Karanis

Karanis (Greek: Καρανίς), located in modern Kom Aushim, was an agricultural town in Graeco-Roman Egypt, located in the northeast corner of the Fayum. "It was one of a number of towns established in the Arsinoite nome under Ptolemy II Philadelphus as part of a scheme to settle Greek mercenaries among the indigenous Egyptians and to exploit the potential fertile Fayum basin".

The earliest archaeological origins are at the South Temple and can be traced to the 1st century BC. It is from this point that the town expanded north when Augustus, having conquered Egypt and also recognizing the Fayum’s agricultural potential, sent workers to clean up the canals and restore the dikes that had fallen into decline, restoring productivity to the area. A Roman-style temple was then built on top of the foundations of the old temple at the beginning of the 1st century AD. During this period of rebuilding, a smaller, more Egyptian-style North Temple was also built. The South Temple was dedicated to the local crocodile gods, Pnepheros and Petesouchos, but there is no clear dedication in the North Temple.

The Fayum towns were settled by Roman veterans after Augustus conquered Egypt, though the small number of Latin papyri found in Karanis (only two) and the overwhelming number of Greek papyri from or concerning these veterans from this period suggest that these new soldiers may not have been culturally Roman but instead Greek, or at the very least from the Eastern empire. "The peace and political stability brought by Augustus and kept alive by his successors, meant prosperity for generations of landholders at Karanis well into the second century.

In the late second century, and again in the second quarter of the third, there were notable recessions that mirrored difficulties experienced by the Empire at large, houses had fallen down by the end of the 3rd century, and the town was completely abandoned by the early 5th century. The dry conditions that Karanis was left in are most suitable for the preservation of papyri, and it is for this that Karanis is most well known by archaeologists.

The papyri excavated are historically significant in that they come from the same place and time, all dating from the period between the reign of Diocletian and the 370s. Also, with Karanis being a relatively poor town, the documents and artifacts excavated "[provide] a microcosm of life as it was lived by ordinary people in Egypt under Greek and Roman rule," and provide evidence of the whole of Egypt’s relationship to the Empire of Rome. The papyri contain mostly tax records, which is how archaeologists have determined that Karanis and its veterans were mostly poor, self-sufficient farmers who did not have much contact with other towns in the region.

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Wikipedia