Articles by Sofie Waebens
Online publication: www.trismegistos.org/arch/ , 2018
Description of the small archive of Gaius Iulius Apollinarius, a soldier and later veteran of coh... more Description of the small archive of Gaius Iulius Apollinarius, a soldier and later veteran of cohors I Apamenorum, which shows him going about his business as a landowner in his hometown while he was in military service and later as veteran. The archive also reveals that he bought land and married a local woman, two activities from which soldiers were banned by law.
K. Vandorpe (ed.), A Blackwell-Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt, 2019
A bureaucratic society like that of ancient Egypt, where almost every single official act was rec... more A bureaucratic society like that of ancient Egypt, where almost every single official act was recorded, generated a considerable amount of “paperwork” (primarily papyri, but also ostraca and wooden tablets). The documentation stored in the central archives at Alexandria has not survived due to the soil conditions in this region, but copies and registers of private contracts were kept in the record offices in the countryside, while the original contracts remained in the hands of the contracting parties, who stored them in their personal archives. This chapter presents archives of both official and private nature, focusing on the documents they contained and the insight they give into the lives of people and their dealings with the bureaucratic machine in ancient Egypt.
Revue internationale d'histoire militaire ancienne 1, 63-77, 2015
Depictions of Roman soldiers in military dress or armour with their military equipment and decora... more Depictions of Roman soldiers in military dress or armour with their military equipment and decorations prominently displayed are found in large numbers on gravestones throughout the first three centuries AD. This article explores the manner in which soldiers are depicted on funerary monuments from the cemetery near the fortress of Nikopolis in Egypt. Almost all of them date to the first half of the third century and commemorate soldiers of legio II Traiana fortis (and, to a lesser degree, their children). An analysis of this corpus, in all 25 gravestones, reveals that a local variant of the Roman military figural gravestone tradition of the third century AD developed at Nikopolis.
K. Vandorpe, W. Clarysse, H. Verreth e.a. (eds.), Graeco-Roman archives from the Fayum (Collectanea Hellenistica 6), Leuven: Peeters & l'Union Académique Internationale & Koninklijke Academie van België, 239-251, 2015
Description of the archive of Marcus Lucretius Diogenes and Aurelius Sarapion. The archive spans ... more Description of the archive of Marcus Lucretius Diogenes and Aurelius Sarapion. The archive spans a long period of time (AD 132-248), documenting five generations of a relatively well-to-do family of Roman and, from at least the third generation, Antinoite citizens in Philadelphia, a Fayum village with a large population of veterans.
Tyche: Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte, Papyrologie und Epigraphik 28, 183-189, 2013
Edition of two fragments, published separately by previous editors, of a third-century funerary s... more Edition of two fragments, published separately by previous editors, of a third-century funerary stela erected in honour of a veteran of legio II Traiana fortis and a relative, found in the late 19th century at the military burial site of Nikopolis and now in the Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria (inv. no. 21623 and 21627).
C. Wolff (ed.), Le métier de soldat dans le monde romain. Actes du cinquième congrès de Lyon, 23-25 septembre 2010 (Université Lyon III. Collection du Centre d’études romaines et gallo-romaines N.S. 42), Paris: de Boccard, 235-253, 2012
... ITEM METADATA RECORD. Title: The Legal Status of Legionary Recruits in the Principate: A Case... more ... ITEM METADATA RECORD. Title: The Legal Status of Legionary Recruits in the Principate: A Case Study (Lucius Pompeius Niger, AD 31-64). Authors: Waebens, Sofie. Issue Date: 2012. Publisher: de Boccard. Host Document: Le métier de soldat dans le monde romain. ...
