A Part of the Family: Funerary Preparations for Children and Adolescents in Late Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Children in Roman Egypt lived in a complex, multi-cultural world. Due to the numerous risks to life at the time, children and adolescents died at rates much higher than today yet they do not appear in the archaeological record as often as one might expect. Nevertheless, their sometimes elaborate burial preparations, incorporating native Egyptian and Hellenistic religious and artistic traditions, reveal that they were valued members of their families and of society. This thesis presents a catalog of child burials in Roman Egypt and will discuss which religious motifs and art styles the families of the deceased drew upon, how the age group the child belonged to affected their burial, and how child burials in Roman Egypt compare to burial practices in other provinces of the Roman Empire, such as Gaul, Britain, north-central Africa, Sardinia, and the Italian peninsula