PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS AND HIS WORLD
PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS AND
HIS WORLD
EDITED BY
PAUL MCKECHNIE AND PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
CONTENTS
Preface .........................................................................................................................vi
Contributors .................................................................................................................ix
Abbreviations ...............................................................................................................x
Introduction ..................................................................................................................1
Paul McKechnie
ALPHA: A new morning opened … in the lecture-room
Ptolemaic Royal Patronage ........................................................................................10
Oswyn Murray
BETA: From Zeus let us begin ...
Economic Reforms in the Mid-Reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus ................................31
Dorothy J. Thompson
The Foreign Policy of Ptolemy II ...............................................................................46
Céline Marquaille
A Re-Examination of the Chremonidean War ...........................................................75
James L. O’Neil
The Unbalanced Relationship between Ptolemy II and Pyrrhus of Epirus ..............108
Geoff W. Adams
OGIS 1 266: Kings and Contracts in the Hellenistic World .....................................123
Matthew F. Trundle
GAMMA: Countless are the lands... but no land brings forth so much as low-lying Egypt
Egyptians in the Hellenic Woodpile: Were Hekataios of Abdera and Diodoros
Sikeliotes Right to see Egypt in the Origins of Greece? ..........................................142
Martin Bernal
Elephants for Ptolemy II: Ptolemaic Policy in Nubia in the Third Century BC .....161
Stanley M. Burstein
Piety and Diplomacy in Apollonius’ Argonautica ...................................................177
Anatole Mori
Maresha in the Reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus ....................................................202
Amos Kloner
Herakleopolis Magna under Philadelphus ................................................................215
Erja Salmenkivi
DELTA: How has it not occurred to any of the historians or poets to make mention of
such enormous achievements?
Ptolemy Philadelphus and Jewish Writings: Aristobulus and Pseudo-Aristeas as
Examples of Alexandrian Jewish Approaches .........................................................225
Johann Cook
Sexuality and Ptolemy’s Greek Bible: Genesis 1-3 in Translation: ‘... Things which
they Altered for King Ptolemy’ (Genesis Rabbah 8.11) ..........................................242
William R.G. Loader
Ptolemy Philadelphus: a New Moses ......................................................................270
Paul McKechnie
Philadelphus’ Alexandria as Cradle of Biblical Historiography ............................287
Philippe Guillaume
Gendering Healing both Human and Divine: the Case of Sirach 38:1-15 ...............299
Elaine M. Wainwright
EPSILON: ... and with Zeus make end, ye Muses
Innovations in Ancient Garb? Hieroglyphic Texts from the Time of Ptolemy Philadelphus ..318
Joachim Friedrich Quack
The Problem of the Ptolemaic Sibling Marriage: a Case of Dynastic Acculturation? .....337
Kostas Buraselis
Through a Woman’s Eyes, and in a Woman’s Voice: Ihweret as Focalizor in the First
Tale of Setne Khaemwas ...........................................................................................350
Steve Vinson
Bilistiche and the Prominence of Courtesans in the Ptolemaic Tradition ................405
Daniel Ogden
The God Serapis, his Cult and the Beginnings of the Ruler Cult in Ptolemaic Egypt ...444
Stefan Pfeiffer
Bibliography .............................................................................................................470
Index .........................................................................................................................509
PREFACE
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, king of Egypt from 282BC to 246, has hardly received the
scholarly attention which his importance in the history of the Hellenistic age would
merit. A conventional claim, at the beginning of a book about Ptolemy II
Philadelphus, and the conventional follow-up would be to say that we, the authors of
this volume, have now done our part to rectify such an inexplicable lapse. But in this
case the lapse is not inexplicable. Little quoted these days, the thundering rhetoric of
W.W. Tarn is, I infer, still forming assumptions:1
[Ptolemy Soter’s] son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, was of a very different nature.
Alone of the kings of his time he was no warrior; his dealings with the war-god
had consisted in putting two of his brothers to death in good Oriental fashion.
The prince who presided over Egypt’s age of gold was but a sickly creature, a
devotee of pleasure in all its forms, ever seeking new pastimes and new
sensations, whether among his mistresses, or in the gorgeous pleasure-fleet that
he kept on the Nile, or in his menagerie of strange animals from far-off lands;
one who exhausted every form of luxury, and who, prostrated by gout, envied
the simple joys of the beggars beneath his window, even while he dabbled in
search after the elixir that should make him immortal. Extremely able,
nevertheless; a man of high culture; the first diplomat of his time; governing
Egypt well, from the point of view of the Macedonian ruling caste, and
amassing from it great treasures, as from a well-managed estate; distinguished
above all by the encouragement which, following his father’s example, he gave
to learning, art, and science, whereby he has made his name famous. His own
tastes seem to have been opposed to war, and the first ten years of his reign
were uniformly pacific; secure in the command of the Aegean and the friendship
of Sparta, there appeared to be no reason for his interference in Greece so long
as Antigonos [Gonatas] sought no conquests there. In the years following 276
men may conceivably have begun to dream that peace, so long an exile, had
returned to the world.
Our task in these pages includes, but also goes far beyond, saying that Philadelphus’
kingdom was not altogether as Tarn imagined it.
1
W.W. Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas (Oxford, 1913), 216-7.
PREFACE
vii
In 2004 a conversation between Bridget Buxton and myself, which arose from
the task of teaching a course on Egypt and the Hellenistic World, progressed to
speculation over whether it would be possible to arrange a conference in which we
would consider Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, from the viewpoints of
scholars across as wide a range of specialisms as possible. An interdisciplinary
discussion, we believed, was vital. We shared a sense that still in our times studies,
respectively, of the Greek and Egyptian worlds remain too much insulated from each
other--and even within the classical domain, that Alexandria, as the home of Greek
literature, and Alexandria, as the heart of the empire of the Ptolemies, too seldom
appear in our scholarly literature to be one city. The Alexandria of biblical and Jewish
studies might, to a superficial reader, seem like yet a third place.
The New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, via the
Royal Society of New Zealand, provided a major conference grant, and the University
of Auckland via its International Strategic Opportunities Fund and the Faculty of Arts,
provided funds to a similar amount. The Greek Embassy in Wellington funded a visit
to New Zealand by Prof. Kostas Buraselis. His Excellency the Ambassador of the
Hellenic Republic spoke at the opening of proceedings, and later entertained
participants to dinner at a fine restaurant. I wish to thank these patrons of learning
most heartily; ars mercede viget.
During the Auckland Ptolemy Philadelphus conference (13-16 July 2005)
Martin Bernal, Joachim Quack and Oswyn Murray were kind enough to give public
lectures under the auspices of the University of Auckland Centre for Continuing
Education. Nearly all conference participants travelled great distances and laboured
long in the service of scholarship, but these three deserve especial recognition.
viii
PAUL MACKECHNIE
I wish to thank Dorothy Thompson and Joachim Quack for discussing with me
ways in which the roster of contributions could be strengthened beyond the already
fine material presented in Auckland. Stanley Burstein and Stefan Pfeiffer have written
chapters for this book subsequent to the conference. Bridget Buxton’s appointment at
the University of Rhode Island would have left me as sole editor; but when the task
was too great for me Philippe Guillaume offered to share it. “If a man is alone, an
assailant may overpower him, but two can resist.”2 Douglas Sutton, Dean of Arts,
gave indispensable counsel on how to shape the proposal to the Royal Society of New
Zealand, and shared other special insights (“No academic understands the finances of
this University, but ...”). Besides Bridget Buxton, sine qua non, I wish also to thank
Pat Wheatley, Graham Zanker, Jennifer Hellum, Alan Cameron, Robert Hayward,
R.A. Hazzard, Malcolm Choat, Philippa Black, John Morrow, Anne Mackay, Greg
Fox, Danielle King, Pauline Sheddan, Pauline Brill, Alisa Bowden and Andrew Millar
for their help.
P.McK.
Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia
October 2007
2
Ecclesiastes 4.12.
CONTRIBUTORS∗
Geoff W. Adams is Associate Lecturer in the School of Classics, History and
Religion, University of New England.
Martin Bernal is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean History,
Cornell University.
Kostas Buraselis is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Athens.
Stanley M. Burstein is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, California
State University, Los Angeles.
Johann Cook is Professor of Ancient Studies, University of Stellenbosch.
Philippe Guillaume is Professor of Old Testament at the Near East School of
Theology, Beirut.
Amos Kloner is Professor in the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan
University.
William R.G. Loader is Research Professor in Theology at Murdoch University.
Paul McKechnie is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of
Auckland.
Céline Marquaille holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in the
Department of Classics, King’s College, London.
Anatole Mori is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies, University
of Missouri-Columbia.
Oswyn Murray is a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Daniel Ogden is Professor of Classics and Ancient History in the University of
Exeter.
James L. O'Neil is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History, University of Sydney.
Stefan Pfeiffer is Projektmitarbeiter SFB in the Abteilung Alte Geschichte,
Universität Trier.
Joachim Friedrich Quack is Professor in the Ägyptologisches Institut, Ruprecht-KarlsUniversität, Heidelberg.
Erja Salmenkivi is a Researcher in the Department of Classical Philology, University
of Helsinki.
Dorothy J. Thompson is a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, where she used to
direct studies in Classics.
Matthew F. Trundle is Senior Lecturer in Classics in the Victoria University of
Wellington.
Steve Vinson is an Assistant Professor of History in the State University of New
York, New Paltz.
Elaine M. Wainwright is Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow Professor in Theology in the
University of Auckland
∗
The present tense refers to appointments at the time of the Auckland conference, 13-16 July 2005.
ABBREVIATIONS
ANRW
Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und
Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung: 93 volumes
(Berlin, 1972-97).
CAH
Cambridge Ancient History: first edition, 12 volumes, 1923-39;
second edition, 14 volumes, 1982-2006 (Cambridge).
Choix
Jean Pouilloux, Choix d’inscriptions grecques: textes,
traductions et notes (Paris, 1960).
Corpus
Inscriptionum
Indicarum
Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum: 7 volumes (New Delhi, 18771998).
FGrHist
Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 15
volumes (Leiden, 1954-99).*
IC
Federico Halbherr and Margherita Guarducci, Inscriptiones
Creticae: 4 volumes (Rome, 1935-50).
IG
Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873-2003)
IMilet
Inschriften von Milet, in the series Milet: Ergebnisse der
Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen seit dem Jahr 1899 (Berlin,
1899-2006)
IStratonikeia
M. Çetin Ṣahin (ed.), Die Inschriften von Stratonikeia: 3
volumes (Bonn, 1981-90)
OGIS
Wilhelm Dittenberger, Orientis graeci inscriptiones selectae:
Supplementum Sylloges inscriptionum graecarum: 2 volumes
(Leipzig, 1903-05)
RE
Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft:
83 volumes (Stuttgart, 1894-1980)
Syll.3
Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum: third
edition, 4 volumes (Leipzig, 1915-24)
Papyri cited as per the Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca
and Tablets (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html).
Other abbreviations as in American Journal of Archaeology Instructions for
Contributors (http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/Instructions_for_Contributors.pdf).
*
References given by author number and fragment number, not volume and page.
INTRODUCTION
Paul McKechnie
An anonymous referee, having read through this book in draft, wrote that ‘If [Ptolemy
Philadelphus] were a Roman emperor, for sure he would have received his own
monograph by now.’ We may hope that heaven will permit such a work to be written,1
but this book is not it. It is, however, perhaps a sort of Vorarbeit; and if so, I trust it
will point in the direction of the ground-breaking kind of monograph which could be
written, now in the twenty-first century, when a previously unparalleled diversity of
materials relevant to Ptolemy Philadelphus and his world has become accessible.
There are in my opinion two great (if flawed) twentieth-century books about
Philadelphus—but he is the professed subject of neither. They are P.M. Fraser’s
Ptolemaic Alexandria and W.W. Tarn’s Antigonos Gonatas. In the preface, I quoted
Tarn’s character-sketch of Philadelphus, barely more than an aside in Antigonos
Gonatas; but as a biography of an important third-century ruler, that book opened a
new historical agenda, above all with the chapters on ‘The teachers of Antigonos’ and
‘Antigonos and his circle’, delineating Stoic-influenced court life at Pella: the poets
Aratos of Soloi, Alexander the Aetolian and Antagoras of Rhodes; the Stoic
philosophers Persaios of Kition and Philonides of Thebes; the Cynic Bion the
Borysthenite, the Sceptic Timon of Phlius; Hieronymus of Cardia, the greatest Greek
1
Antidotes to unwarranted optimism are not difficult to find. Daniel Ogden observes that the supposed
‘vast outpouring, in many languages, of special studies and monographs concerned with this period’ to
which W.W. Tarn and G.T. Griffith referred in 1952 in the third edition of their Hellenistic
Civilization, as having supervened since the book was first published in 1930, was ‘a rhetorical
decency … a commonplace … a myth’ (The Hellenistic World [London, 2002], p.x).
2
PAUL MACKECHNIE
historian of the third century.2 Tarn conceded that the circle was ‘held together by the
king’s own personality’, and that Antigonos ‘went very near to shaping a new thing
for Macedonia’3—(that is, failed to); but he wrote of the glory of Alexandria being
‘shown forth in her mathematicians and astronomers, her geographers and physicians,
her scholars and encyclopaedists’, while contending that ‘the immediate future lay
with the philosophers’,4 some of whom (most importantly Bion) had Antigonos for
their patron. The kingdom of Ptolemy II is an inescapable presence in the background
to every page of Antigonos Gonatas, up to the thirteenth chapter (‘The reckoning with
Egypt’). That reckoning ended triumphantly for Antigonos, in victory at Andros in
245 over Ptolemy III: Après moi, the ghost of Philadelphus might have reflected, le
déluge.
P.M. Fraser did not confine the scope of Ptolemaic Alexandria to
Philadelphus’ reign, but there, as in Antigonos Gonatas, the same ghost is ubiquitous,
above all in the detailed attention paid to Library and Museum and their poets and
literary scholars. Giuseppe Giangrande in a review drew attention gently to how little
the book contains about Alexandrian law, or the economic life of the inhabitants of
the city—but spoke out forthrightly against the degree to which Fraser made
Alexandria a special case on the literary plane: ‘a feature which inevitably vitiates
Fraser’s approach,’ he wrote, ‘… is the separation which he has made between
Alexandria and the rest of the Hellenistic world.’5 Fraser’s Alexandria is the Greek
Alexandria of the poets and critics—the Alexandria created above all by Philadelphus,
though Soter laid foundations both literally and metaphorically—the Alexandria
which succeeded to Athens’ place as the beating heart of the Greek intellectual world.
2
W.W. Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas, (Oxford, 1913), 15-36 and 223-56.
Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas, 225.
4
Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas, 223.
5
Giuseppe Giangrande, review of P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (JHS 94 [1974], 233-5 at 234).
3
INTRODUCTION
3
Concerns which are implicit in Antigonos Gonatas and Ptolemaic Alexandria
become explicit in this book—but that is not all, because here the conception of
Ptolemy Philadelphus’ world gains greater breadth: it is not only the intellectual
circle, nor only the metropolis. The aim is to give patches of colour to that world in
some of its diversity—we contributors know how much more could be said—by
focusing on Egyptians as well as Greeks, and on the Ptolemaic realm outside Egypt as
well as within, and on the Jews in the life they led in their community, not only when
they interacted with their worldly governors. Nor has it escaped our attention that the
Greek-Egyptian project, the Ptolemaic project, had at Philadelphus’ time both an
imperfectly known Vorleben, in Greek-Egyptian contacts extending back before the
Homeric period, and a future Nachleben whose impact on our civilization largely
remains to be expounded.
OSWYN MURRAY, in the first chapter, on Ptolemaic royal patronage, draws
attention to a key moment at the beginning of the modern world’s encounter with the
age of the Ptolemies: the inaugural lecture given by Christian Gottlob Heyne in the
University of Göttingen in 1763. Heyne’s lecture and its context under the Georgian
monarchy furnish a way into discussion of Theocritus Idyll 17 and its background: ‘a
unique and complex courtly culture and literature’.
The regions of this book are named after the five regions of Alexandria. In
deference to the stature of Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria as a monumentum aere
perennius, MURRAY’s chapter—which ends by reflecting on how Alexandria and
Alexandrianism became figuratively isolated from the world around them—stands
alone in Alpha. Beta, the region where the royal palace stood, is concerned with
government and war. DOROTHY J. THOMPSON looks beyond the pain endured by the
king who (in Tarn’s words) ‘envied the simple joys of the beggars beneath his
4
PAUL MACKECHNIE
window’, and explores the development under Philadelphus of the census and the land
survey, putting into broader context her and Willy Clarysse’s findings in Counting the
People in Hellenistic Egypt (2006), with a focus on the period from the mid-260s to
the mid-250s: discussing the salt tax and the apomoira, and their place in the internal
economic system of Egypt. CÉLINE MARQUAILLE looks beyond Egypt, commenting
on how modern scholarship has been quick to categorize Ptolemaic activity outside
Egypt under ‘foreign policy’, while being slower to think ‘foreign’ things which the
Seleucids did outside Syria. Hers is a substantial and new analysis of Ptolemaic
activity, not only in the Mediterranean and Aegean, but also in the Red Sea area.
In his re-examination of the Chremonidean war, JAMES L. O’NEIL discusses
the alignment between Ptolemaic history and that absorbing third-century puzzle, the
Athenian archon-list. The chapter argues for an improved narrative and chronology of
the war, and places transactions between Athens, Sparta and Philadelphus in the
context of third-century preoccupations with benefaction and freedom. GEOFF W.
ADAMS uses relations between Philadelphus and Pyrrhus of Epirus to explore the
place of friendship (φιλία) between rulers among the factors which were operative in
forming foreign policy. MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE, in the last Beta chapter, approaches
post-Alexander ‘interactive kingship’ with a comparative study focusing on
conditions of service for mercenaries, and their relationships with the rulers who
recruited them.
Region Gamma consists of local studies. First, MARTIN BERNAL engages the
much-debated issue of the ‘past life’ of the Egyptian-Greek connection, drawing his
arguments from language—especially, the language of ritual and priesthood. The
government of Egypt was hellenized further under Philadelphus, BERNAL argues, but
INTRODUCTION
5
even deeply Hellenic features of Hellenism may have had Egyptian roots: he explores
the problem of the origins of the Eleusinian mysteries, on a linguistic basis. Next,
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN studies Philadelphus’ policy in Nubia/Kush, where a great
military campaign in the 270s was the beginning of substantial involvement lasting
many decades, directed above all to catching elephants to be deployed in the
Ptolemaic army of Egypt—and to creating the infrastructure needed to maintain and
transport the animals once caught.
ANATOLE MORI in the third Gamma chapter argues for typological links
between Philadelphus (and his treatment of foreigners in the real world) and Alcinous
in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica; the epic offers, she argues, ‘a distillation of
Ptolemaic ideology’. AMOS KLONER, next, offers a study of Edomite (Idumaean)
Maresha in the third century: a site where over sixty-seven per cent of the Ptolemaic
coins found date from the reign of Philadelphus. KLONER gives a case study of the
Ptolemaic realm in action in Philadelphus’ time: neither Greek nor Egyptian, the
Edomites at Mareshah in the early third century buried their dead in tombs with Greek
architectural elements, and Greek inscriptions. Ostraca show ongoing use of Aramaic
in the Maresha community, but Greek names were common, and Greek had taken
over as early as Philadelphus’ time as the language used in funerary inscriptions.
Lastly in the Gamma region, ERJA SALMENKIVI writes of Herakleopolis Magna, a
nome-capital in middle Egypt under Philadelphus: a place particularly valuable
because not distinguished by quick change in the Ptolemaic period (as the Fayyum
was), and not an apparent centre of anti-Ptolemaic feeling or activity—in short, very
much a normal Egyptian town. Papyri of Herakleopolite origin give evidence of the
local importance of military settlers, and cast another light on the hunting and
transporting of elephants.
6
PAUL MACKECHNIE
Delta was the region of Alexandria with the highest number of Jewish
inhabitants, so in this book Delta is the home of the chapters which concern biblical
studies, and in particular the Septuagint, a unique achievement of Philadelphus’ reign.
The authors of these chapters have seen that achievement as integral within
Philadelphus’ shaping of his realm. The implication is that influence flowed in both
directions. JOHANN COOK tackles the issue of influence by analysing LXX Proverbs in
contrast with the Book of Aristeas and the work of Aristobulus, the second-century
BC Alexandrian Jewish philosopher. WILLIAM R.G. LOADER addresses the text of
LXX Genesis where it narrates the creation of the human being, examining it with a
view to expounding the translators’ attitudes towards sexuality, and the possible
influence on them of Plato’s Timaeus. On the long-discussed question of whether the
Septuagint translation was made by the Jewish community for its own needs, or really
commissioned by the Greek king, LOADER tends towards the latter view.
I myself, PAUL MCKECHNIE, engage another matter arising from the
Septuagint and the circumstances under which the translation was made, drawing (as
COOK, LOADER and GUILLAUME also do) on the Book of Aristeas. I propose that the
giving of the Septuagint in the Book of Aristeas is patterned on the giving of the Law
in Exodus—on lines paralleling how other Hellenistic Jewish narratives riff on Bible
stories. In the fourth Delta chapter, PHILIPPE GUILLAUME discusses the LXX
Historical Books (in Hebrew, the ‘Former Prophets’), examining how the ‘Biblical
Chronography’ became scripture, and how the texts concerned were organized at
Alexandria (‘the Medina of biblical canons’) to give the succession of eras which
remains evident in the Bible today. The work of ELAINE WAINWRIGHT also probes the
interface between Hebrew community and Hellenistic world, examining Sirach 38.115, written probably in the early second century BC, and how the text reflects and
INTRODUCTION
7
does not reflect the impact the Hellenistic world has made on the Jewish community.
Healing, biblically figured as coming from God, was in practice also the concern in
Israel of women and men expert in folk healing, while reliance on physicians and
medicines was discouraged in prophetic tradition and biblical text. The Sirach text
praises physicians and explains their skills as part of God’s work in the world, but the
author’s agenda did not extend to writing supportively of women healers, and while
the medical profession is presented positively to the Jewish reader, two or three
generations after the translation of the Septuagint, healing is strongly gendered male.
In the Epsilon region, JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK gives a new survey of
Ptolemy II’s involvement with indigenous language and writing. The Mendes stela
and the Pithom stela are expounded in detail, together with a fragmentary monument
originating from Sais, and discussion proceeds to the matter of the origin of the
practice of convening priestly synods from all over Egypt, regular later in the
Ptolemaic period, and the development in the dynamic of relations between king and
priests beyond the Königsnovelle model. KOSTAS BURASELIS presents a new solution
to the long-debated question of what lay behind Ptolemy Philadelphus’ decision to
marry his full sister Arsinoe II, evoking a combination of personal feeling and raison
d’état.
STEVE VINSON’s chapter, almost a monograph in itself, expounds the ‘First
Tale of Setne Khaemwas’ in semiotic and narratological terms. This story dates from
the Ptolemaic period and demonstrates interesting developments in Egyptian fictional
narrative. Egyptians still developed their culture on their own terms in the years of
Ptolemaic overlordship; and VINSON ends by discussing possible influence of
Egyptian narrative on the Greek novel. DANIEL OGDEN, in his chapter about Bilistiche
and Philadelphus’ other courtesans, gives a new summary of Bilistiche’s life and her
8
PAUL MACKECHNIE
importance at court, and discusses the possible relevance of Philadelphus’ marriage
with his sister to the number and prominence of courtesans associated with him in the
literary tradition. STEFAN PFEIFFER, finally, discusses Serapis-cult and ruler-cult, and
their place in the developing system of Ptolemaic government under Philadelphus.
Most of the studies in this book are clearly and specifically related to the time
of Philadelphus. A minority deals with texts which cannot be dated with precision, or
questions whose answers (and their implications) relate to Egypt in the Hellenistic
period more broadly. The decision to group these studies with the rest was taken
reflectively (I have in view at this point particularly the chapters by BERNAL,
WAINWRIGHT and VINSON): not indeed with any intention of implicitly confining use
of those chapters to people whose aim is to study Philadelphus, but because of what
each of them has to offer to an interdisciplinary conception of Philadelphus’ world.
This book, to sum up, is not directed merely towards making it possible to
write a fairer character-sketch of Ptolemy Philadelphus than Tarn did in 1913, or one
more in keeping with the spirit of our age—though to do so would be a worthy
aspiration. Its ethos from beginning to end, we its authors claim, is interdisciplinary:
each facet of the gem casts its own light on Philadelphus’ world—a world which was
Greek and Egyptian, but also Jewish, Nubian, Edomite and more; secular and
religious; literate and illiterate; rich and poor; female and male. In offering Ptolemy II
Philadelphus and his World to the twenty-first century world, in conclusion, we
decisively reject Callimachus’ prejudice about a big book being a big problem (µέγα
βιβλίον, µέγα.
SECTION ALPHA
A new morning opened … in the lecture-room
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
Oswyn Murray
Six years before Captain Cook sighted New Zealand the Ptolemaic Age was
discovered. In 1763 Winckelmann’s friend Christian Gottlob Heyne had just been
appointed Professor of Eloquence at the University of Göttingen at the age of 34; he
presented an academic prolusio on the twenty-sixth anniversary of the inauguration of
the Academia Georgia Augusta by George II of England and Hanover.1 The occasion
was also a significant moment in the history of the university, for the speech
celebrated its liberation from French control (1760-62) and the victory of Frederick
the Great and George III in the Seven Years War.
Heyne’s theme was ‘De Genio Saeculi Ptolemaeorum’, on the character of the
age of the Ptolemies:
Hoc est de ingenio eius aetatis, de studiorum, quam tum potissimum viguerunt,
genere et ratione, et ingeniorum natura ac peculiari charactere, caussisque quae
quidem harum rerum probabiles afferri possunt.
That is on the character of that age, on the type and form of the studies that
flourished then, the nature and particular characters of the individual talents, and
the causes which can with all probability be adduced for these things. (p. 79)
1
Chr.G. Heyne, Opuscula Academica Collecta (Göttingen 1785) vol. i. 76-134; the treatise is divided
into two parts, the actual speech delivered, and the fuller published account of his researches. I have
used the copy in Balliol College Library, from the books of Benjamin Jowett; after the conference in
Auckland, Graham Zanker and I decided that we would publish a translation of this little treatise with
an introduction and commentary. On Heyne as a historian see now M. Heidenreich, Christian Gottlob
Heyne und die Alte Geschichte (Munich-Leipzig 2006); she mentions but does not discuss the work.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
11
Heyne’s account has been completely forgotten;2 yet it is full and exemplary. He
discusses the effects of Alexander’s conquests; his general characterisation of
Alexandrianism stresses its ‘elegance, charm and amiable simplicity’ (elegantiam,
amoenitatem et amabilem simplicitatem), ‘the clear pure and elegant diction’
(orationem nitidam, puram et elegantem) but warns that there is ‘nothing lofty, nobleminded or sublime, no boldness in these writers’ (in iis nihil celsum, generosum et
sublime, nulla audacia); they hug the shore and beat the ground with their wings—
and here he cites Longinus 33 on Apollonius and Theocritus (pp. 79-81).
Of oratory there was little: ‘for no-one would naturally expect that the free
speech of oratory could flourish much in a kingdom or a court’ (iam in regno et aula
nemo facile expectet ut oratorum libertas multum se praebere possit). Its poetry is
described as unaffected by Egyptian culture: ‘one may easily recognise in the authors
whose poems survive its elegant, charming, educated nature, but there is not to be
found those highest attributes of poetry, the sublime, uplifted, or lofty’ (ingenium
elegans, amoenum, cultum in iis, quorum carmina habemus, facile agnoscas, sed
neque inveniendo, quae poetices summa est, felix, nec sublime, celsum, elatum—p.
92). Heyne discusses Callimachus, Nicander, Aratus, Apollonius Rhodius,
Lycophron, Manetho, Eratosthenes, Euphorion, Parthenius. He singles out the
tragedians and the comic poets, and in bucolic poetry Theocritus, Asclepiades,
Philetas, Bion and Moschus. Writings on the theory of tragedy and comedy abounded
(Duris, Didymus, Aristoxenus, Hephaestion on the tragedians, and de re comica
Eratosthenes, Lycophron and Hephaestion—p. 101).
2
I have found passing references only in L. Canfora, Ellenismo (Rome 1987) index s.v., and G.W.
Most in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism IV The Eighteenth Century ed. H.B. Nisbet and
C. Rawson (Cambridge 1997), p. 746 n.7.
12
OSWYN MURRAY
The most dominant feature of Alexandrian culture was its love of polyhistoria,
polymathia, philologia:
Nec poeta tum fuit, qui non esset grammaticus, nonullique utroque nomine
clarissimi, uti Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Nicander, Alexander
Aetolus; Eratosthenes et grammaticus et poeta et philosophus insignis habitus
est.
There was no poet then who was not also a grammarian, and there were many
famous in both arts, like Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aratus, Nicander,
Alexander Aetolus; Eratosthenes was famous as a grammarian, poet and
philosopher (p. 98).
There were many learned men like Apollodorus or Rhianus who was both poet,
historian and grammaticus. In fact grammar (philology) was the foundation of all the
disciplines, due to the wealth of the library and the congregation of scholars in the
Museum. This school of grammatici continued to exist until the Christian era, with
Synesius, Nonnus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Proclus, Quintus of Smyrna and
Tryphiodorus. Grammatici like Zenodotus and Aristarchus promoted the study of
Homer, the emendation of the Homeric text and the creation of Homeric
commentaries (hypomnemata); the writing of scholia spread to Hesiod and to the
moderns. ‘That very grammatical erudition brought the first seeds of corruption to
literature’ (Ipsa illa grammatica eruditio prima corruptelae semina litteris attulit—p.
104). The love of recondite knowledge (studium illa antiqua et minus vulgo nota
cognoscendi) permeated the culture with a preference for ancient stories, myths,
accounts of foreign peoples. Thus the historici wrote Indica, Parthica, Scythica,
Periplous (p. 83). Alas, none of these works survives except in their use by later
authors:
Omnino mirationem facit, quod e Ptolemaeorum temporibus, tanta litterarum
luce illustratis, tam pauci libri sospites ad nos pervenere, rerum quoque
gestarum fere omnis memoria intercidit.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
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In fact it is surprising that from the age of the Ptolemies, which was so
resplendent in its literature, so few books survive to our days, and almost all
memory of their history has disappeared. (p. 105)
The study of geography began from Alexander’s conquests and the explorations of the
Ptolemies, with Nearchus, Daimachus, Megasthenes and Onesicritus; again
everything is lost except what is preserved in those who made use of them—Strabo,
Dionysius Periegetes, Pliny and Stephanus of Byzantium (p. 105). There were
flourishing genres of natural history (historia naturae, de mirabilibus, de fluviis etc—
p. 107). In science the Alexandrians were skilled at mathematics, astronomy,
medicine, music and harmony (p. 108).
Despite all the benefits from royal munificence, the rewards of letters and studies, the
banquets of the Museum and the wealth of the library (in ipsa regum munificentia, in
praemiis litterarum studiis propositis, Musei convictu, bibliothecae opulentia),
philosophy did not entirely flourish: there were few Stoics and only one Epicurean
(Colotes). But the philosophy of pleasure was strong at court:
Cyrenaica disciplina, quae ad voluptatem omnia referebat, regum libidinibus
palpabat, fuitque adeo grata iis et accepta; saltem tanta Theodori fuit auctoritas,
ut a Sotere legatus ad Lysimachum mitteretur.
The Cyrenaic discipline which derives everything from pleasure flattered the
royal desires, and so was pleasing and acceptable to them; at least the authority
of Theodorus was such that he was sent by Soter as an ambassador to
Lysimachus. (p. 114)
Under Egyptian influence, Greek philosophy also took on a new guise: the ‘ancient
philosophy and theology’ with its use of symbols and hieroglyphs was a fusion of
Greek and Egyptian ideas which mingled with Jewish superstition and Christianity (p.
112).
14
OSWYN MURRAY
For an account of the artes liberales Heyne refers to his friend Winckelmann: but he
remarks that the Alexandrians especially possessed a love of display rather than a
sense of true beauty—ad fastum et magnificentiam potius se inclinasse, quam ad
iudicii elegantiam aut verae pulchritudinis sensum (p. 114). Having described the
nature of Ptolemaic culture, Heyne turns to the causes of Alexandrianism:
Cum saeculi Ptolemaeorum Genium aliquem, valde notabilem, satis declaratum
dederim, in litterarum quidem studio, polymathiae et polyhistoriae amorem, in
historiis, rerum mirabilium, novarum et insolitarum: caussas eius rei, etsi iam in
ipsa narratione interpositas, nunc seorsum breviter perstringere placet.
Since I have given a sufficient account of the particular and strongly marked
genius of the Ptolemaic age, especially in the study of letters, the love of
polymathia and polyhistoria, and in the stories of things marvellous, novel and
unusual, it is appropriate now to separate out and explain briefly the causes of
these features, which have already been mentioned in the foregoing account. (p.
115)
There is in human history a natural progression towards subtilitas grammatica,
historica ac philosophica (grammatical, historical and philosophical subtlety):
Luxuriantius ingenium a simplicitate ad cultum et ornatum, hinc ad sucum et
lascivium prolabitur. Alexandriae autem maturior litterarum mutatio facta, quia
incertum regum lubido, aulicorum vanitas, urbis luxuries, civium levitas, ipsae
studiorum opportunitates, motui rerum iam per se inclinato momenti et impulsus
haud parum addere debuere. Regum quidem munificentia et amor litterarum fuit
qualem vix alia aetas vidit.
As it grows more luxuriant, talent slips from simplicity to the cultivated and
ornate, and thence to high flavour and exuberance. But at Alexandria a deeper
change occurred in literature because the fluctuating desires of the kings, the
vanities of courts, the luxury of the city, the levity of the citizens, the very
opportunities for study, must have added no little movement and impulse to this
natural tendency. Indeed the munificence and love of learning shown by the
kings has scarcely been seen in any other age.
The kings Lagus, Philadelphus, Philopator, Euergetes and Physcon were all lovers of
literature, as too was Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies:
Regum itaque liberalitas multos viros doctos invitavit: quibus, cum regiis
stipendiis sustentati viverent, id studii erat, ut dictis scriptisque regi et aulicis se
probarent. Inde adulatoria et parasitica illa laudandi licentia in optimis horum
temporum scriptoribus. Imprimis vero regum liberalitas Museo et bibliothecae
condita inclaruit.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
15
And so the liberality of the kings attracted many learned men whose care it was,
since they lived paid by royal stipends, to display themselves in their words and
their writings to the king and his courtiers. So there is an adulatory and parasitic
excess of praise in the best writers of this period. But above all the liberality of
the kings made glorious the Museum and the library founded by them.
The Museum was organised with syssitia (communal banquets) under royal
patronage, but it had its disadvantages:
Vrbis frequentia, regum facilitas et comitas, studiorum facile severitatem
temperare potuit. Quod tamen in rebus humanis fieri solet, cum summis bonis ut
mala indivulso contubernio coniuncta sint, hoc idem in his tantis bonis evenisse
videmus. Ut aulici et principes de honorum fumo, sic viri docti de opinionum
umbra inter se digladiantur; invidia, odiis, inimicitiis gliscentibus optima
quaeque evertuntur. Sic nulli facile doctorum virorum coetus contentionum
libidine et conviciandi licentia carent. De Museo Alexandrino non mitiora
accipimus. Nobile est Timonis Phliasii dicterium.
The crowded city, the ease and friendliness of the kings could easily temper the
rigours of study. But as often happens in human affairs, since evils are
conjoined in an indissoluble table companionship with the highest goods, so we
see this happening in this case. Just as courtiers and kings dispute over the fog
of honours, so scholars dispute over the shadows of opinions; as envy, hatred
and enmities grow all good things are subverted. So no gathering of learned men
can easily be free of the passion for contentions and the licence of quarrels. We
hear nothing different of the Alexandrian Museum. There is a noble saying of
Timon of Phlious. (pp. 118f)
And here he refers to the famous fragment preserved in Athenaeus 1.22d: “Many
there be that feed in populous Egypt, well-stocked pedants who quarrel endlessly in
the bird-cage of the Muses.”
The library however was an important benefit (Heyne was of course the
university librarian at Göttingen): ‘despite these ills how many great benefits there
were for mankind in the Museum and library of Alexandria’ (Cum his ipsis tamen
malis quot et quanta beneficia Museo et Bibliothecae Alexandriae accepta refert
genus humanum). The disasters of the successive destructions of the library are
recounted, together with the organisation of the Museum within the palace and of the
16
OSWYN MURRAY
library, part of which was in the palace, part in Serapeum. The successive librarians
are listed (pp. 121-9).
For the citizens of Alexandria games and festivals were enormously important. (p.
131). The city of Alexandria itself was unique in the ancient world: ‘so much that
scarcely any city of our age can compare with it, except perhaps for London’
(hactenus vix urbs aliqua nostra aetate est, quae cum ea comparari possit, nisi forte
Londinium). Writers of all periods agree that it was marked by the elegantia of both
potentes and plebs: the Alexandrians had a passion for inventions and devices, as well
as being subtle, ingenious, light-headed, fickle and easily agitated (Alexandrinorum
ingenia fuisse sollertia ad inveniendum et excogitandum, simulque vafra, callida;
eadem porro levia, varia, tumultuantia–p. 133). Ancient Egyptian superstitions were
rife among them:
Increbuit superstitio utpote in plebe inter incerta fortunae ex mercatu et
navigatione iactata, advenarum ex diversis terris confluentium et promiscue
habitantium coetibus admixtis imprimis Iudaeorum, a Philometoris maxime
temporibus, quorum Philo non minus quam decies centena millia Alexandriae et
per Aegyptum habitantium memorat.
Superstition increased as is natural in a mob tossed about by the uncertainties of
trade and navigation, with masses of newcomers flooding in and living among
them, notably Jews, especially from the time of Philometor, whose numbers
Philo records as no less than a million living in Alexandria and throughout
Egypt. (p. 134)
This is a full and sensitive description of Ptolemaic culture, which in its general lines
is surely the equal of if not superior to any that has been offered since. But it contains
of course throughout an implicit comparison with Heyne’s own day:
Vos, autem, Cives in ea tempora servatos vos esse laetamini, in quibus Regum
Ptolemaeis illis simillimorum munificentia omnium disciplinarum scholas vobis
aperuit, viros, quales olim in Musei convictum illi adscrivere optavissent,
omnigena doctrina insignes, in hanc Academiam congregavit, bibliothecam
ornatissimam vestris usibus liberalissime comparavit, eumque Virum summum
et immortalem harum rerum Curatorem esse voluit, qualem ipse ille
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
17
Ptolemaeorum inauditus litterarum et artium amor, earumque ornandarum
studium, frustra in humano genere sibi dari exoptavit.
Rejoice, fellow citizens, that you live in those times in which the munificence of
kings most like to those Ptolemies has opened for you schools of all the
disciplines, and has gathered together in this University such men, famous for
all forms of learning, as once they desired to inscribe in the life of the Museum,
and has most liberally provided a splendid library for your use, and has desired
such a man to be the supreme highest being and immortal guardian of these
things as that unheard of love of Ptolemaic letters and arts, and the furthering of
their study, has looked for in vain amongst the human race. (p. 84)
This Hanoverian construction rests firmly on the eighteenth century view of historia
magistra vitae, in which the relationship between the ancient and the modern world is
seen as one of model and copy, based on the unchanging character of human nature: a
monarchic system will always produce the same effects in culture, and so we can read
back and forth between the Ptolemaic and the Hanoverian ages.
Thus two generations before Droysen’s invention of Hellenismus, which is
conventionally taken as the invention of the Hellenistic age,3 Heyne had seen its
special characteristics, and had already posed the central question of Ptolemaic
culture: what is the relationship between patronage and culture in the Ptolemaic age,
and how was that culture created? Today we as heirs of a progressive social
Darwinism and a sceptical post-modernism should be able to come up with a less selfcentred view of the relation between wealth and culture; and yet all too often our
understanding of patronage implies that it is an unchanging factor in the creation of
culture, in which all monarchies and all state funding have much the same purpose
3
‘The inventor of the Hellenistic age or world ... is Johann Gustav Droysen, who in 1836 labelled or
rather baptised his creation as “Hellenismus”, Greekism.’ Paul Cartledge in P. Cartledge, P. Garnsey,
E. Gruen (eds.) Hellenistic Constructs (Berkeley 1997) p. 2. The literature on Droysen and the concept
of Hellenismus is large: see esp. A. Momigliano, ‘Genesi storica e funzione attuale del concetto di
ellenismo’, (1935) Contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome 1955) 165-93; ‘J.G. Droysen
between Greeks and Jews’ (1970), Quinto Contributo (Rome 1975) 109-26; R. Bichler, “Hellenismus”
Geschichte und Problematik eines Epochenbegriffs (Darmstadt 1983); Canfora o.c. (n.2); A. Demandt,
‘Hellenismus–die moderne Zeit des Altertums?’ in B. Funcke (ed.), Hellenismus (Tübingen 1996) 1727.
18
OSWYN MURRAY
and much the same effect on the artistic tradition. Modern views of patronage and
generic composition indeed lay great emphasis on the importance of monarchy as a
simple factor involving primarily the political manipulation of literature, without
considering how monarchies differ fundamentally from each other in their attitudes
and aims, and have different effects on the cultures they support.
Thus the prevalent view of the nature of Ptolemaic poetry rests on the short and
influential paper by Konrat Ziegler, Das hellenistische Epos,4 first published in 1934,
but not widely known until its second publication in 1966. According to Ziegler, the
whole development of Roman panegyrical epic poetry rested on a lost tradition of
Hellenistic royal panegyrical poetry practised at the courts of Alexandria and
Pergamon: he proceeded to reconstruct this tradition on the basis of the titles of these
alleged epics, and by means of reading back from Roman epic practice. This poetry
consisted of long epics devoted to the exploits of the kings, written in a panegyrical
vein such as is attested in Roman literature from Ennius to the poets of the later
Roman empire; the characteristics of the Hellenistic and Roman epic that does in fact
survive, from Apollonius to Virgil and beyond, together with the tradition of critical
comment on long poems and the practice of recusatio, must be understood in terms of
reaction to this dominant lost school of poetry. Ziegler’s theory has been accepted by
a whole series of modern students of Hellenistic and Roman poetry, starting from
Francis Cairns, with his belief that the scheme of the logos basilikos propounded by
Menander Rhetor, a provincial schoolmaster in the third century AD, can be detected
4
K. Ziegler, Das Hellenistische Epos: ein vergessenes Kapitel Grichischer Dichtung (second edition,
Leipzig, 1966); because Ziegler was persona non grata in Nazi Germany, the first edition was not
noticed. I have not read the earlier essay of W. Kroll, ‘Das historische Epos’ Sokrates 4 (1916) 1-14;
there is a useful survey by R. Haüssler, Das historische Epos der Griechen und Römer bis Vergil. 1
Vom Homer zu Vergil (Heidelberg 1976).
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
19
throughout the literature of the post-classical period.5 At its most general, Denis
Feeney can even say, ‘Epics treating the deeds of kings and people, contemporary,
recent or remote, were composed all over the Mediterranean, and at every period,
from the late fifth century BCE to the age of the Byzantine emperors’ (p. 264). The
theory has finally achieved canonical status in the classification used by Lloyd-Jones
and Parsons, in their monumental Supplementum Hellenisticum, according to which
‘of the 39 “epic” poets they included, all but five wrote on historical events’.6
This entire construct is a complete fantasy, which has done untold damage to
the understanding of Latin poetry of the Augustan age especially, as I have been
arguing ever since 1968.7 But it has at last been demolished by a scholar whose
expertise in the literature of panegyrical poetry cannot be disputed: Alan Cameron
devotes chapter X of his book Callimachus and his Critics to the destruction of the
theory. As he says ‘There is in fact no solid or explicit evidence for long historical
epics at any time in the Hellenistic world’ (p. 268), and again ‘there is not a single
indisputable example of a full-scale epic poem on the deeds of a Hellenistic king’ (p.
281). While we know that the exploits of Alexander the Great were celebrated by a
least five poets, all of them became bywords for their badness (p. 278); and it seems
that the example of Choerilus and others prevented anyone from following suit in later
generations. Cameron concludes, ‘There is simply no basis for the dominant
assumption that the advent of the Hellenistic kings created an immediate demand for
large-scale historical epics’ (p. 295).
5
See esp. F. Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh 1972); A. Hardie,
Statius and the Silvae (Liverpool 1983) 86-90; Ph.R. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium
(Oxford 1986); D.C. Feeney, The Gods in Epic (Oxford 1991) 264-7.
6
A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995) 287, citing the list of genres in
Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin 1983) XVII.
7
In this year I began a series of lectures at Oxford on ‘The public voice of Horace’, which contained a
full-scale attack on the views of Ziegler and Cairns.
20
OSWYN MURRAY
The Hellenistic poets did of course experiment with forms of praise poetry.
Cameron is prepared to admit the existence of paeans probably sung at royal festivals
or victory celebrations (possible examples are listed on pp. 289-95). But as he says,
‘Theocritus 17 is the only complete poetic encomion to survive from the Hellenistic
world’ (p. 272). It is for that reason that I want briefly to consider this particular
poem, because it seems to me to demonstrate most clearly the actual nature of
Hellenistic praise poetry. Francis Cairns indeed devoted twenty pages to its analysis
(Generic Composition pp.100-20): he began from the assumption that it followed a
generic pattern exemplified in Menander Rhetor’s logos basilikos, but ended by
detecting Theocritus’ substantial originality in deviating from this schema; the most
recent editor Richard Hunter notes that in fact the divergences and omissions from the
schema are far more striking than the similarities.8 The truth is that Theocritus was
completely unaware of such a schema, since it did not yet exist; and that is why,
though the topic of the praise of a ruler inevitably leads to some similarities, the
structure of the poem in no way conforms to the rhetorical rules of Menander, which
were designed centuries later for hack rhetoricians in the provincial towns of Asia
Minor who were required to celebrate endlessly the emperor’s birthday or his
ceremonial progress through the provinces.
Theocritus is concerned with a different world and a different series of problems—
how, within the existing conventions of Greek poetry, to create a means of praising
his ruler. The Idyll is framed on the pattern of a Homeric hymn, and its echoes of
themes in Callimachus’ hymns show how each sought to offer a contemporary
response to the demands of court poetry. The theme is that of the divinity of kings:
8
R. Hunter, Theocritus, Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Berkeley 2003) 21-3.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
21
this may be explained partly as an attempt to place king worship in an appropriate
light for Greek readers, and partly as a legacy from the generic background in the
hymn as praise of the gods. But the tone is light and ironic; the praise of Philadelphus
is subordinated to praise of his father and mother, which concentrates on their status
as human beings who have achieved divinity like Herakles and have been awarded
seats at the banquets on Olympus. Philadelphus’ own acts of sacrifice to them of
course provide the food for those banquets; so his own relation to the world of the
gods is presented as that of a hero descended from the gods. This picture is combined
with a traditional description of the wealth of Egypt, and the power and wealth of its
ruler which enables him to reward his poets. So after Zeus ‘let Ptolemy of men be
named first and last and in the middle, for he is the best of men’.
In his edition of this poem Hunter says, “we do not know the circumstance of the
poem’s composition and original performance” (p. 46), and of course without that
information it is difficult to understand its implications for the nature of Ptolemaic
praise poetry. But in fact, although this does not seem to have been recognised by
modern scholars, the poem advertises very clearly its purpose and place of
performance. Theocritus refers to the existence of competitive performance at
festivals, in his reference to the lavish prizes awarded by Ptolemy at the Alexandrian
Dionysia (112-4);9 this feature of Ptolemaic culture is clearly an adaptation of the
Athenian Dionysia. But Theocritus’ poem can hardly be written for a festival of
Dionysus: I would suggest that the obvious occasion explains all the distinctive
features of the poem. Gregor Weber says in a footnote that, ‘das beherrschende
Element des Enkomions die Etablierung eines Kultes für Ptolemaios I. und Berenike
9
P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972) i. 202-6.
22
OSWYN MURRAY
zu sein scheint’.10 The poem is in fact a sensitive and skilled adaptation of the
Homeric hymn in praise of a god to the theme of praising a divine dynasty and its
human embodiment: the emphasis is placed on the king’s parents, themselves
installed on Olympus, in order to render more traditional the ambiguous human status
of the reigning king. The piety of Philadelphus in establishing the worship of his
parents is indeed the most prominent aspect of the poem, which therefore finds its
natural place as a hymn composed for performance at the festival of the Ptolemaieia;
this royal festival for the divinity of the king’s parents was first held in 279/8, and
thereafter at four yearly intervals.11 The slightly coy allusion to the brother-sister
marriage of Philadelphus and Arsinoe, which is justified by the marriage of Zeus and
Hera, appears to view it as a recent event. These two contemporary references have
resulted in the generally agreed dating of the poem to between 278 and 270 B.C. (the
death of Arsinoe).12
I therefore see the poem as written specifically for probably the first, or at least one of
the first two (or possibly three) festivals celebrating the new cult of Soter and
Berenice: it is not in fact constructed in accordance with existing conventions for the
praise of a ruler, but is an original hymn carefully adapting a general theme to a
precise religious occasion. It belongs alongside the famous pompe described by
Callixeinos of Rhodes and preserved in Athenaeus, which concerns a magnificent
procession also likely to have been staged at an early celebration of the Ptolemaieia.13
10
G. Weber, Dichtung und höfische Gesellschaft, Hermes Einzelschriften 62 (1993) 213 n. 2.
T.L. Shear, Kallias of Sphettos Hesp. Suppl 17 (1978) 33-6; CAH VII.1 (1984) 138f (EG Turner) and
417f (H.Heinen).
12
A.S.F. Gow, Theocritus (Cambridge 1950) II p. 326; Fraser o.c. II, 933f.
13
E.E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (1983); D.J. Thompson, ‘Philadelphus’
Procession: Dynastic Power in a Mediterranean Context’ in Politics, Administration and Society in the
Greek and Roman World ed. L. Mooren (Studia Hellenistica 36, Leuven 2000) 365-88, esp. 381-8.
11
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
23
In the 270s the new cult of the king’s parents was the main focus of royal attention, as
a means of legitimising the Ptolemaic dynasty through specifically Greek religion;
this royal initiative may indeed be a Greek response to the Egyptian tradition of the
worship of the reigning Pharaoh, although the ritual in no way reflects this. Theocritus
17 should therefore rightly be viewed as an example of Ptolemaic ‘court poetry’; for it
is functionally embedded in the religious ritual of the worship of the royal house, and
must be understood in terms of the hymns appropriate to such an occasion.
Similarly, as Fantuzzi and Hunter have recently demonstrated, in such hymns as those
to Zeus (I) and to Delos (IV), Callimachus seeks to incorporate Philadelphus within
his own mythological world; neither poet praises Philadelphus directly in panegyrical
verse.14 Formal panegyric was not in fact a part of the Ptolemaic literary or poetic
scene, because it had not yet been invented. The model that poets chose to represent
their relations with their patron was that of Pindar, which involved an easier and less
formal relationship, in which the poet’s ability to memorialise his patron in verse
enhanced the status of the subject as well as preserving the independence of the art of
poetry and the poet himself. This insistence on the status and dignity of the poet in
relation to his patron was indeed inherited and adapted to a more vatic theme by the
poets of the Augustan age. Each period in the ancient world experimented with the
poetic tools inherited from the past; but not until deep in the later Roman Empire,
with poets such as Claudian and his successors, did the rules of rhetoric come to play
any part in the relationship between poet and patron.
We know a little, but not nearly enough, about the workings of Ptolemaic
patronage. The catchall term “patronage” can in fact easily mislead, suggesting,
as it does ‘a [personal] relationship ... of some duration’, particularly in the field
14
M. Fantuzzi and R. Hunter, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge 2004) ch. 8.
24
OSWYN MURRAY
of literature and the arts, where the well-documented subject of artistic
patronage in the Renaissance and subsequent centuries seems to offer
dangerously tempting analogies.15
These cautious words of Richard Hunter need to be heeded. The most important
aspect of Hellenistic court poetry is those features which may loosely be described as
‘sympotic’—the easy relationship between the poet and his patron, the friends and
freedom of speech within a convivial context, and the apparent lack of royal protocol.
All this is derived from a consciously recreated world of the symposion adapted for
the royal palace, in which poet and patron are equal members, and indeed in which the
poet is more important than his host because he provides both entertainment and the
hope of eternal kleos. The ideal image is well expressed in Theocritus’ praise of
Philadelphus as a patron in Idyll 14:
εὐγνώµων, φιλόµουσος, ἐρωτικός, εἰς ἄκρον ἁδύς,
εἰδὼς τὸν φιλέοντα, τὸν οὐ φιλέοντ’ ἔτι µᾶλλον,
πολλοῖς πολλὰ διδούς, αἰτεύµενος οὐκ ἀνανεύων,
οἷα χρὴ βασιλῆ’·αἰτεῖν δὲ δεῖ οὐκ ἐπὶ παντί,
Αἰσχίνα.
[Ptolemy is the best paymaster for a free man …] kindly, cultured, gallant, as
pleasant as may be; recognises his friend, and those who are not his friends even
better; generous to many and not one to refuse a request, as a king should be,
but you mustn’t always be asking, Aischinas. (Idyll 14.60-6)
So a king should be praised as eugnomon, philomousos, erotikos, eis akron hadus,
able to distinguish friends and enemies; apart from the implication that kings should
be generous, these are the traditional virtues of the fellow symposiast. The same
picture of independence and reciprocity, though in a more formal and distant style—
poetic fame for monetary rewards—emerges from Theocritus’ description of his
15
Hunter, Encomium (n. 8) 27; cf. id., Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry (Cambridge
1996) 77-82.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
25
poetic calling in Idyll 16, addressed to Hieron of Syracuse.16 The ubiquity of this
characterisation of Ptolemaic patronage is shown also in Herondas, Mimiambus 1,
when Gyllis tries to persuade Metrike that her husband has deserted her and gone to
Alexandria:
κεῖ δ’ ἐστὶν οἶκος τῆς θεοῦ· τὰ γ̣ὰρ πάντα,
ὄσσ’ ἔστι κου καὶ γίνετ’, ἔστ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτωι·
πλοῦτος, παλαίστρη, δύναµι[ς], εὐδίη, δόξα,
θέαι, φιλόσοφοι, χρυσίον, νεηνίσκοι,
θεῶν ἀδελφῶν τέµενος, ὀ βασιλεὺς χρηστός,
Μουσῆιον, οἶνος, ἀγαθὰ πάντ’ ὄσ’ ἂν χρήιζηι,
γ̣υναῖκες, ὀκ̣όσους οὐ µὰ τὴν Ἄ̣ιδεω Κούρην
ἀ̣σ̣τ̣έ̣ρας ἐνεγκεῖν οὐραν[ὸ]ς κεκαύχηται.
The home of the goddess is there. For everything that exists and is produced is
in Egypt—wealth, wrestling schools, power, tranquillity, fame, spectacles,
philosophers, gold, youth, the sanctuary of the sibling gods; the king is a good
chap; the Museum, wine, everything he could desire, women—as many by
Hades’ maid as the stars that heaven boasts of bearing. (Mim.1.26-33)
This is the characterisation of his court that Ptolemy Philadelphus actively sought to
promote, and the reason why he welcomed poets who could both enhance and
celebrate his cultural aims.
As with Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, in Hellenistic courtly culture the
symposion remains the main conceptual focus for expressing the relationship between
poet and patron, and for the demonstration of the courtly virtues of a civilised king.
That this became a permanent aspect of the Ptolemaic court culture is shown by the
many anecdotes about sympotic activity in Alexandria, the existence of sympotic
epigrams and above all by the mise-en-scène adopted by the Jewish writer Aristeas in
his imaginary description of the reception of the 72 translators of the Septuagint by
16
G. Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry (London 1987) 191f: ‘His failure to ‘humanise’ Hiero
contrasts with his strategy for the Ptolemies. Perhaps this is further evidence of the uniqueness of the
Egyptian monarchs’ taste for the humorous realism of their court-poets.’
26
OSWYN MURRAY
Philadelphus.17 Even the vices of the Ptolemies are expressed in sympotic terms—as
anger, arrogance, and unwillingness to accept the parrhesia which is an essential part
of the freedom of the symposion.
So in Ptolemaic culture we need to see the development of forms of royal
patronage as a part of a process only partially connected with the new institution of
monarchy. Ever since patronage entered ancient poetry (or had it always been there
from Homer on?) there was a continuing need to adapt poetic themes to forms of
patronage. The aristocratic and tyrannical patrons of Pindar, the tyrannical and
democratic patrons of Simonides, existed as an inheritance of themes from which the
Ptolemaic poets could draw; they could also invent or adapt themes from Homer and
from established genres such as hymns to the gods. The poets of Augustan Rome were
still experimenting with this inherited material, and adding to it the specifically
Roman tradition of military epic often in praise of particular commanders. By late
antiquity it is true that the rules were well established, and there is little difference
between the poems of Claudian (himself of course an Alexandrian Greek, despite
writing in a formal and classical Latin) and the rhetorical productions of the Latin and
Greek imperial panegyrists. But when we consider the Ptolemaic age we are in a
different world.
Arnd Kerkhecker has raised the question of the extent to which the concept of
Hofliteratur or Hofdichtung can help us to understand Ptolemaic court poetry.18 He
highlights two aspects of Hofliteratur as it appears in western literature from the
17
cf. Cameron o.c. ch. III: ‘The Symposium’; Murray, ‘The Letter of Aristeas’, in B. Virgilio (ed.),
Studi Ellenistici II (Pisa, 1987) 15-29.
A. Kerkhecker, ‘Mousšwn ™n tal£rJ – Dichter und Dichtung am Ptolemäerhof’ Antike und
Abendland 43 (1997) 124-44.
18
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
27
Renaissance to the modern day—literature in the life of the court, and literature about
the court (de aula). The second he dismisses on the grounds that there is no evidence
in the Ptolemaic age for writers with the moralising tendencies of authors such as
Castiglione, Montaigne or Gracián: he seems to forget the whole lost tradition of
writings peri basileias, about which I have written elsewhere.19 He considers the
question of the place of literature in the life of the court under two headings, the
importance of royal festivals and celebrations, and the emphasis on the description of
life at court. Surprisingly he finds no evidence of either of these phenomena in
Ptolemaic poetry: I hope this article has demonstrated that in fact both are present to
the highest degree, even if their expression is different because the court life of the
Ptolemies in no way resembled that of the hierarchical post-feudal societies of the
Renaissance or German princelings, or the court etiquette investigated by Norbert
Elias in his famous book The Court Society.20 But Kerkhecker ends by emphasising
the learned character of Ptolemaic court poetry and its dependence on an existing
literary tradition (he calls it Fussnotendichtung—which seems intended in a nonpejorative sense); and he once again asserts the identity of poet and scholarcommentator. These are precisely the elements in Ptolemaic poetry that Heyne
insisted on two hundred and fifty years ago, writing from the new Museum, the
University of Göttingen, in one of the great ages of Hofliteratur, when he emphasised
the importance of the learning of the Museum as a focus for royal patronage and for
the understanding of Ptolemaic culture. There could be no better justification for my
recalling the long-forgotten contribution of Christian Gottlob Heyne, and his
19
‘Philosophy and Monarchy in the Hellenistic World’ in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers ed.
T. Rajak, S. Pearce, J.K. Aitken, J. Dines (California forthcoming 2007).
20
N. Elias, The Court Society, Eng. trans. (Oxford 1983; originally published Darmstadt 1969): for
literature see esp. ET 105-6.
28
OSWYN MURRAY
characterisation of the chief features of Ptolemaic culture—polyhistoria, polymathia,
philologia.
If I were to add anything to Heyne’s characterisation of Alexandrianism, I would
perhaps seek merely to place it in a more dynamic context. In the first generation after
Alexander’s conquests there had indeed been a moment of openness in Egypt, as there
was throughout the early Hellenistic world; in the age of the first Ptolemy figures such
as Hecataeus of Abdera and a little later Manetho struggled to understand the realities
of Egyptian tradition and culture, as I argued long ago.21 But the closure of the Greek
mind came under Philadelphus, with the foundation of the Museum, and the creation
of a cult of the book in the Library of Alexandria. Thereafter, I would suggest,
Alexandrian Ptolemaic culture was centred on three aspects of the Ptolemaic court—
the royal symposion, the institution of the Museum and the grand religious festival;
these three aspects contributed to a unique and complex courtly culture and literature,
in which patronage and praise were less often offered openly than transmuted through
the literary culture of the royal library and the Museum, and in public through the
rewards for victory in festivals such as the Dionysia and the Ptolemaieia. Poetry was
not therefore a separate phenomenon, but was incorporated into the pleasures of the
royal symposion, the activities of the library and Museum, and royal displays at
religious festivals. If Ptolemaic culture had a central or defining characteristic which
differentiates it from other forms of court life, Heyne is surely right: it lies in the
Museum and the library. This was the first, though not perhaps the only, time in the
21
‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), 200-13.
PTOLEMAIC ROYAL PATRONAGE
29
western tradition that scholarship has been central to a political elite.22 So Alexandria,
its literary culture and its court became cut off from the hinterland of Egypt, and
indeed from the practicalities of government, and created that symbolic form of
Alexandrianism that we still enjoy in the work of the great modern poets and writers
who have lived in, and been influenced by, the myth and the experience of
Alexandria—Cavafy and Ungaretti, E.M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell.
22
It is a rare phenomenon, unknown in the modern western world, but to be found also in the
Carolingian age and the Renaissance: contrast the more continuous tradition of mandarin culture in
China.
SECTION BETA
From Zeus let us begin...
ECONOMIC REFORMS IN THE MID-REIGN OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS
Dorothy J. Thompson
Ptolemy Philadelphus is primarily known as the rich and successful patron of
Alexandrian poets and scholars, a king who presided over the development—if not the
foundation—of the famous Museum and Library in Alexandria. The second in the
long line of Ptolemies, the later Philadelphus made his mark near the start of his reign
with the deification of his father and mother and the institution of the Ptolemaieia, the
celebratory four-yearly festival and festival games.1 But Ptolemy was also king of all
Egypt, a pharaoh whose land stretched some five hundred miles up the Nile, out to the
western oases south from Siwa and eastwards through the desert to the Red Sea coast.
It is with the king of all Egypt and his attitude to its well-being that this study is
concerned.
I start with a sick king—a king in pain—as suffering from gout he sits in his
palace and looks out on the simple peasants eating their plain food and enjoying
themselves on the shore below. The king bewails his fate; for him, Phylarchus reports,
such pleasures are out of reach.2 We cannot know how old the king was at this time
but we may assume that by now he was getting on in years, towards the end of his
reign of almost forty years.3 Besides envy of the simple pleasure of the peasants
outside, what positive aspects were there to his life that the king might wish to recall?
Were there achievements which he might remember with pride, as he stared out over
1
Kallixeinos of Rhodes in Athenaeus 5.196a-203b. For the first celebration in the winter of 279/278
BC, see Thompson 2000.
2
Athenaeus 12.536e.
3
285-246 BC.
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
32
the water? How was Egypt changed in the course of his long reign? And if the
Museum with the Library and the host of scientists and scholars attracted to the
vibrancy of life in Alexandria come first to mind, what about up-country Egypt, the
great valley of the Nile and its delta which provided the wealth which lay at the base
of this grand cultural enterprise? Did this ruler simply exploit and enjoy the
foundations so carefully laid by his father, or do we find innovation and new
beginnings in his reign? What, in the end, was achieved under this second
Macedonian pharaoh?
Any attempt to assess the achievements of Ptolemy II must take account of the
broader picture, of developments in the Aegean as well as the whole of Egypt, west to
Cyrene and south into Nubia, eastwards into Seleucid territory and south east along
the Red Sea Coast where Ptolemaic bases facilitated the import of elephants so crucial
to the army. In concentrating here on some of the economic innovations of this king,
we shall of necessity give a somewhat one-sided picture. Other chapters may help to
fill out the broader scene.
The foreign wars of Ptolemy II cannot be divorced from developments at
home. In 280/279 BC he fought with Antiochus I in the Syrian war of succession, and
then (c. 275 BC) with Magas who defected in Cyrene. The first Syrian war was
followed shortly by what is known as the Chremonidean war, when Ptolemaic forces
fought in Attica and the Aegean (268-262 BC). Then, with only a short pause, came
the second Syrian war which ended in 253 BC. It was clearly essential, in good
Macedonian tradition, that Ptolemy II was a warrior king. ‘Ptolemy’s the best
paymaster for a free man’ is the advice that Thyonikos gives to his love-sick
colleague Aischinas in Theocritus (Idyll 14.59). Ptolemy’s troops were important to
him, as indeed they were more generally to Hellenistic kings. “Round him gather
ECONOMIC REFORMS
33
great numbers of cavalrymen and great numbers of shield-bearing infantry, burdened
with glittering bronze”, claims the same poet in his encomium of Ptolemy II (Idyll
17.93-4). Like his father before him, Ptolemy II was constantly drawn to challenge
Seleucid control not just of Phoenicia and Koile Syria but the wider kingdom too of
Antiochus I and then II. His Aegean empire, both the islands and the coast,4 called for
ships as well as troops for their defence, and the ongoing military demands of his
external policy placed a strain on the resources of his kingdom.5 How, the question
must be asked, could Ptolemy afford these wars, since armies come at a price? If the
easy answer to this question is through the exploitation of Egypt, that as a claim needs
fleshing out. The agricultural economy of Egypt and the exploitation of its natural
wealth were essential to the success of any Egyptian pharaoh, and here I want to
explore some of the administrative detail as, under Ptolemy II, the related institutions
of census and land-survey were developed and put into use. Through looking at the
twin operations of counting the people and measuring the land we may start to gain a
measure of the institutional and economic developments in this reign. The application
of the census in the levy of personal taxes and of the land survey in the levy of grain
and other forms of natural produce resulted in the two major forms of revenue for the
king. The degree to which these institutions were changed and the extent of further
financial reforms of the period are the main subjects of this chapter. At the same time
I want to explore the evidential base for the picture presented, to consider some of its
inbuilt problems. How valid and how complete can an account be that is based on
such scattered texts as we have? How best to deal with the tenor of our sources? A
consideration of Ptolemy II raises a host of such problems for the historian.
4
5
Theoc. Idyll 17.86-90, ‘Pamphylia, Cilicia, Lycia and Caria’.
Turner 2000 stresses the centrality of the Syrian wars to Ptolemy II’s internal policy.
34
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
The first topic to be considered, therefore, is the census and, perhaps of greater
interest, the tax system for which it was used. In earlier times, Egyptian pharaohs had
gathered information on their people with a view to exploiting their labour rather than
for the levy of monetary taxes. Corvée labour was required from the adult population
but, as far as we know, there was no personal taxation. Following Alexander’s
conquest of the country, Greco-Macedonian rule brought monetisation to Egypt.
Through the levy of different taxes the early Ptolemies encouraged the circulation of
coinage throughout the countryside, and a cash economy was added to the more
traditional economy in kind.6 Though forced labour did continue,7 corvée was
converted to cash as the main interest of the king in his people. New taxes and new
ways of collecting them are central to the development.
Then there is the land survey. Like the census, the land survey was not new. It
had a long past in Egypt, as far as we can tell, and the actual survey operations were
little altered. Changes, however, in the pattern of landholding and in those who
collected the charges raised, resulted in increased revenue for the king. It is the
details, context and significance of these changes with which I am concerned.
Just as under the Ptolemies census activities served a different end—used for
taxes rather than the levy of labour—so the forms through which we know them
reflect this change in their use. A handful of actual census returns has survived but it
is through tax registers penned on papyrus and receipts, more generally on pieces of
broken pot, written in both Greek and demotic, that we can trace the application of the
census. These are the texts that form the base for our recent publication, Counting the
6
See von Reden forthcoming; Clarysse and Thompson 2006, 2:8.
W.Chrest. 385 = UPZ II 157.10-35 (242/241 BC). Papyri are quoted according to the standard
Checklist, Oates et al. 2001, regularly updated on
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist_papyri.html.
7
ECONOMIC REFORMS
35
People in Hellenistic Egypt (Clarysse and Thompson 2006). Here I aim to put the
results of that study into their broader historical context.
The main period of concern is the decade from the mid-260s to the mid-250s
BC. As already indicated, this was a period marked by wars. It was also, I would
argue, a key decade for the development of Ptolemy II’s economic policy, though the
degree to which the king himself was central to the new initiatives of this decade is a
question I shall come back to. The 260s and 250s were years packed with economic
activity at home. The extension of cultivated land is an on-going feature of the time;
the drainage and irrigation of the area known as the Marsh (Limnê)—now the
Fayum—is likely to have started under Ptolemy I and continued under Ptolemy II.8 In
this period, reclamation was actively pursued in the area.9 The province was divided
into a series of nomarchies for purposes of reclamation and new drainage dykes were
added to those already in place from earlier works.10 It was not just in the Fayum,
renamed the Arsinoite nome, that new projects were underway. We also hear of an
area of responsibility of one Simaristos in the Oxyrhynchite nome;11 though not
otherwise known, this may well have been a further development zone.
There were many other changes in this period, though it is not always possible
to know when these were made. For example, one interesting innovation of the reign
of Ptolemy II was the introduction of a fiscal year for revenue collection that started in
Mecheir—that is in March, during this reign—some seven months before the start of
8
The changing phases of development may be traced in the village names of the different merides, see
Clarysse forthcoming.
9
As known from the archives of the irrigation engineer Kleon (among the Petrie papyri, see Thompson
1999) and those of the nomarchs Aristarchos and Diogenes (from mummy-casing from the cemetery of
Ghoran, see Héral 1992).
10
Thompson forthcoming.
11
P.Rev. 24.9.
