Shoes, Sickness, and Sisters: The (In)visibility of Christian Women from Late Antique Oxyrhynchus

The aim of this contribution is to determine where and how women become visible in papyrus sources relating to Christians from the Middle Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, modern-day al-Bahnasa.¹ The half million papyri accidentally preserved on its ancient trash heaps make Oxyrhynchus the best-documented city from antiquity. Working at the intersection of papyrology, early Christian studies, and feminist historiography, I am particularly interested in Oxyrhynchus in the third and fourth centuries of our era, a turbulent time that witnessed impactful changes. This is the period when the people inhabiting the regions of the Roman Empire gradually shifted to favor Christianity.