Isias Ἰσιάς
wife who kept the home · Ptolemaic Egypt · 2nd century BC
The wife of Hephaestion, who had withdrawn into the temple of Sarapis at Memphis. She kept the household and their child going alone through a time of soaring grain prices, and in the summer of 168 BC wrote asking him to come home.
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168 BC · To her husband Hephaestion, who had withdrawn into the temple of Sarapis at Memphis. At the end she says his mother too is taking it hard and asks him to come back, and adds: “Take care of yourself.”
But that you have not come home, when all the others who were shut in there have come, displeases me; for I have steered myself and your child through such a time, and have been driven to the last extremity by the price of grain …
ἐπὶ δὲ τῶι μὴ παραγίνεσθαί σε [π]ά[ντ]ων τῶν ἐκεῖ ἀπειλημμένων παραγεγο[νό]των ἀηδίζομαι ἕνεκα τοῦ ἐκ τοῦ τούτου καιροῦ ἐμαυτήν τε καὶ τὸ παιδίο[ν σ]ου διακεκυβερνηκυῖα καὶ εἰς πᾶν τι ἐληλυθυῖα διὰ τὴν τοῦ σίτου τιμὴν …
London Papyri I 42 (P.Lond. I 42 = UPZ I 59)
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