36
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
the regular Egyptian year.12 The fiscal year, it would seem, was based on the
agricultural year starting round the time of the harvest. The date of the introduction of
this new year may be uncertain but that is not the case with the salt-tax which in year
22 of Ptolemy II—264/263 BC—was brought in as a personal levy charged on all
adults, both men and women, with very few exceptions. The salt-tax or halikê was by
far the most significant of all the many taxes that we know of from this reign. The
earliest receipt to survive is from November 263 BC, and at the time of its
introduction the annual charge was 1.5 drachmas for males and just one drachma for
females.13 The salt-tax may have come as a replacement for an earlier yoke-tax
charged on males only at a somewhat higher rate. This at least is what Brian Muhs
argues in his recent collection and study of demotic ostraka, which provides an
important addition to what we know of taxation in this period.14 Two features of this
tax call for comment. First, it is a tax from which a growing number of groups gain
exemption. One such group, certainly the group best known, is that of the teachers of
letters and gymnastics (the didaskaloi and the paidotribai), of the artists of Dionysus
(the actors) and of the victors in Alexandrian games, whose exemption is recorded in
an order sent by Apollonios, the dioikêtês or chief executive, to one Zoilos, probably
the oikonomos (a sort of area officer) of the newly-named Arsinoite nome:
apheikamen—“we have exempted them”, he writes sometime circa 257/6 BC,
displaying an arrogation of royal responsibility in financial matters. 15 Secondly, the
salt-tax is lowered in level on more than one occasion. Why and by how much it was
lowered are interesting questions.
12
B. Kramer in CPR XVIII pp. 86-88 argues for a variable initial date to the financial year.
See Clarysse and Thompson 2006, 2:45, Table 3:1, for changing rates.
14
Muhs 2005, 6.
15
P.Hal. 1.260-265, dated by what is know of Zoilos’ activity.
13
ECONOMIC REFORMS
37
The salt-tax then was a new tax under Ptolemy II and its application implies an
organised approach to the economic exploitation of the kingdom, in which monetary
taxation is a new feature. The method of collection for this new tax is again an
innovatory feature of the early Ptolemaic regime. We learn from the papyri that taxcollection was the responsibility of a mix of public and private officials. Royal
officials were joined by private tax-farmers for the collection of this and other taxes.
Collection rights were auctioned on a specified occasion and the guarantees provided
by the successful tax-farmers served to ensure the revenues of the crown, while the
regular royal officials in post provided the lists of taxpayers and helped in recording
the process. This amalgam of earlier Greek and Egyptian practices—of tax-farming
together with the use of the royal administration—is somehow typical of the regime.16
We can gain a sense of how it worked on the ground both from the registers that
survive recycled in mummy-casing and from the receipts issued to the taxpayers,
penned on pieces of broken pot or ostraka.
The occasion of the tax-auction and the crowds it brought in is mentioned in
several texts, as in a request addressed to Zenon, earlier farm manager of the dioikêtês
Apollonios, made in early April one year: 17 “Please send me several jars of fragrant
wine”, writes Demetrios. “A reasonable crowd has come to town since the sales of
concessions are taking place and they are looking for fragrant wine...” These were
exciting times as the different trade groups collected and the tax concessions were
auctioned out and agreed.18 By introducing a poll-tax charged on both sexes alike,
Ptolemy II was surely increasing his revenue. And with the development of a new
16
Clarysse and Thompson 2006, 2:60-61.
P.Zen.Pestm. 30.10-15 (142 or 141 BC).
18
P.Köln VI 260 (9 March 213 BC).
17
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
38
system for the collection of monetary taxes some half-way through his reign, we find
innovation in revenue-raising on the part of Philadelphus or his administration.
The same year as the introduction of the salt-tax a further innovation is known
from the so-called ‘Revenue Laws’. The acquisition by Flinders Petrie in the winter of
1893/4 of two connected papyrus rolls was followed in 1896 by Bernard Grenfell’s
fine edition of these texts as the Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Philadelphus. In this case,
a key text of the period was actually preserved as rolls of papyrus rather than reused
in mummy-casing. Roll one contains a series of royal orders19 treating the organisation
of the tax levied on the produce of vineyards and orchards. This was the tax named
the tax of a sixth, hektê in Greek.20 Until 264/3 BC this revenue had belonged to the
temples which collected it in. In that year, the same year as the introduction of the
salt-tax, responsibility for the collection of the one sixth-tax was transferred from the
temples to tax-farmers. That was surely a significant change. The hektê was now to be
levied in the same way as was the salt-tax—that is, through the tax-farm or auction
with a mix of private and royal officials involved. And from 264/3 BC onwards, this
income-stream was reassigned to finance the cult of Arsinoe Philadelphus, now
established as a goddess in all of the temples of the land.21 Further modifications of
how the charges were reckoned came later in the same year.22 The crown now
effectively controlled both the levy and the collection of this revenue to the detriment
of the temples.
Five years on, late in 259 BC, yet a further modification was made to this
same tax-levy, now termed apomoira in Greek, with the specification of two separate
19
P.Rev. 9.5, cf. 37.6, programmata.
Koenen 1993, 66-9, and Clarysse and Vandorpe 1998 supersede all earlier studies.
21
P.Rev. 36, dated 14 June.
22
P.Rev. 37.2-9, royal instruction made November-December requiring declaration of produce for the
last four years.
20
ECONOMIC REFORMS
39
rates: the one sixth to be charged on the produce of most vineyards and orchards, but
only a tenth or dekatê on produce from vineyards and orchards granted to soldiers
settled as cleruchs or even as sons of cleruchs known as tês epigones,23 on those in the
Thebaid which were artificially irrigated, and those in the Oxyrhynchite area earlier
administered by Simaristos.24 The background to this further specification is
unknown—one can only imagine the special-interest lobbying which led to the
modified rate on the produce of vineyards for special groups—but it is clear from the
text that again the office of the dioikêtês Apollonios was involved.25 This was an
active period for the dioikêtês’ office, as seen too in a letter sent to Apollonios in
which the king instructs him to clamp down strongly on lawyers who supported cases
against the treasury.26 Such advocates are to be fined double rates and debarred from
future practice. The income of the crown was all important and, as dioikêtês,
Apollonios can be seen to play a central role in the way that things were going. It is
not, therefore, surprising that in the same year as the modification to the apomoira, in
December 259 BC, we find him in the Fayum as the new owner of a 10,000-aroura
gift-estate or dôrea.27 10,000 arouras represents some 2,750 hectares: this was a
substantial gift. Whether the grant came as a reward to Apollonios for support (or
even initiatives) over recent years or as a new model farm for agricultural
experimentation is of course unknowable. Both may have been involved.
So we can see that developments in the levy of the apomoira fit to some
degree with the picture established for the salt-tax. Starting in 264/263, the same year
as the introduction of the salt-tax, the crown replaced the temples in collecting the
23
Cf. P.Köln VII 314 (257 BC), a dekatê paid to the local temple by an Achaean tês epigonês from his
garden (kêpos) of sacred land; royal scribes are involved at the survey stage.
24
P.Rev. 24.1-13; 38.1, correction made in the office of Apollonios, the dioikêtês, on 31 August 259.
25
P.Rev. 38.1-3.
26
C.Ord.Ptol. 23, sent 6 October 259 BC.
27
P.Zen.Pestm. Suppl. A.
40
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
apomoira. At the same time the income from this tax was reassigned to finance a
royal cult, though, as Clarysse and Vandorpe point out in their study of this tax, it was
not very long before the proceeds were being directed in part to other ends in what
they term a double secularisation.28 There were later modifications to the actual levy,
with a lower rate brought in for certain categories in 259 BC. The Revenue Laws
papyrus also records the levy of the tax on oil-crops and, in the second roll, other
financial rulings on banks and further taxes which probably also date from 259 BC.
This year saw the start of the second Syrian war (259-253 BC) in which the success of
recent financial reforms would be put to the test.
Another challenging text from the following year, from November 258, may
be linked to the apomoira.29 It certainly raises many questions. This is a demotic copy
on a piece of broken pot from an area of priests’ houses at Karnak in Upper Egypt of
an order from the dioikêtês Phoenix30 for a comprehensive survey of Egypt, from
Elephantine to the coast, made basin by basin and plot by plot. Different categories of
land are to be enumerated, as are the different types of irrigation possibilities; along
with grain and fodder crops, vineyards must be listed, together with all the income
due, ‘the totality of the payments to the coffer of Egypt to its height and breadth, its
towns and its temples’, runs the text.31 Again we note the importance of the royal
revenues. But there is more. In the course of the text a correction has been made to the
number of nomes in Egypt. Nomes were the districts into which Egypt was divided
and in this text their number has been changed from 36 to 39—an indication perhaps
28
Clarysse and Vandorpe 1998, 15-16, already implied in P.Zen.Pestm. 34 (date unknown), cf. 30 (241
BC).
29
So Clarysse and Vandorpe 1998, 9-10. For the text, see O.dem.Karnak L.S. 462, ed. Bresciani 1978,
31-7, (1983), 15-31, translated Burstein 1985, no. 97; cf. Zauzich 1984, 193-4. The reading of the
king’s name has recently been challenged by Michel Chauveau (not yet published), who would read
Psammetichos rather than Ptolemaios.
30
If the reading is correct this must be a local dioikêtês of the Thebaid, cf. Thomas 1978, 189-90.
31
Translation based on that of Sian Thomas from a new transcription by J.D. Ray.
ECONOMIC REFORMS
41
of more recent activity within the administrative system or the use of an updated
original.
With the Karnak ostrakon, as the text has become known, we meet the role of
the land survey which lay at the base of the levy of revenue in kind, the agricultural
produce of the land. 32 The Nile valley is a thin stretch of rich agricultural land
bounded on either side. The desert was inhospitable and wild; this was the home of
bandits and nomads, of shepherds and goatherds and those who lived at the margins of
society. The valley itself was very different, as a glance at a physical atlas will show.
It was rich and fertile. The early Ptolemaic period is marked both by an extension of
the area of land under cultivation—drainage of the Fayum, as already mentioned, and
reclamation elsewhere—and an intensification of that cultivation—new crops and
agricultural experimentation. By measuring the land on a regular basis, both that
actually under cultivation and that potentially so, the Ptolemies could calculate and
levy revenue in kind. As with the operation of the census, many details are unknown,
but in contrast to the census, only royal officials are recorded as involved in this
operation. The main survey work took place at village level33 but, as with the census
and its resulting tax registers, details were reported up through the administration to
the nome capitals and then on to Alexandria where the central records were kept.
From Alexandria, however, and from the Delta with its moister climate, the only
papyri that survive are those transported elsewhere in antiquity or carbonised texts.34
Our knowledge of the centre is thus very limited. But what do we know of the land
survey under Ptolemy II?
32
Crawford 1971, 5-38; Verhoogt 1998, 133-46.
Verhoogt 2005 publishes accounts deriving from this operation.
34
As in the mummy cartonnage from the Herakleopolite nome in BGU VIII. From the Ptolemaic (in
contrast to the Roman) period there are carbonised texts from Edfu but none from the Delta.
33
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
42
From the reign of Ptolemy I very few papyri have survived. This I suspect is
more to do with burial practices than with the level of bureaucratic development,
though this may also be a relevant factor. It was only under Ptolemy II that the
practice of using recycled papyri for mummy casing (known as cartonnage) was
introduced, with important consequences for the historian. Separated out from the
lime with which they have been mixed, most texts preserved in this way are official in
nature, but in among them some private texts have also survived. Careful
consideration of where texts were originally written and where they were later filed
enables us to reconstruct the waste-paper trade from scribal office to mummifiers’
workshop. And in taking this journey back we can trace the workings of the royal
administration and its offshoots in the villages and towns of Ptolemaic Egypt. This is
precious material for the historian and placed back in context it often has much to tell.
The find-spot of texts is simply one of the problems to take account of as we try to
draw up a coherent account.35
The Karnak ostrakon with its order for survey—a complete survey of all
Egypt, raises many questions for the historian and may be used to illustrate the
problems we face in the interpretation of scattered texts. In the attempt to make sense
of any particular text, various scholarly tendencies are to be recognised which on
occasion can be dangerous. Historians need always to be on the watch to avoid falling
into a trap. First there is a tendency (as here) to link known texts, to join up disparate
pieces of the jigsaw that may once have belonged to very different parts of a picture,
to make them fit more closely than they should. This of course is part of the regular
35
So from the end of the reign of Ptolemy VIII it is striking that contemporary land surveys survive
from three different nomes—from the Arsinoite nome preserved as crocodile mummy
wrappings(P.Tebt. I and IV), from the Herakleopolite (BGU XIV with C.Ptol.Sklav. p. 977, for the
date) in human mummy cartonnage and a carbonised text from the Apollonopolite (P.Haun.inv. 407,
ed. Christensen 2002)—raising the questions of whether this is simply the result of chance or whether
new survey activity is reflected in their survival.
ECONOMIC REFORMS
43
activity of historical hypothesis, but hypothesis it needs to remain. It has, for instance,
been suggested that the Karnak ostrakon may be connected with the ruling on the
apomoira made the year before.36 This may well be right but it should not to be taken
as certain. Secondly, we have a tendency to overemphasise the significance of a
particular text, especially when that text is new. So, in the past, I have probably
overemphasised the importance of the Karnak ostrakon in the development of the
Ptolemaic administration.37 Indeed, if the new reading suggested by Chauveau (note
29 above) is accepted, the Karnak ostrakon becomes irrelevant to the current
discussion. Finally, we tend to forget that what we have is such a small portion of
what once there was and as a result we build too much up on too little; we elaborate a
theme to make a coherent picture when in practice the gaps are too great to justify our
conclusions. I am well aware that in my reconstruction of Philadelphus’ economic
reforms this is a tendency to which I may fall victim; the reader should share this
awareness.
In 254 BC there was a dramatic lowering of the rate for the salt-tax. Less than
ten years following its inception, its rate was drastically cut—from 1.5 drachmas to 1
drachma for men and from 1 drachmas to half a drachma for women or from 2.5 to
1.5 drachmas for a married couple. What is to be made of this adjustment? Is it a sign
of weakness or of flexibility? Were there problems in the enforcement of the levy or a
particular need for royal concessions? The recent Ptolemaic defeat by Antigonus in
the battle of Kos has been named in this context.38 On the other hand, it is possible
36
See n. 29 above.
Thompson in Woolf and Bowman (1994), 79; Manning 1999, 4, even considers the possibility that
the Edfu donation text (ed. Meeks 1972) could be part of the same operation (under Ptolemy II).
38
Clarysse and Thompson 2006 vol. 2, 87.
37
DOROTHY J. THOMPSON
44
that a lowering of rates might in fact be followed by a higher success in collection
without any loss to the crown. There is so much we do not know.
Two loose ends remain. I suggested earlier that it should not perhaps be the
king himself who gets all the credit or blame for the changing financial policies and
reforms that I have outlined. Kings rarely act alone—though they may—and it would
be interesting if we could glimpse beyond the throne to identify the hand of others in
the subtly changing picture of the time. Apollonios, the dioikêtês, might seem a prime
candidate responsible for the flurry of innovation in the 260s and 250s, in the first
decade of the second half of the reign of Ptolemy II. Against such a suggestion is the
order from the king against those lawyers who acted against the crown in revenue
matters. There Apollonios is simply the recipient of the royal order. In favour of the
suggestion is the fact that the Revenue Laws papyrus appears to derive from
Apollonios’ office and, as we have already noted, the first person plural of the ruling
exempting teachers and others from the salt-tax—“we have exempted” are the words
of the text.
Secondly—and finally—we need to return to my initial scene. What might
Ptolemy II have thought of the achievements of his reign in respect of his internal
economic innovations? He fortunately could not know that after his death a further
Syrian war would speedily break out, at the same time as the first internal uprising in
Egypt. Nor could he know that, in the aftermath of these troubles, his son and
successor Ptolemy III would cut the rate of the salt-tax still further. It was not all
black, however. The introduction of Greek ways in the collection of taxes—the use of
the tax-farm with its guarantees and cash required up front to guarantee the income
ECONOMIC REFORMS
45
from a tax—had on the whole been reasonably successful.39 And Egypt now, at least
in the mid-third century BC before the big copper inflation of later years, appears to
have worked as a cash economy, with money used and levied throughout the land.
Payments were regularly made in cash, as long that is as there was cash around,40 and
the cash income of the crown had been vastly increased with the introduction of new
taxes. And grain as always went on coming in. It was only under Ptolemy III that
troubles with bad Nile floods caused havoc with that supply. Overall, it would have
been a mixed report the king would have to ponder. As well as some disasters,
especially overseas, there had been many successes over his long reign. And whereas
it is possible that the mixed system of private and state involvement in the collection
of revenues that we can document in the apomoira and the salt-tax collection under
Ptolemy II actually originated with Ptolemy I, there is, I suggest, sufficient evidence
from the ten years or so from 264 BC to suggest that under Ptolemy II some
interesting innovations were made in what was collected and for what purpose, and
that the state gained, to the detriment in part of the temples. The fabled wealth of
Ptolemy II depended as much on new monetary levies as it did on the traditional
income of Egypt in grain.
39
P.Cairo Zen. I 59130.15-15-23 (April 256 or 254 BC), is one example of problems in the salt-tax
collection; Apollonios protects his farmers at Tapteia against the tax-collectors during the harvest
period.
40
For some solutions to cash shortages, see Thompson 1999, 113.
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF PTOLEMY II
Céline Marquaille
Before presenting the main characteristics of Philadelphus’ foreign policy I would like
to contemplate one of the oddities of studying the foreign policy or ‘empire’ of the
Ptolemies.1 Quite differently from the empire of the Seleucids, the interests of the
Ptolemies outside Egypt are often observed and analysed as separate from their
activities in Egypt, even when scholars such as Tarn or Rostovtzeff have tried to
explain Ptolemaic foreign policy with terms such as offensive or defensive
imperialism.2 Few works on the Ptolemaic state have included a study of its foreign
possessions and dependencies and even fewer have used the evidence found outside
Egypt to help build the picture of an empire that stretched far beyond the boundaries
of Egypt. The administrations of Syria or Cyprus are seldom considered as part of a
Ptolemaic state, and are instead often included in the study of Ptolemaic foreign
policy. And yet the English editor for Geschichte des Ptolemäerreiches has chosen,
rather significantly, to translate Hölbl’s excellent monograph as The History of the
Ptolemaic Empire, recalling Mahaffy’s title in 1895 The Empire of the Ptolemies. If
the narrative development of Hölbl’s work does offer a comprehensive overview of
Ptolemaic activities outside Egypt, in other words of their foreign policy, evidence for
the royal cult in Methymna or Cyrene, or material related to the Ptolemaic court active
in Cyprus, are hardly exploited in constructing what we are to understand by the
1
I would like to thank Paul McKechnie for inviting me to the conference. It was a great
disappointment not to have been able to attend and I am grateful to Pat Wheatley for reading this paper
in my absence, and to the participants for their comments.
2
Tarn at Adcock 1928, 699; Rostovtzeff 1941 vol. 1, 29.
FOREIGN POLICY
47
Ptolemaic ‘state’ or ‘kingdom’. There is a difficulty in finding the right terminology
for defining the political and cultural extension of the Ptolemies beyond the Egyptian
realm. This difficulty is very well illustrated in Polybius’ famous account on the
foreign policy of the first three Ptolemies. Ptolemaic foreign policy is transcribed in
terms of action by verbs, and not by a noun that would identify a united area:3
[…] they had been always able to menace the kings of Syria both by sea and
land, by ruling over Coele-Syria and Cyprus, and their sphere of control also
extended over the lesser kingdoms of Asia Minor and the islands, since they
were masters over strong places and harbours all along the coast from
Pamphylia to the Hellespont and the neighbourhood of Lysimachia; while by
their rule over Ainos, Maroneia and other cities even more distant, they
exercised a supervision over the affairs of Thrace and Macedonia.
They govern, they rule (κυριεÊοντες); their influence expands as far as (παρ°κειντο,
which also conveys the idea of ‘establishing contacts with’) regions where they are
the masters (δεσπÒζοντες); they exercise a supervision over affairs (§φÆδρευον...
πρãγµασι) thanks to their command / their rule (κυριεÊοντες). Polybius clearly
divides the areas of Ptolemaic influence into three groups: the possessions (CoeleSyria and Cyprus) whose aim is to threaten the Seleucid empire and secure access to
Egypt both by land and by sea; the Ptolemaic thalassocracy (from Pamphylia to
Hellespont; Lysimacheia and the Aegean islands) and the expansion to Thrace and
Macedonia. The vocabulary used by Polybius indicates that their influence was
determined by different objectives and expressed different forms of power, and that
control over regions such as Asia Minor and Hellespont resulted in the
3
Polybius 5.34.2-9; this geopolitical perspective may have led Polybius to omit Cyrenaica: Pédech
1964, 552. Compare with Strabo 17.1.5: ‘the early writers gave the name Egypt to only the part of the
country that was inhabited and watered by the Nile, beginning at the region of Syene and extending to
the sea; but the later writers down to the present have added on the eastern side approximately all the
parts between the Arabian Gulf and the Nile (the Aethiopians do not use the Red Sea at all), and on the
western side the parts extending as far as the oases, and on the sea-coast the parts extending from the
Canopic mouth to Catabathmus and the domain of the Cyrenaeans. For the kings after Ptolemy became
so powerful that they took possession of Cyrenaea itself and even united Cyprus with Aegypt. The
Romans, who succeeded the Ptolemies, separated their three dominions and have kept Aegypt within
its former limits’ [translation from Loeb edition].
48
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
implementation of relationships with local rulers. It is interesting that the word éρχÆ,
which could be tolerated as a compromise between ‘state’ and ‘exercise of power’,
and is in fact partly used in relation to Lesbos when designated as τ«ν
Íπαρξãντων,4 is only used by Polybius to describe Ptolemaic rule in Egypt itself.5 F.
Millar pointed out that in the case of Rome, the term éρχὴ in Polybius designated the
“developing capacity to defeat some peoples or rulers and give instructions to others”,
rather than describing the formation of Roman provinces.6 Polybius’ conception of
power explains why Philopator and his successors were not considered as respectable
rulers, despite their efforts to maintain an international presence—since Polybius
implies that we may talk no more of foreign policy for the successors of Ptolemy III.7
However, such an interpretation hardly accounts for the ubiquitous presence,
and action, of the Ptolemaic sovereigns on the religious and cultural front long after a
large part of their ‘empire’ had been lost to Antiochos III, Philip V, or Roman
interference. They do not offer a representative picture of power when expressed by
non-institutional or non-coercive forms of archē. These considerations are even more
relevant in the case of Ptolemy II who inaugurated his reign and his religious policy
by inviting representatives from Greek cities to attend a sumptuous display of luxury
and power in his capital. Dedications in Samothrace by Arsinoe II and Ptolemy II
4
P.Tebt. I 8 line 7.
Polybius 5.34.3 and 9. Polybius does use it when describing other empires: Πέρσαι κατά τινας
καιροὺς µεγάλην ἀρχὴν κατεκτήσαντο καὶ δυναστείαν (Polybius 1.2): ‘The Persians used to rule
over a large empire, but each time they ventured beyond the limits of Asia, they jeopardised their
domination and existence’; in contrast, Aeschylus Persae 700 refers to Persian power as τå Περσ«ν
πρãγµατα. Polybius praises Philip II’s actions who, together with his friends ἐξ ἐλαχίστης µὲν
βασιλείας ἐνδοξοτάτην καὶ µεγίστην τὴν Μακεδόνων ἀρχὴν κατεσκεύασαν (8.10.6: ‘[Philip and
his friends] succeeded, from a small kingdom, in constituting for the Macedonians the most glorious
and largest of the empires’). ἀρχὴ is also used to transcribe the Roman imperium: τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὴν
δυναστείαν τοῦ δήµου τῶν Ῥωµαίων (Polybius 21.32.2; cf. Livy 38.11.2: imperium majestasque
populi Romani).
6
Millar 1997, 90; Derow 1979.
7
For a discussion of Ptolemaic ‘imperialism’ and its chronological ‘limits’: Marquaille 2001, 21-57.
5
FOREIGN POLICY
49
were as fundamental to Philadelphus’ royal authority and legitimacy, and the
maintenance of his ‘empire’, as were prostagmata published in cities under direct
control. The title of this paper should therefore not mislead us on the nature of
Ptolemaic power; if the Ptolemies did treat Egypt separately from the rest of their
empire, their choice of Alexandria as sole capital, in contrast with the southern
position of Memphis or the multiple centres of power in the Seleucid empire, is
enough to show that they did not conceive their power without the territorial and
ideological periphery that encircled Alexandria from north to south and west to east.
The formation of multiple peripheries around Alexandria, to which corresponded
different economic, cultural or strategic interests, contributed in equal measure to the
royal status of Philadelphus inside and outside Egypt.8 We may in fact suggest that
Philadelphus’ idea of his ¶ξω πρãγµατα9 may be held as largely responsible for the
confusion that we experience over a term which would homogeneously convey the
nature and extent of Ptolemaic power inside and outside Egypt. The originality of
Philadelphus’ foreign policy lies in the deliberate fusion between his pragmata and
his basileia, which made him king in Athens as well as Paphos and extended the
limits of his ‘empire’ not where power was exercised but rather where it was
exhibited and given as something to share. Scholars such as Manning have started
considering Hellenistic Egypt as part of a larger Mediterranean structure,10 and it is
now necessary to think of the Ptolemaic empire as a ‘Ptolemaic space’ whose
boundaries were geopolitical as well as ideological.11
8
See also Buraselis 1993, 259 on Alexandria, as ‘the ideological centre of the Ptolemaic state’, and a
periphery of Greece, and how ‘Greece and the Ptolemies in effect divided the roles of centre and
periphery in the third and the beginning of the second century’.
9
Polybius 5.34.4 refers to overseas officials as τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν ἔξω πραγµάτων διατεταγµένοις.
10
Manning 2003.
11
Ma 1999 carefully observed this phenomenon for the Seleucid empire in the third century BC.
50
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Ptolemy II had inherited the difficult task of maintaining under his control the
territories conquered by his father and therefore had to give them the legitimacy of
pragmata. There are legitimate reasons for considering the ring of territories that
encircled Egypt and acted as a ring of protection, as part of Ptolemaic foreign policy.
The first reason is their very basic function, the security of Egypt, which proved
effective since Egypt did not suffer a single attack on its territory before Antiochos
IV’s occupation of the Delta in 170.12 They also served the Ptolemaic ambitions
towards sea supremacy as they provided the Ptolemaic fleet with the necessary
resources that were lacking in Egypt itself. The prime characteristic of Philadelphus’
foreign policy is therefore the continuity of his commitment outside Egypt with that of
his father. Ptolemy I had early implemented the main orientations of his foreign
policy: the defence of Egypt by the conquest and direct control of a buffer-zone
around Egypt, namely Cyrenaica, Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and the domination of
the Aegean Sea in order to thwart Antigonid ambitions in Greece and Asia Minor, and
presumably to secure the trade route from Alexandria to Greece.13 On his accession to
the throne at the death of Soter in 283, after two years of co-regency, Ptolemy II
became heir to Demetrios’ former sea power and took on the leadership of the League
of the Islanders in the Cyclades.14 As Bagnall clearly demonstrated, Cyrenaica, Syria,
Phoenicia, and Cyprus formed ‘the core of the empire’, as they shared common
12
Hölbl 2001, 145.
Beloch 1903 on the foreign policy of Ptolemy I is naturally now out of date; for a general overview
of Ptolemaic conquests which still remains largely accurate: Bagnall 1976, esp. 25-37 (Cyrenaica), 1124 (Coele-Syria and Phoenicia), 38-79 (Cyprus), 117-158 (the Aegean). Pamphylia and Lycia were
also probably partly under Ptolemaic control by 295: Bagnall 1976, 110-114 (Pamphylia), 105-110
(Lycia). On Lycia, see additionally Wörrle 1977 and 1978, Hölbl 2001, 23, 31 n.39. Seibert 1971 on
Ptolemy I and Miletus. Will abundantly discussed the inconclusive evidence concerning a Ptolemaic
foreign policy in the third century governed by economic imperialism: Will 1979, 168-200. It must be
noted however that control over the southern Aegean, and the Ptolemies’ later commitment in the
northern Aegean, must have contributed to facilitate communications between those areas, Greece, and
Egypt, and ultimately served Ptolemaic Egypt’s commercial interests. In that respect, good relations
with Delos and Rhodes must have been equally important.
14
Merker 1970, 141-2; Bagnall 1976, 136-58; Will 1979, 96.
13
FOREIGN POLICY
51
patterns of administration not only between themselves but also with Egypt, including
their participation in a closed monetary zone and the imposition of taxes.15 Evidence
for the reign of Philadelphus is however scarce. The province of Syria and Phoenicia
is the best documented for the reign of Ptolemy II, particularly thanks to the archives
of Zenon whose duties also included taking care of Apollonius’ private interests in
Palestine.16 Royal authority and an administrative framework were firmly in place by
the 260s, supported by garrisons and military settlers.17 Bureaucratic control of the
countryside suggests that royal administration of Coele-Syria was similar to that in
place in Egypt.18 In Cyprus the reign of Philadelphus is poorly attested but we know
from Pausanias that Philadelphus, on his accession to the throne, put to death his halfbrother, the son of Soter by Eurydice, who had tried to incite the Cypriots to revolt.19
Treason and the importance of Cyprus for the integrity of Egypt were sufficient
motives for such radical action. Cyprus was an important shipbuilding and naval base,
and it was in the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos that Philadelphus himself
dedicated a statue of his naval architect, Pyrgoteles, while the statue of the famous
admiral of the Ptolemaic fleet, Kallikrates of Samos, in the same sanctuary, is likely to
have been another royal dedication.20 No strategos or governor for the island is
attested before the reign of Philopator,21 a situation mirrored in Cyrenaica where the
first mention of a Lybiarch dates from the year 203 in Polybius; this is corroborated
by epigraphical evidence from Cyrene, which shows the first strategos appearing in
15
Bagnall 1976, 240-44.
Bagnall 1976, 11-24, supplemented by Grainger 1991, 40-105, remain our best accounts for this area
as there has been no real attempt at providing an exhaustive study of this Ptolemaic province. On
Zeno’s activities in Coele-Syria: Pestman 1981, 172-3.
17
Bagnall 1976, 16-17. Royal prostagmata on the taxation of livestock and the acquisition and
registration of slaves: C. Ord. Ptol. 21-22.
18
Rostovtzeff 1941 vol. 1, 341-6, Lenger 1959, 219, Bagnall 1976, 24.
19
Pausanias 1.7.1.
20
Pyrgoteles: OGIS 39; Nicolaou 1971, 20. Kallikrates: Mitford ‘Old Paphos’, 9 no.18.
21
Bagnall 1976, 38-49.
16
52
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
the reign of Epiphanes.22 Again, evidence for the reign of Philadelphus in Cyrenaica is
scarce, also presumably because of the independence and aborted revolt against his
half-brother of Soter’s governor and stepson in Cyrenaica, Magas, and of his
subsequent alliance with Antiochos I, whose daughter Apame he had married,
although it is in my view difficult to assume a complete separation between the two
kingdoms.23 How Philadelphus integrated these regions in his reality and image of
empire, and how this was perceived in Alexandria or outside Egypt, is difficult to
comprehend. It is interesting to note that Theocritus in his Encomium did not feel the
need to mention Cyprus in the list of territories subject to Philadelphus, while the
decree in honour of Kallias mentions that the Athenian in 282 had visited the king
while he was staying on Cyprus.24 The presence of Philadelphus and probably his
entourage on Cyprus was almost certainly not accidental and may belong to a pattern
in which the king used Cyprus as a secondary military and political base for his
power. The early development of a court on Cyprus, parallel to that in Alexandria (as
I will show elsewhere), may have started with such regular visits of Philadelphus and
22
SEG IX 55: the strategos Philon son of Kastor, archisomatophylax, had his statue dedicated to
Apollo by the Cyrenaeans between 185 and 180 for his arete towards Ptolemy V, Cleopatra I and their
children, and the city of Cyrene.
23
Chamoux 1956, Laronde 1987, 362-9. Evidence shows that Magas had taken the title of king at
some time between his appointment in 300 and his revolt c. 275 BC: a dedication found on the agora in
Cyrene: SEG IX 112; a dedication of a statue of Victory in honour of king Magas found in Apollonia:
Chamoux 1958; a treaty between Magas and the Cretan Confederation of the Oreioi: IC II 17.1.10. His
name is also mentioned with those of other Hellenistic kings in an inscription of the Indian king
Asoka: Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum I 25. Magas continued to strike coins in the effigy of Soter,
although some scholars now tend to attribute the coins thought to represent Soter and Berenice I with
the monogram ΜΑΓ to a later period, therefore representing instead Berenice II; on Soter/Libya types
BMC Cyrenaica xvi; for a full discussion see Caccamo Caltabiano 1998, 101 n.23. As rightly stressed
by Will 1979, 146, Magas’ dissension was less against Ptolemaic power than against Philadelphus
himself, so that Ptolemaic authority in Cyrenaica was not completely overruled. There are signs that
seem to indicate a reconciliation between the two rulers in the 260s. In the treaty that Magas concluded
with the confederation of the Oreioi, he is mentioned as basileus, whereas Cyrenaica is referred to as
§παρχ¤α: IC II 17.1.10 line 10. There is still uncertainty concerning the dating of the inscription: Van
Effenterre 1948, 121-6, but a date in the context of the Chremonidean War is highly plausible. The link
with Egypt, even if materially distant, is real: at the time of the treaty with the Oreioi, Cyrenaica is not
anymore an independent kingdom. The treaty with the Oreioi was not only that of a king willing to
protect his kingdom from piracy; it could also serve the Ptolemaic interests in Crete at the time of the
Chremonidean War (see below).
24
Theocritus Idyll 17.86-90; SEG XXIX 102 lines 42-3.
FOREIGN POLICY
53
his close friends, integrating the island into a royal domain of authority on a scale
similar to Egypt.25
Philadelphus’ interests however extended far beyond the Mediterranean and
the territories that came under his control during his reign range in status from direct
dependencies submitted to taxes and the presence of garrisons, to allies of the
Ptolemaic crown. As a Hellenistic king who built his authority on his capacity as a
military leader,26 Philadelphus, despite modern accusations of an unwarlike
personality or submissiveness to his sister Arsinoe II, did spend a large part of his
reign at war.27 Ending the friendly relationships with the Seleucids, the so-called
Syrian War of Succession (280-279) brought under Ptolemaic influence almost
complete dominance from the coast of Egypt and Phoenicia up to southern and
western Anatolia, with the Nesiotic League acting as the last boundaries of Ptolemaic
influence opposite mainland Greece.28 An alliance with Miletus was renewed,29
25
The passage from Pausanias (1.7.1), in which he mentions a son of Ptolemy I by Eurydice whom
Philadelphus had killed because this half-brother of Ptolemy II had been responsible for inciting the
Cypriotes to revolt, is surprisingly often kept quiet. When this exactly happened is difficult to establish
and there is no way of telling whether it occurred at the same time as Magas’ revolt against his halfbrother around 275, which immediately follows in Pausanias’ account; it is generally agreed that this
episode happened after the death of Arsinoe II in 270. It may, however, suggest that Philadelphus’
anonymous half-brother was in Cyprus to govern the island and that supervision of Cyprus,
administered until 306 by Menelaos, Ptolemy I’s brother, was kept in royal hands in the early times of
Ptolemaic occupation.
26
Samuel 1989, 72-3: ‘If cult and divinity were an aspect of the ideology [of kingship], so too was, on
the human level, military accomplishment and adventure’; Préaux 1997, 183: “Le roi est d’abord et
obligatoirement un guerrier, et un guerrier vainqueur”.
27
Samuel 1993, 183 who deplored that “Philadelphus’ behaviour [was] often seen as that of an
unwarlike personality who abandoned even restricted objectives when they became difficult or
expensive to achieve”. For example Chauveau 1992, 144 on Philadelphus’ naval defeats: “il sut
également compenser ces échecs sur le champ de bataille par une habileté diplomatique parfois teintée
d’un certain machiavélisme”, or Hauben 1989, 458 on Philadelphus’ more intellectual than military
personality. Longega 1968, Burstein 1982 and Hauben 1983 discussed the possible influence that
Arsinoe II held over her brother. Longega (1968, 93-5) claimed that Arsinoe was “smaniosa di
potenza”, and that it was not possible to understand the Athenian policy of the Ptolemies and the
Chremonidean War without considering the irresolute nature of Arsinoe’s brother Ptolemy. Burstein
1982, 199 and 205, objected against the picture of an “ineffectual Ptolemy II dominated” by Arsinoe,
while Hauben 1983, 99 and 100-101 placed the role of Arsinoe in the context of the heyday of
Ptolemaic maritime power and Ptolemaic Egypt’s isolation on the international scene, rightly
emphasising the context in which Arsinoe became the symbol and embodiment of the “épanouissement
maritime de l’Egypte dans ses aspects essentials” (125).
28
Will 1979, 139-12; Heinen at Walbank 1984, 413-16.
54
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Ptolemaic troops landed on the island of Samos,30 while further south a large part of
Caria including the Carian interior came under Ptolemaic control.31 A gift of land near
Telmessos to a Ptolemy, son of Lysimachus and Arsinoe II, suggests further
Ptolemaic expansion into Lycia, while a Pamphyliarch is attested in 278.32 The
presence of Ptolemaic high officials in Caria and Pamphylia certainly implies a
Ptolemaic early commitment to organise the administration of these provinces. If the
outcome of the so-called First Syrian War (274-271 BC) was a renewal of a status
quo,33 control over the Nesiotic League limited Antigonid ambitions in sea power and
in mainland Greece; the conquest of Samos and Ionia meant control over the sea route
around south-eastern Greece and to the Black Sea,34 while the Ptolemaic occupation of
Caria, Lycia and Pamphylia contained the Seleucids’ movements in the Mediterranean
and acted as a protective shield, together with Cyprus, for the security of Egypt. The
outbreak of the Chremonidean War, in 267, between an alliance led by Sparta and
Athens, supported by Ptolemy II, and Antigonid forces, still further expanded the
29
For 314-3 BC as the date of Soter’s alliance with Miletus: Bagnall 1976, 176 n.46 and Will 1979,
60; for 309/8: Seibert 1971, 165; for a date in the first half of the 290s: Burstein 1980, 78-9. Antiochos
is last recorded as stephanephoros in 280/279: I.Milet. III 123, while I.Milet. III 139 (c. 262 BC)
records a letter of Ptolemy and a decree of Miletus honouring the king. Ptolemy’s gift of land to
Miletus in 279/8 appears in I.Milet III 123 lines 38ff and 139 line 2. Its ultimate purpose was to bring
the Milesians into the Ptolemaic ‘alliance’ against the Seleucids: Habicht 1956, 120; Burstein 1980,
78.
30
Samos: Bagnall 1976, 82-8, Shipley 1987, 182, 209, 298-301. That the Nesiotic League gathered on
Samos in 280/279 is generally accepted as proving subjection to Ptolemaic power: Syll.3 I.390.
31
Several cities are now securely attested as Ptolemaic as early as 279/8: Bagnall 1976, 80-102 and
more recently Van Bremen 2003. Stratonikeia area: I.Stratonikeia 1002, dated by the ninth year of
Ptolemy II (277/6 BC); Mylasa: Kobes 1995, 1-6; Halikarnassus: SEG I 363; Amyzon: Robert Amyzon
no.3; Myndos: SEG I 363. New evidence has recently supplemented the list of Carian cities known to
have been under Ptolemaic control: Kildara, Eyromos, Theangela, Thodasa, Xystis in the Harpasos
Valley, Ouranis near Keramos, and probably Bargylia and Panamara: Van Bremen 2003, 9-10 and
n.11. Three strategoi of Caria are attested for the reign of Philadelphus: Margos (Robert Amyzon no.3),
Motes (P.Cairo Zen. 59341) and Aristolaos (Habicht 1957, 218-223 no.57; Pausanias 6.17.3)
32
Lycia: Wörrle 1977 and 1978; on Ptolemy son of Lysimachus and another recent set of articles on
the much discussed problem of the identity of the sons of Ptolemy: Huss 1998 and Tunny 2000.
Pamphylia: Bagnall 1976, 111-13.
33
Heinen at Walbank 1984, 416-18; Will 1979, 146-50.
34
Shipley 1987, 186.
FOREIGN POLICY
55
Ptolemaic space towards Greece and the Aegean.35 Thera, Keos, Methana on the
mainland, and Itanos in Crete came under Ptolemaic direct control.36 Habicht believes
that an Athenian decree honouring two Rhodian captains in connection with a king
Ptolemy, probably dating from Philopator’s or Epiphanes’ reign, adds further
evidence for the existence of a Ptolemaic naval base on the island of Hydrea, off the
Argolid’s southeast shore, as an additional link in the chain connecting Egypt by sea
with Greece.37 Among this network of naval bases, Methana-Arsinoe, Thera and
Itanos remained in the Ptolemaic sphere of control until the end of Philometor’s reign.
The Ptolemaic troops did not intervene directly on the Greek mainland, and their
operations seem to have been limited to the protection of the coasts of Attica and the
patrolling of the Aegean Sea, a lack of commitment that some hold as responsible for
Athens’ ultimate capitulation.38 Control over the southern Aegean and the transfer of
the last phase of the conflict off the coast of Asia Minor, perhaps around Cos,39 where
the Ptolemies lost a naval battle, suggest that Patroklos was also setting up a
containment zone against Antigonid interests in the area. The Kallias decree in honour
of this Athenian citizen in Ptolemaic service, mentioning the sending of troops
35
Decree in honour of Chremonides: Syll.3 434/435, Austin 1981, no. 51. Pausanias 1.1.1, 7.3; 3.6.4-6;
Justin 26.2. The dates of the Chremonidean War are controversial, although its end can be securely
dated to 262/1 BC in the archonship of Antipatros: Pausanias 3.6.6; Polyaenus 4.6.20; Hammond and
Walbank 1988 vol. 1, 292. For the outbreak of the war, two possible dates have been suggested:
Gabbert 1986 argued it started in 265/4, although it is more commonly accepted that the conflict broke
out in 268/7: Reger 1985 [1993], 176 n.66; Will 1979, 223-4; Heinen 1972, 102-117; Osborne 1981-83
vol. 2, 165-6 n.750. Ptolemaic intervention in the Chremonidean War may have been triggered by
Gonatas’ resumption of his ancestors’ ambitions to maritime hegemony: Will 1979, 220-21; Hammond
and Walbank 1988 vol. 1, 279. See James O’Neil’s contribution in this volume.
36
Thera: OGIS 44; Keos: IG XII.5 1061; Itanos: IC III.IV 2 and 3; Methana: Bagnall 1976, 135-6.
37
IG II2 1024, Habicht 1992, 88-90.
38
Hammond and Walbank 1988 vol. 1, 279-84. It has been established that the Ptolemies established
fortified camps during the war at Koroni and Vouliagmeni in Attica, as well as Rhamnous and
Helioupolis: McCredie 1966, 46ff, 110-14.
39
Athenaeus 209e; Plutarch Moralia 545b, 183c-d. Two dates have been suggested for the battle of
Cos: Reger 1985 [1993], and Walbank 1982, 218-20 argued in favour of 261 BC, therefore placing the
battle at the end of the Chremonidean War, although Hammond and Walbank 1988 vol. 1, 291-2 later
expressed a preference for a later date in 255, as argued in Buraselis 1982, 146-51 and Hammond
1988, 595-9. Ptolemaic officials were also present in Miletus (I.Milet. III 139A) in 262/1 BC.
56
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
stationed on Andros to help defend the Athenian countryside against Demetrios in
287,40 also suggests that Ptolemaic interests in the Aegean preceded the
Chremonidean War and bases may have been implemented at an earlier date.41 It is
equally unlikely that Philadelphus lost interest in the Aegean after 260 and the start of
the Second Syrian War (260-253),42 since the naval defeats suffered by the Ptolemaic
fleet off Ephesus in 255 and Andros, possibly in 246, show that the Ptolemaic king
was still active in this area. 43 At the end of his reign Philadelphus was left with
control over the nucleus of his empire, several naval bases in the Aegean and possibly
in Lycia, while most of the possessions acquired in the aftermath of the Syrian War of
succession went back to Antiochos II: Ionia was lost, naval bases from Pamphylia to
Trachea Cilicia, as well as Samos, became Seleucid.44 There is hardly a mention
anymore of the Nesiotic League in the Cyclades, soon taken over by Rhodian
influence. Ptolemy III later claimed to have inherited the Cyclades from his father; the
Third Syrian War and Euergetes’ expansion in the North Aegean, Thrace and the
Hellespont meant that the son of Philadelphus was determined to continue his father’s
policy in the Aegean, and the spectacular Ptolemaic dedications on Samothrace
40
SEG XXIX 102 line 25; Shear 1978.
Shear 1978, 18.
42
Antiochos probably took advantage of the defection of Ptolemy the son, whom Philadelphus had
established in Ionia: Will 1979, 234-5, and may have received the support of Gonatas: Hölbl 2001, 44.
43
Ephesus: Polyaen. 5.18; Berthold 1984, 89-91. Reger 1985 [1993], 163 dates the battle of Ephesus in
the context of the Second Syrian War (260-253). Andros: Hammond 1988, 587-95. Reger 1985 [1993],
164, 167-168, and 1994, 33-41 who argued that the Ptolemies lost interest in the Aegean after 261 and
that the battle of Andros in 246 definitely marked their final retreat from the Aegean. Hauben 1983,
127 also believes that the battle of Cos marked the beginning of a slow decline. Hammond and
Walbank 1988 vol. 1, 294 and Will 1979, 231-3 are more cautious on the decline of Ptolemaic power
in the 250s and 240s; Will prefers the term ‘repli’ to a complete desertion of Ptolemaic forces in the
Aegean. A reference in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates (180) mentions a naval victory of Ptolemy
II over Antigonos, perhaps in 250: Pelletier 1962, 187; Buraselis 1982, 170-71; Hammond 1988, 591
n.4. This is supported by a letter of Apollonius dating from January 250 concerning the felling of
native trees for use in the dockyards, perhaps in connection with contemporary naval operations in the
Aegean: Fraser and Roberts 1949. Ptolemy II founded another festival on Delos in 249-8 BC (the first
Delian Ptolemaia dated from 279): Bruneau 1970, 520, 523-524, while I.Delos 290 lines 129-31
mentions the subscription of a loan by the Delians for the erection of a statue of Ptolemy II (perhaps IG
XI.4 1073).
44
Will 1979, 239-46; Heinen at Walbank 1984, 418-19.
41
FOREIGN POLICY
57
suggest that the episode of the Chremonidean War had interrupted a progressive shift
in Ptolemaic interests.45
The arrival of Arsinoe in Egypt in 279 therefore happened when Ptolemy was
at the height of his power, reaching a climax between the end of the 270s and 260 BC.
We need to picture Philadelphus’ supremacy at sea, with the Ptolemaic fleet free to
circulate in both the Mediterranean and the Aegean, supported by a whole ring of
harbours for the Ptolemaic fleet to drop anchor. It is most probably during this period,
either in 279 or in 275/4, that the Ptolemaia, to which I will later come back, took
place in Alexandria, attracting representatives from cities from all over the Greek
world, who had made the trip to Alexandria to acknowledge the power of a mighty
and lavish monarchy, a monarchy that nevertheless gave these cities pride of place in
a grandiose procession. As Theocritus reminds us in his Idyll 14, it became wellknown that for those who wished to lend their services to a king and enter his army,
‘Ptolemy [was] the best employer for a free man’.46 What really distinguishes
Philadelphus from his father and his successors, is this very notion that Ptolemy II
bound his power to the representation and extent of his realm of authority, in other
words to the formation and advertising of a Ptolemaic space that went beyond notions
of control and administration through the creation of new means to link individuals
45
Euergetes’ claim to have inherited the Cyclades comes from the Adulis inscription: OGIS 54 line 15;
whether this is true or not cannot be established but it nevertheless indicates that in Ptolemaic
propaganda, control over the Cyclades had to be publicly advertised. A third series of Ptolemaia was
founded on Delos in 245 BC: Bruneau 1970, 520, 523-4; Reger 1994, 45. On the island of Astypalaia,
a former member of the Nesiotic League, a statue of Ptolemy Euergetes ‘son of king Ptolemy’,
probably dating from the reign of Philopator, was found, showing that contacts with Ptolemaic power
did not come to an end in the reign of Ptolemy III: IG XII.3 204; Bagnall 1976, 149. For the battle of
Andros in 246: Reger 1994, 46-47, who argues that the Cyclades were ‘independent’ between 246 and
200. Philadelphus’ interests in the Aegean are well attested in Samos: Shipley 1987, 182; Samothrace,
where Arsinoe dedicated a rotunda in the sanctuary of the Great Gods: IG XII.8 150, Roux 1992, 231
[contra Ameling et al. 1995, 265 no. 236 who dates the dedication when Arsinoe was the wife of
Lysimachus], Seiler 1986, 107-115. Ptolemy Philadelphus also dedicated a propylon on Samothrace:
Frazer 1990. In Methymna, on Lesbos, a plaque from the 260s bearing the name of Arsinoe
Philadelphus was found: IG XII.2 513, Brun 1991, 101-2 no.2; although it does not necessarily imply
that the island was under Ptolemaic control, it certainly attests some kind of relation with Egypt.
46
Theocritus Idyll 14.59.
58
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
from both inside and outside Egypt to his person and his family. In other words,
Philadelphus’ foreign policy succeeded in two realms: he gave a dynastic dimension
to his power; and he founded the boundaries of his basileia on a carefully designed
image of power that relied on concepts attached to the fundamental notion of
Hellenism, using channels of communication such as art and religion that transcended
his image of conqueror.
The boundaries of this space are probably more extensive than is commonly
acknowledged. The emergence of Alexandria as a cultural centre in the reign of
Philadelphus makes further sense if we acknowledge Philadelphus’ determination to
position Alexandria as literally, or physically, the centre of an empire, constituting the
link between the routes opened by the numerous royal expeditions to the south and
Arabia on the one hand, and the Mediterranean and Aegean worlds on the other. As
Theocritus writes, Philadelphus “cut off for himself part of Black Aethiopia” when he
launched military campaigns in Nubia led by men such as Philon or Dailon.47
Philadelphus’ domination of the south is conspicuously advertised in Athenaeus’
description of the Great Procession with a grand display of ebony, exotic animals,
frankincense and elephant tusks constituting the Aethiopian tribute.48 He also
established direct channels of communication between Alexandria and the Red Sea by
founding the city of Arsinoe by the Gulf of Suez and restoring a canal that linked
Alexandria to the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.49 Cities were founded further south
down to the Ban el Mandeb Strait, expeditions were sent to measure distances, record
natural resources, especially precious goods, while foundations such as Ptolemais
47
Theocritus Idyll 17.87; Burstein 1993, 42; importance of the South for gold and war elephants:
Fraser 1972, vol. 1, 175.
48
Athenaeus 5.201a.
49
Herodotus 2.158, Diodorus Siculus 1.33.11-12, Strabo 17.1.25; mentioned on the Pithom Stele:
Cairo CG 22183 lines 22-25; Bouché-Leclercq 1903, 242-3; Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 177 and vol. 2, 298-9
n.346 and 348; Pédech 1976, 84.
FOREIGN POLICY
59
Epitheras facilitated the capture of elephants.50 With Philadelphus’ expeditions to the
south, stretching the limits of Ptolemaic diplomacy and trade to Arabia and India,51
but also to the north, up to Crimea where a drawing of an Egyptian trireme with the
name of Isis, perhaps a sacred galley or a warship, was found in the shrine of
Aphrodite and Apollo at Nymphaion.52 Alexandria becomes the centre of a new
world. The foreign element in Philadelphus’ concept of his power and pragmata
cannot be separated from his conception of Egypt as the nurturing land and the base of
his power. I often used to think of Philadelphus’ Alexandria as a city open to the
world, but I now tend to contemplate it as a place designed as a centripetal force
towards which everything converges, from transport networks to festival attendants,
artists, soldiers and worshippers. Members of the Mouseion and the Library in
Alexandria were encouraged to advertise the magnitude of Ptolemaic power by the
production of expedition reports and treaties which, if they did nothing to contribute
to geography, mapped the extent of Philadelphus’ determination to embrace the
known world through war or diplomacy.53 A Rhodian commander in the Ptolemaic
navy, Timosthenes, returned with detailed accounts, including one entitled On
Harbours, from journeys to Central Africa and the Mediterranean, both probably
ordered by Philadelphus.54 Diodorus may have used reports such as those brought
back by Timosthenes or Philon when he recorded Philadelphus’ campaigns to
50
Pédech 1976, 85-86; and Stanley Burstein’s contribution in this volume.
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 175-8. The contacts established between the Maurya king of the Punjab, Asoka,
and Philadelphus were inscribed in rock edicts: Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum I 25 (the name of
Magas is also recorded) while Pliny NH 6.58 mentions the sending of an embassy to India.
52
Dated 275-250 BC: SEG XXXIV 756 and XLV 997; Grač 1984, 81-8; Heinen 1989, 113-14 n.16;
Vinogradov 1999; more recently Murray 2002 has usefully revisited the graffito and suggested that the
ship may have been conveying sacred delegations sent by Ptolemy II in the 250s to introduce the cult
of Isis and other Egyptian deities to the Black Sea. We should however be cautious with the latter
suggestion as it presupposes Ptolemaic religious propaganda of the cult of Isis.
53
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 525: until Eratosthenes, expedition reports and other geographical writings in
Alexandria ‘contributed little or nothing to the further understanding of the inhabited world’.
54
Strabo 9.3.10. See Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 522; vol. 2, 751 n.13.
51
60
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Aethiopia.55 The Callimachus entry in the Suda records works such as The Foundation
of Argos, Foundations of Islands and Cities and their Changes of Names, On the
Rivers in Europe, On Astonishing and Paradoxical Things in the Peloponnese and
Italy, On Winds, and finally, On Rivers in the Inhabited World.56 Callimachus’
narrative on metonomasiai probably found its inspiration in Philadelphus’ numerous
foundations, especially those in honour of his sister-wife, Arsinoe II, whose
apotheosis Callimachus celebrated in a famous poem.57 Philadelphus’ overseas
contacts must have been publicly advertised in Alexandria as court poetry suggests,
when Theocritus mentions the wool of Miletus and Samos in the singer’s hymn of his
Idyll 15, or when he lists the peoples subject to Ptolemaic power in his Encomium:
Phoenicia, Arabia, Syria, Libya, Aethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Caria and the
Cyclades.58 The poet’s list is not entirely realistic or accurate: Theocritus omits to
include Cyprus, while Arabia and Aethiopia were never directly governed by the
Ptolemies.59 This is rather the picture of an ‘imagined empire’, an expression already
used by Ma,60 to which corresponds the limitlessness of Ptolemy’s power, the heir of
Alexander as the conqueror who defeated the barbarian empire of the Persians. The
wealth and abundance of Philadelphus was echoed in the luxury imports from such
regions as Arabia. Theocritus’ list also reflects the perception of Philadelphus’ empire
in Alexandria, and when the poet mentions the ‘spearmen of Cilicia’, or the ‘bellicose
Carians’, it most certainly refers to the Alexandrian daily experience of living in a
55
Diodorus Siculus 1.37.5.
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 522-3.
57
Pfeiffer 1949, 218-22 (Fr. 228).
58
Theocritus Idyll 15.126-8; 17.86-90.
59
Burstein 1993.
60
Ma 2003, 185: ‘The effect of language and of concrete processes of administration was to create
“imagined empire”, a space of unity and efficacy filled with the royal presence’.
56
FOREIGN POLICY
61
military state, extravagantly emphasised in the Great Procession where 57,600
infantry and 23,200 cavalry paraded in the streets of Alexandria.61
But such projection was not restricted to the Hellenised population of
Alexandria and the Egyptian chora; we tend to overlook the responsibility of the first
Ptolemies to act as pharaohs and their duty to protect the Egyptian soil. The role of the
pharaoh was not only to protect Egypt from its attackers: he had to adopt a resolutely
defensive attitude towards his potential enemies.62 The limits of the king’s power
coincided with the boundaries of the universe, in consequence of which the Egyptian
borders knew no limits.63 The first two Ptolemies immediately grasped the benefits
they could draw from Egypt’s position, but also the political and ideological
‘demands’ that the preservation of such an entity had imposed since very ancient
times, explaining why the return of Egyptian sacred statues to Egypt by the Ptolemies
was repeatedly emphasised, especially in the context of the struggle against the
Seleucids.64 In a hieroglyphic stele put up by Egyptian priests at Sais, possibly in the
course of the First or Second Syrian War, Ptolemy II is said to have “received the
tribute of the cities of Asia” and cut off the heads of his enemies who had attacked
61
Athenaeus 203a. Buraselis 1993, 258-9 and 269 nn.58-9. For the Ptolemaic army: Launey 1949-50
vols. 1 and 2 passim, Sekunda 1995 and Marrinan 1998. See Appian Praef. 10: ‘The kings of my own
country [Egypt] alone had an army consisting of 200,000 foot, 40,000 horse, 300 war elephants, and
2,000 armed chariots, and arms in reserve for 300,000 soldiers more. This was their force for land
service. For naval service they had 2,000 barges propelled by poles, and other smaller craft, 1,500
galleys with from one and a half to five benches of oars each, and galley furniture for twice as many
ships, 800 vessels provided with cabins, gilded on stem and stern for the pomp of war, with which the
kings themselves were wont to go to naval combats; and money in their treasuries to the amount of
740,000 Egyptian talents. Such was the state of preparedness for war shown by the royal accounts as
recorded and left by the king of Egypt second in succession after Alexander, who was the most
formidable of these rulers in his preparations, the most lavish in expenditure, and the most magnificent
in projects.’
62
Grimal 1986, 652-82.
63
Grimal 1986, 685.
64
This ‘cliché’ of Ptolemaic propaganda appears in the Satrap Stele: Cairo CG 22181, translation in
Bevan 1927, 28-32 (Ptolemy I); the Adulis inscription: OGIS 54 lines 20-24 and the Canopus decree:
OGIS 56 lines 10-11 (Ptolemy III). Heinen at Walbank 1984, 417: ‘From the point of view of native
Egyptians Ptolemaic foreign policy could be perceived as the continuation of their age-old traditions in
the struggle against “the foreign lands”, against the enemies of Egypt and its gods’. In the trilingual
Raphia Decree published after the battle of Raphia in 217, Philopator is praised for having brought
back objects stolen by Antiochus: full bibliography in Hölbl 2001, 174 nn. 23-4.
62
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
him in more ships and chariots “than those possessed by the princes of Arabia and
Phoenicia”.65 Mention of ‘Asia’ echoes a traditional Egyptian topos used to describe
in Egyptian texts foreign enemies in general,66 while ‘Arabia and Phoenicia’ recall the
list of territories subject to Ptolemaic authority in Theocritus’ Encomium. In
Apollonius’ Argonautica, whose narrative covers Greek and Barbarian areas from
Greece to Africa, as pointed out by Stephens, Egypt is not anymore the ‘other’ but
becomes assimilated to the Greek world.67 Again, the foreign policy of Philadelphus
cannot simply be separated from the way the Ptolemaic ruler conceived his archè, that
is both his power and empire, and how this affected his legitimacy as king.
Philadelphus did more than expand the core of his power to a periphery of territories;
his acts of donations or piety and his constant visibility in areas that were not under
Ptolemaic control suggest that his power rested on a certain sense of ubiquity and the
projection of an identity to which individuals, specifically Greeks, could relate.
Philadelphus was remembered by Appian as “the most formidable of [the
Hellenistic kings] in his preparations, the most lavish in expenditure, and the most
magnificent in projects”.68 The distinctive status of Philadelphus among Greeks in
comparison to other members of his family is certainly no coincidence: this is how
Philadelphus wanted to be publicised, and he made sure to keep records of his acts of
generosity and philanthropia. The Ptolemaic king ensured that precisely his name and
that of his family would be remembered, and his dynastic policy when directed
outside Egypt was a policy of names. The first name to receive public exposure was
that of his father as Soter, the Saviour, and subsequently of his parents as Theoi
65
Bevan 1927, 61-2, Thiers 1999.
Grimal 1988, 245-6.
67
Stephens 2003, 183. Green 1997, 61-2 on Apollonius’ efforts at composing a model of Hellenic selfdefinition with the figure of Herakles as Hellene par excellence, and the idea of ‘a Hellenic venture to
the world’s ends’.
68
Appian Praef. 10.
66
FOREIGN POLICY
63
Soteres.69 The establishment of a cult of Soter must have happened early in the reign
of Philadelphus and was most probably made official on the occasion of the
Ptolemaia, that is, in a festival directed towards the whole Greek world.70 That
Philadelphus chose to launch the official celebration of this new dynastic cult in front
of an international audience tells a lot about his own conception of kingship. Hazzard
has tried to relate the date of the festival to the introduction of a Soter era in 262, and
to the political gain that could be drawn at times when Philadelphus was supposedly
on the decline.71 But the festival of the Ptolemaia is not that of a king whose
popularity is waning because of an incestuous marriage and heavy taxation. It is the
celebration of a king at the top of his power who is creating a kind of dynastic
mythology of the Ptolemaic family and consequently wants to assert the continuity of
his rule with that of his father. An earlier context in 279/8 seems therefore more
appropriate. More than Alexander and besides Dionysios, it is Soter who is the true
hero of the magnificent pompè in Alexandria. That Soter received his name from
Philadelphus rather than from the Rhodians is a strong possibility but it was in a
context of legitimacy and continuity.72 Ptolemy I was the king who had saved the
freedom of Greek cities on several occasions, as this is made clear in the decree in
69
Theoi Soteres: Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 218-19, 228, 271. Mentioned in inscriptions from Chytroi
(Cyprus): Mitford, ‘Further Contributions’, 127-8 no.27; Ptolemais (Cyrenaica): OGIS 33; Cyrene
(uncertain date): OGIS 22; Samothrace: OGIS 23; Samos: OGIS 29 and 724, Thera: IG XII.3 331,
1387, 1388 ( the context of this dedication to Ptolemy [III], the Saviour Gods and the Philadephoi
Gods seems to imply that it does not refer to the Dioscouroi); Xanthos: SEG XXXVI 1220; Ephesus:
SEG XXXIX 1234 (uncertain whether this dedication to Ptolemy, Arsinoe and the Saviour Gods
specifically refers to Ptolemy I and Berenice).
70
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 228.
71
‘Soter era’: Hazzard 2000, 25-46. On dating the Grand Procession to the year 262 BC based on
astronomical grounds: Hazzard and Fitzgerald 1991. See Thompson 2000, 381-8 who convincingly
argued in favour of a date in 279/8 BC; 383-5 for a summary of the main objections against Hazzard’s
dating.
72
Diodorus Siculus 20.100.3-4; Pausanias 1.8.6 claimed more specifically that its was the Rhodians
who gave the cult title Soter to Ptolemy I after he helped them against Demetrios Poliorcetes in 304 but
there is no evidence that Soter was used during his lifetime. Hazzard (1992) dates it from 263/2 BC, ie.
about the same year as the Nikouria decree, where divine honours are mentioned: see infra for doubts
against the validity of such a late date.
64
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
honour of Kallias, the Nikouria decree, or Philadelphus’ letter to Miletus in 262.73 In
the latter document, Ptolemy II recalls the σπουδÆ that himself, by a gift of land
(lines 2-3), and his father, by relieving the city from taxes and tolls (lines 5-6),
showed towards the city. He urges Miletus to maintain the same hairesis towards him,
in exchange for which he will continue to show good treatment towards the city (lines
12-14). In the decree that follows, the relationship between Miletus and Ptolemy II is
mentioned as a renewal of the philia and symmachia with Ptolemy I (lines 28-29).
Honours were paid to Ptolemy I, since the Milesian decree mentions the erection of a
statue of ‘Ptolemy god Soter’ in the sanctuary of Apollo (lines 53-5); this has to be
interpreted as a symbolic gesture that will bind the city to the Ptolemies. Philadelphus
had strongly reminded Miletus of these bonds: the city will keep the same disposition
towards the king εfiς τÚν λοιπÚν χρÒνον, and in consequence, that is, in royal
discourse, in return (·να καί), the king will show even greater care for the city (lines
12-14). This dynastic time turned into a leitmotiv and was again at the heart of a later
letter of Euergetes to Xanthos in 242, where Ptolemy III praises the citizens for
maintaining their hairesis towards the king and for remembering the benefactions
bestowed upon the city by himself, his father and his grandfather.74 The same
discourse can be observed in the decree of acceptance of the first Ptolemaia by the
League of the Islanders in 279/8.75 The first part of the decree until line 38 probably
73
SEG XXVIII 60.25-36; Syll.3 390 11-15; I.Milet. III. 139. Diodorus Siculus 20.37.1-2 (308 BC):
‘moving on to the Isthmus, he took Sikyon and Corinth from Cratesipolis […]. Now Ptolemy planned
to free the other Greek cities also, thinking that the goodwill of the Greeks would be a great gain for
him in his own undertaking.’ See Seibert 1971 on Soter’s alliance with Miletus, and Burstein 1980, 78;
discussion on the date of the document in Welles 1934 no. 14, bibliography in Ameling et al. 1995,
326-9 no. 275.
74
SEG XXXVI 1218 ll. 21-24, Bousquet 1986. The letter informs us that Xanthian theoroi were sent to
Alexandria on the occasion of the Ptolemaia and the Theadelphia. Xanthos was under Ptolemaic direct
control from the reign of Philadelphus down to 197: Bagnall 1976, 108, Hieronymus FGrHist 260 F 46
(Antiochos III occupies cities in Lycia).
75
Syll.3 390; Austin 1981, 359-361 no.218, Merker 1970, 141-60.
FOREIGN POLICY
65
repeated parts of the king’s letter, in which Ptolemy II asked the cities invited to the
Ptolemaia to remember how his father ‘liberated the cities, restored their laws, reestablished their ancestral constitution and relieved them from taxation’ (lines 14-16),
and he must have recalled how, “having inherited the kingship” (lines 17-18),76 he
continued “to show the same eunoia and epimeleia to the Nesiotes and the other
Hellenes” (lines 18-20). The legitimacy of Philadelphus’ power in Miletus, that is in
an allied city, or with the League of the Islanders, was defined according to his
inheritance of kingship (lines 27-28: διαδεξάµενος τε τὴν βασιλείαν ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ
βασιλεὺς Πτολεµαῖος καὶ ἀνανεωσάµενος τήν τε φιλίαν καὶ συµµαχίαν), a
kingship which became inseparable from the concept of freedom. Mention of the
name of Soter and his divinisation therefore served to make the time of subjection
potentially infinite. The central theme of Philadelphus’ letters, and part of the
motivation behind the honours bestowed on Soter, hence found echo in the Greek
definition of freedom, by which the Greeks should be in essence eleutheroi,
autonomoi, aphrouretoi, and aphorologetoi.77 This paternal inheritance is also present
in Theocritus’ eulogy of Ptolemy II, praising his filial piety, by which he consecrated
temples devoted to his parents, his integrity towards the safety of his inheritance, and
the memory of his Atreid ancestors.78 I would like to venture a suggestion on the
staging of the Great Procession. Again, several topoi are repeatedly exhibited, such as
the links with Dionysios as conqueror or patron of the arts,79 and Ptolemy II as the
76
I prefer that translation to ‘kingdom’ in Austin 1981, 358, since it better conveys the link between
power over territories and the person of the king.
77
Smyrna was granted freedom and exemption from tribute by Seleukos II, and the Smyrnaeans
praised the king for preserving their autonomia and demokratia: OGIS 228 lines 6-8 and OGIS 229
lines 10-11.
78
Theocritus Idyll 17.121-30, esp. 104 and 116-20.
79
Rice 1983, 52-5, 82-5. The presence of Dionysos and Philadelphus’ patronage of arts may have
spurred the foundation of the Guild of Dionysiac artists, whose members paraded during the
procession (Athenaeus 198c), thereafter tying the fate and identity of the Ptolemaic dynasty to its
cultural and artistic influence.
66
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
master of Greek and barbarian cities.80 The cart carrying statues of Ptolemy I and
Alexander is particularly interesting and has been often quoted as the illustration of
Philadelphus’ foreign commitment outside Egypt (Athenaeus 201d):
… [then came] statues of Alexander and Ptolemy, wearing ivy-crowns made of
gold. The statue of Arete standing next to Ptolemy had an olive-crown made of
gold. Priapus stood next to them with a golden ivy-crown. The city of Corinth,
standing next to Ptolemy, was crowned with a golden diadem. […] This fourwheeled carriage was followed by women wearing expensive clothes and
ornaments; they were given the names of cities, some of Ionia and the rest of the
Greek cities which were established in Asia and the islands and had been under
Persian rule; they all wore golden crowns.
I have always wondered on the presence of Arete and Priapus among these real
characters. Priapus was the god of fertility and wealth, and his presence was a strong
message directed towards those who wished to benefit from Ptolemaic power. It is
therefore no coincidence that the god was honoured by a retired officer on the island
of Thera as the bringer of wealth.81 He is also the son of Dionysos, again exhibiting
the significance of father-and-son relationships. Arete on the other hand was
worshipped in ancient Greece as the personification of virtue and valour, therefore
incarnating the Greek ideal of the noble man. Arete had advised Herakles, Ptolemy’s
ancestor, on fighting for a life of glory and honour, but she was also the sister of
Homonoia, and they were both known as the Praxidikai, the Exacters of Justice. The
concept of Homonoia was highly prized by both the Greeks and Ptolemy II: the
alliance sealed between the Greek cities and Ptolemy in the Chremonidean war was to
preserve homonoia and save the cities.82 The synedrion of the Hellenes gathered at
Platea to honour the Athenian Glaukon who, while in Philadelphus’ service, had
80
Rice 1983, 107, Thompson 2000, 375.
IG XII.3 421.
82
Homonoia was, together with eleutheria, one of the key concepts in the propaganda of the
Chremonidean War; it appears from the Chremonidean Decree (Syll.3 434-5 lines 13-14, 31, 35-36),
and the decree in honour of Glaukon at Platea (Etienne and Piérart 1975, 53 lines 17-20, 24, 29-30, 3940). See Thiérault 1996, 101-30 on homonoia in the Hellenistic period.
