It has long been noted that theos-names have a strong connection with the Jewish diaspora in Egypt. In this article, we look at two of the most common names of this type, Dositheos and Theodosios, and the practice of garbling the orthography of these names, as -Theta eta sigma for Dositheos, and e eta-, en-, and TEU- for names starting with eEO-. We propose a link with a growing avoidance in the Roman period of the use of the name of Jahweh.

This paper offers a new interpretation of SB 10.10527 (TM 14312), which was previously interpreted by Parassoglou as an offer to buy five arouras of the Louriane ousia near Tebtynis. It makes more sense if the land being sold was the former property of a private landowner called Lurius who was indebted to the state. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to other alleged examples of sold-off imperial land and to the sense of pi rho omicron tau epsilon rho omicron nu added to some descriptions of imperial estates, in order to demonstrate that such land was only rarely put up for sale by the administration.

This article challenges the consensus that the Flavians carried out major reforms of imperial properties by creating a separate department, the ousiakos logos, headed by a procurator usiacus, to manage these lands, and that this situation remained unchanged until Diocletian. The available evidence rather points to a reorganization under Hadrian, which was the culmination of a gradual institutionalization of ousiac land in the previous decades.

This paper presents an adjustment to the ‘weighed dates’ method developed by Van Beek and Depauw in 2011, and which was updated by Depauw in 2015. By spreading the date range of sources across all respective years, it is thus possible to incorporate imprecisely dated material in detailed chronological overviews. Plotting individuals raises extra challenges, however, especially since many people mentioned in ancient source material are often only attested as genealogical identifiers. In these cases, the dates of the texts they appear in do not reflect the period in which they themselves were active. To remedy this, I have fine-tuned the weighed dates method by adding an extra step in which the date range of these individuals is recalibrated.

In a forthcoming article, Willy Clarysse presents an overview of the name Socrates in Egypt. He argues for an evolution from a ‘normal Greek name’, with no specific reference to the Athenian philosopher (Ptolemaic period), to a Greek name with Egyptian connotations (Roman period).

Seeks to demonstrate that all Julio-Claudian ousiai were imperial, in the sense that they were a privilege granted by the emperor, even though some did not end up as part of the ousiakos logos under the Flavians. - 1. From Rostovtzeff to Parássoglou and beyond. - 2. The term ousia in Ptolemaic and early-Roman Egypt. - 3. The owners of the "non-imperial" Julio-Claudian ousiai: 3.1. Tiberius Iulius Nikanor; - 3.2. Marcus Aponius Saturninus; - 3.3. Tiberius Claudius Balbillus; - 3.4. Norbana Clara. - 4. Julio-Claudian ousiai: privileged estates. - 5. A note on terminology. - 6. Epilogue: non-imperial ousiai in the second and third centuries AD. - Appendix: Estates not described as ousiai.

Over a decade ago, Katja Mueller proposed a new method for locating settlements in the Fayum borrowed from the social sciences: multidimensional scaling (MDS). As is so often the case with pioneering research, it was heavily criticized, although she never claimed the technique would overcome all problems associated with locating lost sites. In this paper, I suggest an alternative approach to MDS, based on network analysis, to detect settlement communities. In the past 13 years the database that Mueller started from has greatly expanded, allowing for a more encompassing analysis. Narrowing down the possible location radius of unknown sites with the help of these methods can be valuable for studies of ancient settlement patterns.

Thanks to the abundance of, mostly papyrological, sources from Graeco-Roman Egypt mentioning settlements in an administrative, economic, cultural or religious context, we know up to a certain extent a lot about these villages and towns. But although Trismegistos contains over 10,000 toponyms situated in Egypt, the exact location of many of them remains unknown. This paper explores the possibilities for structuring settlement patterns offered by Gephi’s Geolayout algorithm. Located sites can thus be plotted according to their coordinates, after which community detection algorithms can be used to determine approximate locations for ‘lost’ sites.

Since Greeks were generally unaccustomed to adding their maternal line to their identification, it is surprising to find metronymics in Greek papyri from Egypt. The rather exceptional Ptolemaic examples can be explained by Egyptian influence, but in the early Roman period there is a sudden rise in the use of mothers’ names. This article discusses the evolution of this practice and its relation to the socio-legal changes during the first four centuries AD.