Life in Hellenistic Egypt Hellenistic Egypt was very different from the Egypt of the earlier times. The pharaoh still ruled in Egypt, though he spoke in Greek. It was still a highly bureaucratized society, although the Greeks were in charge. So, how do we know so much about Hellenistic Egypt? Alexandria was an important city in Hellenistic Egypt and it was still an important city in Byzantine times and remained so until the Arab conquest in the 7 th century A.D. (Image: Luigi Mayer/Public domain) The Use of Papyri in Hellenistic Egypt We know more about daily life in Hellenistic Egypt than we do about any other part of the ancient Greek world at any other time. That’s because it has yielded tens of thousands of papyri comprising birth certificates, death certificates, contracts, leases, wills, receipts, marriage contracts, lists of various kinds, complaints to officials, tax returns, lawsuits, divorce decrees, and so on.