81
FOREIGN POLICY
67
greatly contributed to the cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia.83 Arete therefore
stood as the spirit of Philadelphus’ policy outside Egypt and the procession marked
the reconciliation between Arete wearing an olive wreath and Corinth bearing a
diadem. Is it then such a coincidence that according to the second century
Alexandrian geographer Mnaseas, as mentioned in the Suda, the father of Arete was
Soter? Such affiliation seems to be restricted to Mnaseas’ work, but an Alexandrian
mythological interpretation could offer an explanation for the presence of Arete in the
procession.84
Philadelphus’ dynastic policy of names took another turn at the death of his
sister and wife Arsinoe. There is no space fully to develop this fascinating subject.
The point I would like to stress is how Philadelphus used the name of Arsinoe to give
an identity, a colour, to the representation of his empire as a sea power. Ptolemy I had
already distinguished himself by the quality of his fleet, and the ironic toast of
Demetrios to Ptolemy the Nauarch after Soter’s defeat at Salamis in 306 should not
mislead us as to the extent of his sea power.85 Ptolemy II however took a step further
and linked this power to the dynasty by creating a deity, Arsinoe-Aphrodite-Kypris.
Three epigrams by Posidippus record the erection of the temple by Kallikrates of
Samos, the then admiral of the Ptolemaic fleet and first eponymous priest of
Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi in 269/8.86 The goddess Arsinoe-Aphrodite-
83
Etienne and Piérart 1975; Pouilloux 1975; Hammond and Walbank 1988 vol. 3, 277; Habicht 1992,
73. In IG XII.1 25 Glaukon is named as proxenos of Rhodes, perhaps when he was in Ptolemaic
service: Etienne and Piérart 1975, 57. He was the eponymous priest of Alexander in 255-4: Clarysse
and van der Veken 1983, no. 36. Criscuolo 2003, 321-2 has recently challenged the dating of the
monument from Olympia generally restored as being a dedication to Glaukon by Ptolemy III and
favoured instead an attribution to Ptolemy I or II.
84
Suda s.v. Πραξιδίκη fr.17 FHG (3.152). Mnaseas: Fraser 1972, vol. 1, 524-5, vol. 2, 755 n. 41-42,
Cappelletto 2003.
85
Plutarch Demetrius 25.7-8.
86
AB 39, 116 and 119. Eponymous priesthood of Kallikrates: P. Hibeh II 199 line 12; Clarysse and
Van der Veken 1983, no.19; Hauben 1970, 62ff. Dedication of a bronze chariot to the gods Adelphoi:
AB 74; Bing 2002/3 places it in Alexandria while Criscuolo favours a location in Delphi: Criscuolo
68
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Kypris-Zephyritis was to be the protector of seafarers and of Greek maidens about to
enter marriage. Votive plaques bearing the name of Arsinoe Philadelphus in the
genitive were found in important coastal cities, in Cyprus, Lesbos, Delos, Paros, Ios,
Amorgos, Samos, Thera, Miletus, and Eretria,87 where Arsinoe must have been
worshipped in private or public cults, taking elements from her cult as Aphrodite
Euploia as Louis Robert famously demonstrated.88 To these plaques must be added
oinochoai uncovered outside Egypt and dedicated to Arsinoe Philadelphus.89 The
divine aura of this maritime divinity was supported by a ring of coastal foundations
scattered around the Mediterranean and the Aegean, up to eleven foundations in total,
all bearing the name of Arsinoe, therefore standing for both the queen and the
goddess.90 Most of these foundations were located in territories under Ptolemaic
control but some represented enclaves of Ptolemaic authority in strategic areas such as
Methana-Arsinoe or the Arsinoe foundations in Crete. From an inscription recording
2003, 324 and n. 58. Two statues of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II at Olympia dedicated by Kallikrates:
OGIS 26 and 27. Samian dedication Íπ¢ρ king Ptolemy, Arsinoe Philadelphus and ‘Kallikrates the
nauarch’: OGIS 29 and 724, discussion in Hauben 1970, 37-9. For a possible use of the epithet
Philadelphus during Arsinoe’s lifetime, see Hauben 1970, 38 n.3. The wording of the dedication is
quite puzzling since Arsinoe II is usually referred to as Philadelphus after her divinisation which
occurred after her death, while Íπ¢ρ-dedications usually include the living sovereigns: Hauben 1970,
38. It is also not clear why only Ptolemy is referred to (if the restoration is correct) as ‘son of the
(gods) Soteres’, which might suggest a date after the death of Arsinoe II; for the use of ‘Soteres’ alone
without ‘theoi’, see Fraser 1956, 49-55, esp. 50 no.2. Dedication by the Samian people to the nauarch
Kallikrates, probably placed in the sanctuary dedicated to the Dioscouroi, the protectors of navigation:
Hauben 1970, 48-9 and Appendix 83-4. His name is mentioned in another dedication found on Samos:
SEG I 370. Statue erected by the League of the Islanders on Delos: IG XI.4 1127; Choix 25. A statue
of Kallikrates stood in the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos on Cyprus, perhaps a royal
dedication: Mitford ‘Old Paphos’, 9 no.18. He was made proxenos and citizen of Olus (Crete), together
with Patroklos, Perigenes, and another son of Boiskos, Kallikrates’ father, probably at the beginning of
the Chremonidean War, during Patroklos’ journey from Alexandria to Greece (Launey 1945, 35-9 and
43): IC I.XXII 4A lines 37-8. Kallikrates dedicated a sanctuary to Isis and Anubis, Íπ¢ρ king Ptolemy
and queen Arsinoe, at Canopus: Malaise 1994, 354.
87
Cyprus: see Mitford 1939, 30-31; 1961, 7-8; 1971, 114-15; Nicolaou 1971, 21; Lesbos: IG XII.2
513; Brun 1991, 101-2 no.2; Delos: IG XI.4 1303; Bruneau 1970, 544; Paros: IG XII.5 264, 265, 266;
Ios: IG XII.5 16; Amorgos: IG XII.7 99 (Arkesine); IG XII.7 263-4 (Minoa); Samos: Robert (1938)
115 n.2; Thera: IG XII.3 462; 1386; IG XII Suppl. 156; Miletus: OGIS 34; Robert 1966, 206; Eretria:
BCH 114 (1990), 809.
88
Robert 1966.
89
Thompson 1973, 125-6 no. 1. Thompson argues that the oinochoai could have been brought back by
visitors to Alexandria.
90
For an overall survey and discussion of these foundations: Marquaille 2001, 175-93.
FOREIGN POLICY
69
the settlement of a dispute between Arsinoe and Nagidos in Cilicia, we learn that the
city was founded by the strategos of Cilicia under Ptolemy II, Aetos from Aspendos,
that the Arsinoeans worshipped the Gods Adelphoi and had a temenos of Arsinoe.91
The son and successor of Aetos, Thraseas, speaking in the first person plural, and
therefore in the name of the king, explains why he came to settle the city’s future.
Among these reasons, βουλÒµεθα τØν πÒλιν éξ¤αν τ∞ς §πωνυµ¤ας ποιε›ν: “we
want to make the city worthy of its name”.92 These Arsinoe cities epitomised the true
nature of Philadelphus’ power: sea domination and, through the goddess ArsinoeAphrodite, security and fertility. At the heyday of Ptolemaic thalassocracy, and at a
time when the royal couple had been formed by the untraditional union of a brother
and a sister, the royal patronage of a goddess and its assimilation with Aphrodite
whose birthplace in Cyprus was at the heart of the Ptolemaic empire, a goddess who
could represent the very identity of Ptolemaic power abroad and give legitimacy to the
royal couple and to the ‘souvenir’ of the great queen Arsinoe, was of course not only
symbolic but terribly clever.
This policy of names, finally, would not have been possible without the
formidable human network implemented by Philadelphus. We already encountered
Kallikrates of Samos, whose name we found at Olympia, Miletus, Old Paphos, Olus
in Crete, as well as on Delos and Samos; we also came across the Athenian Kallias,
who had served both Philadelphus and Philadelphus’ father. As a close member of the
king’s entourage, φ¤λος τ«ν βασιλ°ων according to Strabo,93 Sostratos of Cnidus,
famous for the dedication that consecrated the Lighthouse on the island of Pharos,
also spent a considerable amount of his time promoting his king around Greece, the
91
SEG XXXIX 1426; Habicht and Jones 1989, 317-346, Sosin 1997.
SEG XXXIX 1426 line 10.
93
Strabo 17.1.6. Mooren 1975, 56-7 no. 08.
92
70
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Mediterraean and the Aegean.94 From the 280s down to the end of the 270s, Sostratos
was active at Delphi, where he consecrated a statue of Philadelphus and possibly of
Arsinoe too, in Caunos, Athens and Cyrene, and he was helpful towards the Nesiotic
League, for which he was made citizen of all the cities that made up the League.95 The
king of Sidon, Philokles, helped the Delians retrieve money from the Islanders, for
which he received outstanding honours, while the Ptolemaic nauarch Hermias
founded a festival in honour of Arsinoe on Delos, the Philadelphia, and dedicated a
phiale to the Delian triad on this occasion.96 Glaukon played an instrumental role in
the assertion of Philadelphus’ policy of preservation of Greek traditional values.
Many of the eponymous priests of the reign of Philadelphus, Kallikrates, Patroclos,
Glaukon, or Aetos, had therefore carried important duties outside Egypt itself,
showing that their proximity to the royal house entitled them to act as representatives
of the king abroad, but also that their functions in Alexandria could not be separated
94
Strabo 17.1.6; Lucian De historia conscribenda 62 records part of the inscription as Σώστρατος
Δεξιφάνους Κνίδιος θεοῖς σωτῆρσιν Íπ¢ρ τῶν πλωιζοµένων. For a reconstruction of Sostratos’
dedication, see Bernand 1996 and Charvet and Yoyotte 1997, 239. Poseidippos’ epigram on the Pharos
seems to imply that Sostratos was responsible for the construction of the lighthouse: Gow and Page
1965 vol. 1, lines 3099-3109, esp. 3100-3101, and vol. 2, 489-91 (AB 115); Chamoux 1975;
Thompson 1987.
95
Dedication of a statue of Philadelphus at Delphi, to which may have been added a statue of Arsinoe:
Amandry 1940-41, 63-5 no. 3; Shear 1978, 23-25. Two decrees from Delphi honoured Sostratos: in the
first one, Sostratos was honoured by the city of Delphi, while the second one was promulgated by the
Amphyctionic council. Both decrees were inscribed on the Cnidian Treasure: cf. Fraser 1972 vol. 2, 50
n.111 and 52-3 n.121. A statue of Sostratos was erected by the demos of Caunos: IG XI.4 1130; Choix
23. In the Kallias decree, Sostratus is mentioned as Ptolemaic ambassador sent to Athens by Ptolemy I
to negotiate peace terms with Demetrios on behalf of Athens (287 BC): SEG XXIX 102 line 34.
Etearchos son of Damylos from Cyrene erected a statue of Sostratos of Cnidus for his arete and eunoia
towards himself and the Cyrenaeans: IG XI.4 1190. A decree of the Islanders found on Delos (279-274
BC) honours Sostratos for his zeal towards king Ptolemy and his goodwill towards the Islanders, for
which he will be crowned during the next Ptolemaia on Delos. He will also become a citizen of all the
islands which take part in the synedrion: IG XI.4 1038.
96
Philokles: honoured by the Delians, IG XI.4 559; brought letters from Ptolemy to members of the
League of the Islanders for acceptance of the Ptolemaia in Alexandria, Syll.3 390; sent dikastai to
Samos, SEG I 363; accompanied soldiers to Aspendos, SEG XVII 639, Bagnall 1976, 111-13.
Hermias: founded the Philadelpheia on Delos, IG XI.2 287 B lines 112ff; BCH 32 (1908) 114-23;
dedicated a phiale to the Delian triad: IG XI.2 287 B lines 112-115; 313 lines 63-65; 320 B lines 2730.
FOREIGN POLICY
71
from their function in the empire.97 Several sons of Philadelphus were sent to sensitive
areas and the confusion over their identity since they all shared the same name, is
reflected in the royal policy that will inexorably attach the name of Ptolemy to all the
kings of the dynasty.98 Opposite the Sounion promontory near Athens the Ptolemaic
official Patroklos left his name to a small island, the Island of Patroklos, after he
fortified it and left an everlasting trace of the Ptolemaic soteria.99 Even in the south of
Egypt, expedition leaders, after founding Ptolemais or Arsinoe cities, gave their
names to islands or promontories, and the boundaries of the empire were stressed with
places such as the Village of Philon, the Island of Straton or the Altars of Conon.100
This unconditional solidarity to the cause of Ptolemaic power, which was not only
advertised in areas under Ptolemaic control, setting a striking example of loyalty to
Philadelphus, but also in sanctuaries where events that were essential to the assertion
of a Greek identity took place, is quite remarkable, and the policy was continued by
Philadelphus’ successors.101 Philadelphus’ ubiquitous policy of names shows that at
the heart of any imperial ideology is not the reality of power but the ‘sense’ of power.
The recent discovery of more than a hundred epigrams of Posidippus sheds a
new light on the visibility of Ptolemaic power in the Greek world in the reign of
Philadelphus.102 I am referring specifically to the section Hippika, and the
participation of members of the Ptolemaic family and their entourage in the
97
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 222. Kallikrates, Patroklos, Glaukon, and Aetos respectively: Clarysse and van
der Veken 1983, nos.19 (272/1 BC), 20 (271/0 BC), 36 (255/4 BC), and 94 (197/6 BC). Kallikrates:
Hauben 1970; Patroklos: Launey 1945; Glaukon: Etienne and Piérart 1975, Criscuolo 2003, 321-2;
Aetos: Sosin 1997 and Criscuolo 1998.
98
See n. 32 for the identity of the sons of Ptolemy.
99
Pausanias 1.1.1.
100
Strabo 16.4.5-10 and 17.26. Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 178. Strabo 16.4.9: ‘Next to the altars of Conon is
the port of Melinus, and above it is a fortress called that of Coraus and the chase of Coraus, also
another fortress and more hunting-grounds. Then follows the harbour of Antiphilus, and above this a
tribe, the Creophagi.’
101
Marquaille 2001, 315-51.
102
P.Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, Austin and Bastianini 2002, Acosta-Hughes and Kosmetatou 2004,
Gutzwiller 2005.
72
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Panhellenic games of mainland Greece.103 The poems particularly bring out the pride
that the Ptolemies felt not only in winning such competitions but in being
acknowledged, despite repeated claims to their Macedonian heritage, as part of a
Hellenic cultural space. The other alternative is that the Ptolemaic king may not have
completely succeeded. When Ptolemy IV endeavoured to overthrow the reputation of
the invincible pugilist Cleitomachos, he gave intensive training to the athlete
Aristonikos and sent him to Greece.104 When Cleitomachos saw that the attendance
was cheering Aristonikos he reminded them that Cleitomachos was fighting for the
glory of the Greeks, and Aristonikos for that of king Ptolemy: “Did they prefer seeing
an Egyptian winning the Olympic crown and triumphing over the Greeks, rather than
hearing that a Boeotian from Thebes had won in the boxing contest?” Whether
Aristonikos was Egyptian or not, the defiance towards royal power remained. When
Philadelphus had his statue erected by Aristolaos at Olympia it was still clear that he
had been competing for a king, not for the Hellenic cause.105 The unusual efforts
deployed by Philadelphus to spread the fame of his name and that of his family must
also be understood in the context of this royal frustration, even more so when the
remarkable attention given by Philadelphus to Greece hid a persistent desire to give
supremacy to his own cultural capital, Alexandria.
103
AB 71-88; Fantuzzi 2005.
Polybius 27.9; Walbank 1979 vol. 3, 307-8.
105
Pausanias 6.17.3.
104
73
FOREIGN POLICY
CHRONOLOGY
Year
Military and diplomatic events
282-1
Beginning of the reign of Ptolemy
II
Religious events and gifts
Ptolemy I becomes God Soter
c.280
280-79
280-79?
279-8
Philadelphus founds the Ptolemaia in
Delos
Syrian War of Succession.
Ptolemy acquires Samos, cities in
Caria (Stratonikeia, Amyzon,
Halikarnassus)
Ptolemy son of Lysimachus in
Telmessos in Lycia
Ptolemy II in the Black Sea;
sending of gifts and alliance with
Byzantion
c.278?
278-5
c.274
274-1
273
270
269
268/7
267-61
c.262
262/1?
A temple of Ptolemy II is erected in
Byzantion and divine honours to him
instituted
Ptolemy sends wheat to Herakleia
Nikouria Decree
Festival of Ptolemaia in Alexandria
Ptolemy II sends wheat to Sinopus
and receives a statue of Sarapis in
exchange for his gift
Magas takes the title of king in
Cyrenaica …
… and thereafter launches an
unsuccessful attack against Egypt
First Syrian War against
Antiochos I
Ptolemaic embassy in Rome
Death of Arsinoe II
Evidence for a priest of Ptolemy I in
Lapethus
Arsinoe II deified in Egypt
Alliance between Athens, Sparta
and Ptolemy against Antigonos
Gonatas to preserve homonoia
and the freedom of the Greeks
Chremonidean War. Patroklos
cruises the Aegean with the
Ptolemaic fleet and establishes
long-term bases in Cretan Itanos,
Thera, and Methana-Arsinoe
Ptolemy II acquires Ephesus and
perhaps Lesbos
Ptolemy II writes to the boule and
demos of Miletus to remind them
of their friendship and alliance
The Amphyctionic Council at Delphi
accepts the invitation to the
Ptolemaia
74
260-53
260/59
259/8
255?
255/4
c. 254-3
253
251/48
CÉLINE MARQUAILLE
Second Syrian War against
Antiochos II
Ptolemy the son revolts in Ionia
Antiochos recaptures Miletus and
Samos
Battle of Kos
Ptolemaic fleet is defeated by
Antigonos
Antiochus captures Ephesus
Presumed end of the Ptolemaic
protectorate over the League of
the Islanders
Miletus, Samos, Ephesus,
Pamphylia and Cilicia become
Seleucid after a peace treaty is
concluded with Antiochos
Diplomatic contacts with King
Asoka of India
250
250/49
249/8
246
A Phoenician in Kition, Cyprus, is
attested as canephor of Arsinoe
Philadelphus
Ptolemy founds the second Ptolemaia
in Delos
Death of Magas
Naval victory against Antigonos?
Aratos, leader of Sikyon, in
Alexandria to receive Ptolemaic
help
Death of Ptolemy II
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR
James L. O’Neil
The Chremonidean War was an important event in the history of Greece in the third
century BC, but like most of the history of the third century, it is extremely poorly
documented. We have two very brief accounts of the war, in Pausanias 3.6.4-6 and
Justin 26.2. Not only are these short, but both of them leave out important details and
we have no reason to think that even combining the two of them can give a full
account of the war. Other references do provide further details of the war. For
example, Pausanias 1.36.4 tells us that Antigonos destroyed the shrine of Poseidon
Hippios at Kolonos, outside Athens. This must have happened in the course of the
Chremonidean War, but cannot be placed in any definite context in it.
This limited literary material does give us some clear impressions on the
nature of the war. Pausanias 1.7.3 tells us that Ptolemy Philadelphos’ admiral
Patroklos came to rescue Athens, but failed to achieve anything worthwhile. This is
supported by Pausanias’ later account, in 3.6.5f, which says Patroklos requested
Areus, king of Sparta, to make an attack on Antigonos’ army, so that Patroklos’ troops
could then attack the Macedonians in the rear, but Areus did not do so, but instead
retreated when his supplies ran out. None of the other literary evidence contradicts
this impression of Egyptian ineffectiveness in the course of the Chremonidean War.
The literary evidence also gives the impression that this ineffective resistance
to Antigonos’ attempts to control Greece did not last for a very long period. J.J.
Gabbert has recently taken another look at the literary evidence in an attempt to
JAMES L. O’NEIL
76
determine the dates of the war without going into the controversy over which years
the archons at the beginning and end of the war held office. She concludes from it that
the war cannot have lasted more than a few years.1
While the literary evidence on the Chremonidean War does not enable us to
write a detailed history of it, inscriptions and archaeological evidence have been
discovered which add a considerable amount of new information on the war. It is still
not possible to write a full and detailed account of the course of the war, but we can
supplement and modify the conclusions reached from the literary evidence and bring
to light certain aspects of the war which have been totally lost in the brief surviving
historical evidence.
The most important inscription is the decree, moved by the Athenian politician
Chremonides, from whom the war has received its name, which created the alliance
between Athens and Sparta which led to the outbreak of the war. Several fragments of
the decree have survived, and in Syll.3 434/5 we have the decree almost intact. It was
passed in the second prytany of the archonship of Peithidemos, and it refers back to
previous alliance between Athens and Sparta, when they opposed those trying to
enslave Greece (line 7). In other words, the Chremonidean War is being compared to
the war against Xerxes in the fifth century.
Ptolemy’s role is mentioned, but the Athenian alliance with Sparta is presented
as the significant factor. Yet the fact that both Athens and Sparta were already allied
to Ptolemy before this decree was passed suggests that he was actually the instigator
of the war.2 Chremonides said that Ptolemy was motivated by his goodwill towards
the Greeks and his concern for their freedom and that he was following the policy of
1 Gabbert, ‘Anarchic Dating’, 230-35.
2 Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, 142f.; Marasco Sparta agli inizi dell’età Ellenistica, 141.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
77
his ancestors and his sister. This links Ptolemy to the theme of Athenian and Spartan
resistance to the enslavement of Greece. However there are certain odd features of
this formulation. Ptolemy Philadelphus had only one ancestor who had intervened in
Greek politics, or even been in a position to have done so, his father Ptolemy Soter,
who had indeed proclaimed his intention of freeing Greece when he arrived there in
309 BC; but when the Greek cities did not provide the financial and other support he
demanded, Ptolemy had made peace with Kassandros and returned to Egypt
(Diodorus Siculus 20.37.2.). Ptolemy’s sister and wife Arsinoe’s concern for Greek
freedom is not attested before this, but since most of her monuments are posthumous,3
this is not surprising. However it seems likely that her major interest in Greek affairs
was the possibility of putting her son Ptolemy, by her first husband Lysimachos, on
the throne of Macedon.4 In actual fact, Ptolemy son of Lysimachos was not restored to
the throne of Macedon, but in the end, his cousin Ptolemy III made him dynast of
Telmessos, on the borders of Lykia and Caria, in 240 BC.5 Chremonides’ account of
the reasons for the alliance seems to be more propaganda than a realistic account of
Ptolemy’s motives. This propaganda is echoed by the dedication made by Ptolemy at
Delphi in honour of Areus, king of Sparta (Syll.3 433) which praises him for his
efforts to free Greece. Chremonides’ presentation of Ptolemy as a benefactor
concerned for Greek freedom matches the way Ptolemy Philadelphos wished to
present himself.
The alliance of Athens and Sparta is said to be an alliance of the two cities and
their respective allies. However, the list of Greek cities given shows that they are all
allies of Sparta, not Athens. They consist of the Eleans, the Achaians, quite a few
3 Hauben, ‘Arsinoé II et la politique extérieure’, 109.
4 Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 170.
5 OGIS 55; cf. ‘Ptolemy (13)’ RE 23 (1939), 1596; Wörrle, ‘Epigraphische Forschungen II’, 217.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
78
Arcadian cities, and some Cretans (lines 23ff and 38ff).6 The attempt to present the
Chremonidean War as a re-enactment of the Persian Wars leads Chremonides to
downplay Athens’ current weakness and to emphasize the alliance of Athens and
Sparta, rather than the support of Ptolemy. In fact, Ptolemaic support was probably
vital for the Spartans as well as the Athenians. Analysis of the coins found in
Hellenistic Sparta shows that Ptolemaic coins were most prominent precisely during
the reign of King Areus, and disappear afterwards.7 These coins are not more
numerous than other coins found at Sparta at that time, so they do not show that
Sparta was totally reliant on Ptolemaic money, but it does seem that Ptolemaic
subsidies were an important factor in enabling the Spartans to field an army against
Antigonos Gonatas at this time.
The Chremonidean decree also shows Areus playing a dominant role at Sparta,
equalling or exceeding the other authorities, and even being mentioned without them
(see lines 26, 28f, 50, 90f). This matches other evidence on Areus’ style of kingship.
He was the first to strike coins in Sparta, which he struck, not in the name of the city,
but his own, and on which he imitated the coins of Alexander.8 Phylarchus9 records
that Areus and his son Akrotatos adopted a luxurious lifestyle. All this shows Areus
as adopting a Hellenistic style of monarchy in Sparta, rather than a traditional Spartan
one.10 Once again, Chremonides’ depiction of the alliance as a return to the values of
classical Greece does not match the realities of the case.
The Chremonides decree has always raised the question of the reference to the
wishes of Arsinoe Philadelphos, since her death, which has been regarded as one of
6 Cloché, ‘Politique extérieure de Lacédémone’, 48.
7 Wace, ‘Laconia: Excavations at Sparta 1906’ 149-58.
8 Head, Historia Numorum, 434; Troxell, ‘Peloponnesian Alexanders’, 73.
9 Phylarchus FGrHist 81F44 = Athenaeus 4.141f.
10 Cartledge and Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta, 35.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
79
the best established dates in the Hellenistic period, occurred, according to the Mendes
Stele, in Pachom of the fifteenth year of the reign of Philadelphos, and has been taken
to be 9 July 270 BC, which was definitely well before the start of the Chremonidean
War. However, Erhard Grzybek has shown that, according to the Pithom stele,
Arsinoe was still alive in Philadelphos’ sixteenth year. It seems that at some point,
Ptolemy Philadelphos changed the count of his years in Egyptian style: having first
counted them from the death of his father, he then later also counted in the two years
of his co-regency with his father. The Mendes Stele uses the first method, and the
Pithom stele the second. Therefore, Arsinoe’s death occurred, not in Pachom 271/0,
but two years later in 269/8.11
Unfortunately, the date of the archonship of Peithidemos is not so certain.
There is a blank space in the decree of Chremonides where the secretary’s name
should have been inscribed, and no other inscription from the year of Peithidemos
supplies the missing secretary’s name and deme, which would allow Peithidemos’
place in the secretary cycle to be determined.
In recent years a consensus has grown up that Peithidemos can be securely
dated to 265/4.12 This date for Peithidemos still meets with support in a number of
recent publications.13 However, it has been challenged by Heinen, who points out that
IG II2 665 and 668, both dated to the archonship of Nikias Otryneus, show that Athens
was in a state of war both in his archonship, 266/5 and in that of his predecessor,
Menekles, 267/6. Both these archons are securely fixed by the secretary cycle, unlike
Peithidemos. It is hard to see what this war could be, if it is not the Chremonidean
11 Grzybek, Du calendrier Macédonien au calendrier Ptolémaïque, 103-7, 117; cf.Hauben, ‘La
chronologie macédonienne et ptolémaïque mise à l’épreuve’, 160.
12 See Meritt, Athenian Year, 228.
13 E.g. Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 276, 288; Gabbert, ‘Anarchic Dating’, 230-235.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
80
War. In that case, Peithidemos must precede Menekles, and can be dated no later than
268/7.14
Dreyer has argued that the emergencies in the archonship of Nikias and the
state of war attested for the end of the archonship of Menekles may have been only
preliminary stages of the war, which did not formally start until the decree of
Chremonides was passed early in 265/4.15 But it seems unlikely that Antigonos was
able to take measures against Athens at sometime in 267/6, which the Athenians saw
as a state of war, while neither Ptolemy nor Areus of Sparta took any action to counter
this for over a year. Heinen’s arguments have been accepted by a number of recent
authors,16 and they seem persuasive.
However, Meritt has continued to defend his dating of the archonship of
Peithidemos to 265/4.17 He argues that an inventory of the priests of Asklepios (IG II2
1534B) shows that Peithidemos’ archonship started a secretary cycle, and this must
have been in 265/4. He also believes that Diogeiton, whom he places in 268/7, and
whose secretary comes from the tenth tribe in the cycle, Hippothontis, cannot be put
anywhere else, since there are no vacant places for an archon with a secretary from
Hippothontis within this general period, to which Diogeiton belongs. In that case,
Peithidemos could not be redated to 268/7. However, neither of these arguments is
decisive.
The individual Pe[........] in IG II2 1534B is probably an archon (and so
Peithidemos) rather than a priest of Asklepios18 (although most of the items on the
14 Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 110ff., 116.
15 Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 301.
16 Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, 148; Osborne, ‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid Third
Century’, 228
17 Meritt, ‘Mid-Third Century Athenian Archons’, 78-99.
18 As suggested by Osborne, ‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid Third Century’, 225.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
81
inventory are dated by priests), since then the beginning and the end of the inventory
would be dated by means of archons. However it is only an assumption that the
inventories of the priests of Asklepios began and ended according to the secretary
cycles.19 This inventory preserves the names of eighteen priests, of whom two in
succession come from the same tribe, Antiochis, with the second probably replacing
the first within the same year.20 So we have only evidence for seventeen years on the
preserved parts of the inventory, and not proof that it covered two full tribal cycles of
twelve years each.
On the other hand, the periods which have been assigned to this inventory by
the dating of the archons who begin and end it, are shorter than two full cycles.21
Furthermore, Meritt initially argued that Peithidemos and the start of the secretary
cycle must be placed in 267/6,22 and later changed the date to 265/4 instead. If
Peithidemos, who is not firmly linked to the secretary cycle, did stand at the start of
one, he cannot immediately precede the archons Menekles and Nikias Otryneus,
whose secretaries place them at the end of such a cycle. The assumption that the
priestly inventories of Asklepios were started and ended with the secretary cycles
does not seem to be supported strongly enough to warrant disregarding the evidence
that Menekles and Nikias Otryneus were archons during the Chremonidean war, and
so held office later than Peithidemos.
19 Osborne, ‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid Third Century’, 229 n.93; for the assumption, see
Ferguson, Athenian Tribal Cycles, 6, cf. 19; Pritchett and Meritt, Chronology of Hellenistic Athens, v,
31.
20 Ferguson, Athenian Tribal Cycles, 21; Pritchett and Meritt, Chronology of Hellenistic Athens, 31.
21 Pritchett and Meritt, Chronology of Hellenistic Athens, xix-xxi, twenty years; Meritt, Athenian Year,
233f, eighteen years; Meritt, ‘Mid-Third Century Athenian Archons’, 60, twenty one years. Ferguson,
Athenian Tribal Cycles, 23f. does have twenty four years for the period of this inventory, but he starts it
with an archon P[olystratos?] in 276/5, distinct from, and earlier than, Peithidemos.
22 Pritchett and Meritt, Chronology of Hellenistic Athens, xix, 29.
82
JAMES L. O’NEIL
Nor is it safe to argue that the secretary cycle was an unchanging feature of
Athenian life. It is not attested in any of our ancient sources, but it can be shown to
have been in place where our evidence is good, and when Athens was under a
completely democratic government. The idea of rotating the secretaryship around the
tribes in a fixed order does seem to be democratic in its inspiration. We know that
Athens was not under fully democratic rule after the end of the Chremonidean War,
and it can be shown that the order of the secretary cycle was broken in the 250s.23 It is
therefore possible to place Diogeiton in one of the years in the 250s for which an
archon is not known, and put Peithidemos in 268/7.
In fact, neither 270/69 nor 269/8 has an archon who is dated by the secretary
cycle or by other clear evidence.24 It does seem possible, therefore, that Peithidemos
held office in one of those years, and that thus Arsinoe was still alive at the time she
was mentioned in Chremonides’ decree. Two points argue against this, although
neither of them is decisive. As Heinen points out, the archonship of Peithidemos fits
logically immediately before that of Menekles.25 As we shall see, an earlier dating
would create a long gap in the war between its outbreak and the death of Areus.
Moreover, Meritt has shown that Peithidemos’ year was probably an intercalary one.
The years in this period which would normally be intercalary are 268/7 and 265/4,
which Meritt uses to argue for the latter year.26 The Athenians did not always have an
intercalary year at the point in the Metonic cycle where it would be expected,27 but it
23 Osborne, ‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid Third Century’, 225. Pritchett and Meritt, Chronology
of Hellenistic Athens, 29ff. also conclude that there must have been a break in the secretary cycles.
24 Meritt, Athenian Year, 233; Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 116; Osborne,
‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid Third Century’, 241; Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen,
428.
25 Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 116.
26 Meritt, ‘Athenian Dates by Month and Prytany’, 255-6.
27 Meritt, Athenian Year, 4f.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
83
does seem to be the case that 268/7 fits the evidence for the archonship of
Peithidemos somewhat better than an earlier year would.
If this is correct, Arsinoe had died a little less than two months before
Chremonides proposed his decree.28 Chremonides may not yet have been aware of
Arsinoe’s death, but it is more likely that he was presenting Arsinoe, like Ptolemy
Soter, as an honoured relative, now deceased, whose praiseworthy policies Ptolemy
Philadelphos was continuing. The policy of war with Antigonos Gonatas in Macedon
could well have been inspired by Arsinoe. There is no longer a gap of several years
between the inspiration and any action taken on it which requires to be explained.
Nonetheless, if the war was Arsinoe’s idea, she did not live to see its start, much less
its outcome.
Another difficult problem with the Chremonidean War is the question of who
was in possession of the Peiraieus during the war, the Athenians or Antigonos
Gonatas. The fact that Ptolemy’s admiral Patroklos made his base on a small barren
island off the south coast of Attica near Sounion, which still bears his name
(Pausanias 1.1.1; Strabo 9.1.21 [C395]), suggests that the Peiraieus was not available
to him, and thus in Macedonian hands.29 The continued presence of one of Demetrios’
officers, Hierokles, in the Peiraieus both in the 280s and later under Antigonos
Gonatas, suggests that the position had remained in Macedonian hands throughout the
period.30 However, this hypothesis does seem to contradict the evidence of Pausanias
1.26.3. Having mentioned Olympiodoros’ recapture of the fort on the Mouseion Hill,
Pausanias says it was his greatest achievement apart from his recovery of the
Peiraieus. Pausanias then goes on to mention Olympiodoros’ defence of Eleusis, and
28 Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, 13, Habicht, Athens and the Ptolemies, 72.
29 Habicht, Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte Athens, 101; Garland, Piraeus, 51f.
30 Garland, Piraeus, 51; cf. O’Neil, ‘Ethnic Origins of the Friends’, 513f.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
84
then, explicitly going back in time, refers to his embassy to the Aitolians asking for
help against Kassandros. The recovery of the Peiraieus would seem to fall in the same
period as his actions at the Mouseion Hill and Eleusis, and so to belong in the decade
around 280.31 In that case, we would expect the Peiraieus to have been still in
Athenian hands at the start of the Chremonidean War.
This leaves Patroklos’ failure to use Athens’ principal port requiring
explanation. Beloch argued that the Athenians must have forbidden the Ptolemaic
fleet to use the Peiraieus for fear that Ptolemy would take the opportunity to seize the
port for himself.32 However, it seems unlikely that the Athenians would allow Ptolemy
to persuade them to make war on Antigonos Gonatas, but then distrust him so much
as to make the conduct of that war ineffective. Dreyer suggests that Antigonos
Gonatas could have blockaded the Peiraieus at the beginning of the war, since he
occupied much of Attica, and thus made it unusable by Patroklos.33 In that case, it
seems odd that Patroklos would not have made use of the port of the Peiraieus, even if
Antigonos was blocking access from it to Athens itself, rather than basing himself on
Gardonisi.
All in all, it seems unlikely that the Peiraieus was in Athenian hands at the
start of the war. Habicht’s argument that Olympiodoros’ saving of the Peiraieus must
have been an earlier event (like his embassy to the Aitolians) seems the least difficult
solution to the problem.34 This means that the Athenians would not have recovered the
31 Ferguson, Athenian Tribal Cycles, 72f.
32 Beloch, Griechische Geschichte IV.2, 453.
33 Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 354.
34 Habicht, Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte Athens, 103. The suggestion of Ferguson
Athenian Tribal Cycles, 73 that Antigonos had forced Athens to surrender the Peiraieus seems less
likely.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
85
Peiraieus in the 280s or 270s after the disastrous failure of their attempt to capture
Mounychia by treachery in this period (Polyaenus 5.7 [1]).
Although the Athenians’ position at the start of the war was weak, since their
port was in the hands of their enemy, they nevertheless were active against him
beyond their borders. In 1971, an inscription of the common synedrion of the Greeks
was found at Plataia, honoring the Athenian Glaukon son of Eteokles.35 Now this
Glaukon is clearly the brother of Chremonides, who like him took service with
Ptolemy after Athens’ defeat in the war (cf. Teles Περ‹ φυγ∞ς 23H). The decree
praises Glaukon for his goodwill towards the Greeks and his adornment of the images
of the shrine, both while he was still living at Athens and later, when he was serving
with Ptolemy. That is to say, he supported the cults at Plataia, not only as an exile
serving with Ptolemy, but at an earlier time, either before the war or after its
outbreak.36
The language of the Plataian decree for Glaukon reminds us of Chremonides’
decree proposing the alliance between Athens and Sparta and other Athenian
information from this period. The cults honoured at Plataia by Glaukon are Zeus
Eleutherios, Homonoia and the heroes of the Persian Wars. On honours to Zeus
Eleutherios we may compare those for the men who died in the seizure of the
Mouseion Hill (Pausanias 1.26.3). Homonoia was a goddess who cannot have been
created before the fourth century, since the word is first found in the late fifth,37 and
she may have been created in the Hellenistic period, perhaps during the Celtic
invasion of Greece, which the Athenians claimed to have played a major role in
35 Etienne and Piérart, ‘Décret des Koinon des Hellènes’, 51-75; Buraselis, ΓλαÊκων ÉEτεοκλέους,
136-66.
36 Etienne and Piérart, ‘Décret des Koinon des Hellènes’, 70f; Buraselis, ΓλαÊκων ÉEτεοκλέους, 138.
37 Etienne and Piérart, ‘Décret des Koinon des Hellènes’, 71ff.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
86
repelling.38 Finally, the parallels with the Gallic invasion, with barbarians being
fought at Thermopylae, were stronger for the Celtic threat than that posed by
Antigonos Gonatas, and the elaboration of these cults fits better in the earlier period.
Chremonides’ decree, with its stress on Greek freedom, on homonoia among
the Greeks, and the parallels drawn with the Persian Wars, shows the same
propaganda motifs as the decree for Glaukon. This honorary decree for Glaukon, even
though it was enacted well after the end of the Chremonidean War when he was
serving with Ptolemy, shows that the same ideas were still being used, and
presumably they resonated with the wider Greek public. It is unfortunate that we
cannot tell whether Glaukon’s activity at Plataia took place before the outbreak of
Athens’ war with Antigonos or during its early stages, but it does seem clear that the
Athenians thought that they would be able to organise opposition to Antigonos
beyond their northern borders.
It is doubtful how far such action may have presented a threat to Antigonos.
Since Glaukon was able to continue to serve the cults of Zeus Eleutherios, Homonoia
and the heroes of the Persian Wars even after the defeat of Athens, it seems that
Antigonos did not seek to prevent Glaukon’s participation in this religious activity at
Plataia, even though it was in area of Greece where he did have control. It may be that
he felt the effects of preventing pious activity were worse than those of allowing it to
continue, but it is unlikely that the comparison of Antigonos to Xerxes had no effect
on his reputation. At the start of the war, the Athenians were optimistic about their
chances of defeating Antigonos with the help of their allies and hoped to exert
influence against him north of Kithairon.
38 Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 254.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
87
Archaeological evidence also shows that the allied efforts to come to Athens’
defense were not as weak as Pausanias’ evidence leads us to believe. Ptolemy’s
admiral Patroklos was based on Gardonisi, the island which took his name.
Excavations on the site have produced pottery which would otherwise have been
dated to the end of the fourth century. But since this camp must be that of Patroklos,
the pottery must, in fact be dated some thirty years later.39 Similar pottery found at
other sites in southeastern Attica may also be dated to the same period, the
Chremonidean War, especially where coins of Ptolemy Philadelphos have also been
found at these sites. It seems that Patroklos was more active in his attempts to assist
Athens than Pausanias’ words would suggest. Patroklos’ actions may have been
ineffective in the end, but it was not for want of trying.
A fort on the coast to the north of Patroklou Charax, in the deme of Atene is to
be dated at the same period.40 Clearly this formed a forward defence for the main base
on the island and shows that Patroklos was prepared to defend and hold positions on
the mainland, even though his army was not strong enough to advance to Athens itself
to meet Antigonos Gonatas in battle. We do not have direct evidence on who held
Sounion at this time, but the fact that Patroklos based himself on an off-shore island
suggests that it was still garrisoned by the Macedonians.41 Patroklos may have
neutralised the Macedonian position at Sounion by his local superiority of numbers,
rather than by removing it.
A second major fort was located at Koroni, on a peninsula in a large bay on
the south east coast of Attica. This cannot be a fortress built to defend the local
population for two reasons. The fort provides little access to the mainland, its
39 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 9-25.
40 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 25.
41 Habicht, Athenian Year, 130.
88
JAMES L. O’NEIL
entrances largely face the sea, and the remains of habitation cover only a small period.
The pottery is similar in date to that from Patroklou Charax and coins of Ptolemy
Philadelphos are the most common on the site.42 Koroni could have served as a base
from which to send supplies to Athens by a route which did not pass near the
Antigonid troops in the Peiraieus. Coins of Ptolemy Philadelphos found at
Markopoulou,43 on the road from Koroni to Athens, may well be evidence for
Ptolemaic supplies sent to Athens along this road.
Patroklos’ forces also advanced towards Athens along the western side of the
Akti. There are remains from this period at Vouliagmeni,44 possibly protecting the
bays and beaches near the peninsula, to safeguard the landing of troops or supplies
there. Further north, at Helioupolis, in the low hills west of Hymettos and looking
down towards Athens itself, there was a camp, which can be identified by its coins as
belonging to this period. There are two gold coins and forty-five silver coins of
Ptolemy II, which outnumber all the other coins found on the site taken together.45
Finally, there was a Hellenistic fortification on Mt. Hymettos, which cannot be clearly
dated by coins or pottery. However, it seems to have been intended as a watch-post
for some other position outside the city of Athens, and it is probable that it was
intended to serve this function for the camp at Helioupolis.46 Overall, the
archaeological evidence shows that Patroklos pushed his troops further into Attica
than Pausanias realised, but, as Pausanias 3.6.5 says, he was relying on Areus and the
42 Vanderpool, McCredie and Steinberg, ‘Koroni, a Ptolemaic Camp’, 26-60; Vanderpool, McCredie
and Steinberg, ‘Koroni, the Date’, 69-75.
43 Varucha-Christodoulopoulou, Συµβολὴ εἰς τὸν Χρεµωνίδειον πόλεµον, 328
44 Varucha-Christodoulopoulou, Συµβολὴ εἰς τὸν Χρεµωνίδειον πόλεµον 322, McCredie Fortified
Military Camps, 30.
45 Varucha-Christodoulopoulou, Συµβολὴ εἰς τὸν Χρεµωνίδειον πόλεµον, 322-6, cf. McCredie
Fortified Military Camps, 46.
46 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 48ff.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
89
Spartans to open the attack and planned to join in with an attack from the rear once
Areus had engaged the Macedonians. The camp at Helioupolis would be the base
from which he planned to advance against Antigonos, and the fort on Hymettos, with
its wider views of the area around Athens, would have told him when such an advance
was possible.
Inscriptional evidence shows that the Athenians themselves were guarding the
north-eastern part of Attica. An honorary decree for Epichares, the general over the
country and the coast, was set up at Rhamnous (SEG 24.154). It was passed in the
archonship of Peithidemos, the first year of the war, and honours Epichares for having
protected the farmers bringing in the crops in the vicinity and having arranged the
ransom for citizens who had been kidnapped by pirates. Since it was possible to
arrange for their ransom even while the war was raging, it seems unlikely that these
pirates were some of the Macedonian ships which Pausanias 3.6.4 mentions among
the forces with which Antigonos invaded Attica. It seems more likely that pirates
acting on their own initiative took advantage of Antigonos’ invasion to ravage Attica
on their own account, and they may well have received some assistance from within
Attica itself.47 Between them, Patroklos and the Athenians provided protection to the
southern and eastern coasts of Attica, though it is clear that this protection was not
totally effective.
We have some information on the western parts of Attica. Demochares was
praised for organising the recapture of Eleusis ([Plutarch] Moralia 851F). Since this is
mentioned immediately after his embassy to the short-reigned Antipatros the Etesian,
it must have been sometime in the late 280s.48 Pausanias 1.26.1 shows that
47 Oliver, ‘Regions and Micro-Regions’, 147.
48 See Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 145 for the date.
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JAMES L. O’NEIL
Olympiodoros blocked a Macedonian attempt to recapture Eleusis later in this period,
so it would seem that it was still held by the Athenians in 268/7. We have no
information on the two forts on the northwest frontiers of Attica, Phyle and Panakton.
Presumably they were included among the forts which the Athenians still hoped to
recapture in 287/6, when they passed a decree in honour of Philippides the comic
playwright (Syll.3 374). It has been conjectured that they did return to Athenian
control some time around 280, but there is no evidence either way on this conjecture.49
However, these forts on the northern frontier of Attica were even more
important for Antigonos Gonatas if he hoped to regain control of Athens than Eleusis
and Rhamnous, which were not under Macedonian control at the start of the
Chremonidean War, since Panakton and Phyle would have opened the way into
invade Attica, and their loss made it hard to reinforce the Peiraieus except by sea. If
the Athenians had recovered these two forts when Antigonos was at his weakest, they
might have done so when they were receiving help from Antipatros the Etesian, the
last time the Athenians could plausibly have recovered the Peiraieus.50 However if
Demochares’ appeal for help from the kings had led to the recovery of any of these
places, it is surprising that it was not mentioned alongside his role in the recovery of
Eleusis. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is better to assume that
Antigonos had kept control of Panakton and Phyle.
It does seem that the Macedonians held the island of Salamis continuously
from 295 to 229 BC.51 This would mean that Athenian ability to protect the western
49 In favour: Ferguson Hellenistic Athens, 155, 162 n.2, however the inscription he cites from Ἐφ.
Ἀρχ. (1896), 33, refers to a demesman from Phyle, not to the fortress; absence of evidence, Habicht,
Athenian Year, 129 (though at 137 Habicht thinks they were in Athenian hands), Dreyer, Geschichte
des spätklassischen Athen, 223.
50 Dreyer, Geschichte des spätklassischen Athen, 271.
51 Habicht, Athenian Year, 130, cf. Dreyer, Geschichte des spätklassischen Athen, 168.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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part of Attica, with Macedonian forces on Salamis and most probably at Panakton and
Phyle, would have been even weaker than their position in the east and south. With
the Macedonians holding the Peiraieus and Antigonos’ army being in the central Attic
plains, both in order to lay siege to the city and, as we shall see, to keep the armies
trying to relieve Athens from joining together, Athens’ ability to protect that area
would have been minimal. The Athenians and their allies do seem to have been able
to protect the Attic countryside more than our literary sources suggest, but even so
Athenian agriculture must have been badly disrupted by the war.
There remain to be considered a number of archaeological sites of a military
nature which belong to this period. They are in north central Attica, and the most
important is a wall, which extends from the northern side of Mt. Aigaleon to the south
of Parnes and is built to block access from the Thriasian plain to central Attica, and
apparently it was only in use for a short time. It is known today as the Dema Wall.52
The first modern report on it dated it to the end of the fourth century, and the authors
suggested it was part of a plan for last-ditch defence of Attica after Chaironeia.53 Such
a date presents problems, since it is unclear why the Athenians would have abandoned
Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, and how they planned to prevent Philip outflanking
them through Aphidna. Nor does it seem likely they had time to build such a wall
before they discovered that Philip was willing to offer acceptable terms.
However, as we saw in the case of Patroklou Charax, a late fourth century date
for the pottery could also suit a date in the Chremonidean War. James McCredie
argues that it was built by Antigonos to block Areus’ advance from the west, and the
Dema Wall, located within Attica is a better fit for Pausanias’ information (3.6.5) that
52 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 63.
53 Jones, Sackett and Eliot, ‘TO DEMA’, 152-187.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
92
Antigonos blocked the forces of Athens’ allies τ∞ς εfiσÒδου τ∞ς εfiς τØν πÒλιν, than
the Isthmus of Corinth would be.54
There are two other fortifications in this general area, which also belong in this
time frame. One is on a low hill in front of the Dema Wall, which McCredie calls ‘the
Lager’. This seems to have been held by a force opposing the garrison of the Dema
Wall,55 which does not fit the situation after Chaironeia, since Philip of Macedon did
not invade Attica, but could well be the base from which Areus confronted
Antigonos’ troops on the Dema Wall. The second is a rough fortification in Kamatero,
on the southern slopes of Aigaleon, close to the eastern end of the mountain. This
position, built around this time, suggests that the Dema Wall was, in fact turned, and
that Areus’ army did enter the central Attic plain.56
This also makes more sense of Patroklos’ request that Areus attack Antigonos’
forces, so that Patroklos could then attack the Macedonians in the rear (Pausanias
3.6.5). If Patroklos were in Attica, while Areus was blocked at the Isthmus of Corinth,
it would be hard for them to make a coordinated attack on the Macedonians.
However, if Patroklos was at Helioupolis, to the south of Athens, while Areus was to
the north of it at Kamatero, this may well have seemed a feasible strategy. But it
seems that the gap between the two armies was still too great. Antigonos possessed
the internal lines, with forces in the Peiraieus and a field army somewhere near
Athens, and he was able to prevent the three allies, Patroklos, Areus and the
Athenians from joining their forces. Areus apparently did not advance beyond
Kamatero and when his supplies were running low, he retreated from Attica
(Pausanias 3.6.6).
54 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 110f, Marasco, Sparta agli inizi dell’età Ellenistica, 148.
55 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 70.
56 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 72.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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McCredie has suggested, as one possibility, that Areus and his army had
evaded the Macedonian position at Corinth by being ferried across the Saronic Gulf
by Patroklos’ ships.57 It is hard to see why Areus would have landed at Eleusis, if he
were brought by the Egyptian navy, instead of landing in southern Attica, where he
would not have been separated from his ally’s forces by the Dema Wall and
Antigonos’ army. There is also the problem that Antigonos had attacked Athens with
land forces and ships (πεζ“ κα‹ ναυσ¤ν, Pausanias 3.6.4). While Patroklos does seem
to have had the advantage over Antigonos at sea, he might have lost it if his ships
were used to transport Areus’ army and Antigonos’ ships had attacked the Egyptians
while they were so burdened.58
It seems more likely that Areus had entered Attica by land. McCredie suggests
the alternative that Areus may have slipped past the Isthmus fortifications.59 It also
seems possible that Antigonos had not blocked the Isthmus at the start of the war in
268/7. We know, from Plutarch Agis 3.4 and Trogus’ prologue to book 26, that Areus
died at Corinth, and Diodoros 20.29.1, tells us that Areus succeeded his father
Kleomenes II in 309/8 and reigned for forty four years. This indicates that he died in
265/4. However, while these two pieces of evidence put together show that Areus died
in 265/4 while trying to force the Isthmus, they do not prove that Antigonos had
secured it against passage from the south in 268/7.
Archaeological traces remain of two walls in this area which were in use in
this period. The first lies south of the Isthmus itself, but does not include Corinth in its
line. This wall was built to block forces coming from the north and can hardly have
been used to stop Areus who was coming from the south. It was probably built to stop
57 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 111.
58 Marasco, Sparta agli inizi dell’età Ellenistica, 150.
59 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 111.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
94
the Celts if they had broken past Thermopylae.60 The second wall is part of a line of
fortifications further south still, which use Mount Oneion, the Acrocorinth and the
long walls to Lechaion, to block movement in either direction past Corinth. It was
originally built in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the Thebans entering the
Peloponnese in the 360s and there are traces of reoccupation in the early third century,
which suit its use to block Areus.61
Ronald Stroud suggests that Areus had found his retreat from Attica blocked
by Antigonos’ troops at the Isthmus fortifications and that he had died while
unsuccessfully trying to force a passage southwards.62 However, this conclusion rests
on the assumption that the archonship of Peithidemos fell in 265/4, the same year that
Areus died. As we have seen, it was almost certainly several years earlier. It seems
more likely then, that Areus made several campaigns to assist Athens, and that in his
first expedition he did not find the Isthmus line of fortification blocked, but did
succeed in advancing into Attica, only to find himself unable to co-operate effectively
with Patroklos. In later years of the war Antigonos would seem to have blocked the
Isthmus line in order to make any such co-operation even less possible.63
Before Areus’ defeat and death in 265/4 there was an episode which is not
fully described in any of our sources. Antigonos was confronted with, and defeated, a
force of Gauls. Justin 26.2.1 says that Antigonos was confronted with a new enemy,
an army of Gallograeci. He left a token force to keep his other enemies from
following him and when he attacked these Gallograeci they turned their arms on
themselves and slaughtered their wives and children before killing themselves. Trogus
60 Wiseman, ‘Trans-Isthmian Fortification Wall’, 248-75.
61 Stroud, ‘Ancient Fort in Mount Oneion’, 127-145.
62 Stroud, ‘Ancient Fort in Mount Oneion’, 143f.
63 See Walbank in Hammond and Walbank, History of Macedonia vol. 3, 282.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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in the prologue to book 26, the source from which Justin is drawing, says that Gauls at
Megara defected from Antigonus and then mentions the death of Areus. Justin, in his
epitome, has left out the detail that the ‘enemy’ was in fact a rebellious ally of the
Macedonians.
There is an inscription from Maroneia, on the north coast of the Aegean, of a
Gaul named Bricco, who apparently died there.64 Bricco has a good Gallic name and
his epitaph says he was the son of Ateuristos, his home was Apameia and he led a
force of Galatians to fight in the front rank against Areus and the force had all gone to
Hades. Bricco’s epitaph supports Trogus in saying that the Gauls came to fight Areus,
but gives the impression that they had died in carrying out this duty, rather than in
rebellion against their paymaster.
The epitaph also provides new information. As a citizen of Apameia, Bricco
must have come from Asia Minor, where he must have become integrated to some
degree into the Greek community there. It seems probable that he led his Galatians
from Asia Minor, rather than recruiting them from somewhere in the Balkans,
although their subsequent mass-suicide makes it unlikely they were also hellenised to
any extent. A hellenised Gaul with citizenship in Apameia can hardly have been
recruiting a force of Gauls in Asia Minor for Antigonos without at least the tacit
approval of the Seleucid king.65
There is further evidence on this campaign. Two sources, Polyaenus 4.6.3 and
Aelian Natura Animalium 11.4 and 16.36, inform us that when Antigonos was
attacking Megara with elephants, the Megarians frightened the elephants by sending
out pigs which had been greased and set on fire. Antigonos tried to combat this tactic
64 Welles, ‘Gallic Mercenaries in the Chremonidean War’, 471-90.
65 Welles ‘Gallic Mercenaries in the Chremonidean War’, 485.
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JAMES L. O’NEIL
for the future by accustoming his elephants to the presence of pigs. Now the only war
in which Antigonos can have had elephants and attacked Megara is the Chremonidean
War.66 Moreover, the elephants, like the Gauls, would seem to have come from Asia
Minor, and are even stronger evidence for Seleucid support for Antigonos in this war.
In addition, we should note that neither Polyaenus nor Aelian mentions Gauls, but
only Megarians. It seems unlikely that they have both made the same mistake and it is
probable that there was not only a mutiny of Antigonos’ Gallic force at Megara but
also a rebellion by the Megarians themselves.
Now McCredie suggests that the Gallic revolt occurred while Areus was
retreating past Megara after his supplies ran out at Athens and that the Gauls may
have expected help from Areus which was not forthcoming.67 But this hypothesis rests
on McCredie’s acceptance of the date of 265/4 for Peithidemos, and it also fails to
explain Justin’s remark (26.2.1) that Antigonos left a covering force to block his other
enemies while he advanced against the Gauls. If Areus was close to Megara when the
Gauls revolted, it is hard to see how Antigonos could have advanced on Megara while
deceiving Areus that the Macedonian army was still at Athens.68
It seems unlikely, then, that the Gallic revolt occurred in the first year of the
war. Instead, it is more likely that in 267/6 Areus invaded Attica from the west, but
was unable to make a junction with Patroklos, whose army was in the south of Attica.
In the next year, 266/5, the Gallic force and the elephants probably arrived from Asia
Minor,69 and Antigonos may have blocked the Isthmus passage. However, if
Antigonos was planning to strike a major blow against any of his existing enemies,
66 Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas, 236 n.28.
67 McCredie, Fortified Military Camps, 112.
68 Marasco, Sparta agli inizi dell’età Ellenistica, 151.
69 Walbank in Hammond and Walbank, History of Macedonia vol. 3, 252; Heinen, Untersuchungen
zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 201
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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the revolt of the Gallograeci and of the Megarians frustrated him. In 265/4 Areus
attempted to force the Isthmus lines, but died in battle at Corinth. It seems likely that
Antigonos had concentrated his forces against the Spartans in this year.
Unfortunately, it is not clear in which half of each of these archon years these
actions took place. Since there is a surprising gap between the death of Areus and the
eventual fall of Athens,70 it seems likely to me that Areus died in the opening months
of the campaigning season of 264, than in mid 265. If that is the case, then Areus’
invasion of Attica and Patroklos’ concurrent occupation of the southern part of the
country probably occurred at the start of 266. It is quite possible that Areus or
Patroklos found it too difficult to organise his forces in time to get in the field in late
267, though it is surprising that Antigonos failed to take advantage of such a delay.
At least one more problem prevented Antigonos Gonatas from concentrating
on Athens after the defeat and death of Areus. Justin 26.2.9-11 tells us that Alexander
king of Epirus, being anxious to avenge the death of his father Pyrrhos, invaded
Macedon and ravaged its borders. Antigonos thought this threat sufficiently serious to
return with his army to Macedon to face it. However his son Demetrios (or the
Macedonian nobles under the nominal leadership of Demetrios) had counter-attacked
and not only driven Alexander out of Macedon, but even expelled him for a time from
his own kingdom of Epirus. In view of Pyrrhos’ past connection with the house of
Ptolemy, it seems likely that Ptolemy Philadelphos had encouraged Alexander’s
attack on Macedon,71 and possibly had subsidised it, just as he had subsidised king
Areus of Sparta.
70 Walbank in Hammond and Walbank, History of Macedonia vol. 3, 285.
71 Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 180.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
98
It is probably in this context that the story in Polyaenus 4.6.20 belongs.72 This
says that Antigonos made peace with the Athenians in autumn, which encouraged the
Athenians to sow their stocks of corn, in the expectation of raising a harvest under
cover of the peace. However, when the crop was nearly ripe, Antigonos returned and
prevented the Athenians from harvesting it, leaving them no alternative to surrender.
Polyaenus sees this as a deliberate attempt by Antigonos to trick the Athenians into
using up reserves of seed for a harvest they would never gather, and making a
specious peace to encourage them to do this. However, Justin suggests that Antigonos
thought the threat from Alexander was more severe than it turned out to be, and that
he would need to return with his army to Macedon in order to face it. Under these
circumstances Antigonos’ offer of peace, or perhaps only a truce, to enable him to
cope with the more serious threat may well have been genuine, and not an attempt to
deceive the Athenians. But when the Epirote threat turned out to have been
overestimated, Antigonos either broke his truce, or returned sooner than the Athenians
had calculated he could, and so reduced Athens’ ability to hold out against him. The
withdrawal of Antigonos’ army may have made it possible to sow crops close to
Athens for the first time in some years, but unfortunately for the Athenians they were
unable to gather the harvest.
There are two other military campaigns which have been suggested to belong
in this later part of the Chremonidean War. One is the battle of Akrotatos, son of
Areus, against Aristodemos the tyrant of Megalopolis, in which Akrotatos was
defeated and killed (Plutarch Agis 3.5), as his father had been at Corinth in 265/4.
This battle is not clearly dated, and there could have been a long interval between
72 Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 181.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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Areus’ death and that of his son Akrotatos,73 but it must have been before 252 BC.74
One possibility is that Akrotatos was trying to carry on his father’s work by attacking
the tyrant of Megalopolis,75 who was probably an ally of the Macedonians since
Megalopolis was not one of the Arkadian cities listed in the decree of Chremonides
among the allies of king Areus.
Now it is unlikely that Akrotatos thought that he could force his way past the
line of the Isthmus when his father, who presumably had a much larger army, had
failed, since Areus would not have been the only Spartan casualty and his allies are
likely to have abandoned the war with his death.76 However, Akrotatos may have
hoped to force Antigonos to withdraw troops from Athens to defend his Arcadian ally,
just as Alexander of Epirus’ attack did temporarily make him withdraw, or to take
advantage of Antigonos’ occupation elsewhere to attack his ally.77 Continued military
action by their friends, or at least by enemies of Antigonos, may well have
encouraged the Athenians to think that the war was not yet lost beyond all hope.
However, Ptolemaic support seems to have been confined, in the last years of the war,
as in the earlier stages, to financial support for his allies and naval assistance.
It remains unclear why Ptolemy did not send more effective soldiers to help
Athens than the Egyptian sailors mentioned in Pausanias 3.6.5. The presence of
Antigonos’ ships could well have discouraged Patroklos from using his warships to
transport land forces by sea, but surely Ptolemy could have supplied other shipping
for a land army to support Athens which the superior Egyptian navy could then have
73 Cloché, ‘Politique extérieure de Lacédémone’, 53.
74 Neise, ‘Akrotatos (2)’ RE 1 (1984), 1208. Tarn, ‘Arcadian League and Aristodemos’, 104f. argues
for a date early in Aristodemos’ career.
75 David, Sparta between Empire and Revolution, 139; Hicks, Spartan Foreign Relations, 20
76 Marasco, Sparta agli inizi dell’età Ellenistica, 156.
77 Cloché, ‘Politique extérieure de Lacédémone’, 54.
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JAMES L. O’NEIL
protected from Antigonos’ ships. Ptolemy does seem to have had some problems in
Asia Minor at this time, since an inscription from 262 BC praises the Milesians for
their loyalty to the Ptolemaic dynasty when under attack.78 However, the major
conflict between Ptolemy and Antiochos II, which we call the Second Syrian War,
does not seem to have broken out until some time after the end of the Chremonidean
War.79 It is even possible that the forces attacking Miletos were associated with
Antigonos,80 and whoever they were, it seems unlikely that they presented a threat to
Ptolemy which would justify his keeping his land forces away from the Greek theatre
of war.
One other reason which may have led Ptolemy to keep his army at home is the
battle of Kos, which has sometimes been dated to the last stages of the Chremonidean
War.81 The date of this battle is a notorious problem of chronology. We know that
Antigonos Gonatas defeated the navy led by Ptolemy’s commanders at Kos, but our
sources tell us practically nothing about the battle or its context. Athenaeus
Deipnosophistae 5.46 209E tells us that Antigonos dedicated his victorious trireme to
Apollo, presumably at Delos, after the battle, and Plutarch Moralia 545B82 says that
Antigonos, when told that his force was outnumbered by the enemy ships, responded
by asking how many ships he himself was worth. Neither of these brief passages gives
any indication of when the battle was fought. All we can say for certain is that it must
have been after Patroklos had dominated the sea during the Chremonidean War.
Ferguson argued that it must have been some years after that war, since our
sources for it could not have failed to mention such an important event if it took place
78 Bevan, House of Ptolemy, 68f.
79 Hölbl, History of the Ptolemaic Empire, 44, cf. Bevan House of Ptolemy, 69.
80 Bringmann, ‘The King as Benefactor’, 19.
81 Cf. David, Sparta between Empire and Revolution, 139.
82 Cf. Plutarch Moralia 183C-D, which tells the same story, without mentioning Kos.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
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during the war.83 However, these sources are too defective for such an argument to be
conclusive. Heinen took the story of Patroklos taunting Antigonos for his lack of
control over the sea, with a gift of figs and fish (Phylarchus FGrHist 81F1), to show
that Antigonos did realise he had to gain naval predominance to win the war, and
therefore dates the battle of Kos around the end of it.84 While the battle of Kos may
well have been Antigonos’ response to the problems which Ptolemaic control of the
sea had caused him in the Chremonidean War, Antigonos did not need sea power to
starve out Athens while he held the Peiraieus and the countryside round the city and
the battle of Kos may still have come after that war. Our evidence for the date of the
battle is almost non-existent, but we should note that Antigonos’ influence does not
seem to have spread into the Aegean before about 255 BC, and an earlier dating of the
battle of Kos to around 262 will cause problems with the evidence for Delos being at
peace in that year.85
We are left with the conclusion that Ptolemy Philadelphos does not seem to
have been prevented by strategic considerations from sending more than naval forces
to assist Athens. Perhaps he chose not to take the risk of his troops being defeated
where it might have proved difficult to evacuate them, or to leave his other frontiers
open to attack by the Seleucids while he had significant land forces in Greece. The
Second Syrian War did break out a few years after the end of the Chremonidean War,
and Antiochos does seem to have helped Antigonos with Galatian troops and
elephants, so the possibility that he would have taken advantage of Ptolemaic preoccupation in Greece does seem a real risk. Nevertheless, Ptolemy does not seem to
have given winning the Chremonidean War as high a priority as his Athenian and
83 Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 180 n.2.
84 Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 191.
85 Hölbl, History of the Ptolemaic Empire, 44; Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 416f.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
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Spartan allies, or his Macedonian antagonist Antigonos, did. We cannot tell how far
Antigonos’ victory in the sea battle at Kos was due to his presence there, but
Ptolemy’s relatively low interest in winning the Chremonidean War, in contrast with
Antigonos’ leadership on the spot, may well have been a major factor in Antigonos’
victory.
The date of the end of the war is relatively securely fixed, even though neither
Antipatros, the archon under whom Athens was forced to surrender, nor his successor,
Arrheneides,86 have a known secretary so that they can be placed in the secretary
cycle. However we know that the philosopher Zeno died in the archonship of
Arrheneides, and he had been head of the Stoic school for thirty nine years and three
months, starting in the archonship of Klearchos (301/0).87 Unfortunately this
information has not led to certainty in the dating of Arrheneides’ archonship, and thus
the end of the Chremonidean War. William Dinsmoor thought that Antipatros was
most probably archon in 263/2 and Arrheneides in 262/1, while allowing the
following years to be possible in each case.88 Heinen believes 262/1 and 261/0 are the
most probable dates for these archons, while not completely ruling out one year later
for each of them.89 These two dates, 262/1 for Antipatros and 261/0 for Arrheneides,
seem to have gained general acceptance.90
In that case, the war ended in 262/1, and since Antigonos made his delusive
peace in autumn, his unexpected return must be placed in the spring of the following
campaigning season. If the Athenians did not surrender immediately upon the
86 Philodemos Περ‹ τ«ν ΣτωÛκ«ν 3 = Apollodoros FGrHist 244F44.
87 Philodemos Περ‹ τ«ν ΣτωÛκ«ν 4; cf. Meritt, Athenian Year, 222.
88 Dinsmoor, Archons of Athens, 46-50’ and Athenian Archon List, 37, 47.
89 Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 184f.
90 Meritt, ‘Mid-Third Century Athenian Archons’, 94; Osborne, ‘Chronology of Athens in the Mid
Third Century’, 229, 241. However, Dreyer, Geschichte des Spätklassischen Athen, 429 merely
indicates the two archons must belong between 263/2 and 261/0.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
103
destruction of their crops, but held out for some months, that surrender could have
fallen early in the archon year 262/1 and Alexander of Epirus’ invasion of Macedon
and Antigonos’ return in the following campaigning season would have taken place
during the archon year 263/2. This leaves a gap of one year between Areus’ defeat
and death in 265/4 and Alexander’s invasion of Macedon in 263/2. Either the
Athenians had sufficient supplies to hold out for two years, even after the losses they
must have suffered in the earlier part of the Chremonidean War, or else the events of a
whole campaigning season have been lost.
As we have seen, both Patroklos and king Areus were more active in their
efforts to relieve Athens than the literary sources suggest, and they initially enjoyed a
measure of success. All the same, they did not succeed in the long run and it does not
seem that Ptolemy Philadelphos was as committed to winning the Chremonidean war
as was his Macedonian antagonist Antigonos Gonatas. The war proved disastrous for
Athens and Sparta and was a setback for Ptolemaic diplomacy in Greece.91 Ptolemy
did strengthen his position in the Aegean as a result of Patroklos’ establishment of
naval bases there,92 but the enmity created with Antigonos led to the battle of Kos and
the Ptolemaic loss of hegemony in the Aegean.
What does this tell us about Ptolemy’s kingship and his effectiveness as a
king? The decree of Chremonides stresses Ptolemy’s goodwill towards the Greeks and
his actions as their benefactor, particularly in defending their freedom against
Antigonos. The image of the king as a benefactor was an important part of the
ideology of Hellenistic kingship, with the benefits he gave not only conferring
majesty on him, but also power over those he had benefited, since they were expected
91 Heinen, Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte, 207f.
92 Hölbl, History of the Ptolemaic Empire, 44.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
104
to repay the king for his help by supporting him in turn. This ideology of the
benefactor applied both to the king’s friends, his officers within the kingdom and to
his allies, the cities which were, at least in theory, outside it. In both cases the role of
benefactor was expected to bring positive benefits to the king.93
Ptolemy Philadelphos was conferring freedom on those Greeks of the
mainland who did not want to co-operate with the Macedonians, not just to win their
good will, but also to serve his own purposes. By weakening the power of Macedon
within Greece, Ptolemy reduced the ability of Antigonos to strike at Ptolemaic
possessions elsewhere, and also made sure that Antigonos could not prevent
Ptolemaic recruitment of Greeks as soldiers and administrators for his kingdom.
Royal benevolence could be used to mask other purposes,94 but this does not mean
that Ptolemy was insincere in wishing to be the benefactor and defender of freedom
for the Greeks. What it does mean is that Ptolemy Philadelphos would pursue those
roles only in so far as doing so protected his own interests. Ptolemy Soter had
abandoned his defence of Greek freedom in 309 BC, when he found it brought him no
support from the Greek cities. Ptolemy Philadelphos did more for Greek freedom than
his father had done, and he was willing to supply money and ships, but not to send
land forces. The interests of the king himself were placed above those of his allies,
and while Philadelphos had gains as well as losses from the Chremonidean War, his
allies paid the penalty for its loss.
