ABSTRACT
Conversely, the documentary evidence for the so-called oldest profession in the world in Gr~co-Roman Egypt is not extensive and is scattered both geographically and chronologically, but enough material does survive to suggest that the organisation of the prostitution business and of those that plied it varied considerably according to time and local circumstances. A few ostraca and one well known inscription deal with the taxation of earnings from prostitution. One or two papyri
are informative about the minutiae of leasing and taxing premises for prostitution. Apart from this, the documentary record is almost silent. Unlike the prostitutes of Pompeii, whose names, prices, sexual specialities and even living quarters are all preserved, the prostitutes of Egypt have left behind few vestiges of their lives. Therefore very little is known about the daily lives of prostitutes in Egypt - how old they were, what future they faced when they stopped working, and what kind of sexual services they offered their clients. This lack of evidence, of course, need not necessarily suggest that prostitution was uncommon in Egypt; indeed, its very paucity might imply exactly the opposite. In spite of the diversity of the evidence, one or two factors are constant: prostitutes seem to have been mobile or based in a large urban area, and most were under the control of a man.
