Spiele und Spielen im römischen Ägypten: Die Zeugnisse der verschiedenen Quellenarten

Abstract

Soldiers were - and are always - players, partly in order to pass the time. Is this statement true for all professional soldiers of the Roman army in the Imperial period? This article will gather as exhaustively as possible the literary and archaeological sources concerning the practices of games and play in the Roman army. On this base, we will examine the popularity of different games and question if some games were produced specifically for the soldiers. This paper will thus present for the first time the papyrological (and literary) evidence concerning toys and games in Greek and Roman Egypt, discuss the archaeological evidence for gaming in the forts and quarries in the Eastern desert, taking also into consideration the evidence from other Roman military sites all over the Roman empire, present the references to games and gaming materials invented in Greek and Roman Egypt.