A study of a small agricultural village in the Fayum as a social and economic unit towards the end of the second century BC, which was a period of civil unrest and economic disruption in Egypt. The book is based on papyrus documents from the archive of the village scribe. The archive illustrates many aspects of the village life: types of landholding and methods of cultivation, religious cults, and the names and racial distribution of the people. Where possible, Dr Crawford relates the material to the broader context of the Ptolemaic state. A special feature is the analysis of much more material into tabular form for easy reference.

This is the first study of Menches, village scribe (komogrammateus) of Kerkeosiris between 120 and 110 B.C., on the basis of the complete body of documents from his archive. The author first presents and discusses the only source material: the papyri found inside crocodile mummies at the Egyptian village Tebtunis during the winter of 1899/1900. After establishing the precise nature of these papyrus documents, the book goes on to explore what we can learn from them about Menches' (re)appointments to the post of village scribe; his position in the Ptolemaic bureaucracy; his contacts - written and otherwise - with peers and superiors; his day-to-day tasks, mainly concerned with fiscal land administration; and, in a final chapter, his dealings with a 'strike' of colleague village scribes and a 'strike' of farmers at his village.

During the Ptolemaic period, Egyptian temples were divided into three ranks: first, second and third class. This volume examines the rules according to which Egyptian sacred buildings were classified and how the different classes of temples were planned and arranged.

This book examines the activities of a broad array of police officers in Ptolemaic Egypt (323–30 BC) and argues that Ptolemaic police officials enjoyed great autonomy, providing assistance to even the lowest levels of society when crimes were committed. Throughout the nearly 300 years of Ptolemaic rule, victims of crime in all areas of the Egyptian countryside called on local police officials to investigate crimes; hold trials; and arrest, question and sometimes even imprison wrongdoers. Drawing on a large body of textual evidence for the cultural, social and economic interactions between state and citizen, John Bauschatz demonstrates that the police system was efficient, effective, and largely independent of central government controls. No other law enforcement organization exhibiting such a degree of autonomy and flexibility appears in extant evidence from the rest of the Greco-Roman world.

"The most comprehensive account of the economy, society, and culture of Hellenistic Egypt available in English."--J.G. Manning, author of Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Structure of Land Tenure