The vocabulary of care and healing in the Greek private letters of Byzantine Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Amid the corpus of Greek papyri discovered in the sands of Egypt, some fifty letters dated from the end of the 3rd century CE to the 7th century refer to a disease which afflicts an animal or a private individual – either the sender or the recipient of the letter, or to a third party. Seventeen of these also provide details on care and healing. How do these seventeen letters, which ostensibly do not derive from the medical world, describe the evolution of a disease, and especially its outcome when it is fortunate for the sick person? What are the healing strategies implemented by these individuals? These are the questions that I try to answer, while emphasising the contribution of these documents to the history of health and disease in Byzantine Egypt.