscripts. Assuming that ‘codicological units’ exist in every manuscript culture and that they are usually composed of discrete elements (such as clay tablets, papyrus sheets, bamboo slips, parchment bifolios, palm leaves), the issue of the cohesion of the constituents is a general one. The volume presents a series of case studies on devices and strategies adopted to achieve this cohesion by manuscript cultures distant in space (from China to West Africa) and time (from the third millennium bce to the present). This comparative view provides the frame for the understanding of a phenomenon that appears to be of essential importance for the study of the structure of written artefacts. Regardless of the way in which cohesion is realised, all strategies and devices that allow the constituents to be kept together are subsumed under the term ‘binding’. Thus, it is possible to highlight similarities, convergences, and unique physical and technical methods adopted by various manuscript cultures to face a common challenge.