History

Chares pornos kalos…

…is a graffito scratched into a street in the Athenian deme of Thorikos. Who Chares was, and whether he really was as fine a whore as his ‘admirer’ suggests, is anyone’s guess. Graffiti like this, which comment on the sexuality of a person, are common in the ancient world however. Read more

Puzzling over some bilingual receipts

The issue of bilingualism is central to my study of the Tebtunis priests. The priests employed Egyptian in “personal” (and, of course, cultic) texts throughout the Roman period—language preference is a more complicated matter—but the use of demotic Egyptian in official contexts drops significantly rather early on—not immediately with the… Read more