You may write an essay on a topic of your choice, but it must EITHER be about a theme or problem after the Roman conquest of Egypt OR a comparative paper tracing an institution, theme, problem, phenomenon, document type, etc. from the Ptolemaic through the Roman period (i.e., at least half the paper should be about Roman Egypt and the emphasis should be on change and/or continuity into the Roman period.) This is, therefore, a good opportunity to follow up on something that you may have found interesting in class ( a good starting point may be one of the texts or objects studied in class, or one of the study questions from a section assignment, e.g., Horace, Juvenal, Roman bureaucracy, resistance texts, early Christian texts, etc., since there is bibliography associated with the content on the course website) or to get a synoptic or diachronic view of something you find interesting from a wider angle (e.g., the status of women, resistance, cultural appropriation, religious practice, etc.; again, the bibliography associated with the content modules is the place to start). Your paper should have a strong thesis articulated in the first paragraph, use at least three (3) pieces of primary evidence, and cite at least one (1) secondary source.