Royal euergetism was not necessarily incompatible with exploitation. Kings
needed to find money, and playing the benefactor to those who could help him in their
93 Bringmann, ‘The King as Benefactor’, 7f. 17ff; Austin, ‘Kings, War and the Economy’, 462f.
94 Bringmann, ‘The King as Benefactor’, 24.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
105
turn could result in rapacity towards others, or even to those being ‘helped’.95 War
was important as a generator of income for the Hellenistic kings,96 and the
Chremonidean War does not seem to have been likely to generate extensive booty or
gain new taxable territory for Ptolemy, while it was definitely a drain on his
resources. It should not be surprising that Ptolemy was not wholly committed to it.
Just as Ptolemy II had won plaudits for his benefaction to Telmessos by promising not
to grant it in δωρεã,97 while his son Ptolemy Euergetes performed the benefaction of
giving the city to his cousin, Ptolemy son of Lysimachos (OGIS 55), the Athenians
and Spartans were expected to be grateful for whatever favours Ptolemy chose to
bestow on them. The king, not the party benefited, decided what favours he would
confer, and he decided primarily in terms of his own interests.
As well as financial resources, kings needed military success, to keep the
support of those who defended their kingdom and to win the support of others. This
was especially the case for Alexander’s successors, who lacked the family charisma of
the Temenid dynasty.98 This applied to all the kings, even the Ptolemies, who
controlled Egypt, a wealthy and defensible kingdom, but who needed Greeks to keep
control of it, and so needed to keep their access to the Greek homeland. It was even
more important for Antigonos Gonatas, the last of Alexander’s successors to establish
himself securely in his kingdom after his father’s failures.99 It was not a realistic
option for either Ptolemy Philadelphos or Antigonos to remain at peace with one
another. If Ptolemy had not tried to weaken Antigonos’ power in Greece, Antigonos
would none the less have needed to increase his power to show that he was a
95 Austin, ‘Kings, War and the Economy’, 463.
96 Davies, ‘Hellenistic Economies in the post-Finley Era’, 53.
97 Wörrle, ‘Epigraphische Forschungen II’, 201f.
98 Austin, ‘Kings, War and the Economy’, 459; O’Neil ‘Creation of New Dynasties’, 118-137.
99 O’Neil, ‘Creation of New Dynasties’, 134.
JAMES L. O’NEIL
106
successful fighter who deserved his royal power. Success for Antigonos in Greece
would have lead him to further expansion, and the outlying possessions of the
Ptolemies in the Aegean and on the coasts of Asia Minor were a likely target, whether
or not Ptolemy had done anything to provoke him. By instigating the Chremonidean
War, Ptolemy Philadelphos had at least postponed the Antigonid incursion into the
Aegean which led to his defeat at Kos. The hopes of victory for Ptolemy and his allies
do not seem to have been as unrealistic as the surviving historical sources suggest. For
Ptolemy, the Chremonidean War must have seemed a worthwhile gamble.
For his allies, Athens and Sparta, it probably seemed worthwhile too. They did
not have any realistic hope of gaining complete independence from all their more
powerful neighbours, the Hellenistic kings. With the support of the more distant
Ptolemy, they might have been able to keep Antigonos, who was more likely to
interfere in their affairs, at bay.100 Since Antigonos’ personal leadership in the war, in
contrast with Ptolemy’s leadership in absentia and his unwillingness to commit all his
resources, seems to have been a major factor in the Antigonid victory, it may well
have seemed a reasonable assessment for Ptolemy’s Greek allies to think that he could
assist them to win a victory they did not have the resources to achieve by themselves.
The combined resources of Athens, Sparta and Ptolemy Philadelphos should,
rationally, have been able to defeat Antigonos Gonatas; but as it turned out, the allies
were unable to combine them effectively.
For the city-states had less room to manoeuvre than the kings who had much
greater resources than they did. Athens and Sparta had more to lose than Ptolemy in
the Chremonidean War, and they duly lost it. However, if they had not taken the
chance when Ptolemy would support them, they might have had to face Antigonos by
100 Cf. Piper, Spartan Twilight, 20f.
CHREMONIDEAN WAR
107
themselves at some future time. A Hellenistic king would take opportunities to expand
his power when they arose, and the city-states, with their smaller resources, could
survive only if they had powerful friends. Unfortunately for Athens and Sparta,
Ptolemy Philadelphos does not seem to have been an effective defender of his friends.
THE UNBALANCED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PTOLEMY II AND
PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS
Geoff W. Adams
1. Introduction
Few monarchs present such a contrast as Ptolemy II of Egypt and Pyrrhus of Epirus:
Pyrrhus was a famed general, whereas Ptolemy II was an administrator. Nevertheless,
they both owed their positions to Ptolemy I and ruled their respective realms in the
early third century BC. The extant ancient writers ascribe no official connection
between them, but this study has asked the question whether they had a φιλ¤α alliance
between 282 and 272 BC and if it changed during this period. Such a φιλ¤αconnection was based upon an ‘unofficial’ friendship, which was a common
occurrence between rulers during this period.
Egyptian foreign relations during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus were
continually beset by the complications of conflict and shifting allegiances among the
various Hellenistic rulers that sought to assert their dominance throughout the region,
or sometimes simply their own survival. Throughout the first decade or so of Ptolemy
Philadelphus’ reign it is possible to see the continuation in the foreign policies of his
father, Ptolemy I (Soter).1 One of the most intriguing relationships that developed
under Ptolemy I was his association with Pyrrhus of Epirus. This liaison had
originated when Demetrius Poliorcetes sent a youthful Pyrrhus as a hostage to Egypt
1
Seibert 1969; Huss 1994.
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
109
in the Ptolemaic court.2 The ancient literary sources surrounding the life of Pyrrhus
have often portrayed a tragic, but idealized image of the Epirot monarch,3 but the
association between him and Ptolemy I has been made quite clear.4 However, his
relationship with Ptolemy II Philadelphus is quite obscure in the literary sources.
But this does not mean that it did not exist. In his 1953 study, Giuseppe Nenci
argued that there was an official relationship between both Ptolemy I and II with
Pyrrhus working for their foreign and commercial interests throughout his lifetime.5
This argument was suitably criticized shortly after its publication because of its often
inconsistent and drastic use of the source material for the argument,6 but within its
rather strenuous line of reasoning there was a strong possibility that they frequently
worked for their common interests. This has been generally accepted in regard to
Ptolemy Soter and the assistance he provided for Pyrrhus (particularly in 298/7 BC),
but the question about Pyrrhus’ relationship with Ptolemy Philadelphus has remained.
More recently, N.G.L. Hammond has presented a reinterpretation of Justin 17.2.1415,7 arguing that it was Ptolemy Philadelphus (rather than Ptolemy Keraunos) who
gave Pyrrhus military assistance for Epirus in 280 BC before his ill-fated departure for
Tarentum.8 This argument seems quite compelling, but it leads to further questions of
the relationship between Ptolemy II and Pyrrhus. It is the intention of this study to
propose that there was originally a φιλία-connection between these two leaders, in
2
Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.3-5.1.
Justin 17.2.11; Plutarch Demetrius 41.3, Pyrrhus 3.4-5, 6.2; Duff 1999, 101-3; Mossman 1992, 90104.
4
Justin 16.2.2-3; Plutarch Pyrrhus 5.1, 6.3-4; Levêque 1957, 108-9.
5
Nenci 1953, 93-9.
6
Fine 1957, 108-11.
7
Hammond 1988, 405-13.
8
For some of the ancient references to Pyrrhus’ role in the Tarentine War, see Polybius 1.6.7-7.12;
Florus, Epitome 1.18.1-28; Frontinus Stratagems 2.2.1, 2.3.21, 2.4.9, 2.4.13, 2.6.9-10, 3.6.3, 4.1.3,
4.1.14, 4.1.8, 4.4.2.
3
110
GEOFF W. ADAMS
accordance with the foreign policy theories of Gruen9 (instead of the formal
relationship argued by Nenci), but that this relationship was significantly altered (if
not finished) in 278 BC with Pyrrhus’ involvement in conflict with the Carthaginians
in Sicily.10 As Gruen has shown, an informal agreement of this sort was quite common
during this period,11 allowing the rulers a greater degree of freedom than in the official
treaties, which would have been desirable for most leaders.
2. Ptolemy I and Pyrrhus: the Origins of their φιλία Connection
Before discussing the relationship between Ptolemy Philadelphus and Pyrrhus, the
origin of their φιλία/amicitia needs to be traced back to the reign of Ptolemy Soter.
The relationship between Pyrrhus and the Lagids followed from the Battle of Ipsus in
301 BC and the ensuing difficulties in Greece for Demetrius Poliorcetes,12 who
entered into a marriage alliance with Seleucus,13 eventuating in an agreement between
himself and Ptolemy I.14 One of the parts of the agreement was Pyrrhus being sent to
Egypt as a hostage, this being a common diplomatic gesture of goodwill and
commitment in such a treaty.15 The basis of Pyrrhus’ relationship with Demetrius was
largely due to the marriage of his sister, Deïdameia, to the Besieger,16 as well as his
own personal difficulties in Epirus, having been deposed from the throne by his
second cousin Neoptolemus II.17 The value placed on Pyrrhus by Demetrius at this
time is shown by the responsibility of settling his affairs in Greece after the Battle of
9
Gruen 1984 vol.1, 54-5.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.8.3-4; Diodorus Siculus 22.8.1-10.7; Pausanias 1.12.5-13.1.
11
Gruen 1984 vol. 1, 54-95.
12
Plutarch Demetrius 30-31; Hammond and Walbank 1988 vol. 3, 201-3.
13
Plutarch Demetrius 31.
14
Plutarch Demetrius 32.
15
Such as after the Battle of Zama between Rome and Carthage. See Polybius 15.18.8; Livy, 30.37.6;
Moscovich 1974, 417-27. Sometimes the role of hostage could be advantageous, such as Philip II’s
time in Thebes. See also Hammond 1997, 355-72.
16
Plutarch Demetrius 25.2.
17
Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.1.
10
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
111
Ipsus, albeit unsuccessfully with the growing move against Poliorcetes in this region
at the time.18 Nevertheless, Pyrrhus was sent to Egypt as part of the deal between
Demetrius and Ptolemy I,19 which may have been partly owing to the death of
Deïdameia in 300 BC,20 and the shifting focus of Demetrius at the time.21
From this time the allegiances of Pyrrhus altered significantly, becoming
closely aligned with the Lagids, which Plutarch attributed to his physical prowess and
shrewd understanding of the internal politics of the Ptolemaic family.22 Regardless of
the motives on either side (Plutarch being the only source to directly mention the
growing intimacy of their relationship) the development of their relationship cannot
be questioned, with the eventual marriage of Pyrrhus and Ptolemy’s stepdaughter,
Antigone,23 clearly strengthening their future ties to a certain degree. Nevertheless,
this should not be overstated on the part of Ptolemy I. Despite Antigone being the
daughter of Berenicé, Ptolemy’s apparent ‘favorite’,24 it was not the most significant
alliance for Ptolemy, Antigone only being his stepdaughter, but he probably saw the
potential of the young Epirot and decided to make use of him. In view of the rapid
change in Pyrrhus’ alliances, towards both Ptolemy I and Berenicé, it is clear that he
would have become a regular at the Ptolemaic court,25 which would have drawn him
into contact with the son of Berenicé and Ptolemy, the future Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
Because of the lack of sources it is difficult to draw conclusions about their
relationship at this time, but there can be little doubt that they would have known each
18
Plutarch Demetrius 30.2-31.2.
Plutarch Pyrrhus 4. See also Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 20.
20
Plutarch Demetrius 32.3.
21
This change in the focus of Demetrius was short-lived with the souring of relations between himself
and Seleucus, followed by his return to Athens in 297 BC, which resulted in a failed intervention by
Ptolemy I on behalf of the Athenians. See Plutarch Demetrius 33.1-4.
22
Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4-5.1.
23
Pausanias 1.11.5; Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4; Errington 1990, 149.
24
Green 1990, 119; Ogden 1999, 70; Carney,1994, 123.
25
Pausanias 1.11.5; Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4-5.1; Levêque 1957, 108-9; Carney 2002, 67.
19
GEOFF W. ADAMS
112
other being half brothers-in-law. When Pyrrhus arrived in Egypt, Ptolemy II would
have been roughly eight years old, whereas Pyrrhus was twenty-one and already quite
experienced in warfare and politics. Owing to their age difference and role differences
it is hard to argue that they would have developed a close relationship at this stage,
but it is clear that due to their familial connections that they would not have been
unknown to one another.
The φιλία between Pyrrhus and Ptolemy I resulted in Pyrrhus gaining
financial and military support towards his reinstatement as king of Epirus in 297 BC.26
Ptolemy’s motivation for this was clearly based upon introducing an ally into the
frame of Macedonian politics, which assisted by allowing him to focus upon more
pressing areas of foreign policy: namely the question of Syria and Seleucus.27 The
motives behind this assistance included the recent death of Cassander and the
uncertain conditions in Macedonia at the time, involving Agathocles in Corcyra as
well.28 After the death of Antigone, the relationship between Agathocles and Pyrrhus
was confirmed, albeit temporarily, by the marriage of Lanassa with Pyrrhus.29
Plutarch mentioned that the significance of the assistance from Ptolemy was not lost
upon Pyrrhus and he maintained a high level of respect and a close relationship with
him throughout the remainder of Ptolemy’s life.30 The marriage to Antigone was
clearly important to Pyrrhus because it was only after her death that he began his
practice of polygamy.31 The military benefit for Ptolemy I is particularly evident in
their joint involvement in the expulsion of Demetrius Poliorcetes from Macedonia in
26
Pausanias 1.6.8; Plutarch Pyrrhus 5.1.
Hammond and Walbank 1988, 205. This compliments the often defensive character of Ptolemy I’s
foreign policy. See also Seibert 1969, 207-24.
28
Pausanias 1.6.8; Talbert 1997, 158.
29
Diodorus Siculus 22.8.2; Plutarch Pyrrhus 9.1, 10.4-5.
30
Plutarch., Demetrius 44, Pyrrhus 6.4.
31
Plutarch., Pyrrhus 9.1; Tarn and Griffith, 1952, 55.
27
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
113
288/7 BC.32 In fact it seems that there was only one occasion that Pyrrhus failed to
assist Ptolemy in a military conflict, when he could not assist the Ptolemaic fleet at
Athens in 294 BC,33 but this seems to have been more because of Pyrrhus’ limited
resources at the time.34 This alliance would have continued into the period where both
Ptolemy I and II served as co-rulers, maintaining a relationship of mutual self-interest
in their foreign policies.
3. Ptolemy II and Pyrrhus: their φιλία Connection (285-278 BC)
The most notable aspect that must be considered when examining Ptolemy II (and his
association with Pyrrhus) is his lack of military involvement. The two were
diametrically opposed in many ways: Pyrrhus was the skilful general who was
continually in action,35 whereas Ptolemy Philadelphus delegated the campaigns to his
generals/admirals.36 Even Callimachus could find only one occasion when Ptolemy II
led his troops.37 Whether the reasons for this delegation were because of health
problems or not is irrelevant for the present study; it is only his lack of involvement
that needs to be mentioned and how he tried to further his interests within his foreign
policy.
Between 285-281 BC Pyrrhus continued to be involved in his struggles with
Lysimachus for dominance in Macedonia.38 At this point Ptolemy II was under
increasing pressure from Seleucus,39 which would have been his greatest concern
rather than Pyrrhus’ activity in Macedonia. This does not mean that their alliance had
32
Plutarch Demetrius 44.2-7; Justin, 16.2.2-3; Plutarch Pyrrhus 11.1-6; Wheatley 2003, 197; Wheatley
1997, 19-27.
33
Plutarch Demetrius 33.7.
34
Hammond and Walbank 1988, 212-4.
35
Plutarch Pyrrhus 8; Austin 1986, 456.
36
Tarn and Griffith 1952, 15; Tarn 1911, 251; Samuel 1993, 183.
37
This is in reference to his victory over the Gauls. Callimachus Hymn to Delos 171-85; See also
Theocritus, Idyll 17.98-101; Pausanias 1.7.2; Griffiths 1979, 75-6; Halperin 1983, 206-7.
38
Pausanias 1.10.2; Justin, 16.3.1-2; Plutarch Pyrrhus 12.1-7; Lund 1992, 104-5.
39
Hauben 1983, 100-101.
114
GEOFF W. ADAMS
ended; it was simply just a lower priority to Ptolemy at this stage. It would seem that
this was the main advantage to the formation of φιλία alliances: their informal basis
allowed for a greater amount of flexibility for their participants to act according to the
circumstances that affected each ruler. Pyrrhus may have been expelled from
Macedonia, but his base in Epirus was secure (as long as he was present), whereas
Ptolemy II was under increasing pressure on his eastern borders from Seleucid
aggression. That being said, these circumstances highlight the inequality between the
participants of this φιλία association, and highlight how both leaders (Ptolemy II and
Pyrrhus) had their respective regions of interest to attend to.
The distance between Egypt and northern Greece prevented the ability to
secure either of their interests in the others region with such competition with their
rivals, but their φιλία relationship at the very least assured them of support if
necessary by which they could proceed to further their own personal interests. The
continuing friendship between Pyrrhus and the Ptolemaic house allowed Ptolemy II to
focus upon the more pressing issues of Seleucid aggression by having Pyrrhus keep
Lysimachus and particularly the Antigonids occupied in their own regions. This is
explicitly shown by Plutarch in his portrayal of Demetrius’ desire to make peace with
Pyrrhus because of his interests elsewhere.
The informal alliance between Pyrrhus and Ptolemy II continued into 280 BC
with Pyrrhus’ involvement in the conflict between Rome and the southern Italian
cities, particularly Tarentum.40 This move represented a major shift in his tactics,
taking him a relatively significant distance from his base in Epirus, but this was
probably largely due to his lack of recent progress for advancement in Macedonia.
There had been some precedent for an Epirot leader giving assistance to Tarentum in
40
Dionyius of Halicarnassus 19.8.1-10.5; Pausanias 1.12.1; Justin 18.1.1-11; Strabo 8.7.1.
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
115
King Alexander the Molossian, who helped them around 332-30 BC against the
Lucanians and Bruttians, which ironically led to an agreement with Rome.41 But in
this instance Pyrrhus was probably motivated by his desire to expand his influence,
which was a consistent theme throughout his lifetime. But with such an expedition
there was the question of his security in Epirus, which has been addressed by
Hammond. He has presented a reinterpretation of Justin 17.2.14-15,42 arguing that it
was Ptolemy Philadelphus (rather than Ptolemy Keraunos) who gave Pyrrhus military
assistance for Epirus in 280 BC before his departure for Tarentum. This supports the
view of a φιλία relationship between the two rulers at this stage in their relationship.
Pyrrhus’ move to assist Tarentum against Rome was not in any contravention
of standing relations between Rome and Ptolemy Philadelphus (which were not
initiated until 273), and if Pyrrhus was successful it would have added to his military
influence, making him a more powerful ally of Egypt. This would have been expected
considering the military successes that Pyrrhus had enjoyed previously in his career
against the other Hellenistic monarchs.43 Rome had been viewed as a developing
power in Italy at this stage, but had not been directly involved in the power struggle to
the east, so a victory for Pyrrhus was probably to be expected, particularly following
his initial successes in the region.44
4. Ptolemy II and Pyrrhus: the Possible End of their φιλία Connection (278-72 BC)
41
Livy 8.17.9-10; Justin 12.2.12; Strabo 6.3.4.
Hammond 1988, 405-13.
43
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.10.1; Justin 25.5.4-6.
44
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 19.12.1-13.3; Diodorus Siculus 22.6.1-2; Pausanias 1.12.3; Frontinus
Stratagems 2.4.13; Florus, 1.18.8; Plutarch Pyrrhus 17, 21.
42
GEOFF W. ADAMS
116
In 278 BC Pyrrhus had begun to suffer losses at the hands of the Romans,45 who were
a more effective military force than was expected. It was at this point that Pyrrhus
accepted an invitation from some of the Sicilian cities, particularly Syracuse, to
liberate them.46 But in regard to Sicily there was a complication: the Carthaginian
controlled regions of Sicily.47 According to Plutarch, the main benefit that Pyrrhus
saw for annexing Sicily was its potential use as a launching point for an attack upon
Libya.48 It is important to note that Rome and Carthage worked together in their
resistance to Pyrrhus,49 it being in their mutual interests for the Epirot monarch to be
expelled from Italian and Sicilian affairs. However, it was the Carthaginian φιλία
relationship with Ptolemy Philadelphus that was the most damaging to Pyrrhus.
The Carthaginians and Lagids had been involved in trade since the early third
century B.C.50 It was this relationship that changed the nature of the φιλία connection
between Pyrrhus and Ptolemy Philadelphus. Carthage had become one of the most
influential and powerful trading centers throughout the western Mediterranean, which
made them important partners of the Lagids, probably even of greater importance than
Pyrrhus. The diplomatic ties with both parties meant that Ptolemy Philadelphus had to
decide upon his actions carefully. In view of their comparative levels of influence it is
clear that Ptolemy II was less inclined towards breaking ties with Carthage than with
Pyrrhus. The Epirot King had also been the aggressor in this instance, which may
have affected Ptolemy’s decision.
45
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.1.1-3.7, 20.10.1-12.3; Pausanias 1.13.1-2; Frontinus Stratagems 2.2.1,
2.3.21; Plutarch Pyrrhus 25-6.
46
Pausanias 1.12.5; Diodorus Siculus 22.7.2-6; Plutarch Pyrrhus 22-3.
47
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.8.3-4; Diodorus Siculus 22.8.1-10.7; Pausanias 1.12.5-13.1; Plutarch
Pyrrhus 24; Justin, 25.3.1.
48
Plutarch Pyrrhus 2-3.
49
Polybius 3.25; Appian Sicilica 1; Diodorus Siculus 22.7.5; Justin 18.2.1-5; Badian 1958, 34; Gruen
1984, 674; Thiel 1954, 26-8.
50
Fraser 1972, 152-3.
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
117
But it was not as if Ptolemy II was directly involved: he remained neutral in
the affair. This was similar to his later actions during the First Punic War,51 when
owing to his mutual alliances with Rome and Carthage; he remained neutral and
offered to be an arbitrator. However, there is one important consideration to bear in
mind: the passage in Justin referring to his military assistance in Epirus. In this
passage Justin is quite clear that the assistance was based upon the premise that it
would occur for a period of two years:
sed Ptolemeus, cui nulla dilationis ex infirmitate virium venia esset, quinque
milia peditum, equitum IV milia, elephantos L non amplius quam in biennii
usum dedit. Ob haec Pyrrhus filia Ptolomei in matrimonium accepta vindicem
eum regni reliquit, pacificatus cum omnibus finitimis, ne abducta in Italiam
iuventute praedam hostibus regnum relinqueret.52
As Hammond has shown it was probably Ptolemy Philadelphus who gave this
assistance to Pyrrhus, which raises a significant question about the continuation of
their φιλία relationship: whether the support of Ptolemy II was removed after the two
years had passed, in 278 BC.
It could be argued that the troops of Ptolemy II were removed in 278 BC,
owing to the new treaty undertaken by Antiochus I and Antigonus Gonatas.53 This
would have made Ptolemy’s position more insecure and necessitated the consolidation
of his forces. It seems that the reference by Justin to the conditions for Ptolemy’s
assistance had confused the eventual removal of his support with that of a prior
agreement. But on the other hand, to remove these forces would weaken the position
of Pyrrhus and in turn would have weakened Ptolemy II’s influence in the region.
51
Appian Sicilica 1.
Justin 17.2.14-15: ‘But since Ptolemy did not have weakness in military strength as an excuse for
delay, he gave 5,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 50 elephants for a period of service not to exceed two
years. Because of this Pyrrhus, who had accepted a daughter of Ptolemy in marriage, left him as
protector of his kingdom, having made peace with all the neighbouring peoples, in order not to leave
his kingdom a prey to his enemies while his own warriors had been removed to Italy.’
53
Justin 25.1.1; Tarn 1913, 168; Heinen 1972, 189-96.
52
118
GEOFF W. ADAMS
Through Pyrrhus’ departure for Tarentum, and in turn Sicily, Ptolemy’s alliance with
Pyrrhus would have seemed less attractive. The original basis for this φιλία
relationship was Pyrrhus’ need for assistance in gaining his Epirot throne and also the
need for another Lagid ally in the continuing struggles for dominance in the region.
By leaving the scene, particularly in a time of growing threats to Ptolemy II from
Antiochus I, Pyrrhus had ceased to be useful in this role,54 which may also explain the
time limit placed upon support for his activity in Italy. Therefore, when this time
limitation is combined with Pyrrhus’ activity against the Carthaginians in Sicily in
278 BC and the new alliance between Antigonus Gonatas and Antiochus I around the
same time, there is a possibility that there would have been added stress upon the
relationship of Ptolemy II and Pyrrhus.
In addition to the questions raised over the continuation of the alliance
between Pyrrhus and Ptolemy II by Justin 17.2.14-15, there are other indications from
the ancient sources that the relationship had ended, or at least suffered. Firstly,
according to Pausanias and Justin, Pyrrhus requested financial and military assistance
while in Italy in 276/5 BC from Antigonus Gonatas (as King of Macedonia).55 It is
also notable that at the outset of this expedition, according to Justin, he requested
military assistance from Antigonus and financial assistance from Antiochus.56 On this
it would seem that Justin is getting the time periods confused, especially if he was
receiving assistance from Ptolemy II in Epirus. Regardless of the accuracy of either
reference, it is significant that Pyrrhus’ most regular previous supporter, Egypt, was
not present among these references after his campaign in Italy and Sicily had been
54
Tarn 1913, 168.
Pausanias 1.13.1; Justin 25.3.1-3; Mooren 1983, 207.
56
Justin 17.2.13; Hammond and Walbank 1988, 246.
55
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
119
completed.57 Both Pausanias and Justin used the rejection of this appeal as a reason for
Pyrrhus’ attack upon Macedonia,58 which may have been indicative of their use of
Hieronymus as a source, despite Pausanias’ criticisms of his bias.59
It is of particular interest to analyze the final two years of Pyrrhus’ foreign
policy where, following from his initial successes in Macedonia,60 Pyrrhus moved into
Greece against Sparta and Argos,61 which was accommodating Antigonus Gonatas.62
Tarn and Griffith have argued that Pyrrhus received assistance from Arsinoë II for his
attack upon Macedonia in 274 BC,63 but the available evidence does not support this.
But Ptolemy II was making another substantial move in his foreign policy: an
embassy was sent to Rome in 273 BC,64 which led to a φιλία/amicitia relationship
between the two cities.65 Gruen has demonstrated the significance of this relationship
for both states.66 However, for the present study it is significant because it represents a
shift in the policies of Ptolemy II, which may provide a further indication of the
degeneration in the perceived value of the φιλία relationship with Pyrrhus. Judging
from the neutral stance taken by Ptolemy II during the First Punic War,67 it is clear
that the φιλία relationships with both Carthage and Rome were of some importance to
him, having greater potential benefits than a friendly alliance with a smaller nation
like Epirus.
57
Pausanias 1.13.2. See Plutarch Pyrrhus 26.
Pausanias 1.13.2; Justin 25.3.2.
59
Pausanias 1.9.8; Habicht 1998.
60
Pausanias 1.13.2-3; Justin 25.3.5-8; Plutarch Pyrrhus 26.
61
Pausanias 1.13.4-6, 3.6.3, 4.29.6; Strabo 8.6.18; Justin 25.4.6-5.2; Plutarch Pyrrhus 27-34; Gabbert
1997, 41; Schaps 1982, 194.
62
Pausanias 1.13.7-8; Plutarch Pyrrhus 31-4.
63
Tarn and Griffith 1952, 17.
64
Dio, fr. 41 = Zonaras 8.6.11; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.14.1-2; Valerius Maximus 4.3.9; Justin
18.2.9; Neatby 1950, 89-98.
65
Appian Sicilica 1; Eutropius 2.15; Dio fr. 41 = Zonaras 8.6.11; Livy Periocha 14; Dionysius of
Halicarnassus 20.14.12.
66
Gruen 1984, 673-4.
67
Appian Sicilica 1.
58
120
GEOFF W. ADAMS
5. The Events after the Death of Pyrrhus (272-260 BC)
The events and foreign policy of Ptolemy II following from the death of Pyrrhus can
provide a similar degree of insight into the effect that this had upon Ptolemy II’s
foreign policy. Up until 272/1 BC, the main focus of Ptolemy Philadelphus’ foreign
policy had been upon the Seleucids. However, at this time there was a major shift in
focus, which seems to have been primarily towards Greece and the western
Mediterranean. It seems as if the first step taken by Ptolemy II was to secure a peace
settlement with Antiochus I in 271 BC, following from the First Syrian War. Around
this time Ptolemy II seems to be more focused upon moving against Antigonus
Gonatas, which may have been due to the influence of his wife and sister Arsinoë II,68
although this is unlikely,69 with the aspirations of Gonatas being another,70 him having
recently taken de facto control of Macedonia.71 In 268 BC, Arsinoë II died and
according to the Decree of Chremonides,72 Ptolemy II continued the policy of his
ancestors and sister/queen by assisting Athens in the Chremonidaean War from 26661 BC.73 This conflict saw a renewal in joint Egyptian and Epirot actions against the
Antigonids, through the involvement of Pyrrhus’ son, Alexander II.74
For the present study, the most significant feature is the dramatic shift in Lagid
foreign policy, with a temporary peace being declared between Egypt and Antiochus
I, while Ptolemy’s focus seems to have been almost entirely upon removing
Antigonus Gonatas. Up until this point in his reign, direct conflict between them had
68
See also Foertmeyer 1988, 90.
Macurdy 1932, 119; Burnstein 1982, 197-212.
70
Buraselis 1982.
71
Chambers 1954, 392.
72
Syll.3 vol. 1, 434/5; Grzybek 1990, 103-112.
73
Michel 1976, 130; See also Pausanias 1.1.1; Robertson 1982, 1-44; Ferguson 1910, 189; Erskine
1995,44 and James O’Neil’s contribution in this volume.
74
Justin 26.2.1-9.
69
PTOLEMY AND PYRRHUS
121
been minimal,75 which may have been assisted by Pyrrhus’ involvement, thus making
the Ptolemaic contribution against the Antigonids more indirect.
6. Conclusions
It would seem that following from the period in which Pyrrhus went to Egypt as a
hostage in 299/8 BC until his unsuccessful Sicilian campaigns from 278-6 BC, there
was a clear trend of supporting mutual interests between both Ptolemy I and II with
the Epirot king. This relationship seems to have been based primarily upon an
informal φιλία relationship. This allowed greater freedom for both parties to pursue
their particular interests, while only requiring action (be it fiscal or military) if
necessary. However, it did also require both parties to respect the interests of the
other. This is why it seems that Pyrrhus’ Sicilian campaign against Carthaginian
interests was so pivotal: Ptolemy II and Carthage also had a φιλία relationship. By
exerting so much effort in Italy and Sicily, Pyrrhus had also ceased to perform the role
that was in Ptolemaic interests from the outset: to help curtail the growth of Antigonid
power.
The conflict of interests for Ptolemy arising from the events in Sicily, in
conjunction with other developments, such as the alliance of Antigonus Gonatas and
Antiochus I, saw a significant decline in his relationship with Pyrrhus. This was most
notably expressed in Pyrrhus’ appeal to the other Hellenistic monarchs for assistance
before his return to Epirus in 275/4 BC. However, owing to their mutual interests,
particularly those against Antigonus Gonatas, the results from the end of their φιλία
relationship were not evident until after Pyrrhus’ death in 272 BC. It was at this point
that with the loss of Pyrrhus’ presence in the region Ptolemy II needed to reassess his
75
Hauben 1983, 100.
122
GEOFF W. ADAMS
foreign policy,76 resulting in peace with Antiochus I at the conclusion of the First
Syrian War and the resumption of hostilities with the Antigonids.
76
Cf. Tarn at Adcock et al (eds.) CAH vol. 7 (1928), 705.
OGIS 1 266: KINGS AND CONTRACTS IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
Matthew F. Trundle
In his fourteenth Idyll, Theokritos (14.58-9; see Lewis 1986, 10-11) praised Ptolemy
II Philadelphos of Egypt as the best paymaster (misthodotes… aristos) for a free man
(eleutheros), in the words of a friend advising a lovesick companion seeking a life
elsewhere. No doubt this was a subtle advertisement to all those seeking the patronage
of a great man and who could choose their patron. Such statements were not new.
Xenophon heard his friend Proxenos praising Kyros in exactly the same terms over a
century earlier (Xenophon Anabasis 3.1.4), and all who served Alexander saw him as
the greatest of gift-givers. The Hellenistic world of monarchs and mercenaries was a
new age in which reciprocal conditions of service and relationships flowed between
kings and mercenaries. Mercenaries travelled the world and would-be employers
needed ways in which to promote themselves to these potential allies and bind them to
their service.
Many scholars see the end of the classical period and the birth of the
Hellenistic age sometime during the fourth century BCE, perhaps with the ascent of
Philip and the Macedonians (Fine 1983; Davies 1989; Griffith 1935), or the death of
Alexander the Great in 323 BCE (Rhodes 2006), or even in 301 BCE with the battle
of Ipsos (Parke 1933). These are arbitrary acts of historical convenience. In a recent
study of Greek mercenaries several reasons justified its termination with the Lamian
war in 322 BCE (Trundle 2004, 8-9; but see also Hammond 1959, 651). Firstly, this
war was a turning point in Greek history, and particularly in Athenian history, as no
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
124
longer could Greek communities claim an independent foreign policy (pace Green
1990, 11; Cary 1935, 6-9). This of course is not strictly true, as many Greek states
such as Rhodes and the communities of the Aetolian League continued to have
militias and to wage wars through the third century BCE (Ma 2000, 337-76).
Secondly, the size of the Hellenistic kingdoms dwarfed the poleis, and as a
consequence the focus of Greek history moves from the small poleis to amorphous
monarchies incorporating large and diverse territories and peoples (see for example
Braund 2003, 21). Thirdly, the nature of all military relationships changed from those
dominated by the civic community to that of the powerful individual and his network
of friends and associates (for example Billows 1990, 250; McKechnie 1989, chapter
8; Savalli-Lestrade 1998).
National or cultural ties still played some role in determining relationships
after 322 BCE, but better rewards could be found with the great providers amongst the
Hellenistic monarchies. Ties to cities played less of a role in motivating individuals to
fight, though for many men like Memnon and Mentor of Rhodes this was not
necessarily true in the fourth century, and arguably it was not true for Xenophon in
the fifth century BCE. In addition, military settlements (apoikiai, klerouchoi and
katoikiai) and garrisons (phrouroi) created special circumstances in military service
on a much more uniform and stable footing (Cohen 1978, 45-60; Chaniotis 2005, 8493), though even these garrisons had their forerunners in the later fifth and fourth
centuries BCE in western Asia (Tuplin 1987, 167-245). Egypt, about which we have
the most information, provides a detailed picture of the allotment of land (kleroi) to
military settlers (Lewis 1986, 24-7) in order to create a permanent and hereditary
military class upon which the pharaoh could rely (Lewis 1986, 21).
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
125
Finally, and perhaps most justifiably, the sources for the history of events after
the end of the Lamian war make it practically impossible to distinguish between
mercenary, citizen and professional soldiers. This is particularly true during the period
of the diadochoi wars as the fluid nature of allegiances and the sketchy evidence make
it difficult to ascertain a distinction between mercenaries and professionals. These
wars allowed for the proliferation of professional soldiering on a much larger scale
when compared to earlier periods (Parke 1933, 206-211). As a consequence, being a
mercenary had become the norm and all soldiers appear as professionals. The
terminology in our sources was transformed, a point not lost on H.W. Parke (1933,
208-9) when justifying the terminus of his book on Greek mercenaries:
Instead of simplifying our task, this prevalence of the mercenary makes it the
more difficult. For when once all soldiers have been reduced to one professional
type, our authorities cease often to distinguish the mercenary as such. All
fighting men are stratiotai and pezoi or hippeis.
Griffith, who began his Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World with the reign of
Alexander the Great, had similar reasons to see a division between Classical and
Hellenistic history. As he stated, ‘the professional soldiers of the ancient world were
mercenaries’ (Griffith 1935, 1). Things are, of course, more complicated in reality.
The blur between the periods has long been recognised as most scholars noted above
would agree. But, in reference to mercenary activity it is clear that mercenary
relationships existed in similar fashions throughout the latter part of the polis period
and continued into the Hellenistic Age.
It is a fact that Hellenistic rulers saw mercenaries as integral to the stability of
their regimes. Furthermore, the rulers of Egypt, Asia and Pergamon looked to
(imported and settled) Greek and Macedonian soldiers for their military strength and
security. The Ptolemies, Attalids and Seleukids, each dynasty ruling over a newly
conquered territory, needed Greeks to provide themselves with military support. This
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
126
support required reciprocity and was in no way given freely. The point is well
illustrated by the analysis of a specific document. The inscription OGIS 1.266 outlines
the relationship between Eumenes I and his soldiers from the garrisons at Philetereiaunder-Ida and Attaleia, and it is unique. Its clauses have been published, translated
and well discussed (Austin 1981, 320 no. 196; Bagnall and Derow 2004, 46 no. 23;
Chaniotis 2005, 86-88; Bengtson 1975, no. 481; Griffith 1935; for discussion see
Launey 1987, 738-46; Schalles 1985, 32; Virgilio 1983, 97-140). The document dates
to the reign of Eumenes, 263-241 BCE, the ruler, but not yet king, of Pergamon.
Eumenes’ successor Attalos I (reigned 241-197 BCE) was the first Attalid monarch to
take up the mantle of basileus (king). He took the title after defeating the Gauls in
Mysia (Polybius 18.41:7-8; Shipley 2000, 312). It remains the first and only
document of its kind, though we can identify many parallels for the ideas it embodies
in other inscriptions, notably the treaty between Eupolemos of Karia and Theangela of
310 BCE in which mercenaries (stratiotai) are mentioned, are to receive (notably)
four months’ pay (opson)—many of them went on to become military settlers under
the king (Chaniotis 2005, 84; Austin 1981, no. 33). Other treaties also tell us of
similar relationships like that of Rhodes and Hierapytna (Austin 1981, no. 95), in
which the Rhodians agreed to pay specified wages to the Cretans in their service
(Chaniotis 2005, 83).
Eumenes ruled from 263-241 BCE. The date of the inscription OGIS 1.266 is
not concrete even though the document dates itself internally. In relation to the fortyfourth year taxes are mentioned. But what is meant by the forty-fourth year? Various
arguments are well discussed by Launey (1987, 744). Many years ago Reinach
thought forty-four years related to the death of Alexander putting the agreement on
taxation, at least, to 280/279 BCE. This is not likely. Suggestions include the years of
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
127
service a veteran might have provided, which still provides no foothold for the date of
the inscription. Life expectancy makes this solution unlikely, but not out of the
question, given that elite units like the veteran Silver Shields (arguraspides) of the
Successor wars were supposedly men in their sixties and still on active duty in 317/6
BCE (Diodorus 19.41.2). Other solutions may concern the Seleukid dynasty’s reign in
Asia. The later Attalids followed the Seleukid Regnal dating system. This would place
the inscription in either 267 BCE or perhaps 262/1 BCE. The Seleukids saw the
restoration capture of Babylonia to Seleukos Nikator in 312/311 BCE as the start of
their era (Shipley 2000, 286; see Diodorus 19.90). At some point after 281 BCE,
Pergamon ceased minting coinage with the heads of the Seleukid monarchs, but
continued to use the Seleukid dating system (Hansen 1971, 16-21). Alternatively, the
inscription may date to 262/1, after the defeat of Antiochos I and just after the
accession of Eumenes to the Attalid throne. Thus, forty-four years refers back to the
acclamation of Seleukos Nikator, along with several other diadochoi, as king
(basileus) and successor to Alexander.
Any interpretation rests upon the translation of the document. Griffith
translates the specific clause ‘that there will be freedom from taxes from the fortyfourth year’, which implies no necessary relationship to an absolute fixed date (and
suggests either a specific or universal application to soldier, army, or dynasty). Austin
(1981, 320-1), on the other hand, translates the key passage as follows: ‘concerning
the taxes: / the freedom from taxation (granted) in the forty-fourth year shall apply.’
Consequently, the mercenaries were demanding concessions like those implemented
earlier in 269/8 BCE and as Launey (1987, 745) thought the inscription reaffirmed
concessions previously granted in the forty-fourth year presumably under Eumenes’
predecessor Philetairos. Finally, for an extreme later date, Hansen (1971, 23) suggests
128
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
a date around the Second Syrian war, c. 253 BCE at the very latest. To him Eumenes
had taken advantage of Antiochos II’s campaigns to extend his empire in other
directions resulting in domestic troubles for himself.
An early date in the reign of Eumenes is the most likely. New monarchs would
need to establish their own authority quickly. The Hellenistic era is littered with
examples of new monarchs being forced to establish themselves at home and abroad
before gaining credibility. Good examples litter Hellenistic history from Antiochos III
(reigned 223-187 BCE) who faced rebellion in nearly all quarters of the Seleukid
kingdom when he ascended the throne (Bar-Kochva 1976, 119), to the conflict
between Aristonikos and Attalos III (Ogden 1999, 207-8). Eumenes, a new monarch
in a precarious situation, defeated the invading Antiochos, but his mercenaries
believed that their rewards were slight and therefore revolted. Thus the inscription
then relates to a little while after 269/8 BCE, around 263/2 BCE, the forty-fourth year
of the Seleukid dating system and the start of Eumenes’ reign.
Arguably, the document is the most important extant evidence from the
Hellenistic period outlining the obligations of both soldiers and their employer to each
other (Griffith 1935, 172-3 and 276-94). Most commentators believe the inscription is
most likely a testament to the conclusion of a dispute between Eumenes and his men
(Launey 1987, 739). One commentator (Gonzales 1998) alone argued that it simply
affirmed a relationship and promoted Euemenes as a good employer for prospective
soldiers, though most recently Angelos Chaniotis (2005, 88) suggested the document
reflected the opposite: Eumenes was, in reality, a bad employer. It is likely that the
mercenaries under Eumenes’ service had revolted for approximately four months, the
period referred to in the inscription (Griffith 1935, 285; Bagnall and Derow 2004, 46).
For a dispute to last that long there must have been serious issues to resolve, and
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
129
strong feelings on both sides. Even this is not certain and has been challenged.
Chaniotis (2005, 88) reckons that “The mercenaries perhaps wanted to make sure that
they received agreed pay for the coming four months, and that this pay would not be
set off against other sums owed to them by Eumenes.” He suggests, attractively, that
four months was the time period in which wages were agreed and payable and he cites
other evidence to support this, like the commander of a garrison Kyrbissos, who
served for four months (SEG XXVI.1306). We can add that four months also appears
in payment dispute on the Anabasis of Kyros the Younger. The men received four
months’ pay (misthos) to settle disquiet in the army when only three was owed
(Xenophon Anabasis 1.2.11-12). Whether concluding a long dispute or confirming an
existing relationship, the inscription represents a written contract between Eumenes
and his professional soldiers.
Other details give context to the inscription. Several key sanctuary locations in
the eastern Mediterranean showcased the inscription. These included the sanctuary of
Athena at Pergamon, Gryneion (probably in the sanctuary of Apollo), Delos (also
Apollo), and the sanctuary of Asklepios at Mytilene. The gods always witnessed
agreements and alliances in antiquity (van Wees 2004, 10-15 for several examples of
such military alliances). It was natural for contractual inscriptions of this nature to
have been placed at sacred locations. In addition they were well-visited sites. As for
these sites, Pergamon is an obvious site as the centre of the Attalid kingdom (Green
1990, 166). Delos was a panhellenic sanctuary, important to both the Ionian islanders
and mainland Greeks (Green 1990, 590). Gryneion was a port town located only 30
km from Pergamon. Here was a seaward centre of commercial and military traffic to
and from Eumenes’ powerbase. Mytilene was an important and nearby coastal town
on the large island of Lesbos west of Pergamon. Thus, both Gryneion and Mytilene
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
130
were strategic centres of Pergamene interest due to their geographical positioning in
the eastern Aegean.
These four centres may have had other tangible significance in mercenary
recruitment for the Attalids. As stated above, sanctuaries were well-visited places.
They spread news and information. The sanctuaries where Eumenes placed these
inscriptions may well be significant for their associations. Inscriptions like this one
boasted to the world that Eumenes was an upright and decent employer. Gryneion
(Grynea, Grynium) was one of the twelve Aeolian cities known to Herodotus
(1.149.1). The Apollo worshipped there thence derived the surname of Gryneus
(Virgil Eclogue 6.72; Aeneid 4.345). Gryneion lay only thirty kilometres south of
Pergamon. Parmenion captured it in 335 BCE from the Persians and enslaved the
population. In Roman times Gryneion was known for the temple and oracle of Apollo
(Strabo 6.22). Pausanias (1.21.7) describes the grove of Apollo that was linked to the
temple and oracle. Unfortunately, little is known about the oracle of Gryneian Apollo.
In classical times, Apollo may have had mercenary connections that went back to the
fifth century BCE. The Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae might have been to
Apollo the Mercenary and not only to Apollo the Healer (Cooper 1978, 20-8; 1996,
75-9; Fields 1994, 95-113; Trundle 2004, 53). Apollo the Mercenary therefore could
well have been another aspect of Apollo the god. Importantly, Apollo and Asklepios
both have mutual associations, oracular and healing powers. Athena is well known for
her military prowess. All these gods were ideal for advertising to the world the
integrity of Eumenes as the ruler of an emerging power.
The inscription itself is divided into three sections: the clauses stating the
agreement (below) followed by the oaths sworn respectively by the soldiers and
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
131
Eumenes. The seven clauses that detail the resolution of the dispute read as follows
(translations pace Griffith):
[σ]ίτου τιµὴν ἀποτίνειν τοῦ µεδίµνου δραχµὰς τέσσ[α|ρ]ας̦ οἴνου τοῦ
µετρητοῦ δραχµὰς τέσσαρας
(1) To pay as the cash value of the grain (allowance) four drachmas for twelve
gallons, and of the wine (allowance) four drachmas for nine gallons
ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ὅπως ἄγηται δεκάµηνος̦ ἐµβόλιµον δὲ οὐκ ἄξει
(2) Concerning the year: that it be reckoned as having ten months, and he will
not reckon an intercalary (month)
ὑπὲρ τῶν τὸν ἀριθµὸν ἀποδόντων τὸν κύριον καὶ γενοµένων ἀπέργων̦
ὅπως ὀψώνιον λαµβάνωσι τοῦ προειργασµένου χρόνου
(3) Concerning those who have given the full number (of campaigns) and who
are no longer in service: That they receive the pay for the time they have
previously served
ὑπὲρ ὀρφανικῶν̦ ὅπως ἂν οἱ ἄγχιστα γένους λαµβάνωσιν̦ ἢ ὧι ἂν
ἀπολίπηι
(4) Concerning orphans: that the next of kin take them over, or the one left
behind (the heir)
ὑπὲρ τελῶν̦ ὅπως ἂν ἡ ἀτέλεια ὑπάρχηι ἡ ἐν τῶι τετάρτωι καὶ
τεσσαρακοστῶι ἔτει. ἐάν τις ἄπεργος γένηται ἢ παραιτή[σ]ηται
ἀφιέ[σ|θ]ω καὶ ἀτελὴς ἔστω ἐξάγων τὰ αὐτοῦ ὑπάρχοντα
(5) Concerning taxation: that there will be freedom from taxes in the fortyfourth year. If anyone goes out of service or asks to be dismissed, let him be
released, removing his own belongings free of impost
ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὀψωνίου οὗ ὡµολόγησεν τῆς τετραµήνου, ἵνα δοθῆι [τὸ
ὁµ]όλογον, καὶ µὴ ὑπολογιζέσθω εἰς τὸ ὀψώνιον
(6) Concerning the pay which was agreed for the four months: that the agreed
amount be given, and let it not be reckoned as part of the pay
ὑπὲρ τῶν λευ[κί]νων ὅπως καὶ τὸν σῖτον λάβωσιν τοῦ χρόνου οὗ καὶ τὸν
στέφανον
(7) Concerning the ‘Poplar Brigade’: that they receive the grain for the period
for which (they were granted) also (maintain) the garland.
132
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
The document details the relationship between paymaster (misthodotês)—employer—
king and commanders and then their men. The Hellenistic world, like the world before
the rise of the Greek poleis, was one in which individuals dominated social and
political activity, rather than communities. Kings and autocrats determined social,
economic and political advantage (for examples see Grant 1982, 21-105; McKechnie
1989, chapter 8). But personal influence of this nature was never absent from the
Greek world. The Persian kings, Egyptian pharaohs and the tyrants of the Sicilian
cities had long been a source of lucrative gain and employment for ambitious Greeks.
Whether it was Memnon of Rhodes, who briefly led the Persian resistance to
Alexander the Great and became second in command to the Great King of Persia
himself (Diodorus 17.7.2, 29.1) or Xenophon the historian to whom the network he
established through Proxenos to Kyros was worth so much, foreign friendship
networks promoted international relationships and military alliances. A friend of
Xenophon, Proxenos the Boeotian, had persuaded Xenophon to go on the Anabasis
saying that Cyrus was worth more to him than his native state, one hundred years
prior to the Battle of Ipsos (Xenophon Anabasis 3.1.4). Examples of this kind of
extra-polis relationship proliferate in the later polis period. Xenia and philia played
primary roles in binding individuals together well before the Hellenistic era (Herman
1987, 97-105; Mitchell 1997, 111-147; Pritchett vol. 2, 59-116; Trundle 2004, 147164). Furthermore, additional parallels could be made to the Iliad as the chieftains
followed Agamemnon as xenoi in search of booty and reward other than money.
The uniqueness of the contract is in its form, but not in its content. It is the
first known example to spell out the obligations and privileges of men and employer
in a written document. Contracts, if we can call them such, between mercenaries and
paymasters were not new. There are as we shall see certain things that are identifiably
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
133
new to Hellenistic relationships and these are specifically related to new
circumstances that are military, political, social and economic in the Hellenistic
world. The establishment of alliances and friendships under oath rather than through
traditional ritualised friendships was common well before Alexander crossed to Asia
(Iliad 3.73, 94, 256, 323; Thucydides 5.47; Isocrates 14.33). Military alliances
between states were always solemnised by oaths and often treaties were inscribed on
stone (Bauslaugh 1991, 56-64; Meiggs and Lewis 1969, no. 10; Tod 1948, nos. 126,
127, 144; van Wees 2004, 10-15). Mercenaries affirmed their relationships and
loyalty to employers with oaths and rituals. Furthermore, gifts in the form of symbols
or money tied men together from the inception of campaigns and solidified their
relationships as they proceeded upon them (Trundle 2004, 114). Thus, Xenophon and
the Thracian Seuthes upon the return of the Ten Thousand from the east at the start of
the fourth century BCE formalised their relationship through gift-exchange
(Xenophon Anabasis 7.3.20), Dion and his mercenaries at Syracuse exchanged gifts
and crowns (Plutarch Dion 31) and Agesilaos gave and received symbols of
friendship from his Egyptian allies (Plutarch Agesilaus 31).
On the surface it would appear that the inscription represents a new
development in affirming relationships. Previously, contracts of this nature were made
either through treaties of alliance between states or verbal agreements. The written
expression of obligation therefore provides a new departure. But evidence,
particularly from Athenian naval contexts, suggests that agreements between
employer and men existed in the late fifth century. Athenian trireme commanders
(trierarchoi) probably kept lists even of their oarsmen (Demosthenes 50.10; Strauss
2000, 272), while mercenary commanders literally signed on (apographô) men in
much the same way as jurors were signed on for Athenian courts. Diodorus (16.30.2)
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MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
noted that the Phocians at Delphi signed mercenaries into their service in the midfourth century BCE. Of course, such terminology in our sources may only reflect
specific turns of phrase; Livy’s (e.g. 6.6.14) early Romans supposedly signed on
(scribere) to the civilian legions, but, in a complex system of provision and pay, lists
may well have been necessary to keep track of relationships. OGIS 1.266 is therefore
part of a continuum of inter-relationships that goes back to the classical period
regarding trends of verbal agreements about relationships betweengreat men and
troops. The nature and form of these agreements culminates with this inscription.
Moving to specific observations about this inscription, we can identify other
themes of military service that have precedents well before the mid-third century
BCE. The first is the subject of clauses one, three, and (tangentially) seven.
Remuneration was the most important and defining feature of mercenary and thus
professional military service (Parke 1933, 1; Griffith 1935, 1; Trundle 2004, 21-24).
And unsurprisingly remuneration is a dominant theme of the inscription. Money had
long played a significant role in Greek warfare. OGIS 1.266 recognises the role of
money specifically in two clauses, three and six. Clause three looks at the financial
rewards for two types of veterans, those whose contract has expired and those no
longer in service, possibly because of age. The second part of clause three “that they
receive pay for the time they have previously served” is vague. Does this mean that
they were not previously paid, and therefore revolted? Did they demand extra
compensation on top of their earlier payment? Additionally, this payment could be a
pension or bonus for serving. We have discussed above some of the problems of the
four months in clause six, but it is not out of the question that four months was a
standardised time period of payment for service. Griffith (1935, 284) sensibly
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
135
translates apergia as ‘idle’ rather than referring to an invalid or retired soldier. Settled
troops required a guarantee of income in the absence of warfare.
Wages were crucial, to ensure the loyalty of the troops. This was commonly
called misthos in the Classical period (Griffith 1935, 264-73; Pritchett 1971, 1-27;
Loomis 1998, 33-5; Trundle 2004, 84-7), but by the third century was known as
opson (Griffith 1935, 274-280). The latter is an euphemistic term from the sauce that
garnished and flavoured one’s bread, or perhaps in our terms ‘iced one’s cake’ (see
Davidson 1999, 21-5, 31-2). Bonuses for good service, covered in the agreement of
Eumenes and his men also had precedents in an earlier age. Kyros promised a bonus
of five minae to the Ten Thousand in 401 (Xenophon Anabasis 1.4.13), and Jason of
Pherae paid bonuses to his best men who loved toil (philoponos) and danger
(philokindynos) in the 370s BCE (Xenophon Hellenica 6.1.6). Alexander rewarded
men who had status and quality with double pay (Arrian Anabasis 6.10.1). Elite units,
like that recognised in the inscription as the ‘White [or Poplar] Brigade’ also had their
origins in the polis armies of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The Spartan three
hundred knights (hippeis), Arkadian chosen men (epilektoi), Argive picked men
(logades), and the Theban Sacred Band (hieros lochos) all predate the Hellenistic age.
Alexander’s attack force (agêma), shield-bearers (hypaspistai), and the Silver Shields
(arguraspides) of the Diadochic wars all followed older traditions that were continued
amongst the kings of the Hellenistic Age.
Remuneration for military service had always come in a variety of forms
throughout the earlier polis period, but particularly as consumables and money for
food without which no army can survive. The first clause demonstrates rations’
importance, but also the dependence that the men had on their employer for their
provision. Clearly Eumenes agreed to pay money for food (sitêresion in an earlier
136
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
age: see Demosthenes 4.28, 50.10-12; Xenophon Anabasis 6.2.4). In the Hellenistic
era this was typically called sitarchia (Griffith 1935, 267-8). The contract calls for the
allocation of two staples, grain and wine. Here it seems that the employer agrees to
make available and even regulate the provision and price of grain and wine. In a
world of settler-garrison soldiers, in which plundering of immediate territories was
not an option, the men relied heavily on their employer for sustenance. In earlier
periods, generals who prohibited plundering made markets (agorai) available, as
Kyros had to do for his army as it moved through friendly lands in 401 BCE
(Xenophon Anabasis 1.5.5-6; see van Wees 2004, 104-8). Settler soldiers needed land
or resources to feed themselves and their families. Clause one deals with this central
issue immediately. Launey (1987, 739-41) discusses the arguments about the meaning
of this clause and goes so far as to compare contemporary prices for grain and wine in
the mid-third century BCE. He concludes that the prices for grain and wine listed
were favourable to the soldiers. Clause seven highlights rations further. Here the elite
unit called the ‘Poplar Brigade’ gains its status. This fuels more questions: did the
elite unit gain more or better-quality food than the other mercenary units, and what
was the time period for which they were granted grain? The garland or crown
(stephanos) may refer not to an emblem of status (though these were commonly
awarded for valour in Hellenistic times: Chaniotis 2005, 38), but perhaps to a bonus
payment associated with the honour in addition to other rewards (Austin 1981, 322 n.
8). Provisioning men in settled-garrison communities was more common to the
Hellenistic era than earlier times, but it had parallels with earlier Greek history.
The care of orphans was also a hangover from earlier Greek practices. Along
with the other agreements this represents a developing relationship between employer
and soldier and a growing level of reciprocal responsibility and dependence between
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
137
the two. Alexander’s relationships with his troops in the East, particularly those left as
garrison troops there, must have set standards for Hellenistic practices (though these
too may have precedents with the many garrisons in the western Persian Empire of the
Classical Period, see, for examples, Tuplin 1987, 167-245). Such practices also have
their origins in civic responsibilities found in the classical era like awarding funerals
to dead servicemen and state provision for the upbringing of orphaned children, both
of which are found in earlier Athenian custom. These two privileges show a basic
understanding of a social contract between the employer (whether state or individual)
and the soldier. The importance of professional soldiers as settlers loyal to the ruler is
undeniable. Professional soldiers, dislocated from their civic communities, still saw in
their funeral rites significant honour. Jason of Pherae promised such to his
mercenaries in the 370s BCE (Xenophon Hellenica 6.1.6). Additionally, that his
children will receive care and protection if he dies, whether by a next of kin or whom
the soldier wills them to was also important to a soldier (Austin 1981, 320; see Stroud
1971, 287-8). Chaniotis (2005, 87) notes the possibility that the clause in OGIS 1.266
may relate to the property of the orphans and cites Aristotle’s (Politics 1.1268 a 14)
use of the term orphanika ‘orphans’ things’, but also posits that this clause may refer
to the specific nomination of the guardian over the property of the dead man’s
children (87-8; see SEG XXVII.806 and below). Austin (1981, 322 n. 5) and Launey
(1987, 744) speculate that this provision may relate to future recruitment
opportunities. We may note that Alexander had made similar provision for the sons of
his soldiers in Persia (Plutarch Alexander 71). Several precedents for the care of
families can be found. Kyros had the care of the families of his garrison troops who
accompanied him on the Anabasis at Tralles (Xenophon Anabasis 1.4.8). Chaniotis
(2005, 86) noticed that Euphron, a Sikyonian ally of the Athenians, obliged the
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
138
generals to put his orphans under their care with special privileges in 323-318 BCE,
and cites SEG XXVII.806 to show the importance of the administration of property
until the orphans came of age. Most significantly, and this may well go to the heart of
the matter in the inscription, Alexander ensured that orphaned boys of men killed in
his service continue to receive their father’s pay (Plutarch Alexander 71). By the
Hellenistic age, care of families must have been a key part of an employer’s
responsibilities. Ptolemy Soter protected soldiers’ families in Egypt and other
examples of such Hellenistic custom are well documented (see Chaniotis 2005, 85-8;
Pomeroy 1984, 100-03).
Finally, and of most interest in the Hellenistic context, are clauses two and five
concerning the campaigning season and taxation. Both are products of new
relationships and a new age. Firstly, the limiting of a campaigning season to ten
instead of twelve months is new. There does not appear to be anything in earlier
evidence that relates back to such an agreement. Not that all year warfare was new to
the Hellenistic age, especially for protracted sieges. Clearly an objection to the
intercalation of additional months of service was connected to exploitation. The men
saw no advantage in campaigning for extra months with no remuneration (Launey
1987, 741-2). In addition, the tax relief proposed in clause five has further
implications for the relationship binding men to employer further. Ptolemaic Egypt
witnessed the use of taxation to tie men to the dynasty as, for example, military
settlers gained tax relief from the monarch: they paid the apomoira tax at ten percent
rather than the almost seventeen percent paid by other land-holders (Fraser 1972, 166;
Lewis 1986, 24-5; see Manning 2003, 49-50, 140-46). The rise of the need for reliable
and loyal servicemen and the mobility of professional soldiers changed the
relationship between men and employer.
KINGS AND CONTRACTS
139
These two clauses are genuine illustrations of what has been called ‘interactive
kingship’ in the Hellenistic Age (Chaniotis 2005, 69). Ordinary men were empowered
in the marketplace of war. Greeks and Macedonians in the post-Alexander world
meant employers like Ptolemy and Eumenes needed to keep mercenaries loyal and in
their service. The Hellenistic era is littered with examples of desertion of men and the
subsequent death of the leader. Perdikkas and Eumenes, both provide examples of this
(Griffith 1933, 262). Clearly there was competition between the diadochoi for
mercenaries, as there was for almost everything from library books to elephants. The
fluid nature of new allegiances—combined with the supposed superiority of Greek
and Macedonian soldiers over their non-Greek counterparts—meant that if
mercenaries surrendered, as they did at Gabiene, Gaza or Ipsos, then they could
simply be absorbed into the army of the victorious general (Griffith 1933, 262). But
Alexander had done the same thing for those Greeks who remained with Dareios to
the very end of his life in 330 BCE (Arrian Anabasis 3.21; Diodorus 17.27).
No wonder in his fourteenth Idyll Theokritos puts words of advice into the
mouth of a friend of a lovesick man to the effect that Ptolemy Philadelphos is the best
employer for a man who has options. These words must have resonated in the ears of
his competitors, the other Hellenistic monarchs. Tax relief and other fiscal benefits
within the territory of a monarch kept men loyal and in service to the great man all
year round and for the rest of their lives. OGIS 1.266 merely illustrates the point.
Eumenes may have been a bad employer, and he may have had trouble with his men,
but the document specifically illustrates the conditions of a new age. Men empowered
by circumstance would honour and follow their leaders, but not without conditions.
These relationships were a long way from Homeric chieftains leading retainers blindly
into war. Professional soldiers participated fully in a reciprocated relationship. The
140
MATTHEW F. TRUNDLE
ruler had responsibilities, some traditional, some new, but the men of the early
Hellenistic world had power in themselves. Alongside new terminology for pay and
soldiering, the professional, permanent and military employee guarding the interests
of the Great Man was a new feature of the ancient Greek world, and one that had
clearly grown from a series of relationships that stretched back into the Greek past.
Documents like OGIS 1.266 inform us clearly about the new conditions of service and
new relationships that had emerged in the wake of Alexander’s conquests and the
competition of his successors for support and power.
SECTION GAMMA
Countless are the lands ... but no land brings forth so much as low-lying Egypt
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE: WERE HEKATAIOS OF
ABDERA AND DIODOROS SIKELIOTES RIGHT TO SEE EGYPT IN THE
ORIGINS OF GREECE?
Martin Bernal
The reign of Ptolemy Philadelphos has been rightly seen as a period of consolidation
of Hellenic rule of Egypt. The capital was definitively shifted from ancient Memphis
to new Alexandria. This signified increased contact with Mediterranean and Aegean
worlds. However, the conventional academic view that Hellenistic Alexandria was
hermetically sealed off from Egypt, as typified by the claim that a Latin term for the
situation of the city was ad Aegyptum, takes it too far. No Greek version of the Roman
term was has been attested from the Ptolemaic period. Nevertheless, there is no doubt
that under Philadelphos the employment of Egyptians in the administration
encouraged by Alexander and tolerated by Ptolemy Soter ended, and the use of
Demotic as an official language substantially decreased. From now on, higher
administrators were required to be Greek or hellenized Egyptians or other
‘barbarians’.1
These political changes were paralleled culturally with an extraordinary
development of Greek, language, literature and scholarship. The greatest Hellenistic
poets and scholars, Kallimakhos, Theokritos and Apollonios of Rhodes, all flourished
under Philadelphos. These authors tended to base their works on Homer, Hesiod and
1
These shifts should not be exaggerated as a substantial legal compendium existed in Demotic from the
reign of Philadelphos: see Mattha 1975.
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
143
Pindar, and use Greek myth and topography in their poems. The political and cultural
power of Egypt, overtly retained in the first fifty years of Macedonian rule, appears to
have disappeared by 282 BCE. Ptolemaic military concern with Egyptians only
revived in the aftermath of the Egyptian victory of Raphia in 217 BCE, and no Lagid
learnt to speak Egyptian before Cleopatra VII.
There was, however, another side to this apparent hellenization. Egyptians and
Egyptian culture and religion persisted throughout this third century peak of
Hellenistic Hellenism. When Ptolemy II married his sister Arsinoe, they were
following the Egyptian practice.2 The symbolic importance and political aspects of the
match were less to do with the parallel with Zeus and Hera than the parallel with
Osiris and Isis.3 In Greek they were the θεοὶ ἀδελφοί; in the Demotic of the Canopus
Decree they were nA nTrw snw, ‘the Brother and Sister Gods.’4 There was also the
continued patronage of Egyptian temples, and representations of the Ptolemaic rulers
as pharaohs.
Even one of the most apparently Hellenic aspects of Alexandria could well
have had an Egyptian precedent. Museums had existed in fourth century Greece, but
by far the most famous was that founded by Philadelphos in Alexandria. It is hard to
believe that this and the earlier mouseia were not inspired by the pr anx, ‘House of
Life’, an Egyptian institution dating back to the Middle Kingdom. These were clearly
flourishing in the Persian and early Ptolemaic periods.5 Scholars differ on the range of
studies conducted in them, but they certainly included medicine, magic, dream
interpretation, astronomy and mathematics. The Alexandrian Museum was closely
2
For a demolition of the view that the Ptolemaic brother-sister marriage could have been derived from
Greek traditions, see the chapter by Kostas Buraselis in this volume.
3
See Green 1990, 145-6, and Stephens 2003, 15 n.43.
4
Canopus Decree: pp.224-41 in Simpson 1996. Simpson’s transcription is into Middle Egyptian.
5
See Derchain 1965, Lichtheim 1980, 36 n., and Clagett 1992, 32-6.
144
MARTIN BERNAL
associated with the Library. Similarly, the pr anx contained libraries or collections of
scrolls written or copied by scribes. In the Demotic Canopus Decree there are frequent
references to nA sXw (n) mDy nTr jrm nA sXw (n) pr anx, ‘the scribes of the holy book(s)
and the scribes of the House of Life’. They were responsible for rituals:6
At the festivals and other processions of the other gods: in accordance with the
hymns which the scribes of the House of Life are to write and will give to the
instructor singers copies of, which will be written in the books of the House of
Life.
The pr anx even appears to have had authority over neologisms: “spell out the name of
Berenice (BrnygA) according to the characters of the House of Life”.7
Few classicists would accept a close relationship between the pr anx and the
Μουσεῖον. Nevertheless, the general tendency among scholars today is to see
interaction between the two cultures, even when they appear most Hellenic. Dorothy
Thompson has shown that taking Greek names and writing in Greek did not cut
Egyptians off from their cultural roots.8 Work by Merkelbach, Koenen, Stephens and
others has demonstrated with some intricacy that there was an Egyptian stratum
beneath even the most ‘Hellenic’ Alexandrian religion and literature.9
Interpretatio Graeca
When traditionalists attack the new consensus they imply that the champions of
hybridity are merely returning to the old bugbear the interpretatio Graeca. The
interpretatio Graeca is a formulation devised by nineteenth-century classicists to
label what they saw as the absurd and unscientific idea that Egypt was central to the
formation of Greek civilization. It might seem paradoxical that men who adored every
other aspect of Hellenic culture and creativity should despise the Greek historiography
6
Simpson 1996, 241.
Simpson 1996, 239.
8
Thompson 1994, 67-83.
9
Merkelbach 1977; Koenen 1993; Stephens 2003.
7
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
145
on this crucial issue. However, the paradox is easily explained by the romantic-racial
intellectual climate in which the founders of Classics were formed, and which they
helped develop.
Susan Stephens firmly rejects the charge that she champions the interpretatio
Graeca.10 In this way she stays within the bounds of her discipline, but flies in the
teeth of the Ptolemaic Zeitgeist. While the poets touched lightly, if at all, on the image
of Greece’s Egyptian origins, the three Greek historians dominant on such issues in
the last three centuries BCE, Herodotos, Hekataios of Abdera and Diodoros
Sikeliotes, all saw Egyptian settlements in Greece. Herodotos maintained that
Egyptians and Syrians had acquired territories in the Eastern Peloponnese, and that
Kadmos and Phoenicians had founded the Greek Thebes. It is difficult to disentangle
Hekataios (writing in the initial Ptolemaic period, with its openness towards Egypt)
from Diodoros (writing during the dynasty’s final decades).11 But one or the other, and
probably both, appear to have believed not merely in Herodotos’ claims of Egyptian
and Phoenician colonisation in the Eastern Peloponnese and Boiotia, but also that
Athens too had been an Egyptian colony—even though they put this scheme in the
mouths of Egyptian priests.12
These histories were not created for the convenience of those Ptolemies who
wanted to bring about Greek and Egyptian cultural synthesis. Herodotos was writing
over a century before Alexander’s conquests. Plato’s views of a special relationship
between Athena and Neith and Athens and Sais (@t-nTr (nt) Nt)—though the poet
improbably saw the Greek city as the mother of the Egyptian one—also anticipated
10
Stephens 2003, 7 n.14.
For a recent survey of later scholars’ disputes on the extent to which Diodoros excerpted from
Hekataios see Stephens 2003, 32 n.35.
12
Diodoros 1.28,4-6.
11
146
MARTIN BERNAL
the conqueror.13 In general the three historians saw Egyptian religion as the basis of
that of Greece. There are other pre-Ptolemaic correspondences between Egyptian and
Greek divinities: Am(m)on and Zeus, Osiris and Dionysos, Horos and Apollo, Ptah
and Hephaistos, and Isis and Demeter.
