The Project

Local institutions, civic religion, and urban élites in Roman Egypt (2nd-4th c. CE)

The research team is multidisciplinary, since it includes Greek and Latin philologists and classical historians who will join efforts and methodologies in order to study local institutions and élites, and civic religion in Roman Egypt (2nd-4th c. CE) by using papyri written in Greek and Latin as a fundamental source.

Objectives

To study the political activity of the ruling élite in Egyptian towns in the third and fourth centuries CE.

To analyze the functioning of the Boulé as the main governing institution in Egyptian towns.

To study the performing and the development of civic religion in imperial Roman Egypt (2nd-4th c. CE)

A corpus of papyri translated into Spanish will be offered for the first time. Furthermore, these documents will be analysed and studied from a philological and historical point of view by being integrated into the socio-cultural context in which they were written. The information obtained through this methodology will be of benefit to classical philologists and historians, archaeologists and Roman Law scholars.