{"product_id":"books-life-in-an-egyptian-village-in-late-antiquity-by-giovanni-r-ruffini","title":"Life in an Egyptian Village in Late Antiquity","description":"Most ancient history focuses on the urban elite. Papyrology explores the daily lives of the more typical men and women in antiquity. Aphrodito, a village in sixth-century AD Egypt, is antiquity's best source for micro-level social history. The archive of Dioskoros of Aphrodito introduces thousands of people living the normal business of their lives: loans, rent contracts, work agreements, marriage, divorce. In exceptional cases, the papyri show raw conflict: theft, plunder, murder. Throughout, Dioskoros struggles to keep his family in power in Aphrodito, and to keep Aphrodito independent from the local tax collectors. The emerging picture is a different vision of Roman late antiquity than what we see from the view of the urban elites. It is a world of free peasants building networks of trust largely beyond the reach of the state. Aphrodito's eighth-century AD papyri show that this world dies in the early years of Islamic rule.","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53506023784721,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781107105607_41abfd2a-d3ea-495e-abbf-ebab40d057f3.jpg?v=1778105561","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-life-in-an-egyptian-village-in-late-antiquity-by-giovanni-r-ruffini","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}