The project aims to integrate textual and material data and develop new digital tools to bring back into life the sights and smells of Antinoopolis, a city from ancient Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods. By ancient historical standards, the evidence for this city is voluminous, with more than one thousand texts—inscriptions and texts from the manuscript tradition as well as papyri. Besides, continuing archaeological excavations at Antinoopolis make it one of the currently most prolific sites for Greco-Roman and Byzantine Egypt. In this documentation, the late antique data hold pride of place, with great potential for historical analysis in the longue durée.

Cities and their people, from the Pharaonic to Islamic periods, have often been considered cogs and gears in the administration of Egypt and denied meaningful agency in the country’s long-term evolution. At a series of workshops and international conferences, the project team will analyze the parameters for urban development in Roman and late antique Egypt so as to reverse this general perspective. More specifically, the PI will write an “urban biography” of an important site, in which all the available evidence will be brought to bear on broader questions of political, economic, cultural, and religious change—beyond the theme of the classical city’s demise in Late Antiquity.

In addition to a book monograph, peer-reviewed articles, and edited volumes, the tools for the integration, analysis, and visualization of the data pertaining to people—digital urban prosopography—and places—a GIS platform for the contextualization and interpretation of archaeological data—will make the results of the project easily searchable and widely accessible. Virtual exhibitions hosted on the project’s homepage will finally expose the broader public to two fascinating aspects of the project: the history of excavations at Antinoopolis and schools and literacy in the cities of late antique Egypt.