ABSTRACT
There is a certain paradox in the nature of the philological study of papyrus texts. Critical about archaeological context and the conclusions that can be drawn from it; critical about the social and economic matrix of those who produced these texts; critical about the artifactual nature of the papyri. The higher level of confidence in the likelihood that conclusions drawn from the papyri are not necessarily unique to Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, but deserve testing in other chronological and temporal contexts. That Egypt had its distinctive characteristics no one would want to deny. The chapter describes the greater chronological and geographical sweep to make documentary studies more and more part of a less parochial history of the premodern world.