Modern scholars have generally denied the significance of Egyptian scarabs
and a symbol of Isis from the ninth or eighth centuries having been found at
Demeter’s cult centre at Eleusis.14 Nevertheless, when combined with the
resemblances between the mystery and initiations in the cult of Demeter at Eleusis
they persuaded a number of the most distinguished specialists of the twentieth century
CE to follow the ancient traditions that the cult of Demeter was imported to Eleusis
from the East, or specifically Egypt, before the Trojan War or during what we should
now call the Late Bronze Age. The most notable of these was the French classicist
Paul Foucart, who dominated Eleusinian studies in the early part of the twentieth
century and whose detailed work is still respected, even by the most conventional.15 A
later French ancient historian, Charles Picard, is generally supposed to have refuted
Foucart. However, even Picard admitted that “well before” the eighth century, the
Eleusinian Mysteries had received substantial influence from Egypt.16 In 1971, the
British scholar A.A. Barb also saw fundamental connections.17 The firm isolationist
Jean Hani admitted when referring to Isis and Demeter: “It seems that there has
always been a type of connivence “understanding” between Greece and Egypt since
prehistory”.18 In a preliminary footnote Susan Stephens argues:19
13
Plato Timaeus 21E-22C.
Snodgrass 1971, 116-17.
15
Foucart 1914. For the conventional respect see Kern 1926, 136 n.1, where he wrote, ‘One can only
be sincerely sorry that such a significant scholar as Paul Foucart should hold this error.’
16
Picard 1927.
17
Barb 1971, 159.
18
Hani 1976, 9.
14
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
147
‘Contact between Greece and Egypt certainly took place from the Mycenean
period but what residue it left in Archaic and Classical Greece is disputed and
unimportant for this argument. I am concerned only with material that could
have directly shaped the Hellenistic experience.’
Nevertheless, she quotes Peter Fraser at length on the Eleusinian mysteries in
Alexandria:20
Though we may reject the notion that the Alexandrian festival produced the
Eleusinian Mysteries, it is quite likely that the festival contained recitations,
perhaps even dramatic scenes, concerning the Eleusinian story. Egyptian
traditions preserved by Greek writers, which derived important elements of the
Attic worship of Demeter from Egypt, may have played a significant role here.
Not only did Herodotus record that the Thesmophoria were introduced into
Attica by the daughters of Danaus [2.171]; more significantly for our immediate
context, Hecataeus of Abdera… reported “the Egyptians” as claiming that the
Athenians derived most of the major items of Athenian life from Egypt,
including the Eleusinian Mysteries [Diodorus Siculus I.29]; and, in particular,
that the Eumolpidae were of Egyptian priestly origin. The circulation of such
theories in Egypt may have assisted the introduction of Egyptian or
Egyptianized elements into the new cult.
Thus in the case of the Eleusinian Mysteries, it would seem permissible to make three
connections:
1. that there is substantial cultic and archaeological evidence indicating that
there were profound pre-Ptolemaic connections, between the Greek Mysteries
and Egyptian cults,
2. that there was a strong Greek tradition that the cult at Eleusis had derived
from Egypt and many Greeks knew or believed this to be the case; and finally
3. that this belief or knowledge had a significant impact on Ptolemaic religion.
The first connection can be reinforced through a tool not used by Foucart and his
colleagues: that of etymology. A number of Eleusinian names and terms exist lacking
Indo-European cognates but explicable in terms of Ancient Egyptian or West Semitic.
To begin with there is the word µυστήριον itself. It is conventionally described as
deriving from an Indo-European root *mū, which means to ‘close the lips’ or ‘stay
19
20
Stephens 2003, 20 n.1.
Fraser 1972 vol. 1, 201, quoted in Stephens 2003, 247-8.
148
MARTIN BERNAL
mute’, found in the Greek µÊω ‘keep silent’.21 Keeping silence is certainly an
important aspect of mysteries. However, this proposed etymology only explains the
first syllable of the term. It would seem more plausible to follow the nineteenth
century scholars Jacob Levy and Otto Keller, who derived it from the Semitic root
√str ‘cover, veil, hide’; possibly, as Keller suggested, from the Canaanite Hophal
participle *mastår, ‘caused to be hidden’.22 Against Keller’s specific proposal, if
µυστήριον comes from Semitic it is more likely to derive from √str with nominalizing
or localizing prefix m-. This is attested in the Hebrew mastêr ‘hiding, the act of
hiding’; mistōr ‘place of hiding, shelter’; mistår ‘secret place, hiding place’.
The challenge to the Indo-European origin of such a central element in Greek
culture caused some anxiety among supporters of the Aryan Model. For an example
of this see the bullying statement by the nineteenth century German Semitist H.L.
Fleischer, in his notes to Levy:23
With the indubitably pure Greek origin of the words µύστης and µυστήριον
from µυέω (µÊω), µÊζω, it would be better to stop even the mere suggestion of
the origin, sometimes sought, of these words from str.
In fact, the Semitic origin of µυστήριον is not certain. According to the specialist on
Egyptian religion Sotirios Mayassis, it comes from the Egyptian root √StA.24 This is, of
course, cognate to the Semitic √str, as are the nominalizing and localizing prefixes m-.
However, m also occurred independently as the locative preposition. Thus m StA ‘in
secret’ is attested.25 The causative sStA was central to the Osiran ‘mystery’ cult.26
21
Chantraine is almost certainly right to dismiss the idea that it came from a need by the initiate, to
close or half close his eyes.
22
Levy 1866, vol. 2, 55 col. 2, and Keller 1877, 356.
23
Levy (Fleischer), Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch 1881, 568 col. 2. Muss-Arnold, who
is sceptical of the Semitic etymology, quotes Fleischer’s statement with approval (1892, 53).
24
Mayassis 1957. For a detailed study of the centrally important Egyptian concept of (s)StA ‘hidden,
secret’, see Rydstrom (1994). I accept, here, the new conventional view that the /A/ was originally a
liquid /l/ or /r/ and only lost this value in the late New Kingdom.
25
Six times: Erman-Grapow vol. 4, 554.
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
149
Given the overwhelming literary and other evidence connecting the Greek mysteries
to Egypt rather than to the Levant, it would seem much more likely that it came from
mStA.
Connections with Egypt can also be found in the special vocabulary used in
the Greek mystery. These include: the Anaktórion, a small chamber at Eleusis
containing the hierá (sacred objects), which can be plausibly derived from the
Egyptian euphemistic use of anx as ‘sarcophagus’, ‘that of the living’, used
particularly of Osiris, and containing objects of great sanctity. The whole was central
to the Osiran mysteries.27 Athēr, ‘ear of wheat’, in Egypt sacred to Osiris, could well
come from nTr ‘divinity’.28 Then there is the likelihood that páx in the cry πãξ, κÒγξn
at the moment of initiation derives from bs ‘initiate’.29 τελετή, ‘initiation into the
mysteries’, came from the root tel—and the Egyptian (r) Dr.30
26
Griffiths, ‘Concept of Divine Judgement’.
See Guilmot 1977, 113-16.
28
Despite the fact that in most of these cases the -r- could be morphological, a possibility remains that
it is part of the root that has been dropped elsewhere. A prothetic i can be seen in the Coptic plural
forms entēr (B), ntēr (S), ‘gods’. For a discussion of Greek borrowings from nTr see Moore (ed.), Black
Athena Writes Back,129-32.
29
The /s/ with which Bēs’ name is usually written, †, was etymologically a voiceless dental fricative
/s/. By contrast, the hieroglyph p was originally a voiced /z/. The two phonemes merged as /s/ in the
Middle Kingdom. As the name Bēs is only attested from the late New Kingdom, its earlier
pronunciation is uncertain. Takács (2001) writes about this: ‘etymology risky due to the unknown OEg
sibilant.’ Taking it as the unvoiced sibilant, his preferred etymology is tenuously attested parallel word
bs ‘orphan’, ‘foundling’; the semantic connection with Bēs requires some convolutions.
If, on the other hand, one posits that that the early form was *bz there are many fruitful links
with other Afroasiatic roots. Before discussing these, it is necessary to consider other words attested in
Middle Egyptian which are written bs with uncertainty as to which s, (s>s or z>s), to use. bsi was ‘to
flow or spring forth’ ( of water) and medically ‘to swell’ and ‘bodily discharge’. bsA was ‘to protect’,
and in the phrase mw bsA ‘water of protection’, it was ‘mother’s milk’. All these have strong
connotations of physical birth. However, bs itself meant ‘introduce someone into’; ‘install as a king’;
‘initiate, reveal a secret to’, and ‘secret’ itself.
30
The Egyptian root Dr has as its basic meaning ‘limit, end’. It is frequently used concretely in space,
as in dr ‘obstacle’, dri ‘enclosing wall’ and drw ‘boundary’. Dr and drw are, however, also used more
abstractly in such phrases as r dr.f, literally, ‘to its end’ and meaning ‘entire’ or ‘complete’. This also
matches derivatives of τ°λος and τ°λλω as well as their derivatives, such as τελετή, concerning
initiation. nb r Dr, ‘Lord to the End’, was used of gods and kings both spatially and temporarily. Dri
‘strong, hard’ is used in the sense of ‘thorough’, ‘to press through to the end’. Dr is used verbally
through time to mean ‘end up as’. This sense closely resembles that of the Homeric τελ°θω, ‘come
into being, become, be’. The phonetic fit is tightened by the general Coptic rendition of r-dr as the
prepronominal forms of tēr= , Old Coptic ter=. and the Fayumic tēl=.
27
150
MARTIN BERNAL
Two other terms central to the Eleusinian mysteries are κãλαθος (5) and
κ¤στη (H). These also have plausible Egyptian etymologies. Émile Chassinat
described the rites described at the Ptolemaic temple at Denderah, at which a reliquary
from Abydos was supposedly used. This consisted of an inswty (‘basket of rushes’),
containing a vase (orHt) which held the sacred and crowned head of Osiris.31 Clement
of Alexandria wrote:32
The formula of the Eleusinian mysteries is as follows: I fasted, I drank the
draught; I took from the chest (κ¤στη) having done my task I placed in the
basket (κãλαθος) and from the basket into the chest.
The inscriptions of the mystery of Osiris at Denderah contain the following passage:33
This pot (orHt) is placed in his [the priest’s] hands and he says: “I am Horus
who comes to your ladyship. I bring you these [things] of my father [Osiris].”
Plutarch referred to a festival that seemed to involve something similar:34
On the night of the nineteenth day they go down to the sea and the priests take
out the sacred box (κ¤στη) which has inside a golden casket (κιβ≈τιον). Into
this they pour some drinking water which they have brought with them and the
people present shout ‘Osiris has been found.
The graphic sign for dr is of a basket brimming with fruit presumably indicating fulfilment.
This would seem very similar in semantics to τελεÒω, and τελεσφορ°ω, ‘bring fruit to maturity’.
There is also τελειγονέω, ‘produce fruit in perfection, or in due season’. Given the abstractions
developed for dr in other senses and the Egyptian delight in metaphysics I see no reason to doubt that
many of the abstractions on the theme of fruit found with the Greek τελ- had already developed in
Egypt around dr. For more on this see Bernal Black Athena vol. 3 (2006), chapter 10.
31
For a detailed discussion of this see Chassinat 1934, 495-7 and 587-95. See also Griffiths 1975, 222
and Guilmot 1977, 115.
32
Clement Protrepticus, Butterworth 1919, 43.
33
Cols. 122-3, Chassinat 1934, 774.
34
Plutarch De Iside 39 (366D), trans. Griffiths 1970, 181. Vycichl (1984) wrote a thoughtful note on
the Coptic borrowing from the Greek kibōtos ‘coffer, box’. He pointed out that the Greek word has no
etymology but is likely to have been borrowed from Semitic. He cites the Hebrew tēba ‘coffer, box’.
Vycichl noted an Old Egyptian word Tb ‘cage, case for birds’ from which he reconstructed a form *kiba
or *kuba, which he saw as ‘very close to the Greek word’. Cerny attempted to explain the Coptic words
taibe and tēēbe ‘coffin, shrine, chest’. He was inclined to see them as deriving from two Egyptian roots
DbAt ‘shrine, coffin’, and dbt ‘chest, box’. Vycichl’s conclusion is that although ‘the links cannot be
formally demonstrated, the use of sufficiently similar words … speaks rather in favor of a common
origin.’
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
151
In the Golden Ass, Apuleius mentioned a priest in the mysterious procession carrying
a box, cista, holding “secret things and concealing within it the hidden attributes of
the sublime faith”.35
Can kálathos be derived from orHt? Kálathos has a bewildering array of meanings.
Primarily it is a narrow-based basket carried in rituals of Demeter. It also part of the
terminology of the Eleusinian mysteries.36 In the same way orHt as a pot was used in
the Osiran ceremonies recorded at the Ptolemaic temple at Denderah.37 Kálathos,
however, can also mean ‘capital of a pillar’, and the diminutive kalathískos is the
‘coffering or sealing of a room or box.’ Another borrowing from orHt would seem to
be κãρταλλος, ‘a small pointed basket’. The suffix seems to be a diminutive. Beyond
mentioning a possible relationship to κυρτÒς, ‘curved’, Chantraine offers no
explanation but Pokorny links kálathos to κλ≈θω ‘spin’.38 The significance of the
kálathoi, however, seems not to be from the material from which they are made but
their shape, narrow at the bottom. This would make it parallel to the orHt, the same
shape as the head of a cobra £( Gardiner I13), meaning ‘serpent spirit as guardian’,
also orHt. In Coptic the term kalahē means ‘breast, stomach or womb’. Vycichl
follows Crum in maintaining that it is made up of kala <orHt and hē, ‘belly or womb’.
Sauneron, however, believes that kalahē is orHt, the womb or egg of the primordial
cobra goddess, from which all life emanates.39 It is interesting to note that in imperial
times many Isiac baskets, caskets and chests were represented with snakes. Gwyn
35
Apuleius 11.27 (trans. Griffiths 1975, 83).
Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus 2.18.
37
Denderah inscriptions cols. 122-4, trans. Chassinat 1966-68, 774.
38
Pokorny 1969, 611. Chantraine gives no etymology of κλ≈θω. The Egyptian kAwt, ‘craft,
profession’ is a possibility.
39
Vycichl 1984, 80.
36
152
MARTIN BERNAL
Griffiths plausibly gave these an Egyptian origin.40 Given the semantic parallels and
the Coptic phonetic development, the derivation of kálathos from orHt seems likely.
The final -t would be aspirated by the previous /H/. The borrowing could have taken
place before final -ts were dropped or later re-inserted as an archaism, very common
in religious contexts.
At this point we should turn to κ¤στη (H) itself. The normal translation is
‘basket’; however, it was sometimes made of bark, and the loan into Latin cista ‘box’
or ‘chest’ suggests that these meanings were already present in Greek. The Latin cista,
from which many Celtic words and Teutonic words descend, including the English,
‘case’, ‘chest’ and ‘cist’, is generally acknowledged to be a loan from κ¤στη, probably
through Etruscan. The only possible Indo-European cognate for κ¤στη is the dubious
Old Irish ciss, ‘basket’. This too is more likely to be a loan from cista.41 In any event,
the better attested Irish word ciste must be a borrowing. Given the religious context
this would seem more likely. Chantraine is uncertain and concludes that it may be a
loan. It is possible that there is also ambiguity between box, hamper or basket on the
Afroasiatic side. Orel and Stolbova postulate a root *kič, ‘basket’or ‘container’, found
in West Chadic and Central and Eastern Cushitic.42 Whether or not it is related, the
Egyptian orst, ‘burial’, orsw, ‘coffin’, and orstt, ‘funeral equipment’, are all written
with Ç (Q6). In Late Egyptian there is orst, ‘coffin, box-shaped sarcophagus’. ost is
‘burial’ and ‘embalmment’ in Demotic. orsw, ‘coffin’ is written kaise, kese (S) and
kaisi (B) in Coptic. Vycichil reconstructs a sequence *qirsat > *qiasat. orst, ‘burial’,
40
Griffiths 1975, 223-4.
Even accepting the form ciss or cess, a loan is more likely. Final vowels fell away very early in Old
Irish and final -st became -s, which was uncertain in Ogam inscriptions and disappeared in later Irish.
See Thurneysen, [1949] 1993, 110 §177. Thus the preservation of the geminated -ss would seem to
indicate a borrowing from the Latin cista.
42
Orel and Stolbova 1995, 317 §1454.
41
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
153
became kōōs, suggesting an original /āā/; its qualitative or completed form is kēs.43
Thus either, at some point in the Late Bronze Age when the final /-t/ was still
pronounced, provides good etyma *ke/ist for kistē.
Εȵολπ¤δαι and ΚÆρυκες: Eumolpids and Kērukes
It is well known that compared to Egypt Greece had fewer priests and less
priesthoods. At Eleusis, however, there were two important priesthoods—the
Εȵολπ¤δαι, Eumolpids, and the ΚÆρυκες, Kērukes. I believe that the first had an
ultimately Semitic name and the second an Egyptian one. For the ancients there was
no doubt that the cult of Demeter and the mysteries associated with her, came from
abroad. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter portrays the goddess arriving at Eleusis to be
welcomed by the local notables including Eumolpos, the eponymous founder of the
family of the Eumolpids, who with the less important clan of the Kerykes provided
priests for the cult throughout antiquity.44 On the other hand, Plutarch, Pausanias and
Lucian claimed that Eumolpos had come from Thrace to Eleusis to found the cult.45
Apollodoros maintained that he was brought up in Ethiopia.46
Against these, Diodorus’ Egyptian informants told him that the Eumolpids
derived from Egyptian priests, and the Kerykes from the lesser rank of the
pastophoroi. They also claimed that the mysteries had been introduced to Eleusis by
Erekhtheus, whom they saw as the Egyptian king of Attika during his reign c. 1409/8
BCE.47 The Parian Marble agreed with this date. Apollodoros, however, put the arrival
43
kōōs appears in Greek as γÒος (H) ‘funeral, lament’ from which the verb γοãω, ‘lament’ derived.
Chantraine distinguishes this from βοãω, ‘call’, and tries to link γÒος to *kaujan, a Germanic form
for ‘name, call’.
44
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 151-5.
45
See Plutarch De exilio 17; Pausanias 1.38,2 and Lucian Demonax 34.
46
Apollodoros 3.15.4.
47
Diodoros 1.29.4.
154
MARTIN BERNAL
of Demeter and Dionysos somewhat earlier, during the reign of king Pandion.48 Either
date would fit the apogee of the eighteenth dynasty. Despite these differences of
opinion, there was no dispute over the identification of Demeter with Isis, and
Dionysos with Osiris. To return to Eumolpos and the Eumolpids, despite the
widespread attribution of their Thracian origin, they themselves believed they had
Egyptian origins and had preserved Egyptian traditions. The significance of these
traditions in summoning of the Eumolpid Timotheus for consultation on the
formation—or reformation—of the cult of Serapis has been mentioned above.
Connections between Eumolpos and Egypt are strengthened by the clearly
Egyptian origin of Μελάµπoυς. Taking away the prefix eu, and the common nasal
dissimilation p>mp, leaves the same consonantal structure mlp. The two men also had
remarkably similar legendary functions. Melampus, thought to mean ‘black foot’, was
associated with µελãµβροτες, ‘negroes’. The view of Egypt as a land of magic and
medicine was almost universal in antiquity. Thus Melampus as an Egyptian may well
be the legendary ancestor of the hero in the Odyssey who was a skilled diviner and
understood the language of animals.49 According to Pherekydes and Herodotos, it was
through his ability to cure madness that Melampus acquired five-sixths of Argos.50
This is very interesting in the light of other traditions referring to the Egypto-Syrian
acquisition of the Eastern Peloponnese.51 According to Herodotos, this Melampus was
supposed to have brought the name and worship of Dionysos, and in particular his
phallic processions, from Egypt to Greece.52 Clement of Alexandria enlarged on this
48
Apollodoros, 3.14.7. For a discussion of the dates, see Burton 1972, 125. Consistently with her
general inclination, she prefers a northern origin for the mysteries to one from Egypt or Crete.
49
Homer Odyssey 15.225-6, and 11.291-4.
50
Pherekydes fr. 24 (Müller, 1841-51, vol. 1, 74f) and Herodotos 9.34.
51
See Black Athena vol. 1, 88-103.
52
Herodotos 2.49.
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
155
to write that it was Melampus who introduced the festivals of Demeter and her grief to
Greece from Egypt.53
Without the nasal dissimilation, mrp/mlp points more to the Levant than to
Egypt. M°ροψ was the legendary first king of Kos with its strong medical and later
Hippocratic tradition. Traces of Merops as a skilled healer are found all over Greece,
but especially in connection with the worship of ̕Ασκλήπιος. Michael Astour has
provided detailed evidence of their derivation from the West Semitic root √rp’, ‘heal’
and the attested name Ba‘al mərappe’ ‘healer’.54 He has also connected these to
Marapijo, a personal name found from Knossos. Oscar Landau, however, sees this as
Melampus or Melampios.55 These explanations are not necessarily exclusive. The
name Melampus may well have been influenced by mélas, mélanos, ‘black’, and
hence Egypt. Like Merops it probably derived from mərappe’, Melampus with a nasal
dissimilation, before the ‘Canaanite shift’, ā>ō, and Merops after it.
In the city of Megara, Melampus was thought to have been an early settler and
was closely associated with the temple of Dionysos. Nearby in Αἰγόσθενα Pausanias
reported that Melampus was worshipped as a god, a claim that has been confirmed by
inscriptions.56 The initial element of Aigosthena is aix, aigos, ‘goat’. There is no
reason to doubt the belief of the early twentieth-century classicist A.B. Cook, that
Melampus was a form of Dionysos as a goat and as a healer, especially from
madness.57
53
Clement Protrepticus 2.13.
Astour 1967, 239. The Arabic rāfā> and the Ge’ez rf> mean ‘stitch together’. This provides a
plausible etymology for the Greek =ãπτω, ‘sew’. The discovery of a Mycenaean erapamena has
ruined previous attempts to establish an Indo-European etymology.
55
Landau 1958, 80. On p.215, however, he follows Chadwick’s identification with the Persian tribe
Maraphioi.
56
Pausanias 1.43.5 and IG VII.223-4.
57
Cook 1914-20 vol. 2, 544.
54
156
MARTIN BERNAL
Megara is only ten miles to the west of Eleusis. Can Eumolpos be linked to
Melampus, the Dionysian ecstatic diviner and healer, to Merops, also a healer, and the
Semitic mərappe’? Paul Foucart derived Eumolpos from melpō, ‘dance, sing’, molpē,
‘song’, and mólpos ‘singer, musician’. He went further to claim that Eumolpos, ‘good
singer’ was a calque for mAa xrw, ‘true of voice’, used in the acclamations of Osiris
and Horus.58 Whether or not this is the case, there is a link between mo/elp and
Dionysos. Pausanias noted:59
In it [a colonnade near the Temple of Demeter in Athens] too, is the house of
Pulytion in which they say some illustrious Athenians parodied the Eleusinian
mysteries; but in my time it was consecrated to Dionysos. This Dionysos was
called ‘the minstrel Melpomenos’.
Although mo/elp sometimes referred to secular music and dance, it was more often
associated with ritual and ecstasy. As it has no Indo-European etymology, it would
seem plausible to derive it from mərappe’.60 This appears to have another Greek
derivative, µορφ-, which also lacks a plausible Indo-European alternative.61 It is
believed to have a basic meaning of ‘shape’. Such an interpretation, however, contains
serious anomalies. µορφØ only occurs twice in Homer, where it is usually translated
as ‘beautiful’ or ‘graceful’. In both cases, however, it was used to describe the power
of eloquence to move others, with a sense of verbal conjuring.62
58
Foucart 1914, 149.
Pausanias 1.2.4, trans. Frazer 1898. The blaspheming villain was, as usual, Alcibiades. For a
bibliography on the house and Dionysos Melpomenos, see Frazer vol. 2, 50.
60
Frisk states: ‘without an etymology’, and goes on to list some hypotheses he does not accept.
Chantraine writes that phonetically ‘it seems to have an Indo-European origin’, but simply cites,
without comment, some of those referred to by Frisk. Both scholars are sceptical of Szemerényi’s
attempt (1955, 159-65) to link it to µ°λος, ‘music’. This too has no Indo-European etymology. It would
seem plausible to derive it from an Egyptian root *mr possibly attested in mrt, ‘female singer’, or
‘musician’ (Erman-Grapow vol. 2, 107) and certainly found in Mrt, a goddess of music.
61
Pokorny (1969, 753) links it to a root mer ‘shimmer, sparkle’. Chantraine tentatively accepts a
relationship with the Latin fōrma, despite the necessity of metathesis and difficulties with the long ō.
He also admits that Ernout sees fōrma as a borrowing from morf-, possibly through Etruscan. In short,
both scholars see both words as loans.
62
Homer Odyssey 7.170 and 9.367.
59
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
157
In later writings where it is used to signify ‘form’ it frequently refers to the
shape of fantasies in dreams. This seems to have been the origin of Ovid’s Morpheus,
the son of sleep and the bringer of dreams.63 µορφØ also means ‘gesticulation’. The
derived verb morphazō, ‘gesticulate’, has the nominal form morphásmos, ‘dance in
imitation of animals’. Thus the fundamental sense of morph is not ‘shape’, but rather
that of morphóomai, ‘take a form’ morphoō and metamorphoō, ‘give shape and
transform’, in a magical way through dance and song.
Greeks believed that Egyptian gods and men were skilled in magical
transformations. In the Odyssey, ‘the immortal Proteus of Egypt’ was capable of
taking any kind of shape.64 Osiris, under his later name as Serapis, was well known as
a performer of miracles who could change his form as well as carrying out the related
role as healer.65 Isis’ association with magical change and healing was even stronger.
The classic instance of this was in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in which the hero Lucius
was transformed from being a donkey back to his human shape through Isiac ritual
and the goddess’s love and power.66 Fifteen hundred years earlier in the Contendings
of Horus and Seth, Isis transformed herself into an old woman, a maid, a bird (a kite)
and a headless statue.67 Similar transformations are described of Demeter in the
Homeric Hymn dedicated to her.68 Diodoros quoted Egyptians who told him that Isis
had discovered many drugs and had resurrected her dead son Horus and made him
immortal.69 This was clearly in a very ancient tradition. In the Pyramid Texts,
inscribed two thousand five hundred years earlier, Isis and her sister double Nepthys
63
Ovid Metamorphoses 21.633-74.
Homer Odyssey 4.385-460.
65
Griffiths 1975, 236-7.
66
Apuleius Metamorphoses 11.13.
67
Griffiths 1960, 102 and 116.
68
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 275-81.
69
Diodoros 1.25.2-6.
64
158
MARTIN BERNAL
arrived ‘with healing on their wings, ‘to heal and resuscitate Osiris’.70 Thus there is no
doubt that Isis’ association with healing and revivifying far antedated any possible
Greek influence.71
To sum up: Melampus, mo/elp, Merops and morph—all seem to derive from
the West Semitic mrp’, ‘cure, shaman, ritual healer’. Despite the Semitic etymology,
however, all the terms with the possible exception of Merops have Egyptian
associations and are linked in some way to Isis/Demeter and Osiris/Dionysos.
Eumolpos and Melampus were specifically tied to the introduction and identification
of Greek and Egyptian cults. Even though they claimed to be, and in many respects
actually were, inhibited by religious scruples, Herodotos and Hekataios-Diodoros
were able to provide specific proofs of the connection. Furthermore, increasing
knowledge of Egyptian religion during the nineteenth century, especially the
translation of various recensions of the Book of Coming Forth by Day, showed
striking similarities between the two systems.72 Thus it is not surprising that the names
Eumolpos and Eumolpid should have a plausible Afroasiatic origin.
The other, lesser, priesthood at Eleusis was that of the ΚÆρυκες or Κηρυκίδαι.
The name is obviously linked to κ∞ρυj, κÆρυκος, ‘herald’, the origin of which is from
the Egyptian oA xrw ‘high, loud of voice’, one who announces the rituals or
sacrifices.73
The crone goddess Hekate was central to the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose
name like that of nearly all Greek divinities has no Indo-European etymology. Her
name almost certainly derives from Egyptian frog goddess @kt or @ot. Both were
70
Pyramid Text Utterance 365.
See Burton 1972, 109 and Harris 1971, 112-37.
72
See Foucart 1914, and Bernal 2001, 386-9.
73
See Bernal 2006, chapter 17 n.37.
71
EGYPTIANS IN THE HELLENISTIC WOODPILE
159
versed in magic—HkA in Egyptian—and fertility. There is, to my knowledge, only one
connection drawn between Hekate and frogs. This comes in Aristophanes’ parody of
the Eleusinian initiation, The Frogs, where the chorus condemns those who defile
Hekate’s shrine.74 The chorus of frogs appears while the travellers are crossing to
Hades on Kharon’s ferry. In the Egyptian Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom,
Sokar’s ferry to the Underworld is reported to have “her bailers… [as] the frog
goddess @ot at the mouth of her lake”.75
Conclusion
Given the plausible claims for Egyptian origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries based on
other evidence, from resemblances between the cults, the Greek tradition and
archaeological finds, the density of plausible Egyptian and Semitic etymologies in the
terminology of the Greek cult makes the case for the connection very hard to refute.76
I proposed Egyptian and Semitic etymologies for other Greek divine and mythological
names and religious terms in the first two volumes of Black Athena. These and many
more now appear in volume 3, certainly enough to confirm Herodotos’ statement that
“the names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt”.77 Thus although the
evidence is particularly clear in the Eleusinian case, it should not be seen as
exceptional or anomalous. The three connections proposed above appear to have been
made:
1. that there is substantial cultic, archaeological and etymological evidence
indicating that there were profound connections;
2. that there was a strong Greek tradition that the cult at Eleusis had derived
from Egypt, and many Greeks knew or believed this to be the case; and finally
3. that this belief or knowledge had a significant impact on Ptolemaic religion.
74
Aristophanes Frogs 367.
Faulkner Coffin Texts vol. 2, p.34; spell 208.
76
For further proposed etymologies in this area see Bernal 2006, chapters 18 and 19.
77
Herodotos 2.50. The names with plausible Egyptian etymologies include Apollo, Artemis, Athena,
Enyalios, Hephaistos, Kronos, Ouranos, Plouto, Rhea and Zeus. See Bernal 2006, chapter 19.
75
160
MARTIN BERNAL
These connections do not necessitate Greeks in the Ptolemaic period having been
aware that many of their sacred names and terms had Egyptian origins. Nevertheless,
the acceptance of the three historians makes it clear that in a general way Hellenistic
Greeks believed that Egypt was the source of their religious culture. Although they
found it difficult to classify Egyptians as ‘barbarians’, these cultural origins do not
appear to have affected their own sense of political, cultural and even religious
superiority over their Egyptian subjects. Ptolemy Soter did not rely on an Egyptian
priest to supervise the new cult of Serapis, but the Eumolpid Timotheus. The best
analogy I can find for the Macedonian rule of Egypt is that of the Japanese rule over
much of China in the Second World War. The conquerors knew that much of their
culture derived from the conquered, but they were convinced not only that they were
superior in power and morality, but that in some ineffable way they had preserved the
ancient culture better than those who had created it.
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY:
PTOLEMAIC POLICY IN NUBIA IN THE THIRD CENTURY BC*
Stanley M. Burstein
The past half century has seen an outpouring of scholarship on the foreign policy of
the early Ptolemies. Important studies have been produced by Edouard Will, Roger
Bagnall, Werner Huss, and Brigitte Beyer-Rotthoff to mention only the most
significant.1 As a result, the principal goals of Ptolemaic foreign policy have become
clear. In order to forestall attack on the Egyptian core of their empire Ptolemy II and
Ptolemy III sought to extend Egypt’s defensive perimeter in the Aegean while
simultaneously disrupting cooperation between the Antigonids and the Seleucids by
securing bases around the coasts of Anatolia and in the Aegean islands and supporting
states hostile to Macedon in Greece. Understandably, the main focus of recent
scholarship, therefore, has been western Asia and the Aegean. Early Ptolemaic policy
in western Asia and the Aegean, however, is only part of the story of Egyptian foreign
policy. Largely ignored has been early Ptolemaic activity in another theatre: Nubia.
As was true in western Asia and the Aegean, the formative period for Ptolemaic
policy in Nubia was the reign of Ptolemy II.
*
I would like to thank Professor J.T. Roberts for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this
article. Unattributed translations are by the author. FHN = Tormod Eide et al., Fontes historiae
Nubiorum: Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region between the Eighth Century BC
and the Sixth Century AD, vol. 2 (Bergen, 1996), PP = W. Peremans and E. Van’t Dack (eds.),
Prosopographia Ptolemaica (9 vols., Louvain, 1950-81); Urkunden = Kurt Sethe, Hieroglyphische
Urkunden der griechisch-römischen Zeit (Leipzig, 1904).
1
Will 1979 vol. 1, 153-208. Bagnall 1976. Huss 1976. Beyer-Rotthoff 1993. In this volume, see
contributions by Céline Marquaille, James O’Neil and Geoff Adams.
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
162
When Ptolemy II intervened in Nubia in the 270s BC, he was following in the
footsteps of his Pharaonic predecessors, whose involvement in Nubia dated back to
the beginning of Egyptian history. Like them, Ptolemy II found both opportunities and
challenges in the region. As the title of William Y. Adam’s magisterial history of
Nubia2 puts it, Nubia was Egypt’s “corridor to Africa”. Through Nubia, Egypt
received a large variety of sub-Saharan African goods including gold, slaves, exotic
woods, and ivory and other animal products that were essential to the lifestyle of the
Egyptian elite and religious cult. Politically, however, Nubia, or more precisely, the
Kingdom of Kush located in the central Sudan, was also Egypt’s principal rival for
domination of the Upper Nile Valley and sometimes of Egypt itself. Traditionally,
rulers of Egypt sought to secure access to the products of Nubia and security for
Egypt by firmly occupying northern Nubia and forcing peoples further south in the
region to recognize Egyptian suzerainty,3 and the evidence suggests that Ptolemy II
followed a similar policy.
The potential for conflict in Nubia was real. The Hellenistic kings of Kush
viewed themselves as the heirs of the Nubian kings of Egypt’s twenty-fifth dynasty.
Like them, they styled themselves Kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, and they hoped
to restore their ancestors’ preeminence in lower Nubia. Twice already in the fourth
century BC kings of Kush had taken advantage of Egyptian weakness to attempt to
reassert their authority in lower Nubia. So, early in the century, Harsiyotef had
campaigned as far as Syene and asserted his authority over local rulers in lower
2
Adams 1977. At present evidence is lacking for the use in the Hellenistic period of two other routes to
the African interior: the Nile to Niger trans-Saharan route whose existence is postulated on the basis
of Herodotus 4.181-185 by Liverani 2000; and the route to the Sudan via the western oases that was
widely used in the early modern period (cf. Adams 1977, 612).
3
Cf. Redford 2004, 38-57.
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
163
Nubia.4 Again, shortly before, or possibly during, the reign of Alexander, Nastasen
repeated Harsiyotef’s campaign, imposing his authority on local chieftains as far north
as Abou Simbel.5 Not surprisingly, therefore, even before Ptolemy II intervened in
Nubia, both Alexander and Ptolemy I had both involved themselves in the region, the
former dispatching a scouting expedition during his stay in Egypt under the pretext of
searching for the sources of the Nile,6 and the latter campaigning in Nubia, while he
was still officially only satrap of Egypt.7
Detailed reconstruction of Ptolemy II’s activities in Nubia is unfortunately not
possible. As is true of so many aspects of Hellenistic history, the problem lies in the
sources. These were once abundant and varied. The royal archives at Alexandria
contained reports filed by Ptolemaic agents active in Nubia, such as the explorers
Philon8 and Satyrus,9 Eumedes,10 the founder of Ptolemais of the Hunts, and even a
garrison commander such as the Egyptian Tosuches11 who established a fort west of
the Red Sea. Some of these men also wrote books based on their experiences; six such
works are known, including one by a certain Simonides the Younger,12 who claimed
to have lived in the Kushite capital Meroe for five years. Except for meager
fragments, however, all of these primary sources are lost.
Also lost are the synthetic works based on them, such as the On Harbors of
the Ptolemaic admiral Timosthenes,13 the Geography of the third century BC scholar
4
FHN vol. 2, no. 78.
FHN vol. 2, no. 84.
6
Cf. Burstein 1995, 63-76.
7
Satrap Stela: translated by Robert Ritner in Simpson 2003, 393 with note 4.
8
PP 6.16962.
9
PP 2.4427, 16303.
10
PP 2.4420.
11
Strabo 16.4.8 (C470). Strabo also refers in the same passage to a country in the interior named
Tenessis, the Greek form of TA-Nehsi (Desanges 1978, 219 n.14), the Egyptian term for Nubia, which
probably comes from the report of Egyptian officer.
12
FGrHist 666 T.
13
PP 5.13794.
5
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
164
Eratosthenes14 and the On the Erythraean Sea of the mid-second century BC
Peripatetic and minor Ptolemaic official Agatharchides of Cnidus.15 Extensive
fragments of the latter two works are, however, preserved by the historian Diodorus,
the geographer Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Aelian, and Photius—but these fragments
overwhelmingly concern the geography and ethnography of Nubia, not the history of
Ptolemaic activity in the area. While it is not, therefore, possible to give a full account
of the history of Ptolemaic activity in Nubia during the third century BC, the
surviving evidence is sufficient to establish the main outlines of Ptolemy II’s Nubian
policy and to assess its goals and achievements.
The one secure fact is that Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign in the 270s BC
marked the beginning of large scale Ptolemaic activity in Nubia. Theocritus16 included
it among the major achievements of the first decade of Ptolemy II’s independent rule
in his poetic panegyric of the king. Agatharchides17 went further, claiming that prior to
Ptolemy II’s reign:
Greeks not only did not cross into Aithiopia, but they did not even travel as far
as the borders of Egypt. Conditions in these regions were completely hostile to
foreigners and extremely dangerous.
While Agatharchides clearly exaggerated when he claimed that Ptolemy II’s incursion
marked the beginning of Greek activity in Nubia, he was right that the campaign
marked a fundamental change in Ptolemaic policy toward Nubia. Unlike prior Greek
interventions in the region, which were isolated events without significant follow-up,
Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign opened a period of close contact between Ptolemaic
Egypt and the kingdom of Kush that extended from the late 270s BC to the end of the
century.
14
Eratosthenes’ account of Nubia is summarized by Strabo 17.1.2 (C786).
For the fragments of Agatharchides’ work see Burstein 1989.
16
Theocritus Idyll 17.86-7. On Idyll 17 see now Hunter 2003.
17
As preserved in Diodorus 1.37.5; cf. FGrHist 86F19.
15
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
165
Agatharchides dealt with Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign in the lost first book
of On the Erythraean Sea.18 Reconstruction of the course of the campaign,
therefore, is not possible. An allusion to a Meroitic raid on Ptolemaic positions near
Aswan in a fragmentary third-century papyrus may refer to an episode of the
campaign or the run-up to it, or even to an event later in the century.19 Agatharchides’
reference to Ptolemy II recruiting five hundred cavalrymen in the Aegean and
equipping the hundred troopers of the vanguard with Kushite style quilted armor to
protect themselves and their horses, however, indicates that preparations were on a large
scale and suggests that the king’s plans involved penetrating the heartland of the
kingdom of Kush, which was noted for its formidable cavalry forces.20 Clearer is the
situation concerning the origins of the war and its implications for relations between
Ptolemaic Egypt and Kush during the remainder of Ptolemy II’s reign.
Like other Greek historians, Agatharchides used speeches to illuminate the issues
behind Ptolemy II’s decision to launch his invasion of Nubia, and substantial
fragments still survive of a speech urging war apparently addressed to Ptolemy II
by a now unidentifiable advisor from the first book of the On the Erythraean Sea.21
Although these fragments are preserved because Photius valued them primarily as
examples of Agatharchides’ rhetorical style, remarks such as ‘the law helps the
possessor of property of the former sort (sc. private property), but the sword
deprives the weaker of property of the latter sort (sc. a king’s property)’ and ‘your
preoccupation with your affairs gives to another ruler the incentive to expand his
possessions and diminish those of others’ indicate that in Agatharchides’ view the
18
These fragments have been referred to a hypothetical Nubian campaign of Ptolemy V, but see
Burstein 1995, 97-104 for the connection to Ptolemy II.
19
FHN no. 97 =SB nr. 5111.
20
Cf. Heidorn 1997, 105-15.
21
On the Erythraean Sea fragments 12-13 (Burstein).
166
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
pretext for the campaign was renewed Meroitic activity in Lower Nubia; and this
concern certainly was reflected in the settlement of the war.
The most important evidence for the terms of the settlement is Theocritus’
(Idyll 17.86-87) statement that Ptolemy II “cut off a part of Black Aithiopia.”22
Scholars have usually interpreted Theocritus’ phrase as indicating that Ptolemy II
annexed the Dodekaschoinos, the roughly seventy-five-mile stretch of the Nile
immediately south of the first cataract. Occupation of the Dodekaschoinos also
meant that Ptolemy II gained control of the important gold mining region east of the
Nile in the Wadi Allaqi that provided a significant part of the wealth that
underwrote his ambitious foreign policy in the Aegean and western Asia.
Moreover, graffiti suggest that Ptolemy II may also have attempted to create a
buffer zone for the Dodekaschoinos by temporarily garrisoning the old Middle
Kingdom forts at Buhen and Mirgissa near the second cataract.23 Finally, Ptolemy II
designated the Dodekaschoinos to be the estate of the massive temple of Isis he
built at Philae as a public statement of his new authority in Nubia.24
Since the Kushite monarchy is attested as functioning continuously
throughout the Hellenistic Period, scholars have assumed that surrender of the
Dodekaschoinos was the extent of Ptolemy II’s demands on Kush. Hieroglyphic
inscriptions in the temple of Isis at Philae, however, suggest otherwise. In the first
inscription,25 which is found in Room 1 of the temple, Ptolemy II is portrayed as
offering to Isis the products of the nomes of Nubia—each nome being represented
with its most distinctive product—from Bigga near the first cataract to south of
22
Theocritus Idyll 17.86-7; cf. Burstein 1995, 108, and Hunter 2003, 164-5. For the history of the
Dodekaschoinos see Török 1980, 76-86.
23
FHN nos. 98-99; cf. Burstein 1995, 108, 118 nn.16-17.
24
For the temple of Isis and the Dodekaschoinos see now Dietze 1994, 63-110.
25
FHN no. 112.
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
167
Meroe. In the second inscription, Isis gives Nubia to Ptolemy II, saying “a southern
land is given to you in the south stretching as far as the kns.t stj area; subordinated
to you forever...”26 that is, as far as the land south of Meroe or, in other words, all of
Kush. The temptation to dismiss these inscriptions as merely symbolic should be
resisted, since the Rhodian historian Callixeinus27 reported in his On Alexandria on
the basis of the records of the Penteteric Festivals that Aithiopian ‘gift bearers’, that
is, ‘tribute bearers’, marched with their ‘gifts’ in a spectacular procession Ptolemy
II mounted in Alexandria sometime after the Nubian campaign:
After these came Aithiopian gift-bearers, some of which carried six hundred
elephant tusks, and others two thousand logs of ebony, and others sixty mixing
bowls full of gold and silver and gold nuggets.
Taken together, the implication of these three texts is clear. Although not put under
direct Egyptian rule, Kush became as a result of Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign a
‘tributary’ state, sending ‘gifts’ to Egypt a regular intervals as it had done during
the New Kingdom and again in the fifth century BC following the Persian king
Cambyses’ Nubian expedition.28 As a tributary state, Kush could also be expected
to cooperate with Egyptian forces in achieving Ptolemy II’s goals in Nubia; and the
most important of those goals was his desire to find a secure African source for war
elephants.
The military use of elephants was millennia old in Asia. Greeks and
Macedonians first encountered them in battle during Alexander’s campaign. Although
their record of effectiveness in battle was uneven, the Ptolemies and other Hellenistic
26
Urkunden vol. 2, 119, line 26. Translated at Kormysheva 1997, 360.
FGrHist 627F2.32; cf. Rice 1983, 98. ‘Gifts’ from Aithiopia are reported ca. 270 BC in the Pithom
Stele (translation in Roeder 1959, 125). The procession is generally identified with the Ptolemaieia.
Proposed dates range from 279/8 to 262 BC (cf. the recent survey of proposed dates in Thompson
2000, 381-8). Hitherto proposals have been based on external factors to the exclusion of internal
factors such as the references to Aithiopians and Aithiopian goods in the procession, which are
difficult to reconcile with a date prior to Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign.
28
Cf. Kormysheva 1997, 359-60. For Nubia and the Persians see Herodotus 3.97.1-2 with Burstein
1995, 155-64.
27
168
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
kings considered these living ‘tanks’ an essential component of their armies. Ptolemy
I had acquired the nucleus of an elephant corps, possibly obtaining some of
Alexander’s elephants following his victory over Perdiccas in 321 BC, and then
capturing forty-three of Demetrius Poliorcetes’ elephants and their Indian mahouts at
the Battle of Gaza in 312 BC.29 These animals and their mahouts were, however, a
wasting asset, as age increasingly eroded their numbers and battle worthiness.
By contrast, the Ptolemies’ Seleucid rivals enjoyed ready access to Indian
elephants and mahouts thanks to their good relations with the Maurya rulers of north
India. If Ptolemy II was not aware of the potential significance of the Seleucids’
Maurya connection, it was certainly made clear to him, when Antiochus I was able to
bring fresh elephants from Bactria to Syria in 275 BC just before the outbreak of the
First Syrian War.30 Ptolemy II had no choice, therefore, except to find and to develop
an alternative African source for war elephants as well as train new mahouts. He set
about this task immediately after the end of the First Syrian War in 271 BC, and his
successors continued to pursue it until the great Egyptian revolt of 207-186 BC
severed ties between Ptolemaic Egypt and Nubia.
Not surprisingly, the focus of most scholarship on Ptolemaic activity in Nubia
has been the elephant hunts themselves.31 The evidence available for studying
Ptolemaic elephant hunting is limited in quantity, but it does include a wide variety of
textual, epigraphic, and papyrological sources. The most revealing of these sources is
the triumphal inscription Ptolemy III set up after the Third Syrian War at the port of
Adulis in present day Eritrea. The original inscription does not survive, but it was
copied in the sixth century AD by Cosmas Indicopleustes at the request of the
29
Perdiccas: Diodorus 18.33-4; Demetrius: Diodorus 19.82-4.
Austin 1981, no. 141.
31
The most recent and fullest account is Casson, ‘Ptolemy II and the Hunting of African Elephants’,
247-60. Still useful older accounts are H. H. Scullard 1974, 126-37, and Kortenbeutel 1931, 16-43.
30
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
169
Axumite governor of Adulis. In it Ptolemy III boasted that his army included
“elephants, both Trog[l]odytic and Aithiopian”, which he claims that he and his father
Ptolemy II “first hunted in these countries, and, having brought them back to Egypt,
trained for military use.”32
Despite the brevity of its reference to elephants, the Adulis inscription clearly
indicates the scope and nature of Ptolemy II’s initiative. Wild elephants were hunted
and brought back to Egypt for training from two regions: Trogodytice and Aithiopia.
The former term in Ptolemaic sources refers to the African coast of the Red Sea and
its hinterlands, and the latter to the Nile Valley south of Egypt. Greek graffiti at
Ramses II’s great temple at Abou Simbel confirm that elephant hunters hunted
elephants using the Nile Valley route.33 The remoteness, however, of the elephant
herds—Ptolemaic scouts first reported signs of elephants near Meroe above the fifth
cataract of the Nile, almost six hundred miles south of Aswan34—the logistical
problems involved in gaining access to them, and the difficulties involved in
transporting them to Egypt by the Nile with its numerous rapids combined to mean
that the main focus of Ptolemaic elephant hunting would be the Red Sea region
despite the smaller size of the herds in its hinterlands and the difficulties and expense
involved in developing the infrastructure required to exploit that route.
Despite its logistical challenges and high costs, Ptolemy II began elephant
hunting via the Red Sea almost immediately after the end of the First Syrian War. His
first step was the foundation, probably about 270 BC, of the port of Philotera,35 about
seventy miles south of the entrance to the Gulf of Suez, to serve as a base for hunting
elephants. The foundation of Philotera was quickly followed by that of Ptolemais of
32
OGIS 54 lines 11-14.
Cf. Desanges 1970, 31-50.
34
Bion, FGrHist 668F5 = Pliny NH 6.180.
35
Strabo 16.4.5 (C769).
33
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
170
the Hunts, further south near the present day port of Aqiq on the coast of the central
Sudan. According to the account in the Pithom Stele, Ptolemais of the Hunts was
intended to be a self-supporting base from which elephant hunting expeditions could
be dispatched into the interior, and captured elephants could be transported to
Memphis for training by way of the Red Sea and the old Nile canal,36 which originally
had been built by Darius I in the late sixth century BC and reopened by Ptolemy II
during the late 270s BC:37
He built a great city to the king with the illustrious name of the king, the lord of
Egypt, Ptolemy. And he took possession of it with the soldiers of His Majesty
and all the officials of Egypt and the land of ...; he made there fields and
cultivated them with ploughs and cattle; no such thing took place there from the
beginning. He caught elephants in great number for the king, and he brought
them as marvels to the king, on his transports on the sea. He brought them also
on the Eastern Canal; no such thing had ever been done by any of the whole
earth.
Ptolemais of the Hunts remained the principal center of Ptolemaic elephant hunting
throughout Ptolemy II’s reign and thereafter. Important changes in how the hunts
were conducted occurred soon after its foundation, however, which required
significant additional expenditures by Ptolemy II and his successors. Probably
because of adverse sailing conditions in the northern Red Sea—strong prevailing
northerly winds make sailing difficult above 20 degrees north latitude for most of the
year38—the Nile canal was abandoned as the main route for transporting captured
elephants from the Red Sea to Memphis, where the training facilities were
maintained. As a result, a new Red Sea port had to built at Berenike near Ras Banas
about two hundred miles east of Syene together with a road linking Berenike to
36
Redmount 1995.
English translation: Naville 1902-3, 21 lines 23-24. For a recent German translation see Roeder
1959, 125-6. Cf. Bernand 1972, 9 bis, for the graffito of a carpenter named Dorion who accompanied
Eumedes, the founder of Ptolemais of the Hunts.
38
Préaux 1952, 271.
37
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
171
Coptus on the Nile.39 Even so, the challenges of conducting the hunts remained
formidable.
The hunting expeditions—sometimes numbering hundreds of men40—had to
be paid and supplied from Egypt as did the crews of the elephant transports that
brought captured elephants to Berenike. Facilities had to be prepared near Thebes to
house and feed the captured elephants after the long sea voyage and the desert march
from Berenike before they could be transported downriver to Memphis for training.
Liturgies also had to be instituted to provide men and grain to care for the animals,
while they were at Thebes.41 Moreover, the same peculiarities of the sailing regime in
the Red Sea that led to the construction of Berenike also meant that shipyards had to
be established there to maintain and repair the elephant transports because those in the
Nile valley could no longer be used.42 While ivory collected from elephants killed
during the hunts may have offset some of these costs, ivory collecting also led to
over-hunting of the small elephant herds near the coast, forcing Ptolemy II’s
successors constantly to seek new hunting grounds and to establish additional hunting
stations south of Ptolemais of the Hunts, a process that finally resulted in extending
the hunting zone outside the Red Sea itself, reaching the northern coast of Somalia
some time in the reign of Ptolemy IV.43
Not since the Egyptian New Kingdom, over a millennium earlier, had
Egyptian military forces operated in Nubia on such a scale and with such freedom.
39
On Berenike see now Sidebotham and Wedrich 1995-2000. For an overview of the road system
connecting Berenike to the Nile see Sidebotham and Zitterkopf 1995, 39-52.
40
A papyrus letter of 223 BC refers to the hunting expedition numbering 231 men (FHN no. 121 =
P.Eleph. 28).
41
P.Hibeh 110, lines 78-9; cf. Rostowzew 1913, 181.
42
FHN no. 120 mentions the preparation of a new elephant transport at Berenike after one had sunk in
the Red Sea. For the dangers of sailing in the Red Sea see the vivid account of Agatharchides, On the
Erythraean Sea F85 a-b (Burstein) and the dedications to Pan at the temple of Pan Euodos at ElKanaïs by those ‘saved from the Trogodytes’ (Bernand 1972, 13, 18, 42, 44, 47; Householder and
Prakken 1945).
43
Cf. Burstein 1996, 799-807.
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
172
Despite recognition of Ptolemaic suzerainty by Kush, Egyptian activity on this scale
inevitably provoked resistance from the peoples of the region. According to Strabo,
Eumedes, the founder of Ptolemais of the Hunts, already faced local opposition at the
time of the foundation of the town; which, however, he overcame by secretly
fortifying “the peninsula with a ditch and stockade; then he conciliated the people
who were seeking to obstruct him and made them friends instead of enemies.”44 The
peoples involved were probably Trogodytes, warlike pastoralists who inhabited the
Red Sea hills behind Ptolemais of the Hunts. Papyrological evidence for Trogodyte
translators points to continued efforts to maintain good relations with Trogodyte
groups.45 Sometimes, of course, diplomacy failed to overcome resistance, as
Agatharchides reports,46 noting how elephant hunting populations west of the Red Sea
rebuffed Ptolemaic agents’ efforts to persuade them to help capture elephants alive
instead of hunting them for food as was their custom. An unsuccessful effort by a
traditionalist Kushite faction to break free of Ptolemaic influence is probably also
behind Agatharchides’ dramatic story of a failed coup against the philhellenic king of
Kush Ergamenes/Arqamani-qo (ca. 270-260 BC) because of his cooperation with
Ptolemy II’s plans in Nubia:47
The strangest of all their customs, however, is that concerning the death of their
kings. In Meroe, whenever it enters the mind of the priests, who care for the
worship and honors of the gods and occupy the highest and most exalted status,
they send a messenger to the king ordering him to die. (2) They say that the
gods have revealed this to them, and that the order of the immortals must not be
disregarded in any way by those of mortal nature. They also assert other things
such as would be accepted by a nature of limited intelligence that has been
raised in accordance with customs that are ancient and difficult to eradicate and
does not possess arguments with which to oppose arbitrary commands. (3) In
earlier times, therefore, the kings obeyed the priests, not having been conquered
44
Strabo 16.4.7 (C770).
PP 6.16220.
46
Agatharchides On the Erythraean Sea F57 (Burstein).
47
As preserved by Diodorus 3.6; cf. Török 1992, 555-61 for his philhellenism. Date: Welsby 1996,
208.
45
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
173
by weapons or force but their reason having been overcome by this superstition.
During the reign of the second Ptolemy, however, Ergamenes, the king of the
Aithiopians, who had received a Greek education and understood philosophy,
first dared to spurn this practice. (4) He made a decision that was worthy of his
royal rank and entered accompanied by some soldiers the shrine where is
located the gold temple of the Aithiopians, and killed all the priests. After
abolishing this custom, he reorganized affairs in accordance with his own plans.
Ptolemy II pursued his elephant hunting project throughout his reign, and the Adulis
inscription indicates that by the time of his death in 246 BC he had achieved his
primary goal of building a battle worthy elephant corps and training new mahouts.
The evidence concerning the size of his elephant corps is ambiguous. St. Jerome,
following the third century AD scholar Porphyry,48 claims that Ptolemy II possessed
400 elephants, while the second century AD historian Appian,49 citing records
preserved at Alexandria, puts the size of his herd at 300 animals. Hunting on a scale
necessary to produce a herd of this size is, however, unlikely, and there is no evidence
that Ptolemy II successfully bred elephants in captivity. Hellenistic sources, moreover,
suggest a lower figure. So, Callixeinus50 claims that there were twenty-four elephantdrawn quadrigas in Ptolemy II’s great procession which implies that he possessed at
least ninety-six trained elephants at some point in his reign, while in 217 BC Ptolemy
IV deployed seventy-three elephants against Antiochus III’s 102 elephants at the
Battle of Raphia.51 As Ptolemy IV mobilized all available forces including Egyptian
heavy infantry for the Battle of Raphia, it is likely that the seventy-three elephants that
fought at Raphia were all that he had, suggesting that the size of the Ptolemaic
elephant corps ranged between about 70 and 100 animals during the third century BC.
Its performance was, however, mixed, apparently performing well during Ptolemy
III’s invasion of Syria in 245 BC at the beginning of the Third Syrian War, but
48
Apud Porphyry, FGrHist 260F42.
Appian Preface 10.
50
Callixeinus FGrHist 627F2.32 with Rice 1983, 92-3.
51
Polybius 5.79.2, 82.7.
49
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
174
unsuccessfully at the Battle of Raphia where Ptolemy IV’s outnumbered African
forest elephants could not cope with Antiochus III’s larger and stronger Indian
elephants.52
Despite the poor performance of the Ptolemaic elephant corps at the Battle of
Raphia, elephant hunting not only continued but it did so on an expanded scale
throughout the reign of Ptolemy IV. Events, however, conspired to end the hunts in
the last decade of the third century BC, almost three quarters of a century after
Ptolemy II began them. For over two decades from 207 BC to 186 BC the Ptolemaic
government was forced to focus all its efforts on regaining control of Upper Egypt
from Egyptian rebels supported by the kingdom of Kush. Kush also took advantage of
the Egyptian revolt to throw off Ptolemaic suzerainty and to successfully reassert its
authority in lower Nubia,53 even managing to occupy Philae,54 which it held until the
forces of Ptolemy V decisively defeated the rebels and their Kushite allies in a battle
near Thebes in 186 BC.55 A generation later Ptolemy VI may have attempted to
resume an active policy in Nubia, founding two military colonies near the second
cataract of the Nile,56 demanding tribute from Kush,57 and possibly even resuming
elephant hunting,58 but his death in 145 BC aborted his program and put an end to any
hope of restoring Ptolemaic power in Nubia. During the remainder of the Ptolemaic
period most of the ports and other facilities that had supported the hunts were
gradually abandoned so that by the first century AD few traces remained of Ptolemy
II’s ambitious project.
52
Polybius 5.84.3-7. Gowers (1948, 173-80) pointed out that the Ptolemies used the smaller forest
elephants and not the large African bush elephants.
53
Winter 1981, 509-13; Kormysheva 1997, 353-5; and Veïsse 2004, 85-95.
54
The Kushite king Adikhalamani set up a stela on Philae (FHN no. 132).
55
FHN no. 134.
56
OGIS 111; cf. Heinen 1997.
57
FHN no. 137 = Junker 1958, 263-77.
58
Ptolemy VI’s army included elephants during his Syrian campaign (Josephus Jewish Antiquities
13.4; cf. Scullard 1974, 188-9.
ELEPHANTS FOR PTOLEMY
175
In scale, complexity, and extent, Ptolemy II’s elephant hunting initiative was a
remarkable undertaking, perhaps the largest and most complex project ever
undertaken by the Ptolemies. Although the successful conduct of the elephant hunts
was a notable achievement, they and the foreign policy that supported them had only
limited success. While the Ptolemies did succeed in building an elephant corps, it
failed in its biggest challenge at the Battle of Raphia and almost brought about the
defeat of the Egyptian army. Likewise, while Ptolemy II and his immediate successors
managed to secure Egypt’s southern frontier and access to gold, ivory and other
Nubian products besides elephants, it is not clear if these resources offset the high
costs of the program. More seriously, the Ptolemies’ heavy handed policy toward
Kush only fueled Kushite resentment, leading to their intervention in the great
Egyptian revolt that cost the Ptolemies control of Upper Egypt for over two decades.
Culturally, however, the results of Ptolemy II’s Nubian initiative were long-lasting
and significant.
Strabo59 mistakenly claimed that Ptolemy II’s interest in science was behind
his exploration of Nubia, but the reports Ptolemaic explorers and hunters prepared did
revolutionize Greek knowledge of the geography and ethnography of the interior of
northeast Africa, providing geographers and historians with information about the
region that would not be equaled in extent and quality until the compilation of the
medieval Arabic accounts of Nubia.60 Thanks to them, the centuries-old puzzle of the
cause of the Nile flood was solved, and rumors may even have reached them of the
Nile’s ultimate source in Lake Victoria in modern Uganda.61 Its impact on Kush was
also significant. Kushites not only imported Greek luxury goods including drinking
59
Strabo 17.1.5 (C789).
Burstein 2000.
61
Huss ‘Die Quellen des Nils’.
60
176
STANLEY M. BURSTEIN
vessels and amphorae and even masons to work on their temples, but they also even
adopted the use of war elephants.62 More important, however, Ergamenes/Arqamaniqo’s reforms fundamentally changed the character of the Kushite monarchy, giving it
the form it retained until the kingdom of Kush itself disappeared in the mid-fourth
century AD, but that is another story.
62
Agatharchides On the Erythraean Sea 8 n.1.
PIETY AND DIPLOMACY IN APOLLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
Anatole Mori
The contrast between the diplomatic Alcinous and the tyrannical Aietes is pronounced
in the Argonautica, but little scholarly attention has been paid to the question of
whether and in what ways (if the answer is positive) the Ptolemaic conflation of
religious and political authority is inscribed in the ethical polarization of leaders in
this poem. The Ptolemaic synthesis of piety and diplomacy is certainly suggested by
the poem’s representation of royal cult activity: Alcinous and the other monarchs who
aid the Argonauts are associated with public sacrifices and in addition are shown to
prefer mediation to aggression, to honor sworn agreements, and to respect the
mandates of “straight justice.”1 Those kings and tribes who are suspicious of the
Argonauts, on the other hand, are relatively dissociated from sacrifice and are likely to
be violent and unstable in their allegiances.2 The following argument will accordingly
seek the connections between the image of benevolent kings in the Argonautica and
Philadelphus’ poetic self-representation, beginning first with a consideration of
several issues that are fundamental for interpretation of the poem, namely, its date and
relevance of the poem for the ideological program of the Ptolemies.
1
Examples of royal sacrifice by diplomatic kings include Hypsipyle (1.858-60), Cyzicus (1.966-67),
Lycus (2.760-61), Alcinous (4.994-95), all of whom welcome the Argonauts with feasts, as does
Phineus at 2.302-3 (though in this instance the Argonauts have provided their own sheep).
2
When the Argonauts encounter Amycus, the Bebrycian king, they are met with a pugilistic challenge
rather than hospitality (2.11-18); in the Brygeian islands Jason suspects the Hylleans of plotting against
them (4.404-5: see Green 1997, p. 314, n. 526), and indeed after Apsyrtus’ murder they abandon their
Colchian sympathies and help the Argonauts (4.526-28); later the Argonauts manage to avoid the
unfriendly Celts and Ligurians with Hera’s aid (4.645-48). On Aietes’ ‘welcome’ feast for the sons of
Phrixus, see further below.
178
ANATOLE MORI
Apollonius is said to have lived in the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes (284–
221) by several ancient sources: a brief passage from a second-century C.E.
Oxyrhynchus papyrus, an entry in the Byzantine Suda, and two biographical notes
(possibly late first-century B.C.E.). These sources report that Apollonius went into
exile in Rhodes because the first edition (proekdosis) of the Argonautica was badly
received. Scholars continue to be divided regarding the veracity of this story,3 but
most now agree that Apollonius probably served as Euergetes’ tutor, an honorific
office held in association with the post of Chief Librarian, during the reign of
Philadelphus. Apollonius probably composed the Argonautica between 270 and 260,
revising it several times during Philadelphus’ rule,4 a period when the court poets
Callimachus and Theocritus were also active. Yet while their works openly celebrate
the Ptolemies in their encomiastic works, the Argonautica does not, presumably
because the narrative is set in the generation before the Trojan War. Even so, the
narrator frequently employs aetiological references and digressions to anticipate the
future of the ancient sites and cultural practices that are mentioned, and it is likely that
the entire poem was designed, as Stephens (2003, 173) has recently put it, to provide a
“mythic historicity” for the Greco-Macedonian inhabitants of the recently founded
Alexandria.
As a scholarly trend, connecting the Argonautica with the particulars of
Ptolemaic Egypt is not especially new: it has been nearly forty years since Fränkel
(1968, 514) observed that the narrator’s aetiological reference to the future cult of the
Dioscuri (4.650-53) could be seen as an epic precedent for the cult of living rulers.
3
For arguments against the exile and alleged quarrel with Callimachus, see Lefkowitz 1980, 1981 and
2001, Rengakos 1992, and Hunter 1989; Green 1997 and Cameron 1995 argue in support.
4
Hunter 1989, 1-9. This estimate is earlier than the previous estimate of 250-240 made by Vian
(2002/1974, xiii). Vian posits Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, written after 246, as contemporary with a
revised version of the Argonautica, but Hunter (1989, 7-8) suggests that similarities may be the result
of earlier versions of the hymn, which were likely to have circulated in the Library.
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
179
Still, recent studies of the poem continue to be primarily concerned with the poem’s
ties to other poetic works, from Homeric epic to Attic tragedy and contemporary
poetry, and thus do not consider, for the most part, the implications of its larger
political context.5 We should not be surprised, however, to find such associations in
the Argonautica, given the practical dependence of Alexandrian scholar-poets on
Ptolemaic patronage and the allusive character of Alexandrian poetry as a whole. For
that matter, the adventures of the Argonauts in distant regions like the Black Sea and
northern Africa attest a programmatic interest in expanding both the topographical
and the topical boundaries of epic in accordance with the Greco-Macedonian diaspora
of the fourth and third centuries. Thus, it is likely that the Argonautica, like other
works produced in Alexandria at this time, is concerned with the construction of
political authority, even if the epic idiom remains allusive and analogical rather than
explicit and denotative. We may therefore justifiably consider whether the
characterization of Alcinous and Aietes reflects what we know of Philadelphus’ poetic
self-representation, and if so, in what ways it does. In this way we may perhaps add a
new dimension to our understanding of Philadelphus’ public characterization as a
pious and diplomatic ruler.
Let us begin by taking a look at Ptolemy’s religious responsibilities. In
keeping with Egyptian (and for that matter, Argead) tradition, Ptolemy served as an
intermediary between gods and mortals. For the ancient Egyptians, kingship entailed
both a living being and a divine office.6 This exact formulation—mortal being, divine
office—may have been somewhat unfamiliar to the new Macedonian rulers, but they
quickly put it to use. The Egyptian king was traditionally understood to be the son of
5
See, e.g., Byre 2002; Clare 2002; Albis 1996; Knight 1995, Clauss 1993; Goldhill 1991, 284-333;
Hutchinson 1988, 85-142; Beye 1982. Cf. Barnes 2003, Stephens 2002, Mori 2001, Pietsch 1999,
Hunter 1995 and 1993, Rostropowicz 1983, and Huxley 1980.
6
Silverman 1991, 67.
180
ANATOLE MORI
the sun god Re and the image of Ammon. For the sake of a newly arrived Greek
audience, the king was likewise assimilated to specific Greek gods like Helios, Zeus,
and Dionysus, just as the queen was assimilated to Aphrodite, Isis, and Agatha Tuchē,
“Good Fortune”.7
Though this identification of the royal couple with gods was clearly Egyptian
in origin, “…the basic thought pattern was not foreign to the Greeks” as Koenen
(1993, 70) observes. In Callimachus’ affirmation that there is nothing on earth more
godly (theioteron) than the lords of Zeus (Hymn 1.80) we hear echoes of Hesiod, who
proclaimed Zeus the father of kings (ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες, Th. 96). But while all kings
were thought to be allied with Zeus ex officio, it was not the case that all kings were
equally favored by the gods (Call. Hymn 1.84-86 Pfeiffer):
ἐκ δὲ ῥυηφενίην ἔβαλές σφισιν, ἐν δ’ ἅλις ὄλβον
πᾶσι µέν, οὐ µάλα δ’ ἶσον. ἔοικε δὲ τεκµήρασθαι
ἡµετέρῳ µεδέοντι‧ περιπρὸ γὰρ εὐρυ βέβηκεν.
[Zeus] poured riches upon them,
And prosperity enough. On all, but not
The same amounts. We can infer as much
From our lord’s case, for he outstrips them all
By far.8
It is Ptolemy’s exceptional piety that wins greater favor from Zeus, and thus it is
Ptolemy’s role as the sponsor rather than the recipient of cult that primarily interests
us here.
In effect, the royal office brought with it not only divine antecedents but also
an attendant responsibility to sacrifice on behalf of the entire country. As a divine
intermediary, it was the Egyptian king’s duty to perform sacrifices that would
maintain good relations with the gods and therefore increase the prosperity of his
7
8
Stephens 2003, 20-21.
Tr. Nisetich 2001, 23, 111-15.
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
181
realm. Philadelphus’ sacred responsibilities are described in Theocritus’ Idyll 17, an
encomium that praises his respect for the honors owed to his divine parents (17.12127 Gow):
Μοῦνος ὅδε προτέρων τε καὶ ὧν ἔτι θερµὰ κονία
Στειβοµένα καθύπερθε ποδῶν ἐκµάσσεται ἴχνη,
Ματρὶ φίλᾳ καὶ πατρὶ θυώδεας εἴσατο ναούς
ἐν δ’αὐτοὺς χρθσῷ περικαλλέας ἠδ’ἐλέφαντι
ἵδρυται πάντεσσιν ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἀρωγούς.
Πολλὰ δὲ πιανθέντα βοῶν ὅγε µηρία καίει
µησὶ περπλοµένοισιν ἐρευθοµένων ἐπὶ βωµῶν
This man, alone of men of the past and of those whose still
Warm footprints mark the trodden dust, has established fragrant
Shrines to his loving mother and father; within, he has set them
Glorious in gold and ivory to bring aid to all upon the earth.
Many are the fattened thighs of cattle that he burns upon the
Bloodied altars as the passage of months proceeds…9
By sponsoring countless sacrifices, in this case to the deified Soter and Berenice I,
Philadelphus’ is said to bring aid not just to the inhabitants of Egypt but, interestingly,
to all humanity. Philadelphus’ sphere of influence is therefore portrayed, at least, as
Zeus-like in its universality and its regard for the well-being of all peoples, not just his
own.
