Books About Everyday Life in Ancient Civilizations

A. G. McDowell translates records that the residents of Deir el-Medina wrote for their own use. The laundry lists and love songs in the subtitle show how far those records run beyond the work of cutting royal tombs. Start here if you want to hear from people through the things they needed to remember, ask for, or say to one another.

Mary Beard picks through houses, shops, and places to eat in Pompeii to ask what it was like to move around a Roman town. Her account pauses over how we recognize a tavern or decide what people did in a particular room. Choose it for a lively introduction to both city life and the uncertainty of reading ruins.

Payson D. Sheets and his contributors examine the houses, kitchen, gardens, and workshops of Cerén, a Maya village in what is now El Salvador. Volcanic ash helped preserve the arrangement of a place where people cooked and worked. Read the excavation reports if you want to see how archaeologists build an account of home life from objects in position.

Jean Bottéro and his contributors follow people through kitchens and homes as well as the world of medicine and magic. A reader looking for the texture of an ancient city can compare household troubles with the ways people sought help. The variety makes it easy to begin with one subject and decide what you want to pursue.

Mu-chou Poo draws on excavated objects and written evidence to look at several sides of ancient Chinese daily life. Economics, law, and personal feeling sit in the same account. Choose it for a thematic introduction that makes room for both what people left in the ground and what they put in writing.

Shereen Ratnagar gives Harappan settlements a place within Bronze Age South Asia and its connections farther west. The comparison among sites, including Dholavira in the revised editions, helps a reader put life in a single settlement beside a much larger archaeological picture. Choose it when you want a compact regional overview.

Jeffrey Quilter uses objects made by the Moche of coastal Peru to investigate what their images meant. Ceramic figures and scenes give you something to look at closely, while the exhibition research asks who made and used such objects. Choose it to see the problems of interpreting daily life through a society’s visual record.

Philip Matyszak imagines a day in Rome, passing from one resident to another each hour. A watchman and a washerwoman bring parts of the city’s working day into view that can disappear in an account of public affairs. Choose it for a narrative way into Roman history before tackling a collection of original sources.

Cécile Michel translates letters and other documents from women in Assur and Kanesh. In family correspondence, the business of weaving and sending cloth can belong to the same conversation as household problems. Read it if you want to meet ancient people through the practical details they expected relatives and business partners to understand.

Donald P. Ryan moves through a day in Thebes by imagining an hour in the company of one person at a time, including a bread maker, a fisherman, and a midwife. The format makes it easy to see how occupations shaped different days in the same city. Try it as an approachable companion to books that present the surviving documents directly.

Sue Blundell uses legal texts, literature, and sculpture to ask what can be known about women in ancient Greece. The evidence for Athens is especially important, and much comes from men writing about women. Choose it if you want to see how a historian can ask about women’s lives while keeping the limits of those sources visible.

The contributors to this collection edited by Jon C. Lohse and Fred Valdez Jr. compare ways of living across Maya commoner settlements. One chapter asks how Classic Maya homesteads worked as farms, while others examine settlements in Belize. The comparisons complement studies of one village by showing how commoner households could differ from place to place.

Jane F. Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann assemble translated sources on the people and relationships that made up a Roman household. Documents on the position of enslaved people and freedpeople show how far the word household extends beyond immediate kin. Turn to it to read the evidence yourself on the difference between belonging to a home and holding power within it.

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer uses material from excavated Indus cities to describe technologies and work. The objects associated with crafts such as beadmaking give readers a way into activities that buildings alone would leave obscure. Choose it to look closely at how urban remains preserve the work that went on inside a city.

Joyce Tyldesley considers women’s work, marriage, religion, and grooming in ancient Egypt. Her account of women’s ability to hold and trade property gives a reader a concrete way to think about how power could operate in a household. Choose it if you want the domestic and economic sides of women’s lives in the same book.

Andrew Dalby follows the history of eating in the Greek world, beginning with evidence such as animal bones before turning to better-documented periods. The change in sources lets you see why historians can be more sure about some meals than others. Choose it when you want to start with food and see what it reveals about the people who served it.

The essays edited by Leonard H. Lesko look closely at the unusually well-documented village of Deir el-Medina. One contributor describes the craftspeople taking time away from work for village religious duties, including making beer for festivals. This is a useful follow-up to the residents’ own written records if you want more on how their work and neighborhood fit together.

Garrett Ryan starts short essays with questions such as how Greeks and Romans shaved or why trousers were unusual. The answers make a case for taking small routines seriously. Pick it up when you want a few pages about an ordinary activity that looks different once you know how it was done.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill examines how rooms and decoration regulated encounters inside houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum. He asks what owners wanted visitors to see and how work and leisure could occupy the same building. Choose this if the floor plans are the part of an excavation you would like to spend time learning how to read.

Jean Bottéro reads cuneiform evidence for cooking in ancient Mesopotamia. The recipes preserved on clay open questions about what a written dish assumes the cook already knows. Read this focused study when you want to follow one household activity all the way down to the unusual form in which it survived.