Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt

Description

The historical studies of this second volume provide an examination of the economic and social history of Ptolemaic Egypt. The salt-tax registers of P. Count not only throw light on key aspects of the fiscal policy of the Greek pharaohs but also provide the best information for family and household structure for the Western world before the fifteenth century AD. The makeup of the population is thoroughly analysed here in both demographic and occupational terms. A constant theme running throughout is the impact of the Greeks on the indigenous population of Egypt. This is traced in cultural policies, in administrative geography, in the realm of stock-rearing and in the changing religious affiliations traceable through the names that parents gave their children. The extent to which Egypt is typical of the Hellenistic world more widely is the final topic addressed.

Willy Clarysse is a Fellow of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium and teaches in the Departments of Classics and the Ancient Near East at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He is the author of Prosopographia Ptolemaica IX, Addenda et corrigenda au volume III (1981), The Petrie Papyri (second edition), I. The Wills (1991) and of the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (htpp://ldab.arts.kuleuven.ac.be). Dorothy J. Thompson, a Fellow of the British Academy, teaches ancient history in the University of Cambridge where she is Isaac Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and a Fellow of Girton College. She is the author of Memphis under the Ptolemies (1988).

Review of the hardback: 'Good books are common. Great books are rare, and rarer still are great books that have the potential of moving scholarship in a new direction. Such a work is Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt ... By reconstructing 427 households containing 1,271 adults and situating them in their socio-economic context, they have laid the indispensable foundation for all future studies of the social history of Ptolemaic Egypt. All historians of Hellenistic Egypt are in their debt.' Ancient West and East Review of the hardback: 'What we have here is an enormous and well-written body of scholarship by two leading scholars in the field of many aspects of the population of (early) Ptolemaic Egypt. Discussion ranges from the tiniest detail in straightening fibers in a papyrus document to an overall comparison of the Ptolemaic situation with that in other pre-modern societies, and everything in between. These volumes are a must-read for anybody interested in Ptolemaic Egypt, or the Hellenistic world at large. ... This is, indeed, a wonderful piece of scholarship, setting the framework of Ptolemaic society, and providing future studies with a strong foundation to keep adding new material.' Arthur Verhoogt, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor