Ancient Archives and Network Models: The Case of Pathyris (c. 165−88 BCE)

The Ptolemaic military camp of Pathyris, established around 165 BC, has generated a rich body of written sources that reveal detailed information about the inhabitants and their socio-economic activities and relationships. Because the site was abandoned in the autumn of 88 BC, a large number of texts that are unlikely to survive continuous habitation has come down to us. Therefore, the Pathyrite community can be studied in detail through roughly three generations.

The paper introduces the author’s doctoral research and discusses the applicability of formal social network analysis (SNA) to ancient archive studies. The community can be meaningfully studied in the form of social networks through systematic documentation and analysis of prosopographical, attribute and relational data revealed by 427 Greek and Demotic documents associated with 21 ancient archives.