RT Article
T1 Socioreligious Aspects of 217 Women’s Letters in Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800
JF Journal of religion in Africa
VO 54
IS 1
SP 21
OP 41
A1 Luca, Luigi M. De
A1 Armey, Laura
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2024
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1876261390
AB Egyptian women’s religious expressions in papyrus letters (Bagnall and Cribiore, 2006) were divided into five categories: None, no god(s) mentioned; Pray, containing “Pray” without gods; Gods, for Greek Gods; Sarapis/local Gods/προσκυνήµα for letters containing prayers in which obeisance before a God is expressed in the Egyptian reverential manner, a προσκυνήµα; Θεός/Κύριος/Χριστός letters to the Christian God. The None category is prevalent during the early 300 BC to 100 AD period followed by an increase in, and then stable, formulaic/religious expressions. The Pray category peaked in the second and third centuries AD, and the Gods category, referring to pagan Gods, showed a steady and significant decline from the first to the fourth century AD inverse to the rise in prevalence of letters in the Θεός/Κύριος/Χριστός category. The shift to monotheism with Christianity is rendered in graphic form, and permits an appreciation of feminine popular sentiment on religion and its Gods in Egypt.
K1 Christian
K1 Pagan
K1 Sarapis
K1 formulae
K1 Greek
K1 Egypt
K1 Religion
K1 Family dynamics
K1 Statistical analysis
K1 ostracon
K1 Papyrus
K1 women’s letters
DO 10.1163/15700666-12340270