Papyri from Karanis - Voices from a multi-cultural society in ancient Fayum

10 February 2015 - 15 March 2015

Cairo, Egypt

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Midan Tahrir

An exhibition to celebrate the publication of papyri housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute Cairo organized by Cornelia Eva Römer (DAAD Cairo), Mohamed Gaber El-Maghrabi (Alexandria University), and Post-Graduate Students from Ain Shams University, Cairo.

The publication of the papyri from Karanis (Kôm Aushim) in the Fayum is an important contribution to our knowledge of village life in the Graeco-Roman period. In the focus of the exhibition stands Socrates, a tax collector in Karanis in the 2nd century AD. His Greek name and his library show his social ambitions in a world in which the Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures flourished side by side. Socrates’ wife, Sempronia Gemella (Latin name !) was a Roman citizen, their daughter was Tasoucharion (Egyptian name !), called after the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek (Egyptian name) or Souchos (Greek name).

The publication of the papyri is:
Texts from the Archive of Socrates, the Tax Collector, and Other Contexts at Karanis, edd. by M. G. El-Maghrabi and C. E. Römer, De Gruyter, Berlin/München/Boston 2015