What was life like in a village of the Fayum when Egypt had long been part of the Roman Empire? Papyri excavated in the 1920s by the University of Michigan might give some answers to this question. Nowadays, these papyri from the village Karanis (north-western Fayum) are stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Some tell the story of the 2nd century AD tax collector, Socrates, his wife Sempronia Gemellam, and their children. Socrates read Greek literature and was particularly interested in Homer and the comedies. This family was probably a typical upper-class family of Karanis with both Graco-Egyptian and Roman background.
The so-called Michigan papyri are currently studied and prepared for publication by a DAI Cairo project.
Read more about the project at https://www.dainst.org/projekt/-/project-display/63492
