Records of a Roman Bath in Upper Egypt

Abstract

HERBERT C. YOUTIE, University of Michigan IN the course of excavations conducted in 1937 at Apollinopolis Magna, the modern Edfu, a Franco-Polish expedition under the direction of M. Bruyere uncovered, in the central area of the ancient town, a bathing establishment of five rooms which had been constructed probably toward the end of the first century.' In a small room to the north of the apartment and separated from it by a wall were found ten Latin and four Greek ostraca, which have been assigned on palaeographic grounds to the same period.2 These deserve further study for reasons that go beyond the obvious interest roused by the discovery, one might almost say in quantity, of Latin ostraca, which are otherwise very rare.3 The difficult work of transcription has been done with unusual skill, and although the editor did not connect the ostraca with the rooms beyond the wall, they provide nevertheless, when correctly interpreted, all the evidence necessary to show that the room in which they were discovered was at first united with the principal suite. The texts inscribed on these ostraca have a