At the same time, however, Philadelphus was also celebrated as a military
hero. He was not especially active on the battlefield: riding into battle seldom, if at all,
in contrast to the ideal warrior-king exemplified by his father Ptolemy I Soter.10 On
the Satrap Stele (dated to 311), Soter is celebrated for his prowess in battle, his
matchless skill with the bow and the sword, and for recovering former Egyptian
territory and religious artefacts from the Persians (Cairo CG 22182; Sethe 1904, 1:1316). Egypt was not precisely “spear-won” inasmuch as the Persians had originally
9
Tr. Hunter 2003, 89.
Cf. Samuel 1993, 183, who considers the view that Philadelphus “was unmilitary and pacific in
character” incorrect, citing his incessant involvement in war for the first three decades of his rule. At
issue, however, is Philadelphus’ physical presence on the field of battle, not his ability to deploy troops
at a comfortable distance.
10
182
ANATOLE MORI
ceded it to Alexander without a battle, but the image is not unrealistic inasmuch as
Soter had previously campaigned with Alexander the Great, had successfully
defended Egypt against invasions (although it must be admitted that adverse weather
and terrain were decisive factors in these victories), and was engaged in a prolonged
struggle for control of Syrian territory. Be that as it may, Soter generally played the
role of an onlooker in the wars of the Successors,11 and Philadelphus seems to have
adopted a similar approach. He continued to campaign in Syria, celebrating his
triumphs, like his father, by erecting an official monument, the Pithom Stele (in 264;
I.Cair. 22183, ll. 11-15 = Sethe 1904, 1:91), which praises the Ptolemaic recovery of
formerly Egyptian possessions. Inasmuch as he in fact won control of Samos and
Syria in the first Syrian war (274-271), such praise was not inappropriate (although
this territory was later lost in the second Syrian war, from 260 to 53).12 In any case it
is important to note that Ptolemaic military activity in Syria was publicly justified, by
Soter as well as Philadelphus, as the recovery of territory that rightfully belonged to
Egypt.
Thus, despite his successes, Philadelphus appears to have fallen somewhat
short of his father’s mark.13 The martial images that occasionally crop up in the poetic
encomia dedicated to Philadelphus are limited in number. Theocritus praises the king
in military terms in Idyll 17, observing that Berenice bore the king as “a warrior son to
a warrior.”14 Later in the poem Theocritus also describes him as “skilful in wielding
11
Shipley 2000, 201-202.
IG II2 686 + 687. See Habicht 1997, 142-54. Philadelphus also supported what turned out to be an
unsuccessful Athenian and Spartan alliance against Antigonus Gonatas in the Chremonidean War (26760).
13
Manning 2003, 141, citing St. Jerome, Commentary on the Book of Daniel, XI 7-8; Porphyry FGrH
260 F 43.
14
Id. 17.56-57 Gow: σὲ δ’ αἰχµητὰ Πτολεµαῖε, αἰχµητᾷ Πτολεµαίῳ ἀρίζηλος Βερενίκα.
12
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
183
the spear.”15 The phrase alludes to Achilles, who is said to be unique among the
Achaeans in his skill at wielding both his own spear and that of Peleus.16 Though the
reference to Achilles flatters the king, at least with respect to his knowledge of
Homer, the description remains essentially generic, and relies on poetic camouflage to
divert attention from a lack of specific instances of the king’s martial prowess. And
so, as one might perhaps expect, the poem compensates by celebrating Philadelphus’
heroic ancestors, the troops who surround him, the strength of the country’s defences,
his piety, and the wealth and extent of his dominion. In Theocritus’ Idyll 14 we find a
plausible approximation of Philadelphus’ personality: “considerate, fond of the arts,
amorous, and utterly pleasant” (14.61). From his coin portraits he appears to have
been somewhat overweight,17 and was said to follow intellectual pursuits because of
physical weakness, either congenital or the result of illness (Strabo 17.789, Ael. VH
4.15), though in truth there is little evidence to suggest that he suffered chronic illness
apart from painful attacks of gout. These would presumably have subsided after five
to ten days, and evidently did not prevent him from traveling, since he was known to
participate in Nubian and Ethiopian elephant hunts.18
All things considered, Philadelphus’ true talents appear to have been less
martial than managerial with respect to both the domestic economy and international
relations. Indeed, a significant component of his public image lay in the area of
international mediation. The ancient Greeks had long relied on arbitration in the
15
Id. 17.103 Gow:…ἐπιστάµενος δόρυ πάλλειν.
Il. 16.141-44: Patroclus arms himself with two spears, but not that of Achilles, which he alone could
wield. The same lines are repeated when Achilles arms himself with the spear of his own father at
19.388-91. For discussion, see Hunter 2003, 176-77.
17
E.g., a gold octadrachm dated to 246, now in the British Museum, that depicts Ptolemy II and
Arsinoë II (reproduced in Green 1990, 145, fig. 57).
18
On the probable causes, symptoms, and severity of Philadelphus’ gout, see Tunny 2001. For
Philadelphus’ elephant hunting see the Adoulis Inscription (OGIS 54 = Bagnall and Derow 2004/1981
no. 26) and Stanley Burstein’s article in this volume.
16
184
ANATOLE MORI
resolution of conflict,19 but the practice of intervention by third-party mediators had
become much more widespread in the Hellenistic period, probably as a result of
increasing refinements in diplomatic protocol.20 Interstate arbitration on mainland
Greece, the islands, and in western Asia Minor generally addressed debt, property
disputes, or loan and contract settlements, with teams of dicasts or individual judges
invited from one city to another, often to handle an overload of cases. More
importantly, Hellenistic kings themselves would take part in the mediation of
international disputes. Appian records that in 252 Philadelphus offered to mediate
between Carthage and Rome in the First Punic War. Claiming friendship with both
states, 21 he refused to lend 2,000 talents to the Carthaginians, who would have used
the money to strengthen their military forces.22 Philadelphus was undoubtedly
motivated by thrift rather than pacifism, and in this way he avoided being drawn into
a costly war. In addition, as a mediator he was able to take an active part in the
conflict without sacrificing the security of a politically neutral position.
Although Philadelphus’ mediation between Rome and Carthage occurred
toward the end of his reign, it is apparent that he appreciated the political value of
pious displays from the beginning. The Nikouria decree was passed ca. 280 by the
League of Islanders, an organization that represented the political interests of the
Cycladic islands of the southern Aegean. The League responded favorably to
Philadelphus’ request for recognition of a new festival, the Ptolemaieia, as the
19
See Gagarin 1986, 19-50 on dispute-settlements in early Greek literature.
Ager (1996, xiii) attributes the rise in third-party intervention to the increasing refinement in
diplomatic protocol.
21
Philadelphus’ diplomatic foreign policy continued under Ptolemy IV Philopator, who attempted to
resolve differences between Carthage and Rome during the Second Punic War. He also successfully
resolved the Social War in Greece in 217. For discussion of relations between Egypt and Rome in the
third century, see Gruen 1984, 673-78.
22
Sikelika 1; Ager 1996, 109-10 (no. 35).
20
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
185
political equivalent of the Olympian Games.23 The members based their decision in
large part on Philadelphus’ continuing friendship with them and his laudable desire to
honor his divine ancestors. As a result of the decree, participating cities would
sponsor the attendance of sacred envoys from all over the Mediterranean and would
also finance a golden wreath to honor Philadelphus himself. The festival thus allowed
Philadelphus not only to celebrate the gods of Egypt and the royal dynasty but also to
promote international goodwill with the island cities. While the League had been
under Ptolemaic influence since approximately 286,24 the particulars of the decree
demonstrate the interrelation of Ptolemaic cult and politics: indeed, the nature of the
monarchy rendered the two inseparable.
The first Alexandrian Ptolemaieia featured a fantastic procession (pompē) that
has been described by Callixenus, who composed the only surviving account by
consulting state records more than a hundred years after the event.25 This description
has subsequently come down to us in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus (second to
third century C.E.). We need not rehearse the extremes of the pompē here, other than
to observe that it literally paraded the king’s wealth and military strength before an
international audience that included visiting dignitaries and other guests of political
importance.26 Callixenus notes that it concluded with a procession of 23,000 cavalry
troops and 57,600 foot soldiers, all of whom were marvelously outfitted. Philadelphus
23
IG XII 7.506 (= SIG3 390). See translation by Burstein 1985, no. 92.
On the organization of the league and its relation to the Ptolemies, see Bagnall 1976, 136-41. See
also Price 1984, 28-29 on Ptolemaic influence over subject states.
25
The date of the Ptolemaieia, the festival during which this procession took place, is not certain. Soter
died in 283/2, and a generous estimate for the Ptolemaieia is at some point between 280 and 270. Hölbl
2001, 94 dates it to 279/8; Rice 1983, 5; 165, who suggests that 280-275 is likely; additional
bibliography is cited in Hunter 2003, 2 n.6. Callixenus composed the surviving account of the
procession (pompē) by consulting state records more than one hundred years after the event. His
description has subsequently come down to us in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus (Athen. 197d-e),
dating from the second to third century A.D.
26
Hazzard 2000, 69-74.
24
186
ANATOLE MORI
himself may not have ridden at the head of the line, but his power was no less
apparent.
The poetic and historical evidence we have considered shows the interrelation
of the king’s cult activity with his image as a pious and just mediator, backed by a
powerful army and an especially powerful navy. In reality, of course, Philadelphus
seems to have found it necessary to defend his position with a prejudicial vengeance
worthy of Alexander, for he evidently eliminated one or more of his half-brothers
(Paus. 1.7.1), not to mention Demetrius of Phalerum, who had advised Soter against
Philadelphus’ succession (Diog. Laert. 5.78-79). Nevertheless, Ptolemy’s public
image was that of a pious and beneficent diplomat, a model thoroughly in keeping
with Apollonius’ idealized portrait of the Phaeacian king Alcinous.27
At least one critic (Rostropowicz 1983) has also argued for the existence of a
similar parallel between Philadelphus and Jason.28 Jason’s characterization is more
dynamic than that of Alcinous, and as a consequence certain of his actions, like the
murder of Apsyrtus, render the comparison rather less flattering to the king. Still,
Jason’s duties are primarily diplomatic: we learn during the election at Pagasae that
the leader (orchamos) of the Argonauts is to be responsible for handling quarrels and
agreements with foreign leaders (1.338-40). In such circumstances Jason would
presumably act as an advocate on behalf of the Argonauts rather than as an impartial
arbiter, and yet the centrality of mediation (in contrast to heroic aggression) in the
Argonautic representation of responsible leadership clearly aligns Jason—at least in
this regard—with Alcinous and thus, by extension, with Ptolemy himself.
27
For the nest of associations between Philadelphus and Alcinous, see Hunter 1993, 161-62; 1995, 2225. On generosity, justice, and mildness of temper as political virtues that are associated with the
idealized Hellenistic king, see Aalders 1975, 21.
28
Rostropowicz 1983, 61 argues that Philadelphus is a model for Jason’s diplomatic character, as well
as his charitable aid to characters in need, such as Phineus and Phrixus. The idealized portrait of the
Hellenistic king as a defender of the weak can also be seen, she suggests, in Alcinous.
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
187
Moreover, Jason’s formal contact with the divine both confirms and secures
his leadership of the Argonauts. This proportional relation between Jason’s hegemony
and ritual practice is reinforced by the characterization of other authority figures, all
of whom comprise an array of ethical modulations ranging from the fair and
diplomatic to the arrogant and xenophobic. More precisely, the moral stance of rulers
in the poem is typically correlated with the narrative duration and frequency of their
ritual activity. While almost all leaders engage in sacrifice of one kind or another, the
character and context of their sacrifices is evidently keyed to their respective political
temperaments. The more arrogant a given ruler is, the more tenuous or problematic
his ritual practice turns out to be (e.g., the savage Amycus performs no sacrifices, 2.197; Pelias sacrifices to the gods but fails to honor Hera, 1.14). Diplomatic kings, on
the other hand, are consistently linked with extended descriptions of prayer and
sacrifice. Such a correlation seems natural enough, but what is interesting is the way
in which the specific details of such scenes vary in accordance with the exercise, just
or unjust, of power.
Inasmuch as kings in the Argonautica offer cult but do not themselves receive
it, they more closely resemble their Homeric counterparts than the Ptolemies, and they
are, for the most part, portrayed as mortals, although there are several important
exceptions. Aietes, the son of Helios, is a demi-god,29 and Alcinous (like the rest of
the Phaeacians) is traditionally thought to be close to divine (ἀγχίθεοι, Od. 5.35). But
as Virginia Knight (1995, 247) points out, Apollonius alters the Homeric description
of Alcinous from θεοειδής (god-like, Od. 7.231) to θεουδής (god-fearing, Arg.
29
Other signs of Aietes’ divinity include the use of the term mēnis to describe his probable anger at
Alcinous (4.1205). This term is typically reserved for instances of divine anger: the only other
instances in the Argonautica are Cypris’ anger at the Lemnians (1.802) and Zeus’ anger at the Aeolids
(3.337).
188
ANATOLE MORI
4.1123).30 In Homeric epic the latter term appears in a formulaic expression that refers
to the mores of unfamiliar peoples. Odysseus, for example, uses the term as he
speculates about the Phaeacians, having just been awakened on the shore by the cries
of Nausicaa and her handmaids (6.120-21): “Are they arrogant, savage, and unjust, or
do they welcome strangers with god-fearing intent?”31 In the Argonautica, by contrast,
the philoxenic nature of the Phaeacians is apparent from the moment the Argonauts
arrive (4.994-1000 Vian):32
Οἱ δ’ἀγανῇσιν
Ἀλκίνοος λαοί τε θυηπολίῃσιν ἰόντας
δειδέχατ’ἀσπασίως, ἐπὶ δέ σφισι καγχαλάασκε
πᾶσα πόλις‧ φαίης κεν ἑοῖς ἐπὶ παισὶ γάνυσθαι.
Alcinous and his people gladly welcomed their arrival with
Propitiatory sacrifices, and the whole city celebrated:
You would say they were exulting in their own children.
In contrast to the Homeric Phaeacians (whose response to Odysseus’ arrival must be
carefully managed by Alcinous and Arete as well as by Athena and Nausicaa), the
Argonautic Phaeacians are shown to be pious and immediately hospitable,
spontaneously joining in with the royal celebration. The narrator explains that they
claim descent from the Titan Uranus (4.991-92), and have inherited a sacred island of
ancient fertility.33 Alcinous’ prime attribute, his god-fearing (θεουδής) nature, is thus
a distinguishing characteristic of all the Phaeacians. But because of Alcinous’ position
as king, this fearful respect plays a crucial role. As he explains to Arete, he is unable
to protect Medea by forcing the Colchians to leave because he fears the “straight
30
The two words differ in meaning, although θεουδής was evidently mistaken by later writers for
θεοειδής (see B. Snell et al., Lexicon des frühriechischen Epos (Göttingen, 1979), s.v. θεουδής.
31
6.120-21 (= 9.175-76 = 13.201-2 ≅ 8.575-76): ἠ ῥ’ οἵ γ’ ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι οὐδὲ δίκαιοι /ἦε
φιλόξεινοι, καὶ σφιν νόος ἐστὶ θεουδής;
32
I have translated this and all other passages from the Argonautica.
33
The narrator explains that the island is said to be sickle-shaped either because of its association with
the instrument used by Cronus against Uranus (4.982-86) or because of its association with the reaping
hook of chthonian Demeter (4.986-91).
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
189
justice” (dikēn itheian) of Zeus (4.1100). Justice towards mortals (including
foreigners) is synonymous with piety towards the gods: in effect, for Alcinous, to be
god-fearing is to be just. Thus, the motivation behind Alcinous’ peaceful intervention
in the quarrel between the Argonauts and the Colchians is thus the direct result of his
pious regard for “straight justice.” Alcinous’ arbitration in this neikos is framed in
idealistic terms, but it is also realistic insofar as it mirrors the practice of third-party
mediation in international disputes.34 Alcinous’ arbitration therefore fits into the
pattern of mediation by Hellenistic rulers and other diplomatic emissaries who sought
to preserve homonoia (or at least to look like they were preserving it) all over the
ancient Mediterranean world.
To appreciate the narrative significance of Alcinous’ mediation in the
Colchian neikos, we need to look more closely at an earlier arbitration in the poem.
Alcinous is not, as it happens, the first king to arbitrate in the matter of Medea’s
status. We recall that the Argonauts had encountered the first half of the Colchian
fleet in the Brygeian isles on the Illyrian coast. The Argonauts are outnumbered and
quickly come to terms, rather unhomerically, rather than face defeat in battle (4.338340). The Colchians agree to allow them to retain the Golden Fleece, since Jason did
fulfill the labors stipulated by Aietes (4.341-44), but Medea’s fate is still disputed by
both sides (amphēriston, 4.345). The dispute is therefore left in the hands of one of
the local “kings who uphold just precedents” (themistouchōn basileuōn, 4.347) while
Medea is to be sequestered on a separate island in a sacred precinct of Artemis.
34
For evidence dealing with the intervention of kings, see Marshall 1980, 640 n. 47. See Ager 1996 on
the largely epigraphic evidence for between 150 and 200 examples of arbitration or mediation in the
two hundred and fifty years after Chaeronea. We have evidence for only about sixty cases of thirdparty mediation during the previous four centuries. See also Magnetto 1997 on mediation from 337 to
196, continuing the work of Piccirilli 1973, who collected instances down to 338.
190
ANATOLE MORI
Unfortunately for Medea, the surrounding tribes are Colchian partisans, and as
Jason points out, they are not only hostile (dusmeneōn, 4.397) but also eager to defend
Apsyrtus.35 It appears likely that any ruling of a royal arbiter selected by them would
probably favor the Colchians and return Medea to Aietes. Medea berates Jason for
abandoning her (4.376-78):
Σχέτλιε, εἰ γὰρ κέν µε κασιγνήτοιο δικάσσῃ
ἔµµεναι οὗτος ἄναξ τῷ ἐπίσχετε τάσδ’ἀλεγεινὰς
ἄµφω συνθεσίας, πῶς ἵξοµαι ὄµµατα πατρός;
Cruel man, if he judges that I am to be with my brother,
This king to whom the two of you36 assign this hurtful treaty,
How will I confront my father?
Medea’s fear is tied to her powerlessness: this treaty (synthesias, 4.378) with the
Colchians was made without her consent,37 and she has no more influence over “this
king” (houtos anax, 4.377), as she dismissively refers to him, than she does over
Aietes. Of particular interest here is her concern regarding the trustworthiness of the
synthesia. Medea will use the same term again in line 390, where she threatens that if
she returns to Colchis the spirits of vengeance will ruin Jason’s homecoming
regardless of his faith in this agreement (synthesiaōn). He cannot use her to treat with
the Colchians for safe passage, she reminds him, because he has already sworn a great
oath by Olympian Zeus and Hera Zugiē (Of the Marriage Yoke) to marry her (4.9596). Later, when the other half of the Colchian fleet catches up with the Argonauts on
the Phaeacian island Drepane, Medea will use a similar argument to persuade the rest
of the Argonauts, first begging them not to return her to her father, then threatening
them with divine retribution if they betray her (4.1042-44 Vian):
35
4.399: Ἀψύρτω µεµάασιν ἀµυνέµεν.
Jason and Apsyrtus.
37
The narrator observes that Medea reckoned the situation in her own mind (4.350): τὰ ἕκαστα νόω
πεµπάσσατο κούρη.
36
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
191
Δείσατε συνθεσίας τε καὶ ὅρκια,38 δείσατ’Ἐρινὺν
Ἱκεσίην νέµεσίν τε θεῶν, εἰς χεῖρας ἰούσης
Αἰήτεω λώβῃ πολυπήµονι δῃωθῆναι.
Fear treaties and oaths, fear the Erinys
Of suppliants and the vengeance of the gods, if into the hands
Of Aietes I fall to perish in agony.
Medea’s injunction regarding treaties (synthesias) and oaths (horkia) has a double
meaning: such agreements are to be feared not only because Nemesis and the Furies
will punish those who violate them, but also because they may be made covertly, to
the disadvantage of others, and easily lend themselves to deception.
As a priestess of Hecate, Medea is familiar with the divine sanctions against
oath-breaking, but past experience gives her no confidence in political negotiations.
As she tells Jason at the temple of Hecate: “In Greece I suppose this is a fine thing, to
honor agreements [synēmosynas alegynein],39 but Aietes isn’t disposed toward men
the way you said Minos the husband of Pasiphae is.” (3.1105-7). Hera similarly
describes Aietes as an arrogant (hyperphialos) king (3.15), a sentiment echoed by the
Phaeacian queen Arete as she pleads with Alcinous on Medea’s behalf (4.1083), and
by Argus, the son of Phrixus, who warns the Argonauts that Aietes is “horribly armed
with deadly cruelty.”40 These assessments of the king’s character are borne out by his
behavior, although it must be admitted that he is more sophisticated, or at least has a
greater regard for appearances, given the power of the gods, than either Amycus or
Pelias, the other kings in the poem.
38
In phrasing (if not sentiment) this line echoes Nestor’s speech at Iliad 2.339: “What will become of
our agreements and oaths?” (πῇ δὴ συνθεσίαι τε καὶ ὅρκια βήσεται ἥµιν;).
39
The use of this particular term for a covenant or agreement (συνηµοσύνη) suggests an agreement that
is sanctioned by the gods or close kinship. It is somewhat uncommon, occurring when Jason tells his
mother to have confidence in Athena’s agreements (Arg. 1.300): θάρσει δὲ συνηµοσύνῃσιν Ἀθήνης.
Achilles also uses it when he refuses to treat with Hector regarding the terms of their duel (Il. 22.261):
“Hector, don’t go droning on and on about covenants, you wretch.” (Ἕκτορ, µή µοι, ἄλαστε,
συνηµοσύνας ἀγόρευε).
40
2.1202-3: “ Ἀλλ’ αἰνῶς ὀλοῇσιν ἀπηνείῃσι ἄρηρεν / Αἰήτης…”
192
ANATOLE MORI
When the sons of Phrixus introduce the Argonauts to Aietes, he initially
attempts to camouflage his intentions with a semblance of civilized behavior.41 He
imagines that the sons of Phrixus have returned in order to seize his throne (3.576605), and soon openly accuses them of uttering lies against the gods (3.381). Only his
“respect for the rules of hospitality” prevents him, he says, from cutting off their
tongues and hands (3.377-80). As Campbell observes, Aietes here demonstrates some
respect for the laws of the gods,42 yet it seems that this respect is little more than a
pragmatic concession. Years ago he had received the suppliant Phrixus, although only
because Zeus forced him to (3.587-88), and afterwards he sacrificed the ram of the
Golden Fleece, somewhat grudgingly one imagines, to Zeus Phyxios (Patron of
Fugitives). He now puts on a show of welcoming Phrixus’ sons by Chalciope, Aietes’
eldest daughter, whose attempt to return to Greece, the land of their father, has ended
in shipwreck (3.270-74):
Τὸ δ’ αὐτίκα πᾶν ὁµάδοιο
ἕρκος ἐπεπλήθει‧ τοὶ µὲν µέγαν ἀµφεπένοντο
ταῦρον ἅλις δµῶες, τοὶ δὲ ξύλα κάγκανα χαλκῷ
κόπτον, τοὶ δὲ λοετρὰ πυρὶ ζέον‧ οὐδέ τις ἦεν
ὃς καµάτου µεθίεσκεν ὑποδρήσσων βασιλῆι.
At once the whole courtyard
Was filled with people. Some of the servants attended to
A great bull, while others cut dry wood with a bronze axe
And heated water for bathing. There was no one
In service to the king who shirked his labor.
The description of the sacrifice recalls typical hospitality scenes in some respects: a
hospitable welcome is being prepared. Yet on second thought there are interesting
omissions in the narrative. A sacrifice is alluded to, but there is no actual reference to
41
Williams 1996, 465 points out that the Argonauts are themselves uncertain what to expect from
Aietes, since they have received conflicting reports about his disposition earlier in the poem.
42
Campbell 1994, p. 324 ad 377f.: “We are reminded then in no uncertain terms that Aeetes does
indeed, despite the vile talk issuing from his lips at this moment, have regard for the laws of
hospitality...—not that he can bring himself to appeal to Zeus Xenios openly.”
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
193
any god, no description of a ritual or prayer, and no mention of a feast. For that
matter, it can hardly come as a surprise, given Aietes’ angry reaction to Jason’s
request for the Golden Fleece, that the Argonauts are not invited (3.448). The narrator
draws our attention only to the servants’ concern to accomplish their duties without
delay: what the scene illustrates is not the respect of the king for the gods, but the
servants’ fear of the king. Similarly, when Aietes speaks of his respect for the
immortals, he is merely acknowledging their superior strength. Justice is one-sided for
Aietes, who inhabits a Hobbesian world where the weak struggle in the shadow of the
strong (3.420-21): “It is unseemly for a noble [agathon] man to yield to one low-born
[kakōterōi]” regardless, it is clear, of any agreements they may have made.43 In the
end, however, Aietes miscalculates his strength, for he will lose his daughter, his son,
and the Colchian fleet as well. He has threatened them with death if they return
without Medea (4.234-35), and after Apsyrtus’ death both halves of the fleet elect
remain in exile rather than return to Aietes empty-handed.44
Alcinous calls Aietes “most imperious” of kings (basileuteros, 4.1102), a term
that alludes to Agamemnon’s self-description in his failed attempt to win Achilles
over (Il. 9.160): “Let him yield to me, for I am the more kingly.”45 While Aietes’
Agamemnon-like ‘kingliness’ would likely suggest wrong-headed arrogance to a
Greek audience, the kings of Colchis claimed him as an ancestor, much as Alexander
claimed Achilles.46 Aietes’ entrance hall is certainly reminiscent of the sumptuous
43
See also 3.437-38.
Some of them settle on the Brygean isles of Artemis, others on the mainland, either near the tomb of
Harmonia and Cadmus or in the mountains of Zeus the Thunderer (4.514-21), and still others among
the Phaeacians and later the Abantes, the Nestaeans and the town of Oricum (4.1211-16). See Chapter
3.
45
For this reference I am indebted to the anonymous reader.
46
According to Xenophon (Anab. 5.6.36), Colchian kings claimed descent from Aietes; the name was
used at least until the sixth century. See Braund 1994, 37 n.183.
44
194
ANATOLE MORI
Persian palaces found by Alexander at Susa, Babylon, and Persepolis,47 for the
courtyard is filled with galleries and ringed with a bronze wall covered with flowering
vines (3.217-37). Within the wall are four fountains, forged by the god Hephaestus,
which flow with milk, wine, oil, and water, running hot and cold in conjunction with
the trajectory of the Pleiades.48 Aietes is thus a richly drawn character: both an
Eastern potentate of divine heritage and a proud king in the tradition of Homeric
chieftains, as the arming scene in which the narrator praises his helmet, shield, and
spear indicates (3.1225-34).49 Yet despite these associations, he remains a flawed
ruler. His contempt for scheming foreigners ironically leads him to break his own
word, while his xenophobia leads him to condemn well-intentioned guests and to
make enemies of his own family. In the complex political world of the Argonautica,
the line between friend and foe is based on behavior rather than ethnic background,
and the implication is that the ‘kingliest’ of kings, in a positive sense, will be the one
who preserves the interests of all people upon the earth, not just his own.
Aietes is therefore the opposite of Alcinous, whose strength is rooted in the
peaceful preservation of agreements. Like the royal arbiter in the Brygeian isles,
Alcinous is called upon to resolve the Colchian neikos (4.1009-10), but unlike his
anonymous predecessor he succeeds to the satisfaction of all parties. He seeks, as he
tells his wife, the queen Arete, a just solution that will seem best to everyone (pasin
anthrōpoisin, 4.1104-5), and so he has determined that Medea’s marital status will
47
The Colchians were not exactly thought to be Persian, and this area of the Black Sea coast was
settled by Greeks in the sixth century. Herodotus 3.97 observes that the Colchians, like the Ethiopians,
were not taxed by Darius with tribute, but instead gave him gifts, and that the government was Persian
as far north as the Caucasus mountains, though that was the limit of their sovereignty.
48
This prodigy of nature suggests a parallel with the marvel of the spring flowing with water and oil
encountered by Alexander en route to Sogdiana (Arr. 4.15.7-8). Clauss (1997, 156) notes that other
parallels include the four fountains of Calypso’s cave (Od. 5.68-73a) and the hot and cold sources of
the Scamander River (Il. 22.148-52). See also Knight 1995, 227.
49
See Williams 1996 who takes Aietes’ part, arguing that in contrast to the thieving Argonauts the king
behaves like an outraged Homeric warrior demanding justice.
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
195
determine her fate. During the night before he announces this judgment publicly, a
private wedding is arranged by Arete to ensure that as Jason’s new wife Medea will
not be sent home to her father. It seems that even among the Phaeacians synthesiai are
deployed with strategic foresight, but the crucial difference between the Phaeacian
and Brygeian negotiations lies in the result. The secret marriage on Drepane ensures
that no one will be harmed, whereas the dolos of Jason and Medea leads to the killing
not only of Apsyrtus but also of his ship’s crew (Argon. 4.485-89 Vian):
Κόλχον δ’ ὄλεκον στόλον, ἠύτε κίρκοι
φῦλα πελειάων ἠὲ µέγα πῶυ λέοντες
ἀγρότεµοι κλονέουσιν ἐνὶ σταθµοῖσι θορόντες.
οὐδ’ ἄρα τις κείνων θάνατον φύγε, πάντα δ’ ὅµιλον
πῦρ ἅ τε δηιόωντες ἐπέδραµον.
...they preyed on the Colchian force like hawks
On a flock of doves, or as wild lions
Plunder a sheepfold, rushing among the great flock.
Not one of those men escaped death: the whole crowd
They overran, killing like fire.
In this scene we find the vicious fruits of Eros that are condemned by the narrator
some lines above in an apostrophe to the cruel god (4.445-47).50 In effect the slaughter
of the Colchians is the unintended consequence of the Brygeian arbiter’s failed
negotiation, for his suspected partiality inspires no confidence among the Argonauts
and therefore protects no one, whereas Alcinous’ skillfully executed arbitration
injures neither the Argonauts nor the surviving members of the Colchian fleet and for
that matter preserves the security of the Phaeacians as well.
On the morning after the secret wedding Alcinous goes forth to reveal his
decision “in accordance with their agreement” (sunthesiēsin).51 As Vian points out in
his note on 4.1176, the narrator alluded to this agreement earlier in line 4.1010, where
50
Cf. the wolf in the sheepfold simile of the Argonauts’ attack on the Bebrycians after the death of
Amycus (2.123-29).
51
4.1175-76: ...Ἀλκίνοος µετεβήσετο συνθεσίῃσιν ὅν νόον ἐξερέων κούρης ὕπερ…
196
ANATOLE MORI
we learn of Alcinous’ desire to resolve the neikos without bloodshed.52 Moreover, we
later find that Alcinous has taken care to “yoke” both the Colchians and the Argonauts
to this agreement with “unbreakable oaths” (ἀρρήκτοισι δ’ ἐνιζεύξας ἔχεν ὅρκοις,
4.1205). They are yoked to their agreement much as Jason is yoked by his oath to
Hera to marry Medea; such oaths are certainties to which the Colchians, from Aietes
and Medea to Apsyrtus and the entire fleet, are unaccustomed. Alcinous, by contrast,
applies treaties and oaths, like those with which Medea threatens the Argonauts
(συνθεσίας τε καὶ ὅρκια, 4.1042), to lawful, peaceful ends. The “straight decrees”
(itheias themistas, 4.1179; cf. 1207) delivered by the just king are quite different from
those of Aietes, or the violent Amycus, whose own decree (emas themistas, 2.17) is
simply that all foreigners must elect a champion to fight him to the death.53 As Hunter
has recently observed,54 Alcinous’ “straight decrees” anticipate a peaceful
reconciliation like those of Hesiod’s wise king, whose themistes are rooted in “straight
judgment” (Theog. 84-87 West):55
οἱ δὲ νυ λαοὶ
πάντες ἐς αὐτὸν ὁρῶσι διακρίνουντα θέµιστας
ἰθείῃσι δίκῃσιν‧ ὁ δ’ ἀσφαλέως ἀγορεύων
αἶψά τι καὶ µέγα νεῖκος ἐπισταµένως κατέπαυσε.
…All the people
look to him as he makes decisions [themistas]
with straight judgment [itheiēsi dikeisin]. He addresses the assembly steadfastly
and quickly puts a stop to even a great conflict in his wisdom.
Alcinous similarly relies on the “straight judgment” (dikēs itheiēs) of Zeus, by using
Medea’s marital status, the “contested point” (amphēriston, 4.345), as the foundation
4.1010: λελίητο γὰρ ἀµφοτέροισι, δηιοτῆτος ἄνευθεν ὑπέρβια νείκεα λῦσαι.
The truly lawless, like the Amazons, apparently do not even honor such rudimentary themistes as that
of Amycus (2.987-88).
54
Hunter 2004, 127.
55
Clare 2002, 203-4; Vian 2002, 3:120 n. 5.
52
53
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
197
of his decision.56 That Jason and Medea’s wedding took place only hours before
makes no difference, then, since this does not violate the terms of the original
agreement with the Colchians. Alcinous’ steadfast adherence to this agreement is
directly opposed to the “crooked judgment” (to use the Hesiodic idiom) of Aietes,
who broke his own agreement regarding the Golden Fleece. As we observed earlier,
the Colchians themselves recognize the Argonauts’ claim on the fleece, regardless of
whether they acquired it by trickery (doloisin, 4.343) or openly (amphadiēn, 4.344),
because Aietes had already agreed before his entire court to give it to them upon the
completion of the labors in the field of Ares (4.341-44). “Straight justice” is a
measure of the king’s public integrity, not the methods, whether secret or open, by
which others seek to anticipate or accommodate his rulings.
From a structural point of view, the centrality of piety in Alcinous’ “straight
justice” is reinforced by the order of events themselves, for the description of the
communal sacrifice and celebration literally interrupts Alcinous’ public declaration.
On the morning of the pronouncement, the king arrives holding his staff of justice and
flanked by Phaeacian warriors (4.1176-81). The narrator then describes the arrival of
crowds of women who come to see the heroes (4.1182-83), as well as field labourers
who have learned of the gathering through a rumour sent by Hera (4.1183-85). Our
attention is thereby drawn to the preparations for sacrifice and the public
acknowledgement and celebration of Jason and Medea’s midnight nuptials. This is a
lengthy passage, but I will include it in order to clarify the elements of the scene
(4.1185-1200 Vian):
Ἄγεν δ’ ὁ µὲν ἔκκριτον ἄλλων
ἀρνειὸν µήλων, ὁ δ’ ἀεργηλὴν ἔτι πόρτιν‧
56
1185
4.1201-2: Αὐτὰρ ὅ γ’, ὡς τὰ πρῶτα δίκης ἀνὰ πείρατ’ ἔειπεν, ἰθείης, ἤδη δὲ γάµου τέλος
ἐκλήιστο.
198
ANATOLE MORI
ἄλλοι δ’ ἀµφιφορῆας ἐπισχεδὸν ἵστασαν οἴνου
κίρνασθαι‧ θυέων δ’ ἀπὸ τηλόθι κήκιε λιγνύς.
Αἱ δὲ πολυκµήτους ἑανοὺς φέρον, οἷα γυναῖκες,
µείλιά τε χρυσοῖο καὶ ἀλλοίην ἐπὶ τοῖσιν
ἀγλαΐην, οἵην τε νεόζυγες έντύνονται.
θάµβευν δ’ εἰσορόωσαι ἀριπρεπέων ἡρώων
εἴδεα καὶ µορφάς, ἐν δέ σφισιν Οἰάγροιο
υἱὸν ὑπαὶ φόρµιγγος ἐυκρέκτου καὶ ἀοιδῆς
ταρφέα σιγαλόεντι πέδον κρούοντα πεδίλῳ.
Νύµφαι δ’ ἄµµιγα πᾶσαι, ὅτε µνήσαιντο γάµοιο,
ἱµερόενθ’ ὑµέναιον ἀνήπυον‧ ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτε
οἰόθεν οἶαι ἄειδον ἑλισσόµεναι περὶ κύκλον,
Ἥρη, σεῖο ἕκητι‧ σὺ γὰρ καὶ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκας
Ἀρήτῃ πυκινὸν φάσθαι ἔπος Ἀλκινόοιο.
1190
1195
1200
One led a ram, selected from the rest
Of his flock, another a heifer still untrained,
And others set up wine jars close by for mixing
While the sacrificial smoke billowed up in the distance.
The women brought robes of rich brocade, as they do,
And golden offerings, and other kinds of finery
Worn by those new to the marriage yoke.
They marveled as they looked at the beauty and form
Of the matchless heroes, and among them Orpheus,
The son of Oeagrus, tapping his ornate sandal
In time to the tune of his well-strung lyre.
All the nymphs mingled their voices, the wedding in mind,
Sweetly hymning a bridal melody, but at other times
They sang unaccompanied, dancing around in a circle,
To honor you, Hera, for it was your inspiration that led
Arete to disclose the wise word of Alcinous.
The contrast with the sacrifice in Aietes’ palace is apparent: here all the people take
part of their own volition, out of curiosity and admiration. The just themistes of
Alcinous are “decrees that favor the people” (dēmoteras themistas) that are
encouraged by Dike, the goddess of Judgment herself, as she is portrayed in Aratus’
Phaenomena.57 The passage is not so much a narrative as a tableau of ecphrastic or
pictorial images: the preparations for sacrifice, the harvest of gifts for the married
couple, the scene of choral singing and dancing—all these events are framed by the
public assembly in a ring composition. As a result, the chronological sequence of
57
Arat. Phaen. 107: δηµοτέρας ἤειδεν ἐπισπέρχουσα θέµιστας.
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
199
events in this passage is very loosely defined: it is not clear whether the wedding
celebration takes place before, during, or after Alcinous’ declaration. Although the
general chronology is uncertain, the ring composition (assembly—celebration—
assembly) ensures that the communal sacrifice forms the dramatic heart of Alcinous’
proclamation, which is neither quoted nor summarized again here. When the
description of the assembly resumes after the apostrophe to Hera in line 1200, it reads
like a denouement, especially since the judgment and its effects are only briefly
summarized (4.1201-10). In the aftermath of the secret nuptials and the public
recognition of the wedding, Alcinous’ decision seems unassailable, even anticlimactic, to the reader, not to mention to the Colchians, who quickly accept it
(4.1206-10). The structure of the scene forcefully demonstrates the strength of the
Phaeacian king, whose just power is expressed in the strategic admixture of private
diplomacy with pious celebration and a public display of military strength. The justice
of the king can only be kept straight, in other words, through compromise and a
broadly conceived respect for all concerned--the gods, the community, guests and
foreign visitors alike.
It is helpful to compare the idealized Phaeacian tableau of assembly and
celebration with the ecphrastic representation of the Homeric city at peace that is
depicted on Achilles’ shield (Il. 18.491-508). The peaceful city is characterized by
scenes of a marriage procession, with women admiring the young men as they sing
and dance, and by arbitration over a neikos (Il. 18.497) regarding the blood price of a
homicide. Alcinous is the Argonautic equivalent of the Iliadic judge who will win two
talents of gold for the “straightest judgment” (dikēn ithuntata, 18.508). Both these
arbitrations emphasize the connection of the just rule of law with the fertility of the
people; they are contrasted, moreover, with scenes of conflict, neikea, that end in
200
ANATOLE MORI
death. The description of the city at war portrays a terrible ambush by the banks of a
river (18.509-40): an apt comparison with the ambush of Apsyrtus and the Argonauts’
subsequent slaughter of his crew.
What separates ambush from arbitration both for Homer and for Apollonius is
the “straight justice” of Zeus, who strengthens synthesiai, themistai, and horkia with
unbreakable bonds. But in the Argonautica Zeus’ justice extends far beyond the walls
of the peaceful Homeric city to honour all those who come from distant lands, the
Argonauts and Colchians alike. The possibility that this is nothing more than
ideologically charged artifice, the fanciful tale of a Golden Fleece whose brilliance is
meant, like the gold of Philadelphus’ grand procession, to dazzle the viewer, may not,
perhaps, have been lost on Apollonius’ original audience. It is tempting, moreover, to
think that the poem is more critical than has previously been supposed, to see it as a
cautionary tale that attributes, perhaps, something of Aietes’ superficial concern for
appearances to all kings, including Philadelphus, or at least warns against the
corrosive threat that such tendencies pose to a just society. In any case it is clear that
the poem’s association of justice with peace-loving, philoxenic piety does not merely
counter the combative heroism of traditional epic. Rather, it offers in its place a
distillation of Ptolemaic ideology that is most evident in the contrast between
Alcinous and Aietes. The episodes in which Aietes appears dramatize his
untrustworthiness, his suspicious, belligerent, and autocratic character, the
perfunctory nature of his piety, and his utter failure to cooperate with foreign guests or
even to consider their requests in a reasonable fashion. By contrast, the episodes in
which Alcinous appears reveal his interest in the wise counsel of his wife, his
empathy for suppliants, fidelity to agreements, and respect for the gods, and in
addition his reluctance to involve himself, his people, and his Greek allies in a costly
APPOLONIUS’ ARGONAUTICA
201
war. In this way Alcinous embodies the ideals that are indeed associated with
Philadelphus, who is publicly represented as a pious, just, and diplomatic ruler whose
military strength is cautiously deployed as a deterrent to aggression, as a means to
recover only that which has always already belonged to Egypt.58
58
I am very grateful for the comments of the audience and participants at the Ptolemy II conference,
expecially Graham Zanker, Daniel Ogden, and Kostas Buraselis. I also owe a debt of thanks to the
organizers of the conference, Paul McKechnie in particular, as well as to the anonymous reader for
helpful suggestions and observations.
MARESHA IN THE REIGN OF PTOLEMY II PHILADELPHUS
Amos Kloner
During the third century BCE Maresha (Marissa) was under Ptolemaic rule and
became the main city of Idumaea. It is mentioned in several of the Zenon papyri dated
259-257 BCE, shedding light on intensive commercial activities and trade between the
city and Egypt (Edgar 1925-1931. P.Cairo 59006, 59015, 58537). Although there is
ample evidence of third century BCE occupation at Maresha, the author has chosen to
concentrate on only two areas: some economic-numismatic evidence and the tombs
from the eastern necropolis presented below. The finds from Khirbet Za’aquqa
reinforce this evidence and are also presented here.
The Economic Numismatic Evidence
Of the 950 coins found at Maresha, 135 are Ptolemaic. Of these, 116 coins date from
the time of Ptolemy I (305-283 BCE) and that of Ptolemy VIII (170-117 BCE). Of
these, 78 coins were from the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (67.25% of the total).
Six of the 135 Ptolemaic coins are tetradrachms: three of Ptolemy II (one minted at
Alexandria and two at Tyre); two of Ptolemy III (minted at Ioppe and Sidon); and one
of Ptolemy VIII (most probably minted at Aradus). Two silver-plated tetradrachms of
Ptolemy II were also found. These coins are clear evidence that in the third century
BCE
the local population of Maresha used Ptolemaic coins, about half of which were
minted at Alexandria and the other half at Tyre. This may also indicate that almost all
of their trade was conducted with Egypt and Egyptian-dominated lands.
Distribution of Ptolemaic coins found at Maresha:
Ruler
No. of Coins
Percentage
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MARESHA
Ptolemy I Soter (305-283 BCE)
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BCE)
Ptolemy II or III
Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 BCE)
Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-205 BCE)
Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-180 BCE)
Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (170-117 BCE)
12
78
4
16
4
1
1
10.35%
67.25%
3.45%
13.80%
3.45%
0.85%
0.85%
Although only two pre-Ptolemaic coins were found, there are historical and
archaeological indications for an Idumaean settlement during the Persian period and
the general impression from the excavations is of continuity from the Persian to the
Ptolemaic period, especially indicated by finds from the Lower City. The total picture
is of a settlement already begun under Ptolemy I, while according to the numismatic
evidence as well as other finds from the excavation, the main floruit of the city was
under Ptolemy II.1
The Evidence from the Necropoli of Maresha
The caves in which the residents of Hellenistic Maresha buried their dead form a ring
around and outside the city limits of the Lower City, arranged in three groups: the
eastern necropolis, the south-western necropolis and the northern necropolis (Kloner
2003:21-30). In this study we will concentrate on the eastern necropolis, and will not
use evidence from the south-western and northern necropoli. Besides these three
Hellenistic necropoli, seven constructed trough burials, presumably Persian in date,
were excavated in the 1994 season in Area 940 in the eastern area of Maresha; only
one contained a complete skeleton; the remainder appeared to have been emptied in
antiquity.
The Eastern Necropolis
1
I would like to thank Dr. Rachel Barkai, the numismatist who worked on the coins from the Maresha
excavations, who enabled me to use her study written here. The full numismatic report will be
published in one of the coming volumes of the Maresha Excavation Final Report (in press). Secondly, I
would like to thank Mrs. Sherry Whetstone for the English editing of the article.
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AMOS KLONER
East of Maresha along a valley running north-south at a distance of ca. 250 m from
the Upper City is a strip-like concentration of at least 25 hewn burial caves. The basic
plan is of a rectangular hall with benches along the walls and kokhim (loculi) with
gabled façades cut in the walls. The plans, the gabled loculi, the murals and the
inscriptions found in them date these burial caves to the first half of the third century
BCE
Although the population of Maresha was a mixture of Edomites, Sidonians,
Greeks and peoples from other ethnic origins including Egyptians, all of them were
Hellenized and used Greek.
The tomb caves of the eastern necropolis have attracted the attention of many
scholars. The first three tombs were discovered and described but not drawn by
Conder and Kitchener (1873:272). Clermont-Ganneau (1896:445-6) prepared a plan
of the third tomb identified by Conder and Kitchener and mentioned another, which
may be identical to one of those mentioned by the Survey of Western Palestine team.
Peters and Thiersch (1905) published four tombs found by grave robbers in 1902.
Two of these (Tombs I-II) contained wall paintings and many Greek inscriptions. In
1913 Moulton (1915:63-70) added another tomb of the same type. In 1923 the
Dominican Fathers explored several more tombs (Tombs V-VII) with inscriptions.2 Of
the approximately twenty remaining tombs in the eastern necropolis, about ten are
located near and to the east of Tombs I-II. Of these, Tomb VIII characterized by its
architectural elements of engaged pillars and capitals was published by Oren and
Rappaport (1984:133-5).
The painted tombs published by Peters and Thiersch in 1905 are considered
the most important Sidonian-Idumaean burial caves to have been discovered and will
be described in detail here. Thirty inscriptions, mainly names of the deceased, and
2
Abel 1925, 267-75; Tomb VII was published 12 years earlier by Moulton.
MARESHA
205
five Greek graffiti were found in Tomb I (T551); similar inscriptions were found in
Tomb II (T552).
Tomb I (T551)
This is the largest (21 x 17 m) and most richly decorated tomb. It consists of an
ornamented and decorated entrance hall and a passageway to three burial chambers. A
pedestal for a statue was hewn on the right side of the entrance to the middle chamber;
an altar stood to the left of the entrance. There were thirteen gabled kokhim in the
middle of the hall, six hewn in the northern wall and seven hewn in the southern wall.
Long benches ran along the walls beneath them. A recess in the rear wall flanked by
pilasters served as a passage to another three burial rooms. Five kokhim were hewn in
the long walls and four in the short wall opposite the entrance in the north burial
chamber. Five kokhim were hewn in the long walls and three in the short wall in the
south chamber.
The wall paintings and inscriptions found in the tomb have attracted the most
interest. A carved and painted dotted wreath decorates the longer walls of the main
chamber. A continuous frieze of hunting scenes and animals runs from the southwestern corner to the opposite north-western corner beneath the wreath; the majority
of the animals are accompanied by inscriptions in Greek.
The first figure on the right is a youth blowing a trumpet. To his left is a rider on a
horse with a beautifully decorated saddle; below him is a running hunting dog. The
rider hurls a spear at an animal bleeding from a wound caused by an arrow in its
breast; a second hunting dog attacks the beast from the rear. Above the rider, ΙΠΠΟ
ΛΙΒΑΝΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΙΠΠΙΚΟΥ is written, translated by Peters and Thiersch (1905:24)
as the “horse from the Lebanon of the rider”. The inscription has also been rendered
as the “horse of Libanus the cavalry commander” (Meyboom 1995:44, 282).
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AMOS KLONER
ΠΑΡΔΑΛΟC (leopard) is painted above the hunted beast. A palm tree, painted black,
separates the leopard from a stalking lion to the left, identified as a ΠΑΝΘΗΡΟC
(panther) in the inscription above it. The figure of the next animal was destroyed
when two of the kokhim were joined. To the left is a huge bull (ΤΑΥΡΟC) collapsed
on bent forelegs, with blood running from its mouth. A large snake writhes to the left
of the bull. Behind the bull are a giraffe (ΚΑΜΕΛΟΠΑΡΔΑΛΟC) facing left and a
boar facing right. To the left is a griffin (ΓΡΥΨ) with a lion’s body and eagle’s head
and wings. Facing in the same direction is a running antelope (ΟΡΥΞ) with long horns
curled at the ends and a striped body. Again a tree, similar to the previous one,
separates the deer from a red rhinoceros or hippopotamus ambling to the left and
above it is written ΡΙΝΟΚΕΡΩC (rhinoceros). To his left walks a war elephant
(ΕΛΕΦΑC) painted black and equipped with a saddle for the mahout and a canopy.
The figure to the left of the elephant was destroyed in 1902 as were the faces of the
trumpeter and the rider (Peters and Thiersch 1905:2, 23). ΑΙΘΙΟΠΙΑ (Ethiopia) is
inscribed above the defaced figure, apparently the symbol of Africa.
On the opposite side are two fish, one with the trunk and nose of an elephant
and the other with the head of a rhinoceros. To their left is a crocodile
(ΚΡΟΚΟΔΙΛΟC) with an ibis (ΙΒΙΣ) perched on its back. Behind them are a
hippopotamus, a wild ass (ΟΝΑΓΡΙΟC) struggling with a snake and a wolf with a tall
tuft of straight hair. To its left is another rhinoceros with one horn, which might be
identified as an Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornus). Next is a porcupine
(ΥΣΤΡΙΧ) whose body is directed down and forward. Further to the left is a lynx
(ΛΥΝΞ). At the end of the frieze stands a lamassou, a lion with a human face and
beard. Beneath the frieze are painted laurel wreaths tied with red ribbons; Ionic
capitals are painted below them at the tops of the pilasters and between the kokhim.
MARESHA
207
In the corridor (Room A) above the altar is a drawing of a red cock and on the
doorjamb near the entrance to the middle hall (Room D) is an image of Kerberos
(Cerberus). The recess in the middle burial chamber leading to the rear burial room is
decorated with a triangular pediment similar to that of a Greek temple. The pediment
is ornamented with a stylized leaf design and below it runs a Doric frieze. The two
pilasters flanking the entrance are painted red and have a rosette under the capital.
On either side of the pilasters are tall black-painted amphorae, the one on the
right surrounded by a white band and that on the left by a red band. The amphorae are
covered with lids painted in the same colors and have long fillets tied to the handles
and represent loutrophori. Loutrophori, generally made of stone, especially marble,
were used to mark graves in the Greek world (Bergemann 1996). This vessel, standing
above grave mounds in vase paintings and adorned with ribbons on grave reliefs is
common in Greek funerary art (Kurtz and Boardman 1971:152). This custom
evidently became widespread in the Hellenistic period, mainly in the fourth and third
centuries BCE. Two types of loutrophori existed: those with three handles (hydriae)
and those with two handles (amphorae). The loutrophori depicted at Maresha are of
the two-handled type.
The legs of a bed are carved in relief at the base of the recess. In front of the
recess at either side of the pediment two eagles with outspread wings stand on a
wreath which runs the entire length of the walls. Under each eagle is a yellow table
whose legs end in a lion’s foot. On each table rests a white (silver) incense burner in
the form of three griffins set on a base (Peters and Thiersch 1905:21).
Thirty inscriptions, mainly names of the deceased, and five Greek graffiti were
found in the tomb in addition to the sixteen titles of the animals and human in the
main frieze. Above the entrance to Burial Chamber XXXVI to the right of the above
208
AMOS KLONER
mentioned recess (Room E) is the epitaph of Apollophanes, son of Sesmaios, head of
the Sidonian colony in Marisa (Peters and Thiersch 1905:21):
Apollophanes, son of Sesmaios, thirty-three years chief of the Sidonians at
Marisê, reputed the best and most kin-loving of all those of his time. He died,
having lived seventy-four years.
Many members of his family are buried in this tomb. The names of the fathers are
generally Semitic while those of the sons are Greek. The Idumaean names (Babas and
names compounded with Qos) attest to the assimilation of the Sidonian family into the
Edomite population among whom they dwelt, while the Greek names are evidence of
gradual Hellenization.
One of the graffiti (No. 33) inscribed in four lines is either a poetic dialogue
between a pair of lovers, or a letter addressed to a lover (Peters and Thiersch 1905:5659). The interpretation of this dialogue has aroused much debate as to whether it is
actually a poem, or merely a letter. Another carved inscription (No. 34) mention the
priest Miron and a woman named Calypso. It is to this Calypso to whom the “poem”
is attributed without any justification.
The dates mentioned in Tomb I are from the Seleucid period (196-119 BCE)
and years one to five in a regnal era. The suggestion put forward by Peters and
Thiersch (1905:76-80) that these dates refer to a local era at Maresha is unacceptable.
The dates they suggest are too late and do not correspond to historical fact. Moreover,
this hypothesis does not explain the fact that the dating under discussion includes only
five years. According to Rappaport, the dating would seem rather to be Ptolemaic, in
which regnal years are counted so that years A, B and E would indicate years 1, 2 and
5 of a Ptolemaic king (Oren and Rappaport 1984:148).
Ptolemy V Epiphanes ruled in Egypt between 204-180 BCE, but his control
over Palestine ended with the fifth Syrian war in ca. 200 BCE. Years one to five would
MARESHA
209
cover his rule in Palestine, and no later dates are to be expected. Consequently, year Z
(=7) discovered in an inscription in Tomb 500 should be attributed to an earlier
Ptolemaic king. The dates of Ptolemy V’s reign are followed in the Maresha
inscriptions by dates according to the Seleucid era, of which the earliest is year ΡΙΖ
(year 117 of the Seleucid era), i.e. 196 BCE. Thus there is a sequence of dates at
Maresha from the Ptolemaic to the Seleucid periods.
According to Oren and Rappaport (1984:149) it is clear that the family of
Sesmaios began to use its tomb in Philadelphus’ reign, in the first half of the third
century BCE, since the great grandsons of Sesmaios were buried there in year B (203/2
BCE)
and year E (200/199 BCE).
Tomb II (T552)
This tomb, about 80 m south of Tomb I, is smaller (17 x 16m) but similar in plan to
the previous tomb. The hallway opens into a central hall with five kokhim in each side
wall. Behind it to the east is another room leading to seven small burial chambers.
North of the passageway is a chamber containing eight kokhim and small burial rooms
while the southern hall does not have kokhim. Above the kokhim in the central hall
(Room D) are painted garlands interspersed with wreaths. Large amphorae–
loutrophori–similar to those in Tomb I are painted on either side of the entrance to the
central hall. Tall candelabra with burning candles are painted on the pilasters between
the central hall and the one behind it; two small figures are painted beside each
candelabrum (Peters and Thiersch 1905:32). A fresco showing a man crowned with a
wreath, wearing a striped tunic and playing a double flute is painted on the wall to the
left of the door to the central burial room (XVII). Behind him walks a woman wearing
a multicolored dress and playing a harp. A libation scene and, behind it, a tripod and
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AMOS KLONER
kantharos are painted on the right side of the opening. Twelve inscriptions, dated by
Thiersch and Peters from 188-135 BCE were found in Tomb II.
The burial caves at Maresha are similar to ones at Alexandria from the time of
the Ptolemaic dynasty of the early Hellenistic period (McKenzie 1990:63-9). The
closest parallel to Tomb I (T551) and Tomb II (T552) is found at Shatby, Alexandria.
The gabled kokh, characteristic of almost all the Maresha tombs appears in Hypogeum
A at Shatby, dated to 280-250 BCE ( McKenzie 1990:63-4).
The paintings in the Maresha tombs are mainly characterized by Greek
sepulchral elements: eagles, the flute and harp players, Kerberos, the cock and the
amphorae (Kloner 2000) and possibly the rider. The present author does not
necessarily agree with D. Jacobson’s conclusion that elements of the Greek god
Dionysus and his cult are portrayed here, and therefore disagrees with his dating;
preferring instead the first part of the third century BCE (Jacobson 2004:24-39). The
animal frieze in Tomb I is influenced by Ptolemaic menagerie drawings such as those
known from Hellenistic Alexandria. There was great popular interest in the natural
sciences under Aristotle’s influence. From descriptions of the menageries of Ptolemy
II (according to Agatharchides) we know they included lions, leopards and other
felines, rodents, buffaloes from India and Africa, a wild ass from Moab, large snakes,
a giraffe, a rhinoceros and various birds–some of the very animals represented at
Maresha. The griffin was a Persian legacy. The animal with the human face is a
version of the Assyrian lamassou (a fabulous creature with a lion’s body, eagle’s
wings and human face, statues of which guarded palace entrances). Fish with an
elephant’s or rhinoceros’ face are taken from legends based on the belief of Greek
scholars that an exact correspondence existed between land and marine animals.
Hellenistic “travel stories” are replete with descriptions of animals of this kind, which
MARESHA
211
were found, they claimed, in remote corners of the earth. The animal frieze at
Maresha is a unique document of its kind in the Hellenistic world. Only Roman
mosaics, like those at Palestrina which postdates ours by ca. 140 years, show
influences from the same Hellenistic-Egyptian sources which the artist at Maresha
used for his inspiration (Meyboom 1995:43-80). The Maresha wall paintings should
be classified as provincial in comparison with other western Hellenistic centers such
as Palestrina (Roll 1985).
Tomb IV (T554)
Third century C.E. constructions and use were found in Tomb IV (T554), which was
not decorated with paintings but is important because of its inscriptions (Peters and
Thiersch 1905:29-33; Kloner 2003:25-6). The inscriptions that were written in two
different scripts and the plan of the tomb attest to chronological stages in the
functioning of the cave: it was hewn around the mid-third century BCE and the incised
inscriptions were made about that time and toward the end of the century; the painted
inscriptions were added at the end of the third and during the second century BCE. The
majority of the names are Greek, a few are Semitic, i.e., Idumaean or Sidonian (AviYonah and Kloner 1993:955; Kloner 2003:25-6).
Tomb T561
In 1985, during the course of work to deepen the bed of the highway along the ancient
road from Beth Guvrin to the Hebron Hills, another burial cave (T561) was
discovered in the eastern necropolis not far from Tomb I (Kloner 2003:26-27). This
was the first tomb ever discovered at Maresha that had not been broken into by grave
robbers and was resealed when the road was paved. The cave was discovered during a
survey of Subterranean Complex 71 when the examination of a plastered crack in the
complex led us to one of the kokhim. From the kokh it was possible to reach a
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AMOS KLONER
rectangular hall (4.1m long, 3.5m wide and 2.2m high) along the walls of which was a
low stone bench (0.40m wide and 0.50m high). In the south the wide, high entrance to
the hall was blocked with masonry. Most of the kokhim were 2.2m long and 0.70m
wide. Each had a gabled facade and roof 1.3m above floor level. The kokhim were
sealed with masonry and contained primary burials. Kokh 7 held the remains of a man
and woman laid in opposite directions: one inward, the other facing the opening of the
kokh. Only Kokh 3 contained collected bones, belonging to nine adults and two
children. A few bones of those buried in this kokh were found in other kokhim, in
which they had been buried first–another indication of secondary burial. A quarter of
those buried in the tomb were youths and infants. The bones of three adults showed
identifiable signs of tuberculosis, a very rare phenomenon in archaeological finds. Ten
pieces of pottery were found in the tomb; nine fusiform unguentaria which by their
form indicated an early Hellenistic use of the cave, and a small jar (Regev 1994:272;
Kloner 2003:26-7). The pottery allowed us to date the tomb to the first half of the
third century BCE. The tomb also contained fragments of glass vessels, a bronze ring
and bracelet, and an iron ring and iron axe. Only one graffito was found with an
unclear name that might be read as ΜΕΓΙC[ΤΑC].
The Evidence from Khirbet Za’aquqa
The third evidence of a completely Hellenized population, from a village or
farmhouse and not a main economic center, is found in a burial tomb at Khirbet
Za’aquqa, about 6km east of Marissa (Regev and Rappaport 1992:27*-50*).
Approximately twenty separate graffiti were found in this large loculus cave, of which
sixteen were read and published. These contained thirty-three personal Greek names
and indications of kinship, as well as one date (the twelfth regnal year of Ptolemy II
Philadelphus, corresponding to 272/1 BCE), all of them written in Greek. In none of
MARESHA
213
the tombs at Maresha and Khirbet Za’aquqa were any names found written in
Aramaic, another indication of the high degree of Hellenization in Idumaea.
The cave was cut into the chalk slope and fronted with a dromos-like
courtyard, most of which has not been excavated. The rectangular burial chamber has
a narrow shelf running along three walls, from which 14 large loculi (average size
1.2m wide, 2.3m long and 1.6m high) were hewn into the walls. The loculi, larger
than those in the contemporary cemetery at Marissa, appear to have been intended to
accommodate wooden coffins.
Numerous inscriptions and graffiti were incised on the cave walls, including
human portraits, architectural representations and a boat. The reading of the better
preserved inscriptions follows:
Year 12. Of Boutas son of Demophilos.
2a.
Year 12. Of B…./ …/ son of …
Diodotos son of Demophilos.
4a.
And of Rhodion, daughter of Demophilos.
4b.
Of Bryon son of B…
5a.
Of Demophilos son of Bryon.
5b.
And of Rhodion daughter of Demophilos.
Of Botrichos and of Dorotheos his father.
7a.
Of Athenion daughter of Demophilos.
Of Athenion.
9a.
Of Athenion daughter of Demophilos.
9b.
Of the father of everyone.
9c.
Of Demophilos, the father of everyone.
Of Nikobos son of Lys[imachos].
Of Botrichos son of Botrichos.
And the son of Dorotheos.
13a.
Baukis.
Of Philoklea wife of Dorotheos.
15a.
Of Demophilos son of Dorotheos.
15b.
Of Hegesias and/Byron (his/the) son/ of Hermias’ wife.
Of Byron Geonios (?)/ of Hedylion.
For the year appearing in Inscriptions 1 and 2, the twelth regnal year of Ptolemy II
Philadelphus (272/1 BCE) is proposed as the most plausible of several late fourth/early
third century BCE possibilities. The interpretation of the year as the age of the
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AMOS KLONER
deceased appears unlikely, as its placement at the beginning of the inscription is
consistent with date, rather than age, which usually comes at the end.
The onomasticon is purely Greek with no identifiable regional characteristics
like Idumaean, Arab or Judahite names, and may be ascribed to Greek settlers who
arrived during the early Hellenistic period–a date supported by the material culture
remains found in the tomb. During the three or four generations that the tomb was in
use, there is no sign of intermingling with local Idumaeans or other Semitic groups.
At the beginning of the third century BCE and especially at the time of Ptolemy
II Philadelphus the Greek language had become dominant among the local population,
as testified by the names inscribed in the tombs of Marissa and Za’aquqa. It is worth
mentioning that in the burial chambers, one of the places where the most traditional
practices are kept, no inscription written in any language other than Greek is found.
By contrast, ostraca written in Aramaic used by the Idumaeans from the third and
beginning of the second century BCE were found in subterranean complexes and other
surface areas, but not in burial caves. These Aramaic ostraca were used for the most
personal and private purposes, including a marriage contract dated to 176 BCE Greek
presumably reached Marissa directly from Alexandria, and it is amazing how quickly
it became the dominant language used in the daily life of Idumaea.
HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA UNDER PHILADELPHUS
Erja Salmenkivi
Herakleopolis Magna, in Egyptian (Hwt)-nn(y)-nswt, Coptic ϨΝΗϹ, modern Ihnasija
el-Medina, was the nome capital of a quite densely populated area in middle Egypt.
During the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2170/2120–2025/2020 BC), Herakleopolis
was the seat of the ninth and tenth dynasties, and again during the Third Intermediate
Period, the area around Herakleopolis was strategically important as a fortress for the
rulers of the twenty-second Dynasty.1 The site was religiously important throughout
the Pharaonic history,2 and what makes it, to my mind, interesting during the
Ptolemaic period is that it represents a kind of traditional administrative unit along the
Nile: it is not an exceptional area such as the Fayyum,3 and it is also not known to be
the stronghold of the native Egyptian resistance of the Macedonian rulers as the
Thebaid.
The Greek nome Herakleopolites corresponded approximately to the twentieth
Upper Egyptian nome Naret-Khentet, near the border between Upper and Lower
Egypt.4 The topography of this nome based on the Greek and Latin sources has been
thoroughly studied by Maria Rosaria Falivene (= Falivene 1998). Her book, however,
1
Gomaà 1977, 1124–1127. The dates of the First Intermediate period follow Beckerath 1997, 143–145;
188. About the 22nd Dynasty, see Kitchen 1986, chapters 7 and 18–20. The Spanish-Egyptian
archaeologists have continued to work more or less continuously at the necropoleis of the First and
Third Intermediate periods since the 1960’s, see, most recently, Pérez Die 2004, 63–88.
2
See further Mokhtar 1983.
3
See, for example, Thompson 2001, 1255.
4
The neighbouring nomes were Arsinoites to the north-west, Memphites to the north, Aphroditopolites
to the north-east and Kynopolites to the south-east on the east bank of the Nile and Oxyrhynchites to
the south. The northern border of the nome ran near Abu Sir al-Malaq (< Bousiris < Pr-wsjr-mht-3bِdw)
both during the Pharaonic and the Graeco-Roman periods, cf. Montet 1957, 193; Falivene 1998, 21;
Salmenkivi 2002, 13–15. About the southern border near al-Hiba, see further note 11 below.
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ERJA SALMENKIVI
excludes the sources on the metropolis,5 but she notes that: “Even at the time when the
Greeks called it Herakleopolis, this was an important town, deserving a special study
which cannot be attempted here.”6 On the other hand, Ulrich Wilcken noted, in his
1903 article on papyrus excavations in Herakleopolis Magna, that our knowledge of
the Ptolemaic town is almost nonexistent. He wrote: “Doch wird Herakleopolis und
der herakleopolitische Gau mehrfach in ptolemäischen Papyri erwähnt, freilich ohne
daß wir über die Stadt selbst daraus Genaueres erführen.”7 My attempt in this paper
(and especially in a forthcoming study on Hellenistic Herakleopolis Magna) is to
challenge Wilcken’s statement and to study the evidence from the large number of
Ptolemaic papyri that have been published during the past ca. 100 years and concern
directly (or indirectly) this metropolis.
These papyri derive mostly from mummy cartonnages excavated (or
plundered) from three different sites, that is, the necropolis near modern Abu Sir alMalaq that has yielded mostly texts dating to the first century BC, that of ancient
Tebtynis (which, from the administrative point of view, belonged to neighbouring
Arsinoites to the north-west), and the necropolis near modern al-Hiba.8 More work is
still needed on the first century BC documents, but the sophisticated control system of
the central government in the Herakleopolite Nome is well attested in the official
archives9 of the basilikoi grammateis who appear mostly in Berliner Griechische
Urkunden VIII (published in 1933), and XVIII.1 (published in 2000). These officials
worked at the nome level of the administration and thus, the logical place where the
5
Falivene 1998, xv.
Falivene 1998, xiii.
7
Wilcken 1903, 313.
8
Cartonnages are covers manufactured to protect the mummified deceased. The raw material used was
recycled waste papyri, cf. D. Thompson’s article, p. xx.
9
The term 'archive' is certainly justified in these cases. It is sometimes used to refer to a collection of
papers only loosely connected with each other, cf., for example, Verhoogt 1998, 22ff. Such documents,
however, should be referred to as a dossier, cf. Pestman 1995, 91–92.
6
HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA
217
documents were written and filed is Herakleopolis Magna.10 The first and third
volumes of the Tebtynis Papyri, as well as cartonnage texts that have found their way
into various collections around the world, have yielded documents mostly from the
second century BC. The bulk of the third century BC documents derive from the
cartonnages that were excavated by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt near modern
al-Hiba at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, the evidence from the 3rd century
is biased towards the southern part of the Herakleopolite Nome or to neighbouring
Oxyrhynchites to the south-west and south of Herakleopolites.11
At first, I set myself to trace documents that would originate from
Herakleopolis on the basis of personnel working at the nome level (such as the
basilikoi grammateis mentioned above), but this approach proved to be unfruitful for
a couple of reasons. For one, the titles of the persons involved in the official
correspondence of the 3rd century attested in the Hibeh Papyri are hardly ever
mentioned, and thus, these people are extremely difficult to identify.12 Furthermore,
the bulk of the material seems to originate from the Oxyrhynchite Nome, or perhaps
from Phebichis, the administrative centre of the southernmost toparchy of
Herakleopolites, that is the Koites.13 The area around al-Hiba may actually have been
more or less independent in the third century, and Falivene has suggested that the
10
See further Salmenkivi 2002, 54; Falivene 1998, 13; Habermann 1998, 149. About the role of the
basilikos grammateus as a controlling official working at the Nome level of the administration, see
Handrock 1967, 89–90; Oates 1995, esp. 95–100; cf. Sarischouli in BGU XVIII.1 Einleitung 24–34.
11
About the dating of the texts from Abu Sir al-Malaq, Tebtynis, and al-Hiba, see Falivene 1998, 13–
23; cf. Salmenkivi 2002, 28–51. Al-Hiba, the Greek Ἀγκυρῶν πόλις, belonged to the Koites, an area
that might have covered the southernmost part of Herakleopolites as well as the north-western parts of
Oxyrhynchites, cf. Falivene 1994, 203–209. On the historical interpretation of texts from cartonnages,
see Dorothy Thompson’s article in this volume.
12
Towards the end of the third century, the situation changes as the number of documents increases. As
an example I would like to mention the correspondence of the banker called Kleitarchos whose
correspondence with a certain Asklepiades is preserved from the time of Euergetes I (ca. 230–227 BC,
see P.Yale I 47–39). Asklepiades is the superior of Kleitarchos, and as the editors suggest (P.Yale I, p.
