Scholarship of Roman Egypt has taken a positive turn in the last decade, with a number of recent studies emphasising survival, success and local and imperial support for Egypt as a Roman province. K.'s book, which developed from his doctoral dissertation (Yale, 2008), is an important contribution in this scholarly revision. The book synthesises textual evidence for local theology, temple construction and religious festivals in Roman Thebes, with the general aim to provide a reconstruction of religious life. K. succeeds admirably, advancing a positive picture that markedly contrasts with long-held scholarly paradigms that denigrate religion in Egypt's Roman period. As K. aptly notes (p. 2), the study of this period has fallen outside the purview of Egyptologists and Classicists, remaining instead with those who specialise in Late Antiquity. With the focus on Late Antiquity, scholars used religion in the Roman period to explain the end of millennia of pharaonic religion and the ‘triumph’ of Christianity. K.'s contrasting approach keeps more with recent developments in the study of Roman Egypt that consider connections between the imperial present and pharaonic past rather than its Christian future, allowing him to contend that religious life in Roman Thebes continued to develop vibrantly with flourishing cults through official imperial and priestly support. With this revaluation, this book is an essential addition to a growing body of scholarship that reframes Roman Egypt as both a continually successful era of Egyptian history and an integral part of the Roman Empire.Footnote ¹

The book consists of a preface, seven chapters, a map of Theban temples, an impressive 55-page bibliography and a typological index that includes a list of texts translated by K. – many of which are published here for the first time. In this first comprehensive publication of texts associated with Roman-period Theban monuments, K. expertly brings together evidence to build a picture of thriving religious life in Roman Thebes.

The first three chapters are introductory in nature and comprise a cohesive overview to ideas held about Thebes in modern scholarship, and in ancient sources from both the wider Graeco-Roman world and within Egypt itself. Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’, provides a thematic overview of previous scholarship on religion in Roman Egypt. Whereas scholars generally see the annexation of Egypt in 30 b.c. under Octavian as the beginning of the decline of Egyptian religion (and culture in general), K. understands this paradigm as a ‘grossly exaggerated myth’ (p. 4). K. calls attention to the unreliability of Roman literary sources, which imagine a negative Egypt under Augustus (e.g. Suet. Aug. 2.18 and Dio Cass. 51.16.3–17.5). Rather, K. observes the ‘narrative of the decline and fall of Egyptian temples in the Roman period finds little support in archaeological or textual evidence’ (p. 2). In order to elucidate further the problematic use of classical sources as reliable accounts, Chapter 2, ‘Roman Visitors to Thebes’, brings together Roman authors who specifically mention Thebes. K. places most weight on those who probably visited Thebes, including Strabo (27–26 b.c.), Pausanias (c. a.d. 140–170) and Ammianus Marcellinus (after a.d. 360). Contrary to most modern interpretations of these sources, K. categorises these Roman-period accounts of Thebes as ‘quite positive or simply neutral’ (p. 30). Chapter 3, ‘The Reputation of Thebes’, turns to both Greek and Latin sources dealing with the Egyptian priesthood and Egyptian geographical inscriptions in Roman-period temples, the latter of which refer to Thebes as ‘mistress of cities’, and ‘heaven upon earth’. K. takes these epitaphs as proof that Thebes continued to be seen as the traditional religious capital of Egypt throughout the Roman period.

The next three chapters create a sourcebook for religion in Roman Thebes and serve as the core of the study. Chapter 4, ‘The Theban Pantheon’, provides the first catalogue of Theban deities in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. This catalogue documents 54 individual or groups of deities through detailed line-by-line translation of and commentary on temple texts, graffiti, ostraca, papyri and inscriptions on statues. K. reconstructs the Theban pantheon in the Roman period while connecting it to its pharaonic precedents, thereby demonstrating its continued vitality. Chapter 5, ‘Temple Activity in the Roman Period’, uses all known architectural and epigraphic evidence for Roman-period temple activity in Thebes from Augustus to Constantine to gauge the scope of official support for the Theban pantheon. K.'s meticulous compilation of temple building activity shows the extent to which individual Roman emperors supported the Theban area with many building projects. A tremendous value of this chapter is K.'s assessment of each emperor's building programme in Thebes in relation to his temple building programmes in the wider empire, which prove to be comparable. This conclusion counters the scholarly theory that Roman Egypt was unique and unrelated to the rest of the empire. Chapter 6, ‘Theban Festivals’, analyses the texts that contain the most complete references to the festivals at Thebes; these include temple inscriptions at Medinet Habu and Deir Shelwit and papyri P. Louvre N. 3176 (S) and P. Leiden II 32. From these sources, K. compiles a list of daily and decade festivals along with five annual festivals that were performed in Roman-period Thebes and discusses these festivals as evidence of the continued religious use of the structures catalogued in the previous chapter.

Chapter 7, ‘Epilogue’, suggests connections between the rich intellectual milieu of the Theban priesthood and philosophers in the wider empire. K. proposes a dialogue between Theban priests and international philosophers of the Second Sophistic because of allusions to Kneph / Kmeph in the works of third-century a.d. Abammon and Porphyry. Although speculative, this epilogue admirably calls attention to the connectedness of Egyptian religion and philosophy to the rest of the Roman Empire.

K.'s book is useful for a broader discussion of Egypt in the Roman period, even though the scope is limited to the ‘religious nome’ of Thebes from the reign of Augustus (30 b.c.–a.d. 14) to Constantine (a.d. 306–337). Although K. uses temple texts and inscribed objects as primary evidence, more thorough discussion of the material would be welcome, as architecture, relief, sculpture and religious donations only appear in relation to how they support texts, with the exception of corn mummies fashioned for Osiris during the month of Khoiak (p. 392). It is problematic that K. does not include images, line drawings or plans for any of the material under discussion. It would be equally helpful to include images of the original texts, as the majority are only given in transliteration, with a few in typeset hieroglyphic and demotic.

K. has produced an excellent sourcebook for the deities in the local pantheon of Roman Thebes, the temples constructed to house them and the festivals to honour them. This sourcebook conveniently makes available textual evidence for religion in Roman Thebes; it is well-written, includes copious footnotes and contains few copy-editing errors.