Cambridge University Press publishes Roman Egypt: A History, edited by Leon Levy Director emeritus Roger Bagnall

Cambridge University Press has just published Roman Egypt: A History, edited by Leon Levy Director emeritus Roger Bagnall in collaboration with five other scholars; Mona Haggag (Alexandria), T. M. Hickey (Berkeley), Mohamed G. Elmaghrabi (Alexandria), Arietta Papaconstantinou (Reading), and Dorothy J. Thompson (Cambridge). The book aims to provide a broadly accessible account of the long period that Egypt was under Roman rule (30 BCE to 641 CE), with an introductory chapter that traces Egypt's development in the three centuries from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra and a final chapter that describes how Egypt was lost to the Roman Empire and became part of the Arab conquests and the Islamic world. In this process, Egypt's largely Christian population developed the distinctive religious identity that came to be called Coptic and that has helped shape the country's religious landscape down to the present. The book is extensively illustrated and includes numerous ancient sources in translation.