This chapter introduces slavery during the three centuries of Ptolemaic rule in Egypt for which papyri, recycled in mummy casing or discovered archived together, provide a wealth of texts in both Greek and Egyptian Demotic. Greek settlers brought a developed form of slavery to Egypt. Traditional forms of dependence, however, continued in domestic as in temple contexts, where sacred slaves were dedicated to a god. The terminology of slavery is scrutinised and Greek city law codes examined for information on slaves. The third-century BC archive of Zenon provides many details on where slaves came from and how they were acquired. Slaves are mainly found in a domestic context but there is some evidence for workshop employment, especially in textiles; evidence for their use in agriculture is minimal. To gain their freedom slaves might benefit from testamentary grants but running away was the more usual method.

This chapter reconstructs the typical physical form of the rural sanctuaries of Roman Hieradoumia, as well as their landholdings and distinctive labour regimes. The exiguous evidence from excavations and surveys is set alongside a lengthy inscription from a sanctuary of Apollo Kisauloddenos that describes the sacred buildings and their associated furniture. The mechanisms by which these sanctuaries accumulated their large landholdings are discussed, with a focus on the evidence for semi-compulsory ‘tithes’ on secular land-transactions. Sacred woodlands and groves were a standard feature of sanctuaries’ landholdings, and poaching from these woodlands was very widespread. Although these sanctuaries had a small permanent staff of sacred officials, much of the rural labour on their estates was provided through the Hieradoumian institution of ‘sacred slavery’, under which villagers were expected to offer their labour as hierodouloi for a fixed term of service. Low-level resistance to this compulsory labour service was endemic, illustrating the structural tensions that existed between Hieradoumian villagers and the powerful sanctuaries of the region.