Women in Roman Egypt †

In 30 b.c. Cleopatra vii, the last the of the Ptolemies to rule Egypt, chose to take her own life rather than march as a captive in the triumphal procession of the Roman general Octavian. Many aspects of women’s daily lives in Egypt were not altered by the Roman conquest, nor are they different nowadays. However, there are ways in which women are affected by changes in political systems. ¹ This paper will discuss those changes that Roman rule produced in the lives of women in Egypt, and in our own perceptions of the past, which resulted from the removal of restrictions on land ownership by women that had been in force in the Ptolemaic period.