Living in el-Ashmunein: Snapshot of an Eighth Century House

As part of the British Museum Expedition to el-Ashmunein, Steven Snape undertook recording work at the temple of Domitian during the 1984-85 season. 1 While the time-period covered by my contribution to this volume in his honour is seven centuries later, I hope that its connection with Steven's fieldwork, as well as its focus on urban landscapes, will speak to his broad interests in Egyptian history and archaeology. El-AshmuneinToday, the large village el-Ashmunein occupies the southern part of the ancient site, which is known in different periods of its history as Khmunu (ancient Egyptian), Shmoun (Coptic), and Hermopolis (Greek). 2 Different periods in the site's history are better understood than others, in terms of its topography.For example, a relatively detailed picture of the city under Roman rule is achievable based on archaeological and textual evidence. 3However, less is known about the architecture of the city after this time, despite the survival of papyri written in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic that attest to the city's continued importance during the early Islamic period (i.e., the century or so following the conquest of 639-642 AD).Certain features of the city's Roman layout would still have been present during later centuries, especially its two principal thoroughfares: the main east-west road, Antinoe Street, and the main northsouth street, the Dromos of Hermes (to use its Ptolemaic and Roman name), which bisected each other at right-angles and divided the city into quarters.South of Antinoe Street, the remains of a large basilica (founded in the first half of the fifth century) survive, which is one of seven churches and a monastery in the city that would have continued to be important features of the city's built environment after the conquest. 4n light of the paucity of archaeological evidence for early Islamic el-Ashmunein, the following study aims to provide a glimpse into life in the city during the eighth century on the basis of a Coptic rental contract.This document contains a partial description of a house, namely the rooms rented by a man called Zacharias.Following an overview of the document and the space it describes, and drawing upon comparisons from other sources, I suggest ways in which the space can be re-populated, in terms of both material goods and people.The resulting spatial and social reconstruction of the house indicates how much can be extracted from seemingly limited sources, about the building itself and those who lived within it.The Document Today, the contract is divided between the British Library in London (Or.5993) and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.Together, they are referred to by the papyrological