Chronique d'Égypte 87/174, 322-339, 2012
The so-called Ares tombstone of 188/189, now in the British Museum (GRA 1973.4-22.1 [Sc. 2271]), ... more The so-called Ares tombstone of 188/189, now in the British Museum (GRA 1973.4-22.1 [Sc. 2271]), is one of the most beautiful examples of Roman sepulchral art to come out of Egypt. Although the stela has been studied many times before, scholars continue to be intrigued by its unusual relief, depicting two full-length standing male figures with similar facial features. The Greek inscription below the relief informs us that the stela was erected to commemorate Ares, a veteran. A second Ares is mentioned, but his identity and relationship to the deceased Ares are unclear. Various theories have been proposed, identifying this Ares successively as a brother, a commander or a fellow soldier of the deceased, as Ares, the god of war, or as the deceased himself, but all of them have been refuted. In this article, I propose a new interpretation of the stela.
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 180, 267-277, 2012
In AD 140, the privileges of auxiliary veterans were reduced, as their military diplomas attest. ... more In AD 140, the privileges of auxiliary veterans were reduced, as their military diplomas attest. While this change has been addressed in numerous studies, hardly any attention has been paid to the way in which epikrisis records reflect the "change in 140". This article provides a detailed discussion of the various veteran groups listed in these documents, thereby showing that the withdrawal of the civitas liberorum privilege from auxiliary veterans became effective immediately. Following this view, I propose to omit the clause 'with their children and offspring', restored by the original editor, in line 11 of PSI V 447, an epikrisis document of 166-167.
Chiron: Mitteilungen der Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 42, 1-23, 2012
In AD 140 the privileges of auxiliary veterans were reduced, as their military diplomas attest. B... more In AD 140 the privileges of auxiliary veterans were reduced, as their military diplomas attest. Before 140 all children were granted Roman citizenship upon discharge, including those born during military service. By 13 December 140 (RMD I 39), however, only children born from legal Roman marriages were eligible for the grant of citizenship. Many scholars have wondered about the objective of this so-called “change in 140”, proposing various theories, most recently Peter Weiss. Although he has shown that the withdrawal of the civitas liberorum privilege from auxiliary veterans fits Pius’ imperial policy, in which Roman citizenship and marriage played key roles, there must have been an incentive for the introduction of this change in veteran privileges in 140, a problem that will be explored in this article.
K. Lembke, M. Minas-Nerpel & S. Pfeiffer (eds.), Tradition and Transformation: Egypt under Roman Rule (CHANE Series 41), Leiden: Brill, 415-435
P. Van Nuffelen (ed.), Faces of Hellenism: Studies in the History of the Eastern Mediterranean (4th Century B.C. - 5th Century A.D.) (Studia Hellenistica 48), Leuven: Peeters, 179-197
Graeco-Roman Upper Egypt has produced thousands of tax receipts, providing valuable information a... more Graeco-Roman Upper Egypt has produced thousands of tax receipts, providing valuable information about the elaborate tax system that existed in the wealthy Nile country. These receipts are primarily written on ostraka, rarely on wood. But who provided the writing material – the tax payer or the tax official? In this article, wooden tablets from Pathyris, a small town in Upper Egypt, are presented as a possible solution to answer this question.
Books by Sofie Waebens
Brussels 2010, 327p, see https://www.peeters-leuven.be/search_serie_book.asp?nr=295
The small town of Pathyris, modern Gebelein, is located south of Thebes. After a huge revolt supp... more The small town of Pathyris, modern Gebelein, is located south of Thebes. After a huge revolt suppressed in 186 B.C., a Ptolemaic military camp was built in this town, where local people could serve as soldiers-serving-for-pay. The Government took several initiatives to Hellenize the town, resulting in a bilingual society. The town produced hundreds of papyri and ostraka, discovered during legal excavations and illegal diggings at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century. Katelijn Vandorpe and Sofie Waebens describe the history of the town and reconstruct the bilingual archives by using, among other things, prosopographical data and the method of museum archaeology.
Dissertation by Sofie Waebens
After Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, a legionary fortress was established near Nikopolis... more After Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, a legionary fortress was established near Nikopolis, a small town located east of Alexandria. The necropolis has yielded up to 134 funerary monuments, most associated with legio II Traiana fortis. My dissertation provides the first comprehensive edition of these monuments.
