Domesticating Empire is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlín Barrett draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between representations of Egypt and a particular type of Roman household space: the domestic garden. Through paintings and mosaics portraying the Nile, canals that turned the garden itself into a miniature "Nilescape," and statuary depicting Egyptian themes, many gardens in Pompeii offered ancient visitors evocations of a Roman vision of Egypt. Simultaneously faraway and familiar, these imagined landscapes made the unfathomable breadth of empire compatible with the familiarity of home. In contrast to older interpretations that connect Roman "Aegyptiaca" to the worship of Egyptian gods or the problematic concept of "Egyptomania," a contextual analysis of these garden assemblages suggests new possibilities for meaning. In Pompeian houses, Egyptian and Egyptian-looking objects and images interacted with their settings to construct complex entanglements of "foreign" and "familiar," "self" and "other." Representations of Egyptian landscapes in domestic gardens enabled individuals to present themselves as sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and "Romanizing" once-foreign images and objects. That which was once imagined as alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of what it meant to be "Roman." Featuring brilliant illustrations in both color and black and white, Domesticating Empire reveals the importance of material culture in transforming household space into a microcosm of empire.

Households in Context shifts the focus from monumental temples, tombs, and elite material and visual culture to households and domestic life to provide a crucial new perspective on everyday dwelling practices and the interactions of families and individuals with larger social and cultural structures. A focus on households reveals the power of the everyday: the critical role of quotidian experiences, objects, and images in creating the worlds of the people who live with them. The contributors to this book share contemporary research on houses and households in both Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to reshape the ways we think about ancient people's lived experiences of family, community, and society. Households in Context places the archaeology and history of Greco-Roman Egypt in dialogue with research on dwelling, daily practice, and materiality to reveal how ancient households functioned as laboratories for social, political, economic, and religious change. Contributors: Youssri Abdelwahed, Richard Alston, Anna Lucille Boozer, Paola Davoli, David Frankfurter, Jennifer Gates-Foster, Melanie Godsey, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Sabine R. Huebner, Gregory Marouard, Miriam Müller, Lisa Nevett, Bérangère Redon, Bethany Simpson, Ross I. Thomas, Dorothy J. Thompson

This book examines the role of the family in the Roman province of Egypt drawing on a wide range of sources.

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

"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"--

This book examines different forms of ritual activities performed in houses of Graeco- Roman Egypt. It draws on the rich archaeological record of rural housing and evidence from literature or papyrological references to both urban and rural housing.

Egypt played a crucial role in the Roman Empire for seven centuries. It was wealthy and occupied a strategic position between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds, while its uniquely fertile lands helped to feed the imperial capitals at Rome and then Constantinople. The cultural and religious landscape of Egypt today owes much to developments during the Roman period, including in particular the forms taken by Egyptian Christianity. Moreover, we have an abundance of sources for its history during this time, especially because of the recovery of vast numbers of written texts giving an almost uniquely detailed picture of its society, economy, government, and culture. This book, the work of six historians and archaeologists from Egypt, the US, and the UK, provides students and a general audience with a readable new history of the period and includes many illustrations of art, archaeological sites, and documents, and quotations from primary sources.