How were letters delivered in the ancient world before street addresses?

Before systematic street addresses existed, letters reached recipients by carrying precise, on-the-ground directions that guided local deliverers to the addressee’s location. An extant papyrus fragment provides a concrete example of this practice: the text itself included enough identifying detail to let a local messenger find the recipient. The underlying argument is straightforward and practical - postal delivery in the ancient world depended on descriptive directions and shared local knowledge rather than numbered streets or formal addressing systems.

The wider evidence base reinforces how common letter-writing and such delivery practices were: Romans sent large volumes of correspondence, and roughly 10% of surviving Greco-Roman texts from Egypt are letters, showing the genre’s prominence in the documentary record. The survival of papyri with these directional instructions demonstrates a working system where messengers, neighbors, or civic networks used the descriptive cues within letters to complete delivery, making organized street addressing unnecessary for everyday communication.