A Sound Body and Mind

This chapter sets the pursuit of literary culture and a fit body by the more fortunate layers of Egyptian society side by side with the place of literacy and health in daily life. Given the traditional importance and widespread uses of written records in Greco‐ Roman Egypt, knowledge of reading and writing can be assumed to have been a valuable skill and a prestigious cultural attainment. The converse of “cultural” literacy on the Egyptian side was that attained by priests, who thereby had access to the knowledge and traditions of their ancestral culture in the form of ritual, scientific, and narrative texts. The connection between athletics and elite culture can be explained by its positive associations with leisure and with Greekness. Athletics had a distinctly Greek visual style and ritual: before starting to exercise, people fully undressed, oiled their naked bodies, and sprinkled them with dust.