At home in Roman Egypt : a social archaeology /

Boozer (Baruch College, CUNY) shifts the usual top-down focus of standard histories to instead explore the lives of ordinary, non-elite people in Roman Egypt. She illustrates how Egyptian, Roman, and Christian traditions and innovations were interwoven, as were private and public lives. Chapters are thematic, beginning with a fictional vignette of a married couple's life, which introduces the topics to come: homelife, the community, birth and childhood, adulthood, the home, the body, religion and ritual, health and old age, and death and the afterlife. Boozer shows how these strands overlap and intertwine, arguing that "most people in Roman Egypt ... thought about domestic concerns rather than historically significant subjects" (p. 1), though she never overlooks history. She draws from a wide array of evidence to build her study, from house floor plans to shopping lists, children's toys, mummy portraits, and even Galen's cure for baldness. However, this exhaustive documentation in no way intrudes on the text's eminent readability or enjoyability. Moreover, the thematic approach mirrors the current trend in museum installations, making this book a fine companion to museum visits. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Carol C Mattusch, emerita, George Mason University