Women in Hellenistic Egypt. From Alexander to Cleopatra.

Schocken Books, New York, 1984. 241p. XXII,(III),241p.ills.(B&W photographs). Hard bound with dust wrps. Spine gilt titled. Edges rust stained. 'Sarah Pomeroy's new book unites, successfully, her long-standing concern with the documentary papyri and her well-proved capacity for lively, lucid writing on women's studies. This book (...) will, above all, bring several illuminating case-studies from the documentary evidence from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt for social history to the attention of a wider public; her numerous extensive discussions and translations of particular documents will be especially welcome. Such welcome introductions to major archives point to the great need for more substantial translations of such archives; it should also be said that Pomeroy's bibliography is splendidly full and helpful. The book is, explicitly, a set of provisional studies, rather than the presentation of a substantial set of theses; while it regularly makes comparisons with comparable evidence from classical Greece and elsewhere, it does not offer a concluding, general assessment or set of explanations of the particular roles and status of women, Greek and native, in Egypt. In the body of the book, however, there are various interesting, interim reflections on different aspects of these complex problems.' (N.R.E. FISHER in The Classical Review (New Series), 1987, p.259).