Bagawat

The necropolis of Bagawat is one of the best-preserved archaeological sites of Roman Egypt. Comparable to few other cemeteries of the imperial period, such as that of Portus, to the north of Ostia, or the one at Sopianae, in Pannonia, the site became known mostly thanks to the painted domes of two mausolea, the iconography of which keeps setting off scientific debates as well as touristic advertisement. The 299 mausolea of the cemetery identified so far contain, however, other sources of information of paramount importance for our knowledge of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Egypt. Among these, the graffiti and, more rarely, dipinti-in Coptic, Greek and Arabic-that cover the walls of about forty of the mausolea of the necropolis are among the most visible ones. This book offers to the reader the edition and translation of all the Coptic and Copto-Greek epigraphic documents of Bagawat, namely 396 texts. It includes an epigraphic and linguistic study of the edited texts, supplemented by indices, as well as plans of the archaeological site and several mausoleums, along with photographs and facsimiles of the graffiti and dipinti.