131), he may well have been the banker in charge of the whole Herakleopolite Nome stationed at
Herakleopolis.
13
Falivene has even suggested that a possible origin for both literary and documentary texts of the
Hibeh Papyri could be al-Hiba itself, see Falivene 1997, 273–280.
218
ERJA SALMENKIVI
Koites could have at least partly coincided with a ‘noncanonical’ Nineteenth Upper
Egyptian nome “of the He-Goat” in some pre-Ptolemaic lists of nomes.14 Thus, I will
make a few observations on some Hibeh Papyri dating to the reign of Philadelphus,
and I will discuss the origin of some texts that have not been found in the excavations
of the Egypt Exploration Society directed by Grenfell&Hunt.
Table of some relevant passages of the Hibeh Papyri:
Passage/document
1. P.Hib. I 30
ll. 24–25: ἐν
|[τῶι ἐν
Ἡρ]ακλέους
πόλει
δικαστηρίωι
Date
300–
271
Contents
A copy of
summons
Persons involved
Nikanor,
Perdikkas
Mummy #
6
Notes
l. 26: διˀ
Ἐπιµένους
P.Yale 26 (= Hib.
148)
early
III
Antichretic Loan
Epimenes, Poros
5
P.Hib. I 84 (a)
284
Sale of wheat
Epimenes,
Timokles
5
2. P.Hib. I 92
ll. 12–13: ἐν
[Ἡρακ]λέους
πόλει ἐπὶ|
Κ̣ρ̣ι̣σ̣[ίππου]] τοῦ
[σ]τ̣[ρ]α̣τ̣η̣γ[ο]ῦ̣
263
Contract of
surety
97
3. P.Hib. I 110,
verso, ll. 78–80:
Δηµητρίω[ι]|
τῶι πρὸς τῆι
χορηγία[ι τ]ῶν
ἐλεφάντω̣[ν]| εἰς
τὴν Θηβαίδα
κυ(λιστὸν) α
Recto
ca.
270,
verso
ca.
255
Accounts
Mnason and
Hegemon acting
as sureties for
Timokles who
lives in
Muchinaroo
(Oxy.)
Several names
mentioned in both
documents
Other texts from
mummy #5:
P.Hib. 31, 39,
84(b), 97, 100,
101, 147 (P.Hib. I
101 mentions
Libanos, a
sitologos, cf.
BGU XIV
2391&2392)
Other texts from
mummy #97:
P.Hib. I 28, 29, 64
(= P.Yale 28), 92,
146
14
Postal register
18
Other texts from
mummy #18:
P.Hib. I 9, 63, 65,
94, 157-9
Falivene 1998, 12. Several studies on the administration based on the Hibeh material have already
appeared. One example is Harimouthes, who is referred to as nomarches (P.Hib. I 85, 261 BC) and
later toparches (P.Hib. I 44, 253 BC). The discrepancy in his titles has been discussed, among others,
by Samuel 1966, 213–229; cf. Falivene 1991, 203–227. I would like to suggest that this ‘demotion' in
his status could be an indication of reorganisation of the administration, and Koites could have been
absorbed into the Herakleopolite Nome in the 250’s BC.
HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA
219
A dikasterion in Herakleopolis is mentioned in P.Hib. I 30, which preserves a copy of
two summons for recovery of a debt (see table number 1). The persons involved in
these cases are Greek soldiers, and at the end of the document, there is a note di’
Epimenous. This Epimenes also appears in P.Yale I 26 (part of the Hibeh Papyri
published in the first volume were presented to the Yale collection and re-published in
P.Yale I, 26–35) and P.Hib. I 84 (a). The editors of the Yale text speculate on the
possibility that the troop of Epimenes at Bubastis, referred to in P.Hib. I 81 (239 BC),
may have been named after this same Epimenes. In P.Hib.I 84 (a), Epimenes is
defined as an Athenian (= PP E25) and he sells 30 artabai wheat to Timokles from
the new crops of his estate at the village of Peroe which belonged to the Koites
toparchy.15 Since P.Hib. I 92 (also from a cartonnage that has yielded quite early
documents, see table number 2) states that the persons acting as sureties for a certain
Simos should (ll.11–14): “deliver him up at Herakleopolis before Krisippos the
strategos”, I find it tempting to suggest that Epimenes, who obviously was a holder of
land by military tenure (kleruchos), could have been an agent of the strategos, living
at Peroe, which was most likely located close to Phebichis.
The strong presence of the military settlers in Herakleopolites is also attested
in P.Hib. II 198 (ll. 1–36 = C.Ord.Ptol. 1–4), a collection of royal ordinances of which
the oldest are dated to the reign of Philadelphus. Lines 20–27 preserve a prostagma
concerning the soldiers in the Herakleopolite Nome. The passage is unfortunately
only partially preserved, but the area was certainly important, located both at a
crossroads between north and south and serving as a gateway to the western desert
and Libya. An interesting glimpse of the settlers in the metropolis itself is provided by
P.Köln VII, 314 dated to the twenty-ninth year of Philadelphus (8 of July, 257 BC).
15
Falivene 1998, s.v. ΠΕΡΟΗ.
220
ERJA SALMENKIVI
Nikaios, son of Charixenos, Ἀχαιὸς τῆς ἐπιγονῆς (PP E298) declares his garden, for
tax purposes, which is located “within the walls near the goose-pen on temple land”
(ll. 7–9). He estimates the income of the garden to be two hundred drachmai of which
he will pay a tenth (δεκάτη) to the Temple of Herakles.16 This was obviously the main
temple of the town dedicated to the Egyptian Harsaphes whom the Greeks interpreted
as Herakles. The oldest excavated remains of the temple of Harsaphes date to the
Middle Kingdom.17
Another interesting detail concerning the town is that there must have been a
harbour in or nearby Herakleopolis since an account of the income and the expenses
of a boat which traded between Memphis, Aphroditopolis, Herakleopolis, Bousiris,
and Ptolemais is preserved in the Zenon archive (P.Cairo Zen. IV 59753).18 (Wilcken
even cites the tale of the Eloquent Peasant to support the mentioning of a harbour in a
late fourth century AD document [BGU III 943 from AD 389].)19
An observation worth noting is that some cartonnage texts dating to the third
century and published in the Berliner Griechische Urkunden –series might well have
been plundered from al-Hiba as they were purchased by Friedrich Zucker in Mallawi
16
P.Köln VII, 314, ll. 2–16: (ἔτους) κθ Δαισίου ς, Αἰγυπ[τίων] | δὲ Παχὼνς ις. ἀπογρά[φεται]|
Νίκαιος Χαριξένου ’Αχαιὸς | τῆς ἐπιγονῆς ὑπάρχειν | αὐτῶι ἐν Ἡρακλέους π[ό]λει ἐντὸς τείχους
πρὸς | τοῖς χηνοβοσκίοις ἐν τῆι | ἱερᾶι γῆι κῆπον ἀρουρῶν | τριῶν καὶ τετάρτου | ὀγδόου, ὡς
βασιλικοὶ γραµ|µατεῖς ἀναφέρουσιν. Τού|του συντελῶ τὴν δεκά|την εἰς τὸ Ἡρακλεῖον.
Τι|µῶµαι τοὺς καρποὺς | δραχµῶν διακοσίων. Prof. Thompson noted during the conference that a
highly interesting detail of this text is that the person who is said to be a descendant (τῆς ἐπιγονῆς) of
an Achaian settler is claiming the right of a settler not born in Egypt, that is, paying only a tenth instead
of a sixth of the income of a garden, cf. the commentary of P.Köln VII, 314 by the editor Klaus
Maresch, and Thompson in this volume.
17
For further information on the excavations and the Harsaphes temple see, for example, Mokhtar
1983, 75ff.
18
About the so-called Zenon archive see, for example, Pestman et alii 1981; Clarysse and Vandorpe
1995. A street leading from the town to the harbor is also mentioned in P.Phrur.Diosk. 6, 10, dated to
the 3rd of November 146 BC.
19
Wilcken 1903, 316. BGU III 924–958 are the only surviving documents of the altogether 80 boxes
full of papyri deriving from Wilcken’s papyrus excavations which were burned in the Hamburg harbor,
see Wilcken 1903, 333; Preisendanz 1933, 165.
HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA
221
in the early 1910s.20 This observation is not without relevance in considering the
origin of certain documents published in BGU X. As an example, I would like to
mention the correspondence between Kallistratos and Akestias attested in BGU X
1911–1916. In BGU 1913, it is mentioned that some one has sailed to a place called
Hiera Nesos and the interesting thing about this person is that he has sailed there with
elephants (ll. 2–3). The text of BGU X 1913, fragment A, runs as follows:
----]αν σοι ̣ [ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ]τος δὲ
ἔπλει εἰς Ἱερὰ[ν] νῆσον [µε]
τὰ τῶν ἐλεφάντων
[ὥ]στε [νῦν] καιρὸν εἶναι
[ἀπ]οστεῑλαι [
[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ] δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν
----One of the several villages known as Hiera Nesos is certainly connected with the
Herakleopolite Nome.21 Another place name attested in the Kallistratos
correspondence is Dikomia (BGU X 1911, 7), also very probably in north-eastern part
of the Herakleopolites.22 On the basis of P.Petr. II 20, it has been argued that the main
stables for the contingent of war elephants were at Memphis,23 but it seems that they
were also, at least temporarily, stationed in or transported through the Herakleopolite
nome.
20
Cf. Salmenkivi 1997, 1083–1087. Falivene, too, suspects that the provenance of many documents in
various German collections is al-Hiba, see Falivene 1998, 14–15 and notes. Even though Mallawi is
located ca. 100 km to the south of al-Hiba, it might have been the town to which the locals took their
goods to sell to the European buyers.
21
Hierai Nesoi are attested both in the district of Polemon and that of Herakleides in the Arsinoites,
and in the Thebaid during the Ptolemaic period. One Hiera Nesos in the Hermopolite Nome is attested
in SB 16, 12948 from AD 448. About the Herakleopolite Hiera Nesos see further Falivene 1998, s.v.
ΙΕΡΑ ΝΗΣΟΣ.
22
The Herakleopolite origin is also implied by Bingen 1976, 186. About Hiera Nesos and Dikomia in
the area between the Arsinoite and Herakleopolite Nomes, see Falivene 1998, 10.
23
See Casson ‘A Petrie Papyrus’, 89 and Stanley Burstein’s article in this volume.
222
ERJA SALMENKIVI
Unfortunately, the Kallistratos correspondence does not tell us anything more
about these elephants.24 These elephants, however, bring us to the wider issue of
obtaining and maintaining them for various purposes. War elephants played a crucial
part in several battles of the Diadochoi described by the ancient historiographers,
elephants had a current value in the affairs of the Hellenistic kings, and they were
used in religious festivals such as the famous procession of the first Ptolemaieia
organised by Philadelphus in winter 279/8 BC.25 Lionel Casson has shown that is was
indeed Philadelphus who was the first of the Ptolemies to organise (in large scale) the
hunting of these beasts from Africa in the areas of modern Eritrea, Ethiopia, and
Somalia.26 It was important for the Ptolemies not to rely on the Indian sources of
elephants since the way to import them to Egypt would have been overland through
Seleucid territory.27
The hunting of the African elephants involved recruiting hundreds of hunters
and tamers as well as solving the problem of how to transport live elephants to Egypt.
The latter meant that a certain kind of ship, an ἐλεφαντηγός, that was able to
navigate with elephants along the coast of the Red Sea had to be built. According to
Casson, elephants were most likely transported by the sea up to the port of Berenike
from which they were marched to the Nile valley along the desert road between
Berenike and Koptos. From there on, the beasts were transported further north along
24
Four further unpublished documents now in the collection of the University of Jena (P.Jena inv. 717,
718, 725, 726) belong to the same archive and have been extracted from a cartonnage from al-Hiba (alHiba provenance is given to inv. numbers 658–1097), see Uebel 1970, 493. The Jenaer papyri bare no
witness on the origin of the Kallistratos correspondence or on the elephants (for this information I am
grateful to Marius Gerhardt, e-mail of September 22, 2005). Three out of the four Jenaer papyri are
now available at http://papyri.uni-leipzig.de.
25
See further Scullard 1974, passim. About the dating of the procession of Philadelphus, see Thompson
2000, 365–388.
26
Casson ‘Hunting of African Elephants’, 247–260. About the occurrence and distribution of African
Forest elephant (loxodonta africana cyclotis, a smaller race than the better known African Bush
elephant) in Antiquity, see Scullard 1974, 24–31; 129 fig. 13.
27
See further Casson ‘Hunting of African Elephants’; Scullard 1974; Vranopoulos 1975, 130–146
(with a short English summary).
HERAKLEOPOLIS MAGNA
223
the Nile.28 All this must have given work to a number of people, such as the
Demetrios mentioned in P.Hib. I 110, 78–80 (see table number 3) with the title “the
one in charge of the supplies for the elephants (in the Thebaid)”. In the same
document, elephants are mentioned in connection with an unidentifiable place name
beginning with Tha- or The-. I find it tempting to think that the latter place was
situated in the Herakleopolite Nome, perhaps close to the Hiera Nesos mentioned in
the Kallistratos correspondence.
To sum up: even though the original purpose of this paper was to discuss one
of the nome metropoleis from the point of view of administration, the evidence at
hand–that is Greek documentary papyri–took us to issues with a wider perspective
such as settling the countryside with Greek soldiers or the organisation of hunting and
maintaining elephants for various purposes. I hope that these few examples have
illustrated that local history can reveal interesting aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt and that
a further study on Herakleopolis Magna is justified.
28
Casson ‘Hunting of African Elephants’, 252–258; Krebs 1965, 96–101.
SECTION DELTA
How has it not occurred to any of the historians or poets to make mention of such
enormous achievements?
PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS AND JEWISH WRITINGS:
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AS EXAMPLES OF
ALEXANDRIAN JEWISH APPROACHES
Johann Cook
Ptolemy II Philadelphus clearly had a great impact upon Jews in Egypt and Palestine.
He is mentioned in the Zenon papyri as well as in Aristobulus and the book of
Aristeas (B.Ar.)1. These writings are evidence that Judaism was fundamentally
influenced by Hellenism. The question is to what extent? These two authors show
clear signs of using Hellenistic ideas. Aristobulus had the intention “to demonstrate
that Jewish doctrine as presented in the Pentateuch, i.e. the Greek translation of the
Mosaic law, represented the true ‘philosophy’ and did not contradict philosophically
trained reason” (Hengel 1974:164). Aristeas had a rather ambivalent perspective on
Greek philosophy. On the one hand, he calls the God of Israel Zeus or Dis; on the
other hand, he regards the cultic activities of the Greeks as vain and useless. In this
paper I will compare the mentioned authors with the Septuagint version of Proverbs in
order to determine the impact of Hellenism on these authors.
The Book of Aristeas
In the legendary letter by Aristeas, apparently an administrator from the reign of
Ptolemy II Philadelphos, to his brother, he gives details of an important mission to
Eleazar, the high priest in Jerusalem. The letter was written on the request of
1
In the most recent study on this writing, Sylvie Honigman (2003:1) argues that this is in fact not a
letter but, with Josephus, she opts to define it as a book.
226
JOHANN COOK
Demetrius of Phaleron, the famous director of the Alexandrian library, who wanted a
copy of the Jewish law to be added to the list of original documents. On the basis of a
suggestion by Aristeas, the king had this letter drafted in which, inter alia, he
expresses his regret about the Jewish exiles who were brought forcibly to Alexandria
in the past. A delegation from the king, including Aristeas, is then sent to Jerusalem
with the request to have a copy of the Law of Moses prepared. After meeting the high
priest, the delegation returned to Alexandria with seventy-two translators in order to
execute their task:
They were men who had not only acquired proficiency in Jewish literature, but
had studied most carefully that of the Greeks as well. (par. 121, Charles 1913)
Upon their arrival back home they are entertained by Ptolemy at a banquet that lasts
for a week. During this time the king meets each translator and puts to them all sorts
of questions which all of them answer with great wisdom. Then the translation is
undertaken and seventy-two translators (six from each Israelite tribe) are
accommodated in a specially prepared house on the island of Pharos; after seventytwo days they complete their work. The translation is then read aloud to the Jewish
community of Alexandria and the translations are perfectly concordant.
Earlier most scholars would have agreed that the genre of B.Ar. should be
described as that of Pseudepigraphon (Meisner 1977:37). This term certainly fits the
legendary and seemingly fictitious nature of the story. Dines (2004:28) talks of a
“mixture of literary genres” which, according to her, is typical of Hellenistic
literature. Honigman (2003:33), however, has come up with a new proposal, namely
that it should be read against its Hellenistic, Alexandrian background. To her two
prominent literary notions bear witness to this background: ring composition and the
blending of genres (Honigman 2003:15). These notions also provide possible
solutions to burning issues in earlier interpretations of B.Ar., such as the large number
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
227
of digressions. These have in the past been attributed to late interpolations (Février
1925). Honigman (2003:16), however, demonstrates that these digressions are indeed
functional, each belonging to a different literary genre. The intention of the
compositional structure is diversity (poikilia), a well-known Hellenistic literary
principle (Honigman 2003:16).
Honigman suggests that this treatise should not be read with modern eyes–asking
irrelevant questions as to whether the narrative is true or false, but that its genre
should be defined as historiography. She takes a cue from the Hellenistic environment
in which B.Ar. functioned and applies the criteria of Hellenistic historiography in
order to define its genre (Honigman 2003:30). According to this interpretation, the
author indeed intended the B.Ar. to be seen as ‘true history’. Accordingly, in the
introduction and the conclusion B.Ar. is defined as a diegesis; hence Honigman
concludes it is a historical diegesis, or even “a kind of historical monograph”
(Honigman 2003:30). Honigman presents nuanced arguments and indeed discusses
the formal aspects of diegema or diegesis. One of the conventions of Greek
historiography is that the introduction should reveal what the subject matter of the
following account is going to be. This is done in B.Ar. The author of B.Ar. also
conforms to these criteria as far as the presentation of his topic is concerned
(Honigman 2003:30). Moreover, the principle of blending operates in the composition
of B.Ar. and more specifically Chapter 4 (Honigman 2003:31). The subject matter of
this chapter, with its discussion of the freeing of slaves, is mentioned already in the
introduction and hence was deemed of central importance by the author. Two
additional subjects from history, Herodotus and Diodorus, are mentioned as possible
precedents which could have been known to the author of B.Ar. (Honigman 2003:30).
228
JOHANN COOK
Two further issues are important in Honigman’s narrative interpretation; the
first concerns the composition of B.Ar., and the second has to do with B.Ar. as a
charter myth. As far as the first is concerned, Honigman also takes the Alexandrian
literary context into account as the basis for her interpretation. She demonstrates that
the author indeed applied literary techniques such as ring composition in order to
create a homogeneous impression of Judaism at the time. Hence to her the entire
B.Ar. represents a deliberate literary construction, even though she accepts that the
author made use of oral traditions and a number of external sources. One example is
what she calls the secondary theme, that of equating the status of the LXX with that of
the Hebrew Law (Honigman 2003:53). She interprets the first episode, namely the
liberation of the Jewish slaves referred to above, in conjunction with the story of the
Exodus in the Hebrew Bible–that Jews were brought to Egypt as slaves. She does,
however, add a creative interpretation to the effect that Ptolemy is willing to let the
people free, as opposed to the Pharaoh, which means that “The Law can and will be
received in Alexandria” and hence B.Ar. is the story of a non-Exodus (Honigman
2003:56).
The second episode, the selection of the elders in Jerusalem, according to her,
is also functional in the whole narrative and especially relevant to the third episode,
the proclamation of the translation of the law in Alexandria. As in the case of Exodus
24:3-7, the translation (law) is read aloud before the people and acclaimed. Significant
in this regard is that the author (according to Honigman 2003:59) is combining two
models, one Jewish and one Greek, since the process is likened to the promulgation of
official classical texts in Greek cities.
Fundamental to Honigman’s interpretation is her view that the Aristeas
document should be seen as a charter myth, a term coined by Malinowski (Honigman
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
229
2003:38). Again Honigman offers a nuanced argument. In this context myth has
nothing to do with the story being true or false, but with how the readers or listeners
perceive it. And according to her, the author purposefully composed and structured
B.Ar. into a myth that would be believed by its readers. She demonstrates that the
author actually utilised narrative devices, such as ego-narrative (the authorial ‘I’ in
Greek historiography: Honigman 2003:67) and the appropriate insertion of
documents, in order to create the notion of the trustworthiness of the narrative.
The definition historiography is thus not a statement of wie es eigentlich
gewesen war, but truth in the sense of how the intended readers of B.Ar. in fact
perceived it to be. This interpretation stands in stark contrast to that by J.W. Wevers
(1985:17): “Since the time of Hody it has been clear that the story was made up out of
whole cloth—it is fiction—and there is no good reason to believe any of it; in fact, it
would be methodologically sound not to accept anything stated in the Letter that
cannot be substantiated elsewhere”. This brings me to the issue of the dating of B.Ar.
The historical placing of the book of Aristeas varies from the end of the third
century BCE through the second century CE (Fernández Marcos 2000:41). Closer
precision is, however, possible as demonstrated by Meisner (1977:37). He follows
Bickermann (1930) and argues that it should be dated between 127-118 BCE.
Honigman (2003:129) again combines the views by Meecham (1935) and Hadas
(1973) in opting for a somewhat later date “shortly before 145” (Honigman
2003:130). There is thus a consensus in favour of the second century BCE (Jobes and
Silva 2000:34, but cf. Dorival 1994:42) and that it should not be seen as a
contemporary document (Jellicoe 1993:46).
230
JOHANN COOK
In the past many scholars have argued that the purpose of this letter is
apologetic in nature (Marcos 2000:43).2 One prominent interpretation in this regard is
that it is an apology for the original Greek translation.3 Kahle (1959) rejected this
interpretation and compared the LXX with the Targumim. Brock (1979) demonstrated
that it is actually related to the later revisionary activity in the Septuagint. Thus he
deems it as a rejection of unnecessary tampering with the Greek translations by
scribes4 because they differed from the Hebrew in many places. Honigman also thinks
that B.Ar. has to do with the transmission history of the LXX. She takes seriously the
Alexandrian origins of B.Ar. in her interpretation by claiming that the author actually
followed Alexandrian literary practices and more specifically the text-critical work of
Aristarchos on the edition of Homer in the creation of new manuscripts, since older
mss had become inferior because they had deteriorated badly (Honigman 2003:131).
She bases her ingenious inference on the supposition that Aristarchos, as fifth head of
the Alexandrian library, brought about a reform in the production of Homeric poems,
a reform that supposedly spilt over also into the Jewish community (Honigman
2003:130). She phrases this as follows: “A new awareness of the importance of
accurate wording of a text was developing. Learned Jews (who taught the Law in the
synagogue) realized that the quality of the LXX manuscripts in circulation had
deteriorated, and that this situation suddenly became intolerable” (Honigman
2003:131).
2
Dorival (1994:43) refers to three possible lines of propaganda: “1. une apologie de la traduction
grecque de la Torah; 2. un ouvrage de propagande en faveur du judaïsme à l'intention des Grecs; and 3.
une œuvre de propagande en faveur du judaïsme à l'intention des Juifs”.
3
Jellicoe (1993:47) phrases this as follows: “On any account, it is difficult to escape the conviction that
the Letter of Aristeas is primarily an apologia for Judaism and its way of life founded in the Law”.
4
Cf. also Brock (1992:306-308), who reconstructs the process through which the writing of B.Ar. came
about.
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
231
Honigman thus presents a new theory on the intention of the passage on the
promulgation of the law. This is not an entirely novel idea, since it builds partly upon
the ideas of Orlinsky (1975) and Kahle (1959). However, that it is an ingenious theory
must be immediately conceded. Nevertheless, it is hypothetical even though
Honigman refers to some comparable textual material from the Alexandrian context.
The problem remains that there is no primary evidence connecting it to the LXX. The
theory by Brock is also a hypothetical one, although there are ample examples of
existing revisions of Biblical texts.5
As far as the intention of B.Ar. is concerned, Honigman also distinguishes
between the intent of the passage on the law and that of the writing as a whole. She
does accept the Jewishness of this writing and in numerous instances she actually
refers to the fact that the intended readership of B.Ar. is a Jewish one (Honigman
2003:29). Yet, she maintains that what we have here in essence is “a blend of Greek
form and Jewish content”, which could be seen as a kind of manifesto of “Jewish
Greekness” (Honigman 2003:19). Honigman is convinced that B.Ar. does not have a
fundamentally polemical intent, even though she admits that in the apology for the
Law there are some polemics contra philosophical viewpoints (Honigman 2003:21).
However, according to her the thrust of the treatise is not apologetic but rather “a
multi-faceted presentation of Judaism” (Honigman 2003:14). This is indeed a novel
perspective, since the whole of B.Ar. is not interpreted exclusively from the
perspective of the passage on the law of Moses.6
The author is convincing in her argumentation. Her holistic approach can
certainly be deemed novel and timely. B.Ar. is after all a Greek writing for Graecised
5
6
Cf. the epoch-making monograph by Barthélemy (1963).
Cf. Dines (2004:30) and Müller (1996:47).
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JOHANN COOK
Jews in Alexandria. Therefore I think she is correct in calling for a cessation of the
application of the term ‘Judaeo-Hellenistic’ and replacing it simply with the term
‘Alexandrian literature’ (Honigman 2003:147). The precarious position of the writing
vis-à-vis its audience is evident in the description that is given of the law of Moses in
B.Ar.. The law is called the divine law (θεῖος νόµος) in § 3. The God who gave them
their law is the Lord and Creator of the Universe, who is called by different names,
Zeus or Dis (§ 16). This law is moreover the law of the Jews (τῶν Ἰουδαίων νόµιµα
§ 10).
B.Ar. is seemingly infused with Greek philosophical ideas. Hence in par 15
the author talks about God as Zeus or Dis (§ 15). However, it should be remembered
that this statement is put in the mouth of a Greek, a non-Jew; it is not spoken by a Jew
(Barclay 1996:143). Moreover, the Jewishness of the epistle is unmistakeably present.
The law which is here referred to is, inter alia, the cultic laws of the Pentateuch. In §
139 the following statements are made:
περίφραξεν ἡµας ἀδιακόποις χάραξι καὶ σιδηροῖς τείχεσιν
When therefore our lawgiver, equipped by God for insight into all things, has
surveyed each particular, he fenced us about with impregnable palisades and
with walls of iron, to the end that we should mingle in no way with any other
nations, but remain pure in body and soul, free from all vain imaginations,
worshipping the one Almighty God above the whole creation.
From § 143 it is clear that the cultic laws are in fact referred to:
Therefore lest we should be corrupted by any abomination, or our lives be
perverted by evil communications, he hedged us round on all sides by rules of
purity, affecting alike what we eat, or drink, or touch, or hear or see.
Here we have an ancient exegetical tradition of the people of God being surrounded
by the law in order to preserve them.
Thus the law referred to by Aristeas is the Law of Moses but more specifically
the cultic, Levitical laws that have the function of hedging the Jews about in order to
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
233
preserve them from ‘un-Jewish’ practices and beliefs. I have discovered a similar
tradition of the law as surrounding wall in LXX Proverbs 28 verse 4, which I have
interpreted as an indication of the position of a conservative Jewish translator (Cook
1999):
עזבי תורה יהללו רשׁע ושׁמרי תורה יתגרו בם
Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law
struggle against them.
οὕτως οἱ ἐγραταλείποντες τὸν νόµον ἐγκωµιάζουσιν
ἀσέβειαν οἱ δὲ ἀγαπῶντες τὸν νόµον περιβάλλουσιν ἑαυτοῖς τεῖχος.
Likewise those who forsake the law and praise impious deeds;
However, those who love the law build a wall around themselves.
There seems to be no logical relationship between the LXX and the Hebrew (Cook
1999:461). It is, nevertheless, possible that the Hebrew reading גורwas deliberately
understood as ( גדרwall). Be that as it may, here the law has a protective function
towards the righteous. This is markedly different from the view found in some later
rabbinical writings, for example the Mishna, and in even later rabbinical writings such
as Aboth I,1, according to which the Torah must be protected. The latter says three
things: be patient in justice, rear many disciples and make a fence around the Torah.
The passage in B.Ar. is an indication of the religious stance of its author. Even
though he is willing to equate Adonai with Zeus or Dis, not directly however, and he
deems the Greek philosophy an advantage, he nevertheless seems to stick to the Law
of Moses and more specifically the Levitical laws to demonstrate his fundamental
Jewishness. I think one could in this respect speak of a ‘bottom line’ of how far the
author would be willing to go in advocating his religious stance. This has a direct
bearing on the question of the extent to which Jews in the Diaspora were indeed
Hellenised. Collins (2001:46) put it succinctly “There was a limit to Hellenisation,
which is best expressed in the distinction between cult and culture”. Jews were
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JOHANN COOK
certainly Hellenised as far as all aspects of culture are concerned, however, excluding
the religion. It seems to me as if the author of B.Ar. was extremely accommodating
towards Hellenism, which is understandable since he lived in Alexandria, but that as
far as the religious sphere is concerned, he was reserved, as his view of the Law of
Moses discussed above demonstrates. The second Alexandrian author, Aristobulus,
has a somewhat different approach.
Aristobulus of Alexandria
Aristobulus is known as the first Jewish philosopher (Collins 1986:176). Collins
(1986:177) and Barclay (1996:1) indeed regard him as the first “theologian of
Hellenistic Judaism” (Collins 1986:177). Unfortunately we have only scant evidence
of this controversial Jewish-Hellenistic, Alexandrian author, since only a few
scattered fragments are extant for research purposes (Holladay 1995:43). He lived and
worked in Alexandria in the first half of the second century BCE and wrote his
treatise to Ptolemy VI Philometor (181—145 BC) circa 174—170 BCE.7 His intention
was to present a correct understanding of the Law of Moses. Dines (2004:33) regards
this treatise as an apology “for the compatibility of Jewish faith and Greek
philosophy”.8 Collins (1986:175) is in agreement, since he deals with Aristobulus
under the rubric of Philosophical Judaism. Aristobulus was clearly influenced by
Greek philosophy, even though he can be regarded as an eclectic (Hengel 1974:16,
Walter 1983:12). Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. II 100, 3) regarded him as a
“peripateticus.”
7
Cf. Walter (1964:41). Clement and Eusebius identify Aristobulus with the teacher of Ptolemy referred
to in 2 Maccabees 1:10 (Collins 1986:175). Cf. also Holladay (1995:75).
8
Cf. Hengel 1974:164. Cf. Also Barclay (1996:158): “This was not just a defensive move to make
sense of ‘outdated’ narratives and laws. It was a positive strategy by which they attributed to Jewish
‘philosophy’ the insights of the Hellenistic civilization they admired.”
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
235
Aristobulus refers to the Septuagint rarely, namely in fragment 3, where he
mentions (like Philo of Alexandria) that the Greek philosophers actually got their
insights from the Hebrew lawgiver (PE 8.10; ὁ νοµοθέτης), Moses. The immediate
context is the translation of the scriptures, the law and the prophets (τὰς γραφὰς τάς
τε τοῦ νόµου καὶ τὰς προφητικὰς - Praeparatio Evangelica 13.12) from Hebrew
into Greek during the reign of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, or Ptolemy Philadelphus. This
immediately brings the relationship between Aristobulus and the B.Ar. into play. The
three possibilities (Dines 2004:37) are: an independent use of traditions (Walter
1999:100); B.Ar. being dependent on Aristobulus; the converse. Collins (1986:176)
accepts that Aristobulus seems to be prior to Pseudo-Aristeas, whereas Dines
(2004:37) thinks Aristobulus is dependent on B.Ar.
Since the fragments of Aristobulus survive only in much later authors, it is
rather difficult to decide this issue. However, it is clear that Aristobulus is not
particularly interested in the LXX, except in the Law of Moses. In order to propose a
correct understanding of the Law of Moses, he made a selection of passages from the
Pentateuch which he interpreted allegorically and which represent an apology for the
Torah.
As is the case with many Jewish-Hellenistic Alexandrian writings,
Aristobulus’ treatise is aimed at a Jewish and a gentile readership. Hence in the first
place he addresses the king, and demonstrates the application of acceptable
Hellenistic categories. In the second place, his specific interpretation is a challenge to
more conservative Jews (PE 8.10.5), namely literalists who took the biblical text
seriously (Collins 1986:179). The allegorical method naturally focuses on the hidden
meaning of the text. There is a direct relationship between Moses, the ‘lawgiver’, and
the law. Anatolius (H.E. 7.32) for one refers to the “exegetical commentaries” on the
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JOHANN COOK
Law of Moses (βίβλους ἐξηγητικὰς του Μωυσέως) that were written by
Aristobulus. Other references are found in PE 8.10:
In the book of the law (τῆς γραφῆς τοῦ νόµου), it is said that at the time when
God was giving the law (ὁ νοµοθεσίας), a divine descent unto the mountain
took place, so that all might see the active power of God.
Sometimes he refers to the law code (ἡ νοµοθεσία PE 8.10 and 12.1), a Greek word
which is also used in order to describe “the entire law” (τῆς ὅλης νοµοθεσίας) in PE
13.12.
It is therefore clear that the law referred to by Aristobulus is the law of Moses,
which in some cases, as in PE 13.12., is a reference to the Pentateuch: “just as Moses
in our LAWCODE has said that the entire beginning of the world was accomplished
through God’s words, for he invariably says in each instance ‘And God spoke, and it
9
came to be ’” (Holladay 1995:162). In PE 13.12.5, he refers more specifically to the
10 commandments: “after receiving the teaching from God in statements on the
TWO-TABLET LAW” (Holladay 1995:170).
When speculating about the creation, he seems to refer to Genesis 1 and
Proverbs 8:22. He combines the resting of God on the seventh day and the creation of
light on the first day with the pre-temporal being of wisdom (Proverbs 8:22), and
certain philosophical notions (Hengel 1974:166). As is well-known, this speculation
on the number seven is of Pythagorean origin and appears later in Philo of Alexandria
as well. Aristobulus moreover quotes a number of Pentateuch passages probably from
the Septuagint, such as Genesis 1 and 2. The statement (PE 13.12.3-8) “For it is
necessary to understand the divine ‘voice’ not in the sense of spoken language but in
the sense of creative acts, just as Moses in our law code has said that the entire
beginning of the world was accomplished through God’s words” and especially the
9
This must surely be a reference to Genesis 1.
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
237
final statement “For invariably he says in each instance, ‘And God spoke, and it came
to be’” are apparently quotations from the Genesis version. The phrase καὶ εἶπεν ὁ
θεός, καὶ ἐγένετο οὕτως occurs in LXX Genesis, although not in this specific form. I
think there can be little doubt that this statement is based on the Septuagint.
The relationship with LXX Proverbs is less clear. The only possible point of
contact between Aristobulus and this unit is his allegorical interpretation of chapter
8:22ff in PE 13.12.40. This, however, has nothing to do with the Law of Moses in the
restricted sense of the word. Aristobulus does refer to the law code in this regard:
“Our law code has clearly shown us that the seventh day is an inherent law of
nature.”10 Nevertheless, it does give us an insight into the way Aristobulus interpreted
this text.
An important issue in this regard is the question as to which text Aristobulus
used for his interpretation. Walter (1964:33) thinks that Aristobulus had the Greek
text available. The passage he quotes from PE 13, 12, 11a (Mras 1956:33) is,
however, not that evident:
σαφέστερον δὲ καὶ κάλλιον τῶν ἡµετέρων προγόνων τις εἶπε Σολοµῶν
πρὸ οὐρανου καὶ γῆς ὑπάρχειν
But more clearly and more beautifully one of our forefathers, Solomon, said that
it (wisdom - JC) existed before heaven and earth. (Gifford 1903:721)
First, the Greek used is quite different from that appear in LXX Proverbs 8:22: Κύριος
ἔκτισέν µε ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἐργα αὐτοῦ. The reference to Solomon seems to
be the only possible point of contact. However, this could certainly be an
interpretation from memory and need not be seen as evidence of a quotation from the
Septuagint. Moreover, it is possible that Aristobulus had knowledge of the Hebrew
text, although Walter (1964:33) rejects this possibility. Second, the view that wisdom
10
Holladay (1995:185). Cf. also Winston (1981:36).
238
JOHANN COOK
existed before the heaven and earth (creation) appears abundantly in rabbinic writings
concerning the pre-existence of created things (Bowker 1969:100). In the final
analysis therefore, these interpretations by Aristobulus give an insight into the way he
in fact understood biblical themes, rather than bearing a direct textual witness to the
extant biblical text. This is at least true of the text of Proverbs.
Another Alexandrian author who used the LXX and testifies to the existence
of the Pentateuch is Demetrius, the chronographer, who probably lived in Alexandria
during the reign of Ptolemy IV (Philopator 222-205 BCE, Holladay 1983:51). He is
the earliest witness for a Greek version of the Pentateuch, and is thus an important
source for determining the origins of the LXX and its impact upon Hellenistic
Judaism in Alexandria. The problem is that he makes no reference to LXX Proverbs.
In short, then, Aristobulus had a positive attitude towards Greek philosophy which
agrees to some extent with B.Ar., but is totally different from the Septuagint, at least
the LXX of Proverbs, as should become clear from the final section of this paper.
The Septuagint of Proverbs
I have demonstrated eslsewhere that the Greek version of Proverbs is an intriguing
and unique translation (Cook 1994; 1997; 1999; 2002). That the person(s) responsible
for this unit was a creative interpreter can be observed on various levels. On the micro
level (lexical issues), he applied a large number of hapax legomena and neologisms
(Cook 2002). He also introduced variations in many instances and chose to be
consistent in fewer instances. Therefore I have defined his lexical approach as one of
diversity and unity (Cook 2001:208). On the micro level this translator also displays
remarkable freedom. He deliberately removed references to Agur and Lemuel in
Chapters 30 and 31 and adapted the order of some of the chapters from 24 through 31
(Cook, ‘Greek of Proverbs’).
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
239
This translator clearly had an excellent education in Greek and Jewish culture.
However, contrary to Aristobulus he applied the knowledge he obtained only to the
external form but he purposely refrained from applying Hellenistic ideas. LXX
Proverbs even exhibits a fundamentally anti-Hellenistic attitude. The prominent role
of the Mosaic Law in this unit attests that the translator felt the need to underline the
value of the Law of Moses. The notion of the Law of Moses as a surrounding wall in
chapter 28:4 is widespread in Judaism in earlier and in later contexts. In LXX
Proverbs and Aristeas the law surrounds the righteous, whereas in the Damascus
document and the Mishna the Torah is surrounded (Cook, ‘Law and Wisdom’, 339).
In LXX Proverbs, the Law of Moses is actually underscored more explicitly than in
the Hebrew version of Proverbs since this law was devalued in the Hellenistic
environment in which these Proverbs came into being.11 There are more examples of
this anti-Hellenistic inclination. In chapters 9 and 13 the equivalent of the phrase “For
to know the law is the sign of a good mind” has no equivalent in MT. Proverbs 9:10
reads:
תחלת חכמה יראת יהוה ודעת קדשים בינה
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy
one is insight.
10 ἀρχὴ σοφίας φόβος κυρίου καὶ βουλὴ ἁγίων σύνεσις
[10a] τὸ γὰρ γνῶναι νόµον διανοίας ἐστὶν ἀγαθῆς.
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord and the counsels of saints is
understanding, for to know the law is the sign of a sound mind.
A slightly adapted phrase appears also in chapter 13:15 to underline the relevance of
the law for its readers. Other examples of Jewish exegetical interpretation in Proverbs
occur in 2:11 and 17:
11
1 Maccabees 1:14 f describes a comparable historical context.
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JOHANN COOK
11 βουλὴ καλὴ φυλάξει σε ἔννοια δὲ ὁσία τηρήσει σε
Good counsel will guard you and holy intent will protect you
17 υἱέ µή σε καταλάβῃ κακὴ βουλὴ ἡ ἀπολείπουσα διδασκαλίαν νεότητος
καὶ διαθήκην θείαν ἐπιλελησµένη
My son, do not let bad counsel overtake you, that which forsakes the teaching of
youth and has forgotten the divine covenant.
This is a well-known rabbinic tradition concerning the ( יצריםthe good and evil
inclinations) inherent in mankind.12 These Judaic interpretations are an indication of
the extent to which the translator(s) of Proverbs was a conservative Jewish thinker. In
this regard Baumgartner (1890:253) has argued that the translator of Proverbs was
deeply influenced by Jewish Midrash. Bertram (1936) also held the view that this unit
represents Jewish legalism, contrary to Gerleman (1956:53) who thought that a Greek
rather than a Jewish philosophical way of thinking is to be taken as the background to
issues of religion and ethics in LXX Proverbs.13
There are other appropriate examples, one being the moralizing or
religionising element present in LXX Proverbs (Cook 2004). Religionising is
achieved by means of the addition of the positive (the translator adds references to
righteousness consistently and systematically), by adding the negative (evil and
unrighteousness as characteristics of religion abound in the explicative, exegetical
renderings used by the translator) and by contrasting. The translator of LXX Proverbs
made use of contrasts to a greater extent than is the case in the Hebrew text, a trait
which defines the translation technique that has its roots in the ideology of the
12
13
Cf. my article ‘The origin of the tradition of the יצר הטבand ’יצר הרעto be published in JSJ.
Cf. also Hengel 1974:277.
ARISTOBULUS AND PSEUDO-ARISTEAS
241
translator. This anti-Hellenistic tendency14 stems from religiously conservative Jews
who deliberately warned the readers of the dangers inherent to Hellenism.
Conclusion
These issues have implications for our understanding of the writings I have dealt with
and more specifically with the dating and locating of LXX Proverbs. As I
demonstrated above, there are clear signs of continuity and discontinuity between
LXX Proverbs and the B.Ar. The well-known exegetical tradition of the Law of
Moses surrounding the righteous occurs in both writings and could perhaps indicate a
similar historical context. However, it is also possible that these traditions originated
in Palestine and from there found their way to Egypt. There is a significant precedent
in the Septuagint of Esther that in all probability came into existence in Palestine
during the time of Alexander Jannaeus and was subsequently brought to Alexandria in
order to introduce the Purim feast to the Jews (Bickerman 1944, 1950; and De Troyer
2001:398). However, the prominent differences between LXX Proverbs and B.Ar.
may reflect different historical contexts. One significant difference is that LXX
Proverbs is more anti-Hellenistically inclined that B.Ar. This is naturally to be
expected, since the OG text is after all a scriptural unit.
As far as the second writing, Aristobulus, is concerned, there is no evidence in
the Septuagint of Proverbs of the philosophical, allegorical speculations that occur in
Aristobulus.15 As a matter of fact, the person responsible for this translation held an
anti-Greek philosophical perspective. In the light of this interpretation I conclude,
contrary to D’Hamonville (2000:134), that Aristobulus could not have been the
translator of LXX Proverbs.
14
I agree with Nickelsburg (2003:152) that any author can at the same time be Jewish, anti-Hellenistic
and Hellenistic.
15
In my view this applies to LXX Genesis too. Cf. Cook (1998).
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY'S GREEK BIBLE:
GENESIS 1-3 IN TRANSLATION
“... THINGS WHICH THEY ALTERED FOR KING PTOLEMY”
(GENESIS RABBAH 8.11)
William R.G. Loader
The ‘King Ptolemy’ referred to in this early fifth century rabbinic commentary on
Genesis is Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reign: 283-46 BCE). “The things which they
altered for King Ptolemy” alludes to instances where the Greek translation differs
from the acknowledged Hebrew text.1 All translation is to some degree alteration,
intended or otherwise. We have no access to the minds of ancient translators, let alone
their intentions, so that at most we can describe the translated text and directions in
which it points, including its alterations. Once translated, however, texts take on a life
of their own, as they are read and re-read in new contexts and produce new meaning.
This investigation explores the ‘altered’ texts, including possible influences which
shaped them, and, above all, the potential meanings thus created.
1
In rabbinic tradition the lists varies from 10 to 18 items. The particular instance to which Genesis
Rabbah refers is Genesis 1:27, which in the Hebrew reads: “Male and female he created them”. The
lists allege a Greek form of the text which read: “Male and female he created him.” In his discussion of
this variant Emanuel Tov concludes that the Greek variant may already reflect a variant Hebrew text.
Emanuel Tov, “The rabbinic tradition concerning the ‘alterations’ inserted into the Greek translation of
the Torah and their relation to the original text of the Septuagint,” in The Greek and Hebrew Bible:
Collected Essays on the Septuagint (NovTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1-20, esp. 11, 17-18. Whether
in Hebrew or Greek, the presence of a singular, “Let us make ’a4da4m” in 1:26 might easily have
attracted a change to a singular in 1:27, but we cannot rule out the possibility that androgynous
understandings of the text (possible in Hebrew or in Greek) may have prompted the change. See also
the discussion in G. Veltri, Eine Tora für den König Talmai: Untersuchungen zum
Übersetzungsverständnis in jüdisch-hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1994), 22-112, who argues against taking the instances as evidence of a different Hebrew
Vorlage. Perhaps the original translators did alter the text for Ptolemy in this way. Outside of these
discussions in the rabbinic Hebrew texts there is no manuscript evidence for the singular.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
243
The translation of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures,
seems to have taken place in part in response to Ptolemy II Philadelphus. This chapter
must forego discussion of the complex historical issues.2 Instead it will focus on those
formative chapters with which Torah begins, the account of creation and of human
beginnings, and do so with a particular focus on the attitudes towards sexuality which
are reflected in them. It will then explore possible influences on the translators of
Plato’s Timaeus and its attitudes towards sexuality.
Genesis and Plato’s Timaeus on Creation
Genesis 1 and 2 contain two different accounts of creation, widely believed to reflect
two different mythological traditions and coming from different sources, P and J. In
the first, 1:1–2:4, creation takes place over six days, with God resting on the seventh.
The climax of creation is the creation of humankind (adam) ‘male and female’ (1:27).
In 2:5-24, however, we have a different sequence. God forms a human being (a man
adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah), a Hebrew word play (an earthling from
earth), and then proceeds to create plants and animals for him and finally woman to be
his companion.
There is evidence that the Greek translators were sensitive to the issues of the
two stories, at least to the extent that they added some elements to the text which
smoothed the differences. The apparent second creation of plants and animals now
becomes the emergence of what had been created but had not yet come into being.
Similarly the creation of man and woman of 1:27 now finds its elaboration in 2:18-25.
The background assumption is that what was made according to the first story comes
to concrete expression in the second.
2
See the appendix to this paper below.
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
244
The translation achieved this with only slight modifications. It added ‘began’
(ἤρξατο) into 2:3 which reads in Hebrew, “So God blessed the seventh day and
hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had created to make”
()אשר ברא אלהים לעשות. In Greek it now reads: “So God blessed the seventh day
and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the works that he had begun to
make (ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ θεὸς ποιῆσαι)”. God’s rest on the seventh day does not imply
the task had been completed. The addition also forms a neat formal inclusio with the
opening verse of Genesis: ‘In the beginning’ (ἐν ἀρχῇ).3 In a sense 1:1–2:4 is the
beginning of creation for the LXX.
Similarly the translation of 2:4 represents “these are the generations” (אלה
)תולדותby “this is the book of the origin/becoming” (αὕτη ἡ βίβλος γενέσεως
hence the book’s subsequent name γένεσις) and emphasises the word ‘becoming’
(γίνοµαι) in what follows. The explicit addition of ἔτι (still, yet) in 2:9 and in 2:19
helps strengthen the sense of continuation of creation between Genesis 1 and 2. God is
still creating.
In his treatment of the Septuagint translation of Genesis 1-11 Martin Rösel
recognizes a framework which might have helped the translators or, at least their
hearers, to understand the relationship between the two creation stories.4 He notes
possible influence from Platonic thought, and the Timaeus in particular,5 which also
3
So J.W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (SBLSCS 35; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993) 21; W.P.
Brown, The Structure, Role, and Ideology in the Hebrew and Greek texts of Genesis 1:1-2:3 (SBLDS
132; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993) 26.
4
M. Rösel, Übersetzung als Vollendung der Auslegung (BZAW 223; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994), 72-87.
5
On earlier discussions of the similarities and differences see J. Pelikan, What has Athens to Do with
Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint (Jerome Lectures, 21; Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Pr., 1997) 26, 46-47. “Whether they came directly from the Timaeus to the translators of the
Septuagint or not, the words, genesis, arche, and kosmos, moreover, were (along with many others to
be noted later) only three of the elements of elective affinity evident already in the Greek vocabularies
of Genesis and of Timaeus that would be deserving of comparative study in their own right” (26).
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
245
dealt with creation. Both Genesis and the Timaeus, he points out, contain two
accounts of creation. The two accounts in each share a common order in describing
the events: heavenly bodies (1:6-8/33Bff), stars and time (1:14-19/38Bff), sea
creatures, birds and animals (1:20-25/40A), humankind (1:26-28/41Dff); and
beginning afresh: the formation of the human being (2:7/69Aff), mention of plants
(2:8/77Aff) and concluding with formation of animals (2:18-20/91Aff).6 In both the
creator7 assesses his work as very good (1:31/37C), before resting (2:3/42E).8 The
Timaeus assumes the creation of the invisible world of forms before the creation of
the visible. The notion of an invisible heavenly world was not totally foreign to
Jewish thought, nor was the notion of a mediator of creation in the person of wisdom.9
There are sufficient common elements for a Jewish translator, let alone a Jewish
hearer, to have brought the thought and the language of the Timaeus into relation to
the Genesis account.
The words used for create and form, namely ποιέω for ברא, and πλάσσω for
יצרmay well be explicable in the light of the Timaeus. While πλάσσω appropriately
translates יצר, the choice of ποιέω for בראis striking. The LXX of the Pentateuch
uses standard equivalents in translation. Ποιέω is the standard equivalent translation
6
Rösel, Übersetzung, 81.
Exodus 3:14 LXX renders the words, “I am who I am” אהיה אשר אהיהby ἐγώ εἰµι ὁ ὤν “I am the
one who is/exists”. The related name, Yahweh, however, which begins to appear in Genesis 2:4 and
might be translated “The one who is/becomes”, is overlooked in LXX until 2:8 and then rendered in the
LXX: ὁ κύριος, ‘Lord’, which puts the focus inherently on power and rule, an aspect not inherent in the
Hebrew יהוה. On this see Armin Schmitt, “Interpretation der Genesis aus hellenistischem Geist,” ZAW
86 (1974): 137-63, here 160-61. A translator wanting to echo the Timaeus would have done well to
translate with ὁ ὤν, but one must assume established usage in the choice of ὁ κύριος. See also Pelikan,
Athens? 34.
8
Rösel, Übersetzung, 81.
9
Rösel, Übersetzung, 82. Rösel points to the interpretations of בראשׁיתin an instrumental sense
behind Proverbs 8:22-26 and Job 28:25-27, so that like the Maker in the Timaeus 24BC, God created
the world through wisdom identified as ראשׁית.
7
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
246
in the LXX for ‘ יצרto make’. For בראone would expect κτίζω, the word for
‘create’, appropriately favored by later Greek translations.10 The choice appears to
reflect influence from elsewhere. The use of these verbs for the work of the maker and
of the gods in the Timaeus provides a possible explanation.11
Other related terminology also includes ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος
“invisible and not properly made” in Genesis 1:2, matching the contrast in the
Timaeus between the invisible model,12 on the one hand, and the material, on the
other, although in the latter case unformed.13 The Hebrew words mean: “without form
and void”. Accordingly Genesis 1:1-2 LXX function as a summary title for what
follows,14 and could be understood as the creation of the noetic, as in Philo under the
influence of the Timaeus.15
The Timaeus also attributes motivation to the maker. The maker is good
(καλός) and what is made is good (Tim 29A, 87C, 92C).16 LXX uses the same word to
translate the expression “and God saw that it was good” (1:25). The unusual choice of
στερέωµα, not previously used of heavenly bodies to translate ‘ רקיעfirmament’ in
1:6, is only to be explained according to Rösel on the basis of the use of στερεός in
10
Rösel, Übersetzung, 29-30, 60; Pelikan, Athens?, 48.
J.Cook, “Greek Philosophy and the Septuagint,” JNSL 24 (1998) 177-91, urges caution (178-81).
12
For ἀόρατος in the context of Plato’s invisible world see Tim 36C, 46E.
13
So Rösel, Übersetzung 31-33, who reads ἀκατασκεύαστος in the context of creation of order from
what is not yet formed expressed in Tim 30A (εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἤγαγεν ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας); Pelikan,
Athens?, 51; Schmitt, “Interpretation”, 150-51.
14
Rösel, Übersetzung, 35.
15
Philo treats day one (Gen 1:1-5) distinctively as the creation of the world of ideas (Opif. 15-16). On
this see D.T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses:
Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Philo of Alexandria Comm. Ser. 1; Leiden: Brill, 2001)
132-35. See also his major treatment of the extensive influence of the Timaeus on Philo, to the extent of
direct citation of it, in his writings and even his attributing its insights to Moses: D.T. Runia, Philo of
Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Phil Ant 44; Leiden: Brill, 1986), and on creation, in particular,
see 92-94. See also R.A. Baer, Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (ALGHJ 3; Leiden:
Brill, 1970), and Brown, Structure, 31-35.
16
Pelikan, Athens?, 42. See also Schmitt, “Interpretation”, 151-52 who draws attention to the shift
which this achieves from functionality and beauty to primarily beauty and connects it also with the
translation of צבאby κόσµος in 2:1.
11
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
247
the Timaeus, meaning, ‘firm, solid’, and referring to heavenly bodies.17 Other alleged
influences are to be found in the use of γένος ‘kind’ and ὁµοιότης ‘likeness’, the
latter with no Hebrew equivalent in the surviving texts in 1:11 and 12. It appears to
assume creation also of plant life in likeness to its model, as in the Timaeus and under
the influence of 1:26.18
The translation of “every living creature that moves” ( )נפש חיה למינהby
πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ζῴων ἑρπετῶν “every soul of moving beings” (1:21) opened possible
connections with the creation of souls in Tim 41D-42E. The unusual τετράποδος
(four footed) for ‘cattle’ ( )בהמהin 1:24, reflects the language of Tim 92A. To these
Rösel adds εἰκών in 1:26-27; 5:1,3 (see also ἰδέα in 5:2-3), κόσµος in 2:1;19
συντελέω in 2:2 (cf. Tim 92C) and the use noted above of γένεσις ‘becoming’ as the
standard equivalent of תולדות, in 2:4 and 5:1,20 and the striking prominence of the
verb γίνοµαι ‘to become’ in 2:4-5, including the translation of ‘when he created’
( )בהבראםby ‘when it became’ (ὅτε ἐγένετο) in 2:4, all echoing the Platonic
distinction between being and becoming articulated in Tim 27C-29D.21 Similarly the
‘still’ ἔτι in 2:9 and 2:19 makes good sense within a Platonic framework.22
17
Rösel, Übersetzung, 36, 82. He refers to Tim 31B, 43C. The notion of a dome might also have
recalled the creation as a sphere in the Tim 33B (σφαιροειδές), as Pelikan, Athens?, notes (50).
18
Rösel, Übersetzung, 43.
19
ויכלו השׁמים והארץ וכל צבאםLXX: καὶ συνετελέσθησαν ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ καὶ πᾶς ὁ κόσµος
αὐτῶν. See also Schmitt, “Interpretation,” on the coherence between the use of κόσµος to translate
צבאand the earlier use of καλός (152).
20
Of Philo’s interpretation of γένεσις in the context of the influence of the Timaeus Runia, Timaeus of
Plato, 94 writes: “The Platonic doctrine allows one to understand the Mosaic title, but at the same time
the Mosaic title validates the Platonic doctrine”. See also p. 426-33 and his On the Creation, 119.
21
Rösel, Übersetzung, 57-59. Pelikan, Athens?, 56. He adds: both Timaeus and Genesis have the
sequence night then day (53) and use sun and moon for measurements and have stars as secondary (54).
22
Rösel, Übersetzung, 62-63. But see also Cook, “Greek Philosophy”, 180, who notes it does not
require that context.
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
248
Accordingly Rösel suggests that the translation is now informed by a Platonic
framework according to which the first creation story describes the creation of ideas,
the second, the creation of the real. Certainly this is similar to the way Philo read it, as
he expounded Genesis using the Timaeus. Rösel argues that such an influence of the
Timaeus on the translators of Genesis is plausible, noting the arrival earlier of
Demetrius of Phaleron in Alexandria.23 The Peripatetic School had its own interest in
laws of foreign states and was influential in Alexandria. Knowledge of Plato and of
Hellenistic literary forms is reflected early and substantially in the writings of
Alexandrian Jews. It gave rise to the bizarre claim of Aristobulus mid second century
BCE
and others that Plato (in all likelihood with reference to the Timaeus)24 depended
on Moses (fr. 3 and 4).25 The strong influence of Hellenistic literary forms reflected in
Jewish writings produced subsequently in Alexandria is evident already in the third
century in the history by Demetrius, and in the second, in the histories by Artapanus
and Aristeas, in the Pseudo-Orphic fragment and Pseudo Greek Epic poets quoted in
Aristobulus, in Philo, the Epic poet, and, not least, in the composition of a tragedy by
Ezekiel.26
23
Rösel, Übersetzung, 83-84. On this see the discussion in the appendix below. He speculates
Demetrius, who had been a student of the Academy at the time of the writing of the Timaeus and a
prominent member of the Peripatetic School where Aristotle had taken the Timaeus to task, could
easily have brought it with him on exile late in the fourth century or early in the third (83-84). Others of
that school could also have been the conduit. This need not imply that translators had read the Timaeus.
Rösel contemplates that they may have known its thought and language from anthologies (84). Cf. F.
Siegert, Zwischen Hebräischer Bibel und Altem Testament: Eine Einführung in die Septuaginta
(Münsteraner Judaistische Studien 9; Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2001) 32, who cautions against the
assumption that the LXX translators stood under the influence of the growing interest in Greek
philology in Alexandria, for which he sees no evidence.
24
So M. Hengel, Hellenism and Judaism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early
Hellenistic Period (2 vols; London: SCM, 1974) 165. See also Runia, Timaeus of Plato, who
comments on the minimal influence from the Timaeus detectable in Aristobulus (103, 410).
25
On this and claims in similar authors see C.R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors:
Volume III: Aristobulus (SBLTT 39; Pseudepigrapha Series 13; Atlanta: Scholars, 1995) 207-209 n. 36.
26
See the collation of literary and non literary texts in G.E. Sterling, “Judaism between Jerusalem and
Alexandria,” in Hellenism in the Land of Israel (Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series 13; ed.
J.J. Collins and G.E. Sterling; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 265-301, 28890; and on literary influence N. Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
249
There are, however, significant differences between Greek Genesis and the
Timaeus. The latter is a much more extensive text with much detail without any
parallel in Genesis (for instance, discussion of the four elements, the notion of the
sphere as a living being and ‘God’, the Pythagorean arithmetic and geometry - though
the seven days are evocative; the transmigration of souls; the mother-receptacle). The
point of the comparison is not however the differences, but that there is sufficient
similarity in substance and terminology for a potential translator or hearer of Genesis
to connect the two and so hear the one in terms of the other. We certainly know the
latter occurred. Philo is our prime example. The points of similarity extend, as we
shall see, beyond the initial creation to include involvement of others in creating
humankind, the creation of woman from man and resultant problems related to
sexuality. It is much more than simply the occurrence of terminology. The potential
for such influence is independent of the issues of the extent to which the figure,
Timaeus, expresses Plato’s views, as already Aristotle assumed,27 but which many
dispute,28 is offering a literal (so Aristotle) or metaphorical account of creation, as his
Greek Version of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 64. This assumes knowledge of the literature itself, so
that Aristeas’s claim (121), that translators had some familiarity with Greek literature, is credible.
Some knowledge of the Timaeus as a whole at some point is very likely to the point of recognizing
similarity.
27
So K.L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy
and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Pr., 2003) 24-25; D.J. Zeyl, Plato: Timaeus
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000) xv, xxvi; Earlier F.M. Cornford; Plato’s Cosmology (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1937); F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Volume 1: Greece and Rome; Part 1
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), who writes: “The theories of Timaeus are Plato’s own, whether
borrowed or not” (272). But they are only a ‘likely account’ not meant to be scientific (272). Zeyl also
provides a critical review of the challenge to the placing of the Timaeus among Plato’s later works
(xvi-xx). See the review of approaches to the Timaeus down to Proclus in Runia, Timaeus of Plato, 3857.
28
The major challenge is that of A.E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford: OUP, 1928),
1-3 and passim. “It is a mistake to look in the Timaeus for any revelation of the distinctively Platonic
doctrines” (11). Note the comment of P. Kalkavage (ed.) Plato’s Timaeus: Translation, Glossary,
Appendices and Introductory Essay (Newburyport: Focus, 2001): “What seems to make this art all the
more deceptive is that we, along with Socrates, are being enjoined to suspend inquiry into first
principles: we must ‘receive the likely story about these things’ and not ‘search further for anything
beyond it’ (29D)” (43). Kalkavage takes the former line and depicts Timaeus as a drama designed by
Plato to help people examine their own souls and to wonder at the connection between cosmic and
political order (4); similarly G.A. Press, “Plato,” in The Columbia History of Philosophy (ed. R.H.
250
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
successors in the Academy (Speusippus and Xenocrates) assumed,29 and the fact that
the context of the Timaeus is preparatory for a discussion about the state.30 There is
little doubt in my mind that both Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium (189-93) and
Timaeus’ account of the origins of sexuality in Tim 91 reflect Plato’s playfulness with
characters,31 but authorial intent and actual reader response can be worlds apart.
It is plausible that a translator familiar either with the Timaeus or with its
language might bring this knowledge to bear on his translation. We may not be able to
discern how much this was incidental and how much it was intentional–for instance,
to underline a claim of authority for his text in the Hellenistic world. We are not, of
course, dealing with a fresh account of creation from a Genesis perspective, as in
Philo, but with a translation where the substance and sequence are dictated by the
existing Hebrew source. There was sufficient substantial similarity with the Timaeus
for the connection to be made. This includes not only the twofold account and the
broad coincidence of the sequence of creation in each, but also common motifs such
as eating the fruit of the tree, the fate of the snake, and the anxiety of the gods about
human immortality. The correspondences in structure and motif are not in such detail
that some theory of dependence is required, such we find in the propaganda of
Aristobulus, who claimed that Plato and the Greeks learned the best of what they
know from the Jews and so from an earlier Greek translation of the Genesis creation
Popkin; New York: MJF Books, 1999) 32-52. Plato is being playful; Timaeus is a Pythagorean and
Socrates largely just listens, so we can’t take it as Plato’s cosmology.
29
See the discussion Zeyl, Plato: Timaeus, xxii-xxv. Aristotle understood it literally, but already in his
time Xenocrates understood it metaphorically. If we assume a Peripatetic influence in the reading of the
Timaeus in Alexandria, then it is likely that the literal interpretation would have been the dominant one
there at the time when any potential translator became familiar with the work.
30
Rösel, Übersetzung, 80; Copleston, History of Philosophy 1: 271.
31
Taylor, Plato’s Timaeus, notes: “It is not likely that any part of the story was regarded by Plato
himself as more than a parable.” Laws 904E 4 suggests lots in reincarnation are based on moral levels
not gendered (262).
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
251
story. One should not rule out that both draw on some common mythologies.32 But we
are not dealing with a causal connection from Hebrew or from a pre-LXX Greek
Genesis to Plato, but at most with sufficient similarity of theme and structure to lead
people to think of the two accounts together and so in the case of a translator or hearer
of the Greek account to allow the reading of the latter to stand under the influence of
the Timaeus.
Changes in Genesis 1–3 LXX Relating to Sexuality
In this section I want to review three main passages within Genesis 1-3 which pertain
to human sexuality. I have treated these passages elsewhere.33 My purpose here is to
present the findings briefly in order to bring them to bear on a comparison with the
Timaeus.
Genesis 1:26-28 and 5:1-3
Genesis 1:26-28 describes the creation of humankind. Changes here are minor but
potentially significant. In 1:26 “in our image according to our likeness” (בצלמנו
)כדמותנוbecomes “according to our image and according to our likeness”
(κατ’εἰκόνα ἡµετέραν καὶ καθ’ὁµοίωσιν).34 The double κατά (‘according to’)
construction produces an echo of (“according to [its] kind”) of the preceding verses,
giving the impression more strongly than in the Hebrew that humankind belongs to
the γένος of God in contrast to the animals. The word for ‘image’ εἰκών might reflect
or evoke Platonic associations.
32
When the Timaeus begins, for instance, with hints of accessing ancient wisdom through Solon from
Egypt, might that imply in some roundabout way knowledge of the Jewish creation myth?
33
W. Loader, The Septuagint, Sexuality and the New Testament: Case Studies on the Impact of the LXX
in Philo and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) 27-59.
34
Καὶ may not be an addition but reflect a different Hebrew Vorlage, which would match the
Samaritan Pentateuch and Vulgate.
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WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
‘Let us make’ ( ;נעשׂהποιήσωµεν) might recall the gods in the Timaeus being
entrusted with making people (Tim 41BC). “So God created humankind ()את האדם
in his image, in the image of God he created him” becomes: “So God made
humankind (τὸν ἄνθρωπον), in the image of God (κατ’εἰκόνα θεοῦ) he made him.”
The unusual shift from ‘create’ ( )בראto ‘make’ (ποιἐω) may reflect the language of
the Timaeus. Similarly in 1:27 “male and female he created ( )בראthem” becomes
“male and female he made (ἐποίησεν) them”.
The LXX faced a problem with the Hebrew word-play between adam and
adamah in 2:7.35 The translators needed to make decisions about when to use the
generic ἄνθρωπος ‘human being’ and when to use what for them is the proper name
of a male, Adam. The inevitable consequence is that the hearer familiar with the LXX
version is inevitably led to see a reference to the man, Adam, from the beginning,
even when the generic term is used, even though the first occurrence in the LXX of
the name, Adam, occurs in 2:16. Although the translators must have been aware of the
generic sense (as 5:1 shows), the inability to reproduce the ambiguity of the word
adam inevitably put greater focus on the first human as male.
Both the Hebrew and Greek texts are open to a wide range of interpretations.
These include seeing in 1:27 a report of the creation of bisexual human beings,36 or of
35
See Loader, Septuagint, 32-35.
Reading Genesis 1:27 as bisexual J.C. de Moor, “The duality in God and Man: Gen 1:26-27,” in
Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel: Papers read at the tenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old
Testament Study and Het Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en Belgie, held at Oxford,
1977 (OTS XL; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 112-25, 124; P. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 17-23 (bisexual or, better, asexual). Cf. E. Noort, “The creation of man
and woman in biblical and ancient near eastern traditions” in The Creation of Man and Woman:
Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions ed. G. P. Luttikhuizen
(Themes in Biblical Narrative: Jewish and Christian Traditions I; Leiden: Brill, 2000) 1-18, who notes
that P does not assume equality elsewhere and argues that the male-female differentiation serves the
promise of progeny, as in 5:1-3 (6-10).
36
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
253
generic humankind as including males and females,37 or of the man from whom then
the female is formed in chapter 2, the more likely reading of the Greek account.
Genesis 1:26-27 find their echo in 5:1-3. The Hebrew of 5:1 recalls the creation of
adam (human kind or Adam). The LXX is unambiguous: “When God created Adam”
(ᾗ ἡµέρᾳ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν Αδαµ). The Hebrew continues by reporting: “in the
likeness ( )בדמותof God he made him” which the LXX renders “in the image
(κατ’εἰκόνα) of God he made him”, reflecting the use of ‘image’ ( )בצלמוtwice in
1:27 and also in 1:26, possibly preferring the more philosophical connotations of
εἰκών. “Male and female he created them ( ”)בראם5:2 becomes “male and female he
made them (ἐποίησεν αὐτούς)”, as in 1:27a. In the concluding line of 5:2, “and he
named their name adam (humankind or Adam)”, LXX is again unambiguous: “and he
named their name Adam” (Αδαµ). This reinforces the view that in the LXX God
made Adam, a man, in 1:27 and would subsequently make woman from him, but that
in a sense he already incorporated male and female, whereas the Hebrew adam allows
a more generic understanding. Within the context of what follows the one created
would very naturally be identified with the man formed from the dust of the ground in
2:7, whose name we learn is Adam. 1:26-28 accordingly finds its elucidation in 2:725. There we see the return of the theme of maleness and femaleness. Read within a
Platonic framework we might see, at least, in 1:26-27 and 5:1-2, the creation of the
human archetype, or, at least, the rational soul.
37
For the view that the Hebrew text assumes man and woman emerge only after the separation in 2:23
see M. Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Pr., 1987) 113-16; Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 17-21, 97-98 and against this: F.
Watson, “Strategies of recovery and resistance: Hermeneutical Reflections on Genesis 1-3 and its
Pauline Reception,” JSNT 45 (1992) 79-103, 92-93; B.J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Rhetoric and Ideology
in Genesis 2-3 (JSOTSup 208; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) 102-103.
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WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
If we stay with the terminology of the Timaeus, we may note that while εἰκών
(‘image’) and ὁµοιότης (likeness) echo its terminology, the model of which
humankind is the εἰκών in Genesis is not an eternal idea or ‘pattern’ (παράδειγµα),
but God himself.38 The difference between the maker’s creating the cosmos according
to eternal patterns and God’s creating human kind in his own image is not as great as
may seem, however, especially if we take into account that Timaeus assumes that the
maker used as a model the eternal which is good (which is why this cosmos is also
good/beautiful). It then connects this with God’s own being: “He was good, and in
him that is good no envy ever arises concerning anything; and being devoid of envy
he desired that all should be, so far as possible, like himself” (29E). This then informs
the maker’s method, including the implanting of a soul in the cosmos: a “Living
Creature endowed with soul and reason owing to the providence of God” (30B),
which could also be called a god (34B). Such a thought seems far from Judaism, but it
might be argued that it is still very close to the notion of creation in God’s image.
