In this Postdoc project I investigate the changing nature of religious organization and experience in Roman Egypt through a detailed case study of the spiritual landscape of Karanis. The wealth and variety of evidence from this village make it an ideal setting for the historian to test competing views of religious change in this period. The two temples of Karanis are well documented; thousands of terracotta figurines were found in domestic contexts; and new textual evidence offers exciting new discursive evidence for the religious community of the village. This study will focus on four overlapping spheres of religious activity in Roman Karanis: 1) the village temples and the local priestly elite 2) Karanis’ participation in regional cults 3) the imperial cult and 4) domestic cult. By studying the interactions between these various layers of religious life, we hope to show that the “community experience” of religious life was still alive and well in Roman Karanis.

The religious history of the Greco-Roman Fayum has mainly been told through studies on Tebtunis and Soknopaiou Nesos, whose native priesthoods and temple operations are relatively well documented. Karanis, on the other hand, has been seen as some kind of secular counterpart to these religious centers. The shortage of written evidence emanating from the priestly milieu in Karanis may have some significance, but the indications of a large and active priesthood in the village, as well as the standing remains of the temples themselves, are sufficient to quell notions that the local priesthood was insignificant. The North Temple,
moreover, was the site of a voice oracle, whose existence, long ago suspected by the excavators because of a chamber behind the main altar, has been confirmed by the forthcoming Karanis Prayer Papyrus.

This papyrus is essentially a script for public prayers meant to be performed in the context of a local festival and offers a unique look at the relationship between imperially-directed religious praxis and local belief and cult. After prayers for the imperial house and a litany of Greek gods, the text offers prayers on behalf of the “Tyche of Karanis,” and “all the residents and landowners” of the village. The text is clearly a layered composition, with self-contained units stacked on to one another in a hierarchical fashion. But it is also unified, insofar as the entire prayer is anchored by the repetition of ἑστία, “hearth,” before most consecrated entities and is bookended by ritual formulae. What kind of meaning could this performance have had for the village’s inhabitants? A full answer cannot be attempted here, but such a public enactment of imperial, Greek, and local cult must have reinforced the village community’s self-perception as a small, but recognizable landmark that was divinely demarcated in the religious landscape of the
Roman Empire.