Conferences by Sofie Waebens
Posters by Sofie Waebens
Periodicals by Sofie Waebens
La Revue internationale d’Histoire Militaire Ancienne (HiMA) a pour ambition d’offrir à tous ceux... more La Revue internationale d’Histoire Militaire Ancienne (HiMA) a pour ambition d’offrir à tous ceux qui sont intéressés par l’histoire militaire de l’Antiquité l’opportunité de suivre les recherches les plus récentes dans ce domaine. Elle s’intéressera surtout au monde méditerranéen dans son ensemble (l’Égypte, le Proche-Orient, la Grèce et Rome) mais est ouverte également à d’autres contextes, comme la Chine et l’Asie centrale, notamment dans une perspective comparatiste. Elle s’occupera aussi de la « pensée militaire ancienne » et de son influence posthume chez les Modernes. Elle souhaite aborder tous les aspects de l’histoire militaire : non seulement les questions plus proprement techniques comme la stratégie et la tactique, ou bien la logistique et l’armement, mais aussi l’économie et le droit, l’histoire sociale et institutionnelle, également l’histoire événementielle basée sur les activités militaires et diplomatiques, qu’on continue de pourfendre comme « histoire bataille ». Car la guerre n’est pas qu’une histoire de batailles : elle est profondément enracinée dans les structures de la société, où elle représente la règle plutôt que l’exception ; les Anciens en étaient bien conscients. La revue paraîtra au rythme de deux numéros par an. Le numéro du premier semestre (parution en janvier) sera thématique, celui du second semestre (parution en juin) présentera des Varia (articles, rubrique à propos des travaux universitaires internationaux concernant l’histoire militaire et comptes rendus).
Papers by Sofie Waebens
... ITEM METADATA RECORD. Title: The Legal Status of Legionary Recruits in the Principate: A Case... more ... ITEM METADATA RECORD. Title: The Legal Status of Legionary Recruits in the Principate: A Case Study (Lucius Pompeius Niger, AD 31-64). Authors: Waebens, Sofie. Issue Date: 2012. Publisher: de Boccard. Host Document: Le métier de soldat dans le monde romain. ...
The numbers in bold refer to P. Diog. Description This family archive consists of at least 34 pap... more The numbers in bold refer to P. Diog. Description This family archive consists of at least 34 papyri, ranging from AD 132 to 248. The family's origin can be traced back to Marcus Lucretius Clemens, an auxiliary veteran of Syrian origin who settled in 132/133 in Philadelpheia, a Fayum village with a large population of veterans. Most of the texts in the archive relate to his great-grandson Marcus Lucretius Diogenes, son of Marcus Lucretius Minor, but he was not the last owner of the archive: after his death, the family papers were passed on to his underage daughter Aurelia Kopria and her great-uncle Aurelius Sarapion, who added his own papers to the archive. Discovery and reconstruction The archive turned up relatively late, between 1920 and 1923, on the antiquities market. 1 On 20 July 1922, 65 texts, of which 25 can be attributed to the archive, were purchased from the Cairo antiquities dealer M. Nahman by the British Museum (now British Library) through the papyrus cartel 2 over which H.I. Bell presided as principal keeper of records of the British Museum, their inventory numbers ranging between 2498 and 2542. According to the dealer, the papyri were found in a small basket at Gharabet el-Gerza, ancient Philadelpheia, 3 where
The small town of Pathyris, modern Gebelein, is located south of Thebes. After a huge revolt supp... more The small town of Pathyris, modern Gebelein, is located south of Thebes. After a huge revolt suppressed in 186 B.C., a Ptolemaic military camp was built in this town, where local people could serve as soldiers-serving-for-pay. The Government took several initiatives to Hellenize the town, resulting in a bilingual society. The town produced hundreds of papyri and ostraka, discovered during legal excavations and illegal diggings at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century. Katelijn Vandorpe and Sofie Waebens describe the history of the town and reconstruct the bilingual archives by using, among other things, prosopographical data and the method of museum archaeology.
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Articles by Sofie Waebens
Books by Sofie Waebens
Dissertation by Sofie Waebens
Conferences by Sofie Waebens
Posters by Sofie Waebens
Periodicals by Sofie Waebens
Papers by Sofie Waebens