Classical World

Few ancient texts can bring us more directly into contact with ordinary people than papyrus letters from ancient Egypt. These letters were not rewritten for publication or with posterity in mind. They were composed by men and women with particular wants or needs: word that someone is alive and well, or needs skeins of wool, or (inevitably) money. These people expressed their requests directly, without literary pretensions. Short sentences follow one another in quick succession, often quoting what someone is supposed to have said. If the style of most letters seems conversational, it is because almost all were dictated to professional scribes.

Yet it is the private and spontaneous nature of the letters that keeps them from providing sufficient information about the lives and environment of the people mentioned in them. It is not always clear who is related to whom, or why particular issues seem urgent. Only rarely does a writer refer to a political event or take time to describe her feelings. The authors' intentions are often further obscured by bad grammar and misspelling. Even in translation and with editorial commentary, the letters often seem obscure and insignificant, because they do not provide the context and meaning that we have come to expect from ancient authors with a high degree of literary skill.

This comprehensive collection of letters known to have been written by women might appear to offer special insight into female lives and thoughts, [End Page 116] but in practice do not tell us more about the lives of women in Graeco-Roman Egypt than might a collection that included letters by men. As Bagnall and Cribiore note in their introduction, the letters give no particular indication of a distinctive female voice. Nonetheless, the book provides modern readers with a fine introduction to the study of papyrus documents: how the texts have been found, written, and dated. The introduction also offers a summary of the kinds of general information about women's lives that can be gleaned from the individual letters. For most women, there was little change in the more than thousand years covered in the book. As always, women cared for children and worked in wool. But they also traveled, owned property, managed finances, and dealt with legal problems.

The majority of letters in the book are presented in the archives to which they belong, which helps to provide at least some continuity and context; others are organized by subject. Bagnall and Cribiore append informative observations about characteristics of different handwritings and individual styles. Their literal translations help convey an impression of the awkwardness and abruptness in many of the letters, but do not always make it easier for modern readers to understand what the ancient writers might have been trying to convey. Are the daughters in PGrenf. 1.53 saying to the elders of the church "we want men" or "we want husbands" (the Greek ἀνήρ can of course mean both)? As so often in the letters, the text alone cannot supply the answer or tell us the whole story about the situation that is of such pressing concern to the woman who dictated the letter, and the entries leave us wishing that we could know more.