Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest

Download or read book Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest written by Egberts and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Panopolis, the modern town of Akhmîm in Southern Egypt, was in Graeco-Roman times an important religious and cultural centre. Its gigantic temple was a stronghold of traditional Egyptian religion. In Late Antiquity it became a major centre of Hellenistic literature and learning and, at the same time, of Coptic monasticism. The sources for Graeco-Roman Panopolis are numerous and diverse. They not only include numerous texts of all genres in various scripts and languages, but archaeological artefacts too. This volume brings together seventeen contributions, dealing with epigraphy, both hieroglyphic and Greek, Greek papyri, Demotic funerary texts, Coptic literature and local monastic architecture. Without neglecting the heuristic problems which these various sources pose, they conjure up a vivid picture of a world marked by profound religious and cultural change.