ABSTRACT
The site was visited by Grenfell and Hogarth in 1895-6 in their search for papyrus but, after preliminary investigations, they decided that native diggers had excavated all that was useful.1 In 1928, a team from the University of Michigan started work on the site. They were rewarded by the discovery of very large numbers of papyri relating to the Roman town. Karanis is one of the few Egyptian sites which has both produced substantial papyrological remains and been subject to scientific archaeological excavation. The resulting publications allow us to reconstruct the workings of the Roman town in some detail.2 The papyrological evidence attests large numbers of Roman veterans settled at Karanis and we are able, therefore, to examine the lives of veterans in the context of a village which is uniquely well documented.
