Landowners and Tenants in Roman Egypt by Jane Rowlandson 1996, Hardcover: items on eBay.com

Publisher's Note
Oxyrhynchus in Egypt is the best documented provincial city of the Roman empire. This book uses the thousands of papyrus documents found there to examine how its urban landowners derived their wealth from the rural hinterland. After an introductory chapter discussing the topography and agricultural conditions of the region, the book analyses the conditions of tenure under which land was held; the social status of landholders (who included both men and women) and the nature of their holdings; the transmission of ownership by inheritance and sale; and finally the role of short-team leasing among methods of land management. Together with social convention, the system of land tenure, rules of inheritance, and the law of sale and lease formed an immensely complex web articulating the social relationships between landowners and tenants. The papyri from Oxyrhynchus, by illustrating in detail how individuals negotiated their way through this web, provide an unparalleled insight into the character of landownership in a Roman province.

Industry Reviews
The numerous papryi discovered at Oxrhynchus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have greatly enriched knowledge of Graeco-Roman Egypt. Studies of Oxyrhynchus itself, however, are rare. Rowlandson's monograph is a distinguished addition to that short list. . . . [The book's] conclusions are not surprising. Concentration of property tended to increase during these centuries, and urban dwellers enjoyed an economic advantage over the inhabitants of villages. The real contribution of Rowlandson's monograph is the unparalleled detail with which she reconstructs agricultural life in all its complexity in the Oxyrhynchite Nome. Essential reading for all scholars interested in the social and economic history of Roman Egypt.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Tribby

This is an important book, which will be an invaluable resource for historians of Roman Egypt, papyrologists, and economic historians for years to come. . . . Since we have more detailed information from Egypt than from any other province, the varied patterns of social relations attested in Egypt must have implications for the far more uniform historiographic depictions of rural society that we have from other areas of the ancient world. [Rowlandson's] book should change the way we think about the social relations of agriculture throughout the ancient world.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Alston

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