A Century of Women’s History from the Papyri

Abstract

This chapter surveys the study of women based on papyrological evidence, a subject to which Sarah Pomeroy has made major contributions. Beginning with the first articles on women in the papyri a century ago, the historiography is presented first chronologically, down to the growth of feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s, and then by subject for the past third of a century. Ancient legal studies, social history, the study of the economy, the development of Late Antiquity as a field, and the emergence of gender studies have all played important roles. The finds of papyri outside Egypt have broadened the subject beyond its Egyptian focus. Although quantitative investigations, based especially on the census returns from Roman Egypt, have played a central role, it is likely that microhistorical studies will be a more fertile direction in the future.