A Research of Late Antique Egypt

The study of late antiquity from the fourth to the seventh century A.D. has attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars in the past twenty years. Late antiquity is indeed an attractive field of study, because its society was in many ways comparable to our own. Scholars have always stressed the ever-growing bureaucracy and the increasing importance of professional services in the economy of late antiquity as developments parallel to what was going on in their own society. However, growing inefficiency in government and a decline in the economy as a whole seem particularly apt parallels to our day and age. In late antiquity the public response to the problems facing the Roman empire was unable to prevent its fall.

Late antiquity is also an attractive field of study because its society was in some ways different from our own. The insistence on theological correctness, the prominent role of the holy men and women in society, the careful use of expressions and titles of respect when people addressed one another, and the formal hierarchy in all walks of life are unfamiliar to us. Yet in a time of rapid change the study of civilizations with roots radically different from ours can provide an interesting form of reorientation.
Read the rest of this entry »