Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt

Important study of the economic and social history of Ptolemaic Egypt, based on the salt-tax registers of P. Count.

This book consists of two closely related parts. Volume I publishes fifty-four Ptolemaic papyri from the Fayum and Middle Egypt, with English translations and extensive commentaries. Volume II uses these texts, created for purposes of taxation, to provide historical studies analysing fundamental aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt.This volume publishes fifty-four Ptolemaic papyri from the Fayum and Middle Egypt, with English translations and extensive commentaries. The texts, dating from c. 250–150 BC and written in either Greek or Egyptian demotic, record lists of adults, ordered by village, occupation and social group, and by household, together with the taxes paid on their persons, their livestock and trades. Some are more than twenty columns long. All texts have been studied on the originals by an international team of scholars. Many are published here for the first time; the others have been extensively revised with numerous new joins between fragments. Lists of tax-payers and their payments provide a wealth of information on population and family structure, administrative practice, social and professional groups and naming practices. Providing the documentary basis for the historical studies of Volume II, P. Count is essential for any serious evaluation of that account.