There is a further oddity about the account in the Timaeus. It depicts four
forms existing within the Living Creature, gods of the heavenly kind, birds, fish, and
land animals (Tim 39E 40A). The gods are immortal. The rest are not, but they are
required to come into being for the sake of completeness. They must not be immortal,
so the maker declares: “But if by my doing these creatures came into existence and
partook of life; they would be made equal to gods” (41C). The envy of the gods is a
motif also present in the Genesis myth (3:22). “Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the
man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out
his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’.” Genesis has its
38
Philo sees 1:26 as referring to the heavenly man, the model, in turn, for the forming of human beings
to be related in Genesis 2. See Loader, Septuagint, 60-61.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
255
own story about human mortality resulting from human disobedience, but even there
we find what many would doubtless hear as an echo of the maker’s anxiety that
humans might “be made equal to gods”.39 Banishment from the garden averts the
threat. For the Timaeus the soul is, indeed, immortal, but fails to reach it mortal bliss
also through human disobedience.
The created gods then receive the commission to create the other kinds. One
might expect an account of the creation of the three forms, but instead we have the
creation of humankind. Later we will learn that they, themselves, will indirectly
generate the others through their failures. The description of humankind as a kind of
microcosm of the cosmos, carrying the sphere upon its skeletal structure (Tim 44D)
further reinforces the notion that like the cosmos so the microcosm is in some sense in
the image of its maker.40 The souls of men derive from the mixing bowl from which
the gods, too, came, but now with impurities (41D). They attach themselves each one
to a star, all equally learn the nature of the Universe, and the laws of destiny. They are
on this basis “to grow into the most god-fearing of living creatures [42A]” and so
return to their star from their embodiment.
The other fascinating connection with the Timaeus is the plural, ‘Let us make’
in 1:26. For those familiar with the Timaeus it might evoke the plural gods who act as
agents of creation in the Timaeus, primarily in making humankind, male and female.41
Genesis, however, assumes the ‘we’ includes God, the creator. This did not stop
Philo, for instance, drawing attention to the involvement of others and attributing to
their role the flawed creation of humankind, and by implication, also women.42 The
39
Pelikan, Athens?, 62-63–also a decision by God and not just human disobedience.
Pelikan, Athens?, 56.
41
Pelikan, Athens?, 56-57.
42
Opif. 75; see also Fug. 68-70. And see Runia, Timaeus of Plato, 242-49.
40
256
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
‘we’ in Genesis need not imply something inferior bereft of immortality as in the
Timaeus. Nor does Genesis suggest impurities in the creation of human kind.
Genesis 2:18-25
The translation of 2:18-25 appears to stand under the influence of the translation of
1:26-27. Intentionally or otherwise the translator opens the possibility much more
strongly than in the Hebrew that people would hear the formation of the woman as
matching the creation of the man in such a way that as man is in the image of God, so
woman is in the image of man. According to Genesis 2:18, God declares that it is not
good for the man to be alone. God’s initiative is to find a companion for him. The
man has already born the name, Adam, in 2:16 so that in the LXX, the man of 2:18,
while depicted generically as ἄνθρωπος, is nevertheless, more strongly than in the
Hebrew, the male man, Adam. The formation of every animal of the field and every
bird of the air fails to provide an adequate companion. Then God forms the woman. In
both initiatives, in 2:18 and 2:20, we find עזר כנגדו, “a helper according to what is
before him” (i.e. his counterpart). In 2:18 LXX renders this as βοηθὸν κατ’αὐτόν “a
helper according to him, like him”. The same Hebrew words in 2:20 are rendered
differently by the translators as βοηθὸς ὅµοιος αὐτῷ “a helper like him”. The words
ὅµοιος αὐτῷ appear stronger and recall the double κατὰ phrases of 1:26, where
ὁµοίωσιν is used to describe the relation between man and God, inevitably
understood as the man, Adam.43 Other echoes of 1:26-27 include the change in 2:18 of
‘I shall make’ ( )אעשׂהto ‘Let us make’ (ποιήσωµεν), and the unexpected generic
(ἄνθρωπος) and not ἀνήρ for (אישman/male) in 2:24, when describing a man
leaving his parents to be joined to his wife, all indicate the connection. Within that
43
See my discussion in Loader, Septuagint, 99-104.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
257
frame of reference the naming of the woman, like the naming of the animals, is the act
of a superior and her role as helper is likely to be seen as the role of an inferior (as in
Philo Q.G. 1.26). The same hierarchical understanding of Genesis 1—2 underlies
Philo’s and Paul’s discussion of men and women (1 Corinthians 11).44
The LXX translation of 2:23-24 affirms the coming together of man and
woman in sexual union, whereas the Hebrew emphases common kinship.45 According
to the Hebrew of 2:23 the woman shall be called ’i4s]s]a4 because she was taken from ’i4s].
The pun, like the adam adamah pun, emphasizes commonality. Our English ‘woman’
and ‘man’ work to some degree, but all the LXX can do is: αὕτη κληθήσεται γυνή,
ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἐλήµφθη she shall be called ‘woman’ (or wife), for she was
taken out of ‘her husband’–not very enlightening, unless it plays with γυνήv and
γένναω ‘to give birth’ as does Philo Q.G. 1.28.
Where the Hebrew word focuses on becoming common kin ()בשׂר אחד, one
flesh or kin, “like bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” in 2:22, the Greek sarx
carries more the connotation of sexual union. The Hebrew also assumes sexual union
expressed in the active Qal verb ( דבקjoin to/stick to). The LXX translates this with
the deponent passive προσκολληθήσεται (shall be joined/shall join). The deponent
passive which will later be read as a real passive to reflect Jesus’ words “Whom God
has yoked”. The presence in 2:24 of οἱ δύο (the two), not present in the Masoretic text
(though reflected in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Vulgate and Peshitta) may also be
seen as enhancing this sense of union. The connections with 1:26-27, which are
stronger than in the Hebrew, suggest that the union is a reflex of an apparent unity of
male and female in 1:27, especially if the man of 1:27 is understood to incorporate the
44
45
See my discussion in Loader, Septuagint, 99-104.
On this see Loader, Septuagint, 79-86.
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WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
female.46 There are a number of elements in 2:21-25 which invite further comparison
with the Timaeus, not least its understanding of sexuality. Before considering these I
turn to another relevant passage in Genesis.
Genesis 3:16-19 and 3:13
The final passage for consideration is Genesis 3:16-19. It reports God’s curse on the
snake, and the punishment of the woman and of the man. More than in the Hebrew the
LXX translation conveys a reversal of what occurred in the formation of man and
woman. The man, formed from the earth returns to the earth and the woman formed
from the man returns to the man. The Hebrew text reads:
To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
The LXX replaces ‘desire’ ()תשוקתך, which means sexual desire (as in Canticle
7:11), with ‘return’ (ἀποστροφή).47 Women will keep returning to their husband, by
implication, seeking sexual intercourse, then falling pregnant over and over again and
suffering the consequences. Their sexual desire is part of the punishment. ‘Return’
helps set up the notion of reversal of the process of formation and goes beyond what
the Hebrew conveys. Both Hebrew and Greek see the punishment as also entailing the
rule over women by their husbands. The word, ‘return’, ἀποστροφή, makes a
connection for the hearer with the punishment of Adam: “until you return to the earth
46
2:25 LXX concludes, like the Hebrew, with the comment that the two of them were naked and were
not ashamed, but unlike the Hebrew is unable to reproduce the pun with the craftiness of the snake
‘ ערומיםnaked’ –‘ ארוםcrafty’.
47
Ἡ ἀποστροφή can also mean, “refuge”, but the discussion which follows makes, “return” more
likely. On the translation see also Wevers, Genesis, who notes its translation by ἡ ἀποστροφή also in
the related text Gen 4:7 which in Hebrew describes the passion of anger, also associated with the motif
of rule, as 3:16 (55). The Greek appears not to refer to the return of sin to Cain as something he must
master. Wevers sees no need to explain the unusual translation on the basis of reading readingתשׁובתך
instead of ( תשׁוקתך55),as proposed by R. Bergmeier, “Zur Septuaginta-Übersetzung von Gen. 3:16,”
ZAW 79 (1967) 77-79.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
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ἕως τοῦ ἀποστρέψαι σε εἰς τὴν γῆν, from which you were taken” (3:19). Here, too,
there are subtle differences. In Hebrew, the adam returns to the adamah
‘ground/earth’ qualified as ‘ עפרdust’ as in 2:7. The LXX simplifies the text using γῆ'
each time instead of ground and dust. The punishment is that he will toil for the earth
and return to it: “until you return to the earth, from which you were taken; because
you are earth and to earth you shall return”.
More strongly than in the Hebrew the punishment for both the man and the
woman is to return to where they came from (the earth, and the man, respectively) and
be subordinated or to toil in hardship for them. For the woman this includes pain in
childbirth into which she is continually being trapped by her keeping coming back to
her husband sexually who in turn controls her. This is arguably present already to
some degree in the Hebrew text, but it is enhanced in the LXX.
This raises the issue of women’s sexuality. What is the relationship between
the subordination which the LXX (though not the Hebrew) presupposes in 2:18-25
and the punishment of subordination in 3:16-19? What is the relation between the
attitudes towards sexuality implied in 2:24 and 3:16-19? Is woman’s fault–her
sexuality–a fruit only of the punishment or already the result of God’s inferior cocreators, as Philo implies is reflected in the words: ‘Let us make’ (Opif. 72-75).48 Or
did the LXX translator consider women’s sexual desire as a punishment which
requires husbands to control women? Was the woman a passive sexual partner before
her punishment? The matter is complicated by what occurs in the Garden of Eden.
48
On Philo’s reading of ποιήσωµεν in 1:27 as explaining human flaws through engagement of other
powers, see Runia, Timaeus of Plato, 242-49 and 265; also his Philo: On Creation, 236-43. Philo reads
the plural also at 2:18 following the LXX and unlike the Hebrew (Leg 2.1,5). While the former
becomes the focus of his explanation of the origin of sin, it may also be implied for the latter,
especially when women are made to represent the dangerous passions.
260
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
The initiative of Adam and his wife to hide from God in 3:8 was probably not
an expression of guilt but a reflection of their new found knowledge of 3:7 which told
them that nakedness, especially of sexual parts, is inappropriate in the presence of the
divine.49 It need not imply that these sexual parts were evil, although it was and still is
easy to confuse issues of purity and morality. Confronted by God the woman declares
in 3:13 “The snake tricked me, and I ate” ( )הנחש השׁיאני ואכלrendered in the LXX
as “The snake deceived me and I ate” (ὁ ὄφις ἠπάτησέν µε, καὶ ἔφαγον). The words
ὁ ὄφις ἠπάτησέν µε, can also be translated, “The snake seduced me”. This is clearly
how Paul (2 Cor 11:2-3) read the passage.50 Philo has no doubt that the woman is a
flawed creature, the result of God not acting alone, and an element of that flaw is her
sexuality. The enhanced description of the tree as enticing by its beauty, reminiscent
of the dangers women were seen to pose to men, reinforce this reading. The Timaeus
employs the image of plucking fruit from a tree for sexual intercourse, reflecting
widespread usage (91D). The LXX begins in 2:16 with the singular in the permission
for Adam to eat of all the trees, but changes the warning from singular to plural in
2:17 in the light of the story to follow in which the woman sins and leads Adam to
sin. It puts the focus more strongly on the woman.51
The Timaeus and Genesis 1-3 LXX on Human Sexuality
The Timaeus states inequality between men and women up front, just after asserting
equality in the relation to the soul’s source and informed origin (41E): “since human
49
See H. Wallace, The Eden Narrative (HSM 32; Atlanta: Scholars, 1985), for the mythological
background of the connection between nakedness and serpent and its likely sexual meaning in early
forms of the myth (144-45). He also notes rabbinic tradition linking the names for the serpent and Eve,
the possible origin of Eve in traditions about Asherah as the mother of all living and the links between
the serpent and wisdom. The Genesis account is subverting existing myths, including a reduction of the
sexual components and their use for etiology (148-62), although the notion of the earth’s fertility
remains in the Genesis story.
50
See Loader, Septuagint, 105.
51
Pelikan, Athens?, 60-61.
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nature is two-fold, the superior (τὸ κρεῖττον) sex is that which hereafter should be
designated ‘man’” (42A).52 The female, nevertheless, belongs and is as much a part of
intended creation by the maker through the gods as are birds, fish and animals. They
are necessary to complete the cosmos. Genesis 1:27 offers no comment about the
relative worth of male and female, although most people read their patriarchal
assumptions into the text.
According to the Timaeus the task of the human being, both an embodied soul
and an ensouled body which consists of passions and appetites, is to be victorious in
the struggle against the latter and not let them rule. Success means eventual return to
one’s star and a life of bliss. “But whoever falls to these will be transformed at his
second birth into the nature of woman” (42B) and failure thereafter produces a
downward slide of reincarnations as lower forms of life until the trend is reversed.
The Timaeus repeats this thought in greater detail in 91A with a bizarre and amusing
account of the degenerative process of men into women, then birds (for those
preoccupied with astronomy), animals (men who gave no attention to philosophy),
and snakes (the most foolish of all). The process brings to completion the act of
creation, the realization of the Forms seen in the sphere. Aside from its striking (and
perhaps intended) perversity, it repeats the assumption that the female is inferior.53
52
Taylor, Plato’s Timaeus, points to Rep v 455D 2 according to which the best performance of women
falls short of men in all departments (260).
53
Taylor, Platos’ Timaeus, comments: “It may fairly be doubted whether Timaeus himself is supposed
to ‘keep a straight face’ to the end” (635). “So, as to the first point, the alleged origin of sex, we can be
sure that Plato is not in earnest with it, since he has put the same theory into the mouth of the comedian
Aristophanes in the Symposium and has made Aristophanes introduce the tale with a reference to his
own calling as a professional γελωτοποίος. Zeus according to this pretended cosmogony, split the
original bi-sexual ‘men’ in half longitudinally, for fear of their storming Olympus, and if we continue
to misbehave, he may repeat the operation and leave us to hop on one leg. It is quaint that earnestminded dullards have found a profound ‘metaphysic of sexual love’ in this Rabelaisian jest. It is simply
fun, admirably suited to the character of Aristophanes who utters it” (635). See also Runia, Timaeus of
Plato, 346.
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
262
The notion of the female as a failed male expounds a theory of sexual
attraction which implies that human sexuality is also a secondary adaptation. Those
who knew Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium (189C-193D) might have
recalled the myth of the single human being combining male and female, then split
into three types, each seeking its matching partner and thus explaining sexual
attraction, of which the most noble is male seeking male. It required also a physical
operation to relocate the genitals to the front side. The myth of androgyny may well
lie behind the text known to the rabbis, alluded to in our title, which read: “male and
female he created him”.54
The Timaeus assumes sexual attraction to be the result of subsequent
modification of the original generation of men (Tim 91). A hole, secondarily bored in
the excretory organ, presumably by the gods, creates in males a channel for animate
marrow (seed) to pass from the head down through the neck and spine into the penis
which it turns into something wanting to reproduce and so develops a vibrant will to
ejaculate. “Wherefore in men the nature of the genital organs is disobedient and selfwilled, like a creature that is deaf to reason and it attempts to dominate all because of
its frenzied lusts” (91C). Sexual desire is an “animate being within us” (ζῷον τὸ µὲν
ἐν ἡµῖν) and expresses itself as an almost uncontrollable urge, verging on the
demonic.55
Drawing on similar Hippocratic tradition, Timaeus’ depiction is equally
negative about women’s sexuality. They have wombs that want to bear children and
become sick and disruptive if left unfulfilled. They are not fulfilled “until the desire (ἡ
ἐπιθυµία) and love (ὁ ἔρως) of the two sexes unite them. Then, culling as it were the
54
55
See n. 1.
On the passions as like wild animals see Tim 70E and Rep ix 588C 7.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
263
fruit from trees, they sow upon the womb, as upon ploughed soil, animalcules that are
invisible for smallness and unshapen” (91CD). Although Timaeus envisages reality as
resulting from failure, it attributes a role to sexual intercourse without which both
women and men become unwell.56
There are significant similarities and differences here. Sexual union in Genesis
is also connected with a physical operation, the making of woman from the original
man; but neither the making of woman nor sexual intercourse is seen in a bad light in
Genesis 2:20-25. Sexual union in Genesis does not appear to be driven by deficiency,
the need to find the other half,57 nor even by the need to produce children. On the
contrary in part it rectifies a situation which was not good: “It is not good for the man
to be alone” (2:18).
In the Timaeus women also come from men, but there it is because of men’s
failure and the reincarnation of their souls in women. The Timaeus does not entertain
the notion of oneness between man and woman, let alone marriage and family as a
positive thing, as Genesis 2:20-25 LXX does. This coheres with Socrates’ low view of
family reflected in Timaeus 18C-E.
Genesis LXX, however, does appear to assume woman as inferior, especially
by its translation of 2:18-25. While the motivation and process for the formation of
the female is quite different, it is possible that someone coming from the Timaeus and
its realm of influence might see the creation of woman in Genesis as the creation of an
inferior. This appears to be implied in the structural analogy between the creation of
man and the creation of woman in the LXX and so informs an understanding of
56
Gaca, Fornication, sexual renunciation as cause of ill health in women (Tim 91B 7-17) and men (B
4-7) (40). Plato seeks in the Republic and Laws to change society so that it can overcome the dangers of
sexual appetites which he saw ruining Athens and other cities. First priority was to regulate
reproduction, taking away male possession of women through marriage which caused so much waste
unnecessary competition (41).
57
Philo, Opif. 152 alludes to Aristophanes’ myth.
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
264
‘helper’ as a subordinate. The LXX interprets the woman’s constant returning to her
husband as a punishment. Her sexual desire part becomes her punishment and thus
exacerbates what was already a flaw. Woman is trapped into wanting sexual
intercourse falling pregnant and suffering the pangs of childbirth. Consequently her
uncontrollable sexuality needs controlling by a man.
We are now not far from the Timaeus in its treatment of sexual desire as an
uncontrollable force within women. Unlike in the Timaeus, however, men’s sexuality,
affirmed in the sticking of oneself to one’s wife and becoming one flesh, escapes the
punishment. The LXX could, however, be read to imply that women only become
sexually active as a result of the punishment, although a sexual understanding of the
sin in the garden would suggest otherwise. The punishment of death for the man,
return to the earth from which he was made, becomes for the woman, more clearly
than in the Hebrew, the punishment of return to the man and to man’s control, perhaps
a kind of death.
Good order in humanity in the light of Genesis 1—3 LXX is the family where
man and woman become one flesh and the man controls his wife’s sexuality (and by
extension the sexuality of all other women, possibly including other wives, in his
care) and she serves him as a helper. He is an image of God for his family and, joined
to his wife, he is fruitful and multiplies (fulfilling the command of 1:28). Good order
according to Socrates’ summary in the Tim 18C-E, by contrast, is the control of
women’s sexuality through the guardians, and the production of children who are then
brought up and educated by the community without attachment to or knowledge of
particular parents.58 They are to be made more like men. In the latter scheme there is
58
Gaca, Fornication, 42. For the Republic “the communal pooling of women and reproductive labor
removes kinship-based factionalism and the related competition for wealth in the city” (45) freeing
women from women’s work (46); this is only for the elite (47). In the Laws Plato compromised, but
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
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room for women, and women are to be equally educated as souls who shared equally
in the universe’s secrets (41E).59
The Timaeus can also use the female image very positively to express the
receptacle of becoming, using the image of the mother to express complex notions of
space and time. In his description Timaeus speaks of the place of becoming as the
receptacle, the nurse of becoming. The image is to that degree neutral, but it also
incorporates the notion of the chaotic, perhaps reflecting an assumption about
women’s being (52DE).60
Female imagery also informs the structure of human being as shaped by the
gods. As women’s living quarters are separated from the men’s so in the human body
the lower part beneath the midriff belongs to the appetites and animal passions which
need male values of courage and spirit, located closer to the reason of the citadel, the
head, to control them (69E 70A).61 Excessive pleasure (Plato doubtless means sexual
pleasure) is the disease of madness, an overproduction of seed in the offending
marrow.
then compensated by greater strictness: an obligation to marry and have children (43, 48. 53); marriage
must be strictly reproduction focused at first; no ejaculations without that as the goal; otherwise it is as
bad as incest; (54); no masturbating etc. Sexual intercourse is an art; temperance in it is enjoined
because it affects offspring; they are affected by it being badly done–sober craftsmanship matters (55).
Yet sexual activity for the male is not limited to marriage in Laws–one can also sleep with slaves, but
only to get them pregnant (56). After the reproductive years there is not total restraint but moderation
and discretion (57). So Plato does not limit sexual activity to procreation.
59
On women’s equal right to education in the Republic see E. Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient
World (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1992) 58-59. Taylor, Plato’s Timaeus, notes that
Timaeus’ views are closer to Aristotle in espousing women’s inferiority, whereas Plato says the arête
of a man and of a woman is the same and so both should have the same education (636).
60
“The Nurse of Becoming, being liquefied and ignified and receiving also the forms of earth and of
air, and submitting to all the other affections which accompany these, exhibits every variety of
appearance; but owing to being filled with potencies that are neither similar nor balanced, in no part of
herself is she equally balanced, but sways unevenly in every part, and is herself shaken by these forms
and shakes them in turn as she is moved” (52DE).
61
Zeyl, Plato: Timaeus, observes: “The very existence of the mortal kind of soul and its susceptibility
to the ‘dreadful disturbances’ of pleasure and pain and the violent emotions that afflict the organism is
… due to Necessity” (lxxix). The Maker and then the gods had to work with material which entailed
limitations as to what one could and could not do. This is an important aspect of the account of the
creation in Timaeus.
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
266
Conclusion
If we accept Rösel’s thesis, a prima facie case exists for arguing that attitudes towards
sexuality in the Timaeus may have already influenced the translation of Genesis. It is,
however, much easier to show such influence on subsequent readings of Genesis. The
LXX Genesis does have distinctive emphases in its understanding of sexuality but an
influence from the Timaeus is not certain. Patriarchy and negative views of women’s
sexuality were not confined to the Timaeus. While the language of image and likeness
probably reflects some influence from the Timaeus, its impact in the translation of
2:18-25 and 1:26-27 moves beyond a Platonic framework. For it assumes an image of
an image within realia. The derivation of woman from man is already there in the
Hebrew text. At most one can say that the notion of superiority and inferiority coheres
with what one finds in the Timaeus. The same is true of the suggestion of women’s
uncontrollable sexuality which is rooted in the Hebrew myth. Clearly the Timaeus
assumes a significantly different role for women in society. Nevertheless, it remains
plausible that the shift in the LXX accounts towards a hierarchical understanding of
God, man and woman, and towards a problematization of sexuality, including the
possible sexualization of the garden myth, may be the result of a translator standing
either directly or indirectly under the influence of the Timaeus or at least moving in
circles where its language and attitudes were at home. That the Timaeus influenced
also the translation of passages relevant to sexual attitudes is, to borrow from the
Timaeus, “a likely story”.
Appendix: The LXX and Ptolemy Philadelphus
The translation of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, seems to
have taken place in part in response to Ptolemy II Philadelphus, like much else in the
sphere of learning at the time in the Hellenistic enclave of Alexandria, where the son
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
267
of Alexander’s general, Ptolemy, lived gloriously.62 The evidence for a significant
Jewish population in Alexandria at this time is strong. Jews will have come as
prisoners of war after the taking of Jerusalem, as soldiers, or as settlers of their own
free will eager to make a fresh start and escape the vicissitudes of Judea torn between
the Ptolemies and the Seleucids.63 Before the mid second century they organized
themselves into a πολίτευµα (Aristeas 310), and according to Strabo had their own
ethnarch (Jos Ant 14.117). By the first century CE, Alexandria’s Jewish population is
estimated to have been roughly double that of Jerusalem.64 The language of the
translators belongs to Alexandria of the first half of the third century.65
Two independent second century BCE Hellenistic Jewish sources, Aristeas, a
pseudograph from Alexandria, written in the second half to defend the translation, and
Aristobulus, written in the first, identify Ptolemy’s initiative together with Demetrius
of Phaleron.66 Both Diogenes Laertius (Diog Laert V 75-83) and Cicero (Pro Rabir.
Postumo 9.23) contradict this partnership, reporting that Ptolemy banished Demetrius,
who had advised against his succession, and had him killed. Their evidence goes
62
W. Orth, “Ptolemaios II. und die Septuaginta-Übersetzung,” in Im Brennpunkt: Die Septuaginta:
Studien zur Entstehung und Bedeutiung der Griechischen Bibel (ed. H.J.Fabry and U.Offerhaus;
BWANT 153; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001) 97-114: speaks of the Ptolemies legitimizing their rule not
by military might as Antigonus and his son Demetrius, not by appeal to divine support as Seleucus, nor
by emphasizing closeness to Alexander as Lysimachus, but by cultivating the Alexandrian heritage by
taking custody of his grave and making his city, Alexandria, magnificent. “Dabei entschloss man sich,
den Rang dieser Polis nicht in erster Linie auf Einwohnerzahl, bauliche Tracht und Wirtschaftsaktivität
zu gründen, sondern auf Bildung und Wissenschaft” (103). On the unparalleled founding of the double
institution of the Museum and Library see also P. Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical
Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1990) 80-91.
63
Orth, “Ptolemaios,”101-102.
64
Sterling, “Judaism” 268.
65
Orth, “Ptolemaios” 97 n, 2. refers to P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford: OUP, 1972) 1: 689;
2: 956 n. 71. See also Siegert, Zwischen Hebräischer Bibel und Altem Testament, 31, and Schmitt,
“Interpretation,” 144-49, who refers to legal and technical terms, designations of professions and
geographical details.
66
N. Collins, The Library in Alexandria & the Bible in Greek (VTSup 82; Leiden: Brill, 2000), argues
that we should take into account two further witnesses who, she argues, are also independent:
Epiphanius 48C, 51D, 52B and the 12th century scholar, Johannes Tzetzes (60-61). See also Johann
Cook’s contribution in this volume.
268
WILLIAM R. G. LOADER
alongside much else that is suspicious and clearly legendary in Aristeas.67 It will have
us believe, for instance, that seventy-two translators were summoned from Jerusalem68
and completed the task in seventy-two days.69 The seventy-two trimmed to seventy
gives us the name of the translation: Septuaginta or Septuagint.
Whereas many scholars, dismissing Aristeas, attributed the translation, a most
unusual undertaking in itself and without parallel in the Greek world for centuries,70 to
internal Jewish liturgical and didactic needs,71 recently scholars have been more
willing to give credence to the link with Ptolemy, indeed to his initiative.72 They point
to royal initiatives in translating demotic laws,73 possibly also for reasons of informed
67
Siegert, Bibel, dismisses Aristeas as just ‘name dropping’ (26). See also the negative assessment in
J.M. Dines, The Septuagint (London: T&T Clark, 2004) 28-33. Contrast Collins, Library, who sets the
date of the translation of the Pentateuch at 281 B.C.E., though most prefer a date around 250. She then
argues that the translation would not have been necessary for the recent generation who emigrated, but
clearly served royal purposes (115-81, esp. 176-78).
68
This is not in itself unlikely given the sparse evidence for Aramaic or Hebrew in Alexandria.
Probably only a limited number of people were bilingual: Siegert, Bibel, 26-27. Sterling, “Judaism
between Jerusalem and Alexandria,” points out “there are only a handful of Semitic inscriptions” and
that “it is more like that they reflect periodic migrations of Jews from Judea” (273).
69
Attested also in Jos Ant 12.11-119; Philo, De Vit Mos 2.25-44, whose story enhances the event into a
miracle of 72 producing separate identical translations under the inspiration of the Spirit; and in
rabbinic tradition: b. Meg 9a-b; y. Meg. 1.1, 4. Elsewhere, in Christian circles, the legend warrants
confidence in the Greek Bible. See M. Hengel, “Die Septuaginta als ‘christiche Schriftensammlung’,
ihre Vorgeschichte und das Problem des Kanons,” in Die Septuaginta zwischen Judentum und
Christentum (ed. M. Hengel and A.M. Schwemer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994) 182-284, 184-209.
70
Emphasised by Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 18; see also Siegert, Bibel, 24. He
observes that the Romans conquered the east by mastering their languages, particularly Greek.
71
E.g. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2: 957-59 n. 75, who argues that the translation was necessary
because people lost their Hebrew or Aramaic, that the need for the people’s approval would not make
sense if it was a royal mandate, nor is a festival likely to have celebrated the product of such a mandate.
See the critical response in Orth, “Ptolemaios” 104-105. R.T. McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New
Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), discusses the theories (liturgical, didactic,
interlinear support for reading the Hebrew; 104-105). See also Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in
Context, 53-66, who argues that there is no evidence in any of the texts indicating the grounds were
liturgical or didactic; these are modern deductions (63). Siegert, Bibel, focuses primarily on synagogue
needs as the reason for the translation (29).
72
Accepting Ptolemy’s initiative: Orth, “Ptolemaios” 97-114; Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in
Context, 63; Collins, Library, passim.
73
The Byzantine scholar Georgios Kenenus reports that Ptolemy II initiated the translation to Greek of
100,000 books, including many from Egyptian and Chaldean (references in Orth, “Ptolemaios” 106 n.
35). Orth argues that the openness to the non Hellenic world which a Macedonian background would
have fostered is reflected already in Ptolemy I’s visits to pagan temples and in that process texts would
need to be translated. The interest is reflected in the work of Manetho who wrote a history of Egypt in
Greek at the instigation of Ptolemy II and would have needed translations. Eratosthenes is alleged to
have translated lists of kings from Thebes and the astrological writings of Hermippus assume Greek
translation of Mesopotamian texts in the Alexandrian library.
SEXUALITY AND PTOLEMY’S GREEK BIBLE
269
government,74 royal initiatives for all other known translations before the second
century BCE,75 the influence of the Peripatetic School of Aristotle through Demetrius,76
the influence of Theophrastus who visited Ptolemy (Diog Laert V 37), and Straton of
Lampsacus, Philadelphus’ tutor and successor of Theophrastus interesting in
collecting the laws of different states.77 There is some evidence of Jewish resistance to
such a translation,78 but their Sinai tradition also suggests the Law does belong to the
nations, only that Israel alone agreed to observe it and this might have enabled some
to affirm the undertaking79 in the latter years of Philadelphus’ reign, around 250 BCE.
74
So M. Hengel, Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenization of Judaism in the preChristian Period (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 94. J. Meleze Modrzejwski , The Jews of Egypt: From
Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), argues on the basis of
the account of local law in the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3285, that the translation of the Jewish Law
belongs to an official administrative action of the Ptolemies (104-105). See the discussion in Fernández
Marcos, Septuagint in Context, who notes there is no evidence for this, pointing rather to Ptolemy’s
cultural interests (63-64), but also noting the lack of mention of the presence of the Jewish Law in the
Alexandrian library before that of Pseudo-Longinus in the 1st century C.E. Siegert, Bibel, claims that it
would be unlikely to have been put in the library because it would not have been seen as literature (28).
But it may have been seen as law.
75
Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 63.
76
On Demetrius of Phaleron see Green, Alexander to Actium, 36-51. He was strategos of Athens from
325/324 on and ruled Athens 317-307 under Kassander, until he was driven out by Demetrius
Polioketes in 307. He came to Ptolemy 1 in Alexandria in 297, so Orth, “Ptolemaios” 108.
77
So Orth, “Ptolemaios” 108-109, who notes Demetrius’s creation of new laws in Athens. Aelian
reports that he played a major role in developing law in Egypt alongside Ptolemy 1 (var. hist. III 17).
He also notes Theophrastus’ references to Palestine and Jews (109), referred to also in Josephus Apion
1 166-67, and his interests in the laws of barbarian peoples, an interest most likely bearing fruit in the
initiative to translate the Jewish Law. Orth concludes: “So gibt es gute Gründe, dass man dei
Übersetzung des hebräischen Textes in die hellenistische κοινή nicht ausschliesslich, so wie man es
bisher fast immer getan hat, als eine interne Angelegenheit der jüdischen Gemeinde in Alexandreia
betrachtet; es kommt vielmehr darauf an, auch den Anteil des Monarchen und der am Hof wirkenden
Intellektuellen mit zu beachten. Ein starker Beweggrund war dabei das Bestreben, fremde
Rechtsordnungen kennenzulernen. Dies ergibt sich aus der aristotelischen Schultradition; allerdings ist
es keineswegs nur auf Angehörige des Peripatos beschränkt [he refers to Hecataeus of Abdera]; es
findet im Übrigen Bestätigung in der Beurteilung des Übersetzungswerkes durch jüdische Autoren”
(110). He also counters Rösel’s suggestion that the focus was an interest in cosmology for which he
finds no evidence (111). We might observe that as with Plato’s Timaeus so with the Genesis creation
stories and later apocalyptic ‘science’ creation and order serve to reinforce the sense of the order of
Law and governance.
78
On this see Veltri, Talmai. The Gaonic additons to Megillat Ta’anit 13 speak of three days of
darkness coming over the land after the translation and Soferim 1.7-8 and Sefer Tora 1.8-9 compare its
completion to the making of the golden calf. See Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 45.
Resistance is already hinted at in Aristeas (312-16) and awareness of problems in translation appears in
the prologue to the Greek translation of Sirach by his grandson. Its earliest attested use of the LXX is in
the late 3rd century Jewish writer Demetrius, writing under Ptolemy IV Philopator, 221-204 B.C.E.,
who uses numbers of LXX and formulations from Genesis. Our earliest ms is 2nd cent B.C.E. Pap.
Rylands 458 (Deuteronomy 23 - 28).
79
So Fernández Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 19-20.
PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS: A NEW MOSES*
Paul McKechnie
In Egypt in the second century Jews manifested loyalty to the government alongside
their piety when they put up dedication stones at their places of prayer. At Athribis
(Benha, 48 km north of Cairo in the Nile Delta) a stone recorded that1
On behalf of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, Ptolemy son of Epicydes,
epistates of the guardsmen, and the Jews in Athribis, [dedicated] this place of
prayer to Most High God.
This place of prayer was developed at the same time or later by adding space in the
form of an exedra (probably a roofed area with three walls, providing seating), and
there was a second dedication stone which said:2
On behalf of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra and their children, Hermias
and his wife Philotera and their children dedicated this exedra for the place of
prayer.
At Xenephyris (Kom el-Akhdar) in the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes and
Cleopatras II and III, the gateway of a place of prayer was dedicated on behalf of the
king and queens;3 and in the same reign at Nitriai (el-Barnugi, across Lake Mareotis
from Alexandria) the place of prayer and its appurtenances were also dedicated on
behalf of the king and queens.4 Such dedications had first been made in the third
*
In memoriam Prof. J.A. Crook, who in his lifetime kindly commented on a draft. All dates are BC. I
wish to thank the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Corley for commenting on drafts of this chapter. He should not be
assumed to agree with anything.
1
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 27.
2
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 28.
3
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 24.
4
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 25.
A NEW MOSES
271
century, and continued to be made for the rest of the Ptolemaic period and beyond.5 I
begin with the second-century ones6 because they point (though not necessarily more
emphatically than others) to the existence in Egypt of a loyal Jewish community.
Ptolemy son of Epicydes, for instance, bore a royal name and was an officer in the
security forces.
These Jews, I assume, had not read 3 Maccabees, in which stories are told
which have Ptolemy IV misbehaving at Jerusalem and persecuting Jews in Egypt. I
will follow Moses Hadas, who argued that 3 Maccabees was written later than the
Book of Aristeas, perhaps many years after (well into the first century),7 and as a
refutation of it, rather than Sterling Tracy, who argued the opposite, namely that the
Book of Aristeas was written in response to 3 Maccabees.8
In the middle of the second century, Ptolemy Philometor allowed Onias son of
Onias to build a Jewish temple, no less, at Leontopolis in the Heliopolite nome. When
Josephus records a letter from Onias to Ptolemy asking for the necessary permission,
it refers (rather as in the case of the places of prayer) to the temple being built “for the
benefit of thyself, and thy wife and children”.9 It is noted in the letter that the prophet
5
See Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 22, from Schedia in Lower Egypt, put up
under Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221); and Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 13,
from Alexandria, set up in 37. Dedications of the Roman period include Horbury and Noy, Jewish
Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 126.
6
Horbury and Noy, (Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, p.47), argue that because the king is named first in
JIE 27 it is unlikely to be from a time when a Cleopatra was acting as regent for her son or brother—so
that the eligible periods are 194-180, 175-170, 145-140, 101-88, 80 and 79-68. At p.49 they quote with
approval A. Kasher’s argument to the effect that no. 28 is likely to be of the same date as no. 27 rather
than later.
7
Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates, 35-6; and earlier, Hadas, ‘Aristeas and III Maccabees’, 175-84,
especially at 182-4. Victor A. Tcherikover argued even more emphatically than Hadas, contending that
‘about a hundred years separate the two writers’ (‘The Third Book of Maccabees as Historical Source
of Augustus’ Time’, 20).
8
Tracy ‘III Maccabees and Pseudo-Aristeas’. Even 3 Maccabees refers to the loyalty of Jews towards
the Ptolemaic kings: at the end of the text, having come to a better mind, Ptolemy IV writes in a letter
that ‘since we have taken into account the friendly and firm goodwill that they [the Jews] had towards
us and our ancestors, we justly have acquitted them of every charge of whatever kind’ (3 Maccabees
7.7).
9
Josephus Jewish Antiquities 13.68.
272
PAUL MCKECHNIE
Isaiah foretold that there should be an altar in Egypt to the Lord God.10 There at
Leontopolis, Tell el-Yehoudieh, in 117, the first extant and datable one of a set of
metrical epitaphs in Greek for Jews was set up, commemorating Demas, who (until he
died at the age of 38) used his sophia to help people.11 Demas was perhaps a doctor or
a magistrate.12
Politically, the most important thing about the Jewish community in the
‘district of Onias’ was that it was a garrison, which might be expected to guard
against any repetition of the Seleucid invasion of Egypt which had been ended just
outside Alexandria by Popillius Laenas’ Roman diplomacy on the Day of Eleusis in
168. In 145, Onias led an army against Alexandria to defend Queen Cleopatra II and
the sons of the late King Ptolemy VI Philometor against an attack by Ptolemy VIII
Euergetes II, who had come from the direction of Cyrene.13 Events played out in
Euergetes’ favour, and he took power in Alexandria—though he also married
Cleopatra, who remained as queen. The outcome was on the whole unfavourable for
Onias, having supported Cleopatra; and it was at this time, if ever, that a Ptolemy got
elephants riled up with alcohol and tried to set them to attack Jews.14 But John M.G.
Barclay seems to be right in arguing that Jews in Egypt were not in general
disadvantaged after 145 in the wake of being on the wrong side; although anti-Jewish
elements had acquired something which in the long term they could use in
propaganda.15
10
Cf. Isaiah 19.19.
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, no. 30.
12
Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt, pp.55-60.
13
Josephus Against Apion 2.50-52.
14
Josephus Against Apion 2.53-4: presented by Josephus as a move against Jews inside Alexandria,
planned by Euergetes as an alternative to attempting to fight Onias’ army.
15
Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 38-9.
11
A NEW MOSES
273
So the decades between 150 and 100 were (broadly) harmonious times
between the Jews of Egypt and the government of the Ptolemaic kingdom. It will be
evident that I am focusing on this period because there is something approaching a
consensus to the effect that this is when the Book of Aristeas was written.16 Bezalel
Bar-Kochva in his book about Pseudo-Hecataeus on the Jews surmises that the rise of
the Hasmonean kingdom must have altered the dynamic of the situation:17
Practicing Jews must ... obviously have been uncomfortable about their
continued residence in Egypt when the new Jewish state in the Promised Land
established itself politically, considerably expanded its borders, and flourished
economically.
I wonder if ‘must ... obviously have been uncomfortable’ is true. There seems to be an
echo of the twentieth century. John Barclay discusses relations between Jews in
Jerusalem and those in Egypt more cautiously.18 And yet there was (stating the issue
mildly) an easily discerned paradox in Jews living in Egypt.
Bar-Kochva summarizes the evidence from the Bible and later interpretation
for what he calls “the explicit biblical prohibition and warnings not to emigrate to
Egypt.”19 When the children of Israel were about to cross the Red Sea, Moses told
them, “the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again”.20 In
Deuteronomy the list of curses for disobedience culminates with the threat that if the
Israelites disregard the Law “the Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a
16
Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus, 142 and 271-88, argues in favour of 116 (or 118)-113. Oswyn
Murray argues in favour of a date around 100 (‘Aristeas and Ptolemaic Kingship’, 338-9 and 368-70).
Hadas argued in favour of a date not long after 132 (Aristeas to Philocrates, 54). Recently Raija
Sollamo has restated the arguments in favour of 145-127, the date suggested by Elias Bickermann in
1930 (Sollamo, ‘The Letter of Aristeas and the Origin of the LXX’, 334; cf. Bickermann, ‘Datierung
des Pseudo-Aristeas’), and Sylvie Honigman has argued in favour of the period between approximately
150 and 145 (The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 129-30).
17
Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus, 236.
18
Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 35-6, citing the letters quoted at the beginning of 2
Maccabees (2 Maccabees 1.1-2.18) and arguing that they show close contacts between Jerusalem and
Jews in Egypt in the second century.
19
Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus , 79 and 234-6. 234 n.8 cites later sources in which Deut. 17.16 is
understood as legislating against migrating to Egypt, at any rate under ordinary circumstances.
20
Exodus 14.13.
274
PAUL MCKECHNIE
route that I promised you would never see again.”21 Isaiah says, “Alas for those who
go down to Egypt for help”;22 Jeremiah, in the context of the neo-Babylonian
campaign against Jerusalem in the early sixth century, warns against migrating to
Egypt;23 and Ezekiel comments on King Zedekiah rebelling against the Lord by
sending ambassadors to Egypt.24
Egypt, in short, was the land of sin and slavery. Israel’s God had first
delivered his people from it into freedom, and then at Mount Sinai given them the
Law to enable them to live right. This is a foundational narrative of the Jewish
religion. Those Jews who did not occupy themselves reading the Law and the
Prophets did not thereby remain unaware of the strangeness of living in Egypt. As
Bar-Kochva notes,25 “the annual celebration of the Passover kept reminding the
people of the meaning of residence in Egypt.” Their chief religious festival celebrated
leaving Egypt, and yet (somehow), there they were.
This is, as it were, a mise-en-scène: the summary of facts one should desirably
know before beginning to read the Book of Aristeas, which was written by a Jew
living in Egypt in this period. The text is written as if by Aristeas, a Gentile courtier in
the service of Ptolemy II, and it describes how Ptolemy II came to want the Jewish
Law translated into Greek, how translators were brought from Jerusalem to
Alexandria, how they were entertained there and answered the king’s questions (this
is a large part of the book), and finally how they made the translation, then went
home.
21
Deuteronomy 28.68.
Isaiah 31.1.
23
Jeremiah 42.13-17.
24
Ezekiel 17.14.
25
Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus, 235. Note also the ‘Passover papyrus’ (Pritchard, Ancient Near
Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p.491), in which Darius II authorizes the Jewish garrison
at Elephantine to keep the Passover in 419. I wish to thank the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Corley for drawing my
attention to this document.
22
A NEW MOSES
275
Aristeas is hard to classify. Henry Meecham not unfairly said it was “an
interesting and readable narrative, despite its length and its somewhat tedious
descriptions”.26 Referring to the text as a novel, Günther Zuntz in 1959 said that “We
may ... begin by surveying the structure of Aristeas’ novel, paying particular attention
to the manner in which the author connected its constituent parts.”27 Zuntz did not
develop the idea further—the point of his article was to discuss what Aristeas says
about the translation of the Torah. Is there a case for thinking of the Book of Aristeas
as a novel? Its longest section is about questions on how a king should behave,
answered at seven banquets in Ptolemy II’s palace—a feature which might make it
look more than anything like a kind of mirror of princes. Even so, the book as a whole
is essentially a narrative. Διήγησις is the term the author employs in line 1. There are
plot, characters, travel—and a beginning, a middle and an end.
The difficulty is what is missing. Lawrence M. Wills in his book about the
Jewish novel in the ancient world observes that:28
Between about 200 B.C.E. and 100 C.E., Jewish authors wrote many
entertaining narratives marked by fanciful and idealized settings, adventurous
tone, happy endings, and important women characters.
While three of these four items are there (on a generous view) in Aristeas, there are no
women in the story. This sets Aristeas apart from the texts which Wills discusses in
the greatest detail in his book, Tobit, Esther, Judith and Joseph and Aseneth, which
share some genre features with Greek novels (though Wills is scrupulous, also, in
defining differences29). Nor does Wills include Aristeas in his category of Jewish
historical novels.30
26
Meecham, Letter of Aristeas, 1.
Zuntz, ‘Aristeas Studies II’, 109.
28
Wills, The Jewish Novel, 1.
29
Wills, The Jewish Novel, 16-28.
30
Wills, The Jewish Novel, 185-212.
27
276
PAUL MCKECHNIE
Sylvie Honigman in her book has suggested a new approach to the issue of
genre, discussing the Book of Aristeas with reference to how it relates to the
development of Greek literature.31 She notes the exceptional place which the survival
of Aristeas has given it (in view of the loss of nearly all Hellenistic prose literature32),
and argues that it is “certainly a reasonably representative example of contemporary
Alexandrian literature”. She looks to poetry and to rhetorical handbooks for parallels
to the way Aristeas is structured.33 Perhaps it would have been wiser not to assert
positively that it must be representative of a category of texts nearly all of which are
lost. But Honigman uses persuasively such evidence as there is. Discussion of the
place in the narrative of poikilia combined with elements of ring-composition and use
of digressions leads her to define the text more precisely as a kind of historical
monograph,34 and go on to discuss the relations of truth and pleasure in the text.35 She
cites with approval Hadas’ classification of Aristeas as a Greek book,36 and notes how
the narrative of Book of Aristeas 182 (dealing with how food and drink were provided
for the seventy-two translators) says that Greeks from different cities have different
dietary requirements—so that (implicitly) “the Jews are no more peculiar than any
other Greek people”.37
The variety of elements in the Aristeas narrative has prompted scholars to
consider on what sources the author drew. Oswyn Murray in 1975 pointed out that
those sources can be divided into three main types:38 Jewish literature, Greek
literature, and official documents. The least controversial of Aristeas’ sources, Murray
31
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship . The use here of the term Book of Aristeas follows
Honigman’s persuasive analysis (1-2) of what the text should best be called.
32
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 13.
33
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 14-25 (quotation from 15).
34
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 30.
35
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 30-35.
36
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 13.
37
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 17.
38
Murray, ‘Aristeas and his Sources’, 124.
A NEW MOSES
277
said, was the Pentateuch—and he pointed out that the description of the vestments of
the High Priest (Book of Aristeas 96-9) is based on Exodus 28 and 29, while the table
presented by Ptolemy as a diplomatic gift is said (Book of Aristeas 62-72) to have
been made in accordance with the provisions of the Law (cf. Exodus 25).39 Murray’s
example of Greek literature as a source is perhaps in a sense problematic, since it is
pseudo-Hecataeus’ On the Jews—which was written by a Jewish author. Bezalel BarKochva in 1996 showed more conclusively than earlier scholars that the writer of
pseudo-Hecataeus was a native of the Egyptian Jewish diaspora.40 Assuming that BarKochva is right, Greek literature is only a source of a source as far as the Book of
Aristeas is concerned. As for official documents, Murray points to William Linn
Westermann’s observations concerning parallels between the decree freeing Jewish
slaves and compensating their owners in the Book of Aristeas (21-27) and the decrees
preserved in Rainer Papyrus (PER) Inv. 24,552. Whether or not the author of the
Book borrowed terminology and wording directly (as Westermann suggests41), official
documents were at least in some sense a source.
Raija Sollamo in 2001 addressed the Book from the viewpoint of the style of
redaction criticism practised by Bible scholars, and she asks whether the Letter could
possibly be a literary whole. Her implicit answer is no. She notes that42
The beginning and the end seem to fit together, but the first 50 chapters contain
an extensive excursus about the liberation of the Jewish slaves in Egypt, an
episode which remains quite separate without any connection with anything
mentioned either before or afterwards.
Afterwards she develops her account in the direction of arguing that Aristeas is
supportive of a liberal position in a debate within the Alexandrian Jewish community
39
Murray, ‘Aristeas and his Sources’, 124.
Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus, 148.
41
Westermann, ‘Enslaved Persons who are Free’, 21.
42
Sollamo, ‘Letter of Aristeas’, 330.
40
278
PAUL MCKECHNIE
relating to the true nature of the community’s Jewish heritage43—and does not
expound how she envisages that the redaction resulting in the present text took place.
J.-G. Février in 1925 had offered a more fully developed theory of sources and
redaction, including the suggestion that sections 83 to 171 were interpolated;44 but if
Honigman’s defence of the work as a unitary text composed using principles
including poikilia is accepted, the stylistic differences within the text are sufficiently
explained and a hypothesis involving interpolation becomes redundant.
Moses Hadas in the introduction to his 1951 edition comments (following one
of Février’s suggestions) that “insofar as Aristeas is an account of a new promulgation
of the Law it is reminiscent of the story told in Ezra and Nehemiah”. Février’s
hypothesis was that Aristeas used these books freely and perhaps in part
unconsciously, as a model.45 Hadas lists eight parallels, which (in brief) are the
following:46
(a)
Nehemiah petitions the king on behalf of the distressed inhabitants of
Jerusalem; Aristeas intercedes with the king on behalf of the enslaved Jews in Egypt.
(b)
Ezra thanks God for granting him favour with the king and his counsellors;
Aristeas secures the cooperation of the king’s officers, Sosibius and Andreas.
(c)
Ezra and Nehemiah journey to Jerusalem carrying royal letters; Aristeas visits
Jerusalem carrying a letter from King Ptolemy.
(d)
Ezra goes to Jerusalem with royal presents destined for the Temple; Aristeas
takes royal gifts for the Temple.
(e)
In the decree of Darius, the Jews are encouraged to offer God sacrifices for the
king, his consort, children and friends; in the Book of Aristeas, Eleazar, the High
Priest, says he has offered sacrifices for the king, his consort, children and friends.
43
Sollamo, ‘Letter of Aristeas’, 338.
Février, La date.
45
Février, La date, 32-6; Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates, 38.
46
Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates, 38-9. Note also (re [h]) that Nehemiah 10.2-28 lists 84 (= 7 x 12)
signatories for the covenant renewal document (cf. Torrey, Ezra Studies, 281 and Duggan, Covenant
Renewal, 243): I wish to thank the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Corley for drawing my attention to this passage.
44
A NEW MOSES
279
(f)
Nehemiah assembles the people for a solemn reading of the Law; Demetrius
assembles the Jews of Alexandria and reads the Greek translation of the Law.
(g)
Ezra 6 and 7 contain official communications; letters from King Ptolemy and
High Priest Eleazar are contained in Aristeas.
(h)
In Ezra embassies consisting of twelve representatives are mentioned; in
Aristeas there are seventy-two translators, a multiple of twelve.
There are items in this list whose importance could be debated: for example (b),
because Ezra thanks the Lord for extending to him his steadfast love “before the king
and his counsellors, and before all the king’s mighty officers”47—but in Aristeas the
(fictively-Gentile) ego-narrator does not attribute the success of his petition directed
to Sosibius and Andreas (which he says he has been pressing for some time) to the
love of the Almighty. None the less it is fair to say that the list as a whole establishes
what Hadas says it does, namely that the Ezra-Nehemiah narratives probably had a
part in the shaping of the story told in the Book of Aristeas.
I am less convinced by Oswyn Murray’s suggestion that 1 Esdras was the
version of the Ezra-Nehemiah story which Aristeas had primarily in mind, and in
particular I am not inclined to agree that the debate of the three bodyguards in 1
Esdras about which is the most powerful (wine, the king, women, or truth) “may well
have suggested Aristeas’ own contest of the seventy-two Jewish elders before
Ptolemy”.48 For one thing, the king’s conversation with the seventy-two elders in
Aristeas is not a competition (each of the speakers gets a reward of three talents of
silver and a slave49). Hadas’ parallels work best if the biblical Ezra and Nehemiah are
assumed to be the texts drawn on.
Therefore the Hebrew Bible is of the greatest importance in the background to
the Book of Aristeas, and there is something to be gained by considering further
47
Ezra 7.28.
1 Esdras 3.1- 4.42; Murray, ‘Aristeas and his Sources’, 126.
49
Book of Aristeas 294.
48
280
PAUL MCKECHNIE
Oswyn Murray’s other observation, namely that the Pentateuch is an important source
for the story it tells. He notes the vestments for the High Priest and the table for the
Temple—both from Exodus. But Exodus has more to offer. Consider the following.
In Exodus Moses leads the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They
then go to Mount Sinai, where they are given the Ten Commandments, and other
laws, and it is promised that they will conquer the land of Canaan. Next Moses and
Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, are called to worship the
Lord at a distance, and after a sacrifice they go up and see God, whereupon:50
... they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a
pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay
his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they
ate and drank.
Once this moment is past, Moses is called to come up to the Lord on the mountain,
where he receives the tablets of stone, “with the law and the commandment, which I
have written for their instruction.”51
In Aristeas, Ptolemy Philadelphus sets the Jews free from slavery in Egypt.
Having done this, he receives the Law of the Lord, in Greek translation. The seventytwo translators who are sent by the High Priest correspond to the seventy elders of
Israel, plus Nadab and Abihu, who (together with Moses and Aaron) “beheld God,
and they ate and drank”. While a direct vision of God is not claimed in the Letter as
one of the qualifications of the seventy-two translators, their qualities as liminal
figures bridging two worlds are expounded in another way; they were:52
... men most excellent and of outstanding scholarship, to be expected in persons
of such distinguished parentage. They had not only acquired proficiency in the
literature of the Jews, but had bestowed no slight study on that of the Greeks
also. They were therefore well qualified to be sent on embassies, and performed
this office whenever there was need. They possessed great natural talent for
50
Exodus 24.10-11.
Exodus 24.12.
52
Book of Aristeas 121-2.
51
A NEW MOSES
281
conferences and discussions pertaining to the Law. They zealously cultivated
the quality of the mean (and that is the best course), and eschewing a crude and
uncouth disposition, they likewise avoided conceit and the assumption of
superiority over others.
The elders in Exodus bridge the heavenly and earthly worlds by beholding God but
living to eat and drink; the translators in Aristeas bridge the Jewish and Greek worlds.
The giving of the Septuagint, then, as the story is told in Aristeas, is patterned
on the giving of the Law in Exodus. That this should be so is no great surprise in view
of the way the High Priest’s vestments and the table for the Temple also feature, or in
view of the way the Ezra-Nehemiah narrative is drawn on in the arrangement of the
story.
For a long time this feature of Aristeas went unremarked; Honigman then
brought it into her 2003 study unobtrusively, referring to it as the ‘Exodus paradigm’,
alongside another narrative paradigm which she has more to say about and which she
calls the ‘Alexandrian paradigm’. This is a narrative pattern relating to the prestige of
Alexandria and the Ptolemaic dynasty. Reduced to essentials, the pattern amounts to
this:53
1. The king wants something which is lacking in Alexandria but would add to his
prestige.
2. The king sends an embassy, letter, financial means to a destination abroad, in
order to get the required item sent to Alexandria.
3. The requested item is sent.
4. The item is settled in its assigned location in Alexandria.
Honigman observes how the Alexandrian paradigm as a narrative pattern occurs
elsewhere, for instance in Tacitus when he tells the story of Sarapis being brought to
Alexandria:54 a statue of Jupiter Dis is sent for, from Sinope, and when King
Scydrothemis hesitates to dispatch it as requested, first a plague and other divinelysent disasters happen at Sinope, and then finally the statue gets up, walks down to the
53
54
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 41-2.
Tacitus Histories 4.83-4; cf. Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 49-50.
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PAUL MCKECHNIE
harbour, and embarks on King Ptolemy’s ship to sail to Alexandria (where a temple is
built for it).55
That the story of bringing the Jewish Law to Alexandria follows a similar
pattern is clear. But Honigman notes the presence, as a secondary theme, of the
‘Exodus paradigm’: perhaps surprisingly, she describes its function as “easier to pin
down than was the case with the main theme”.56 The theme is present, she argues, in
three episodes: first, the freeing of the Jewish slaves; second, the selection of the
seventy-two elders; and third, the proclamation of the translation of the Law.57
Noah Hacham’s recent article on Aristeas as a new Exodus story responds to
Honigman’s definition of the place of the ‘Exodus paradigm’ within Aristeas, and in
effect argues that it is not as secondary as Honigman thought. Hacham’s reading of
Aristeas lays stress on the way it ‘provides a new account of the foundation stories of
the Israelites ... as taking place in Egypt,’58 and so justifying Jewish residence there. It
is, in short, a book that attempts to create the foundation story of Hellenistic Jewry: a
Jewry that interweaves different worlds59—and therefore finds a problem in the
biblical Exodus story, because leaving Egypt is such an integral part of it. Aristeas
addresses this problem by constructing a reworking of the Exodus narrative—a “nonExodus’ story” (a phrase Hacham borrows from Honigman60), while not mentioning
the biblical Exodus.
Hacham’s article supplies an important corrective: surely Honigman
downplayed too severely the importance of the Exodus paradigm in Aristeas. I
suggest that in addition she has underestimated the importance of Ptolemy
55
In Plutarch Isis and Osiris 28, the statue is stolen from Sinope by named Ptolemaic officials.
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 53.
57
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 53-63.
58
Hacham, ‘A New Exodus Story’, 19.
59
Hacham, ‘New Exodus Story’, 16.
60
Hacham, ‘New Exodus Story’, 8, citing Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 56.
56
A NEW MOSES
283
Philadelphus within the Exodus paradigm, and as a consequence gone too far in the
direction of placing Aristeas in the tradition of Greek rhetoric, while not saying
enough about comparisons between it and apocryphal or deuterocanonical biblical
literature.
Commenting on the freeing of Jewish slaves, Honigman refers to King
Ptolemy as “acting in the role of Pharaoh” and says that he is “staged as a benevolent
Pharaoh, willingly liberating the Jews at Aristeas’ request”.61 This is true, but not
exhaustive. The seventy-two translators, at the king’s seven banquets, metaphorically
accompany Philadelphus into the foothills of the holy mountain; and it is Philadelphus
to whom the translation of the Law is given. Therefore Philadelphus is figured in
Aristeas not just as a new Pharaoh (without the unreasonable attitudes of that old
Pharaoh whose obstinacy brought plagues on Egypt), but actually as a new Moses.62
It may seem counterintuitive to read Aristeas as implicitly figuring Ptolemy
Philadelphus as Moses. To see why this could be done by a second-century writer it is
necessary to move beyond the bounds of the Greek rhetoric which Honigman
discusses and look at a broader context—the context (novelistic and otherwise) of
biblical and quasi-biblical literature of the fourth to second centuries BC. Much of the
preserved writing in this category is writing about the Bible. Many texts are structured
on biblical ideas. Erich Gruen comments that “Hellenistic Jews took great pleasure in
retelling biblical tales”,63 and this observation is good even on a broader canvas than
the one Gruen applies it to in his chapter on Biblical Recreations, where he discusses
61
Honigman, Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship, 53.
Several biblical figures are explicitly or implicitly likened to Moses, as Allison argues in The New
Moses: a Matthean Typology. Allison’s main point is to discuss how Jesus in Matthew is like Moses;
but he draws attention also to Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elijah, Josiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Ezra,
Baruch (23-68) and others. The Moses analogy, then, formed part of the vocabulary of approval in the
biblical tradition.
63
Gruen, Diaspora, 182.
62
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PAUL MCKECHNIE
the Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Job, and Artapanus. In a number of
cases, books in this category consist of what I propose to call ‘riffs’ on key biblical
ideas.
Riff, as far as I know, is not a technical term in biblical studies. I wondered if
the word I wanted was ‘midrash’, but the process of patterning to which I am referring
is not precisely midrashic. It is more a matter of telling a new story in a way which
recalls and reflects on a biblical story. In Devorah Dimant’s terms, “compositional use
of biblical elements” (not expositional use) is involved.64 So for example Tobit, which
in detail reflects on a number of biblically-derived concerns (including the exile of the
northern Israelite tribes), is as a whole a riff based on the story of the marriage of
Isaac and Rebecca. So Abraham in the Bible tells the servant whom he sends on a
journey to find a wife for Isaac that “the Lord ... will send his angel before you”;65 but
when Tobit tells Tobias to find a trustworthy man to show him the way to Media,
Tobias providentially finds Raphael (an angel, as Tobias does not at first realize—so
that the biblical idea of the Lord sending his angel is echoed and made more literal).66
Similarly the book of Judith is a riff on the story of Jael and Sisera: Wills discusses
the way the “mirror narrative” (as he calls it) is used in Judith, and how differences
were built in.67
Esther is a riff on the theme of Saul and Agag: Mordecai (a Benjaminite and a
member, like Saul, of the Kish family68) encounters Haman (an Agagite, that is to say,
a member of the Amalekite royal family69); but unlike Saul, Mordecai and Esther are
not too irresolute to see Haman hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai, and to
64
Dimant, ‘Use and Interpretation of Mikra’, 382.
Genesis 24.7.
66
Tobit 5.3-8.
67
Wills, The Jewish Novel, 146-8.
68
Esther 2.5.
69
‘Haman ... the Agagite’: Esther 3.1; King Agag of the Amalekites spared by Saul: 1 Samuel 15.8-9.
65
A NEW MOSES
285
take over his house70—so carrying out the commandment to blot out the remembrance
of Amalek from under heaven.71
Ecclesiasticus, though not a narrative work, is also a riff, in this case on
Proverbs: a number of structural features recall the canonical book, for example
chapter 24, in which (as in Proverbs 8) a personified Wisdom recalls how she was
created by the Lord.72 Ecclesiasticus is an important parallel to Aristeas if (as I argued
in 2001) Ecclesiasticus was written in Alexandria in the early second century, and
translated into Greek in the second half of the century,73 either before or after Aristeas
was written.74 The community context behind both works would be similar, and by
writing a riff on Exodus as an apologia for the Septuagint the composer of Aristeas
was not out of line with the way in which riffs were a principal tool used by other
authors of quasi-biblical works of comparable date. It is not possible to be exact about
the dates of Tobit, Judith or the various versions of Esther, and this fact makes it hard
to be precise about the stage the tradition had reached by the time of the Book of
Aristeas, and what precedents were available to the author. It is worth remembering in
addition (as Février and Hadas noted) that the author of Aristeas had Ezra and
Nehemiah in mind, and so was structuring his reminiscences around more than one
biblical text.
I suggest therefore that the route to advancing understanding of Aristeas lies
through combining Sylvie Honigman’s insight into the place the text occupies in the
tradition of Greek rhetoric and historiography with a bold conception of it as a work
70
Esther 7.9-8.2.
‘I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven’ and ‘The Lord will have war
with Amalek from generation to generation’: Exodus 17.14 and 16.
72
Ecclesiasticus 24.3; Proverbs 8.22.
73
McKechnie, ‘Career of Joshua Ben Sira’.
74
Translated after 132, cf. Ecclesiasticus prologue: ‘I came into Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of
Euergetes’. On the date of Aristeas see n.16 above.
71
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PAUL MCKECHNIE
in the developing tradition of Jewish quasi-biblical literature of the Hellenistic period.
As its author notoriously said,75 “the same God who has given [the Jews] their law
guides your [Ptolemy Philadelphus’] kingdom also, as I have learned in my
researches”. It was a book well suited to the loyal and pro-Ptolemaic Jewish
community in which it was produced; and the way it figured Philadelphus as a new
Moses was daring, perhaps—but no more extravagant than the parallel it drew
between the gods of the Ptolemies and the Jews.
75
Book of Aristeas 15.
PHILADELPHUS’ ALEXANDRIA AS CRADLE OF BIBLICAL
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Philippe Guillaume
Properly speaking, the term ‘Septuagint’ only applies to the Greek translation of the
Hebrew Law, but it is commonly used to designate the whole of the Hebrew
Scriptures translated into Greek. And rightly so, since the other Hebrew books were
soon translated as well. The focus here is on the biblical books that are classified in
the LXX under the title ‘Historical Books’.
The classification of these scrolls as historical is acquiring fresh relevance as
the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis put forward by Martin Noth in 1943 is losing
favour. Hiding in a cellar while bombers were flattening the remains of the Germanic
dream, Noth identified the razing of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE as the
event that spurred a historian to collect old traditions and put them together on a
chronological line (Noth 1957:1-110). This Deuteronomistic History was to furnish a
theodicy to traumatized Judaeans, explaining that the destruction of Jerusalem did not
imply the defeat of Yhwh by Marduk, but that it had been brought about by Yhwh
himself who had repeatedly sent his prophets to warn Israel. Noth’s historian crafted a
chronological narrative that was eventually split up into the books of Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The theory has been accepted by Old Testament
scholars for the last fifty years, although they begin to realize that the hypothesis
suited the post-World War II situation better than it actually fits the biblical evidence,
besides the fact that it also entails attributing to Jerusalem the invention of history a
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PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
good century before Herodotus (Knauf 2000:388-98; Rösel 2000:195-212; Davies
1989:360-75; Kratz 2005:216-7).
Seeking a new model for the formation of the historical collection, Alexandria
seems a promising field of inquiry since it is the LXX that labels the collection as
historical, whereas the Hebrew canon classifies its authors as the Former Prophets.
The work of some Alexandrian scholars and the evidence from the Dead Sea scrolls
will be examined to determine the possible role of Alexandria in the formation of the
biblical historical collection. Before proceeding further, note that I am not suggesting
like the members of the ‘Copenhagen school’ that the Old Testament was written
during the Hellenistic period (Thompson 2003:1-15). I believe, as moderate biblical
scholars do, that a major part of the OT (maybe half) was written before the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. All the books contained in the Former
Prophets had almost reached their final form when Alexander’s armies flooded the
East. The question here is how these texts became Scripture.
Aristeas
For three centuries the author of the Letter of Aristeas was considered a forger and a
liar. In the 1950s Moses Hadas considered it as a plasma, insisting that its imaginative
treatment of history did preserve historical verisimilitude (Hadas 1951:57-8). Other
works gave rise to the so-called legal and cultural hypothesis, until Nina Collins’ and
Sylvie Honigman’s recent work arguing independently from each other that the link
between Ptolemy Philadelphus and the Septuagint is credible.1 Reviewers disputed
Collins’ notion of the opposition of some Jewish leaders to the translation,2 while
1
2
Collins 2000. Honigman 2003, 88-116. See also the contribution by Johan Cook, William
Loader and Paul McKechnie in this volume.
Fernández Marcos 2002, 99; Passoni Dell’Acqua 2002, 123-6 points out that according to
Veltri 1994 there is no evidence of Jewish opposition to the LXX before the Gaonim.
CRADLE OF BIBLICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
289
accepting that the translation of the Torah was commissioned by the royal court
between the reign of Philadelphos and the early second century BCE. At about the
same time, the Indian king Asoka ordered that his Indian edicts should be translated
into Aramaic and Greek, which also strengthens Aristeas’ claim. I will not go into the
reasons for the translation of the LXX; the question here is limited to what happened
after the translation of the Torah.
We know nothing about the circumstances of the translation of the other
Hebrew books, although the letter of Aristeas provides some clues. According to
Aristeas, Demetrius of Phalerum reported a list of Jewish books missing to complete
the Library. Besides the Law, he mentions a few other books (ἑτέροις ὀλίγοις,
LetAris. §30). This is significant, since Aristeas’ concern is the Law. It reflects that in
his days, up to a century after Ptolemy Philadelphos (Honigman 2003:130), other
Hebrew books had been translated and added to the Library.
Another indication comes from a question put to Demetrius during the
ceremony celebrating the completion of the translation. The king asks Demetrius why
none of the poets or prose writers (συγγραφεῖς) has ever mentioned the Hebrew
Torah (LetAr. 312). Besides providing Aristeas with the opportunity to praise the
noble character of the legislation, Ptolemy’s question also suggests one aim of the
translation of Hebrew books. In the same passage (LetAr. 314-6) Aristeas mentions
Theopompos and Theodectos who attempted to insert elements of the Hebrew law in
their works. Whatever the historicity of such claims, they indicate that the translation
would naturally supply Greek authors with literary material. This passage corresponds
to Demetrius’ report to the king at the beginning of the book where Aristeas has
Wasserstein 2003 wrote a devastating review of Collin’s book without engaging her
arguments.
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PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
Demetrius quote the historian Hekataios of Abdera (LetAr. 31). Hekataios was
contemporary to King Ptolemy I (306-283 BCE) and to Demetrius. His mention at the
beginning of the book thus adds historians to the list of potential readers of a
translation of Hebrew books. One of the fragments of Hekataios’ work has the
historian express great surprise to the fact that the Jews never had a king (Diodorus
Siculus 40.3). Writing during the days of Philadelphos, Hekataios had no access to the
books of Samuel and Kings most probably because they were not yet translated.
Hekataios’ surprise and his mention by Aristeas show that Alexandrian scholars
would have been at least as interested as local Jews in the translation of other books
held by the Jerusalem temple library. As was the case with the Law, the spur to
produce a history of the Jews would have come from Ptolemaic circles rather than
from Jerusalem, for academic rather than religious motives. This is confirmed when
we look at what other Alexandrian scholars were up to at the time of the translation of
the Septuagint.
Other Alexandrian Scholars
The influence of the Alexandrian canons of Greek and Egyptian literature on the
canon of Hebrew Writings (Ketubim) has been recognized (Lang 1998:45-65; Pury
1999:163-98). Is a similar influence on the historical books plausible? Some fifty
years after the date suggested by Aristeas for the translation of the Jewish Law,
Eratosthenes wrote a chronological framework for Greek history, the Olumpionikai
and the Chronographiai. The influence of the chronographers is obvious on the some
biblical chronological systems (Larsson 2000:215). But their influence could even
reach the very ordering of Hebrew past into well defined periods: the conquest with
the book of Joshua, the period of the Judges with Judges and Ruth, the Kingdoms
with Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, the Persian period with Esther and Esdras (Ezra-
CRADLE OF BIBLICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
291
Nehemiah). Later, the chronography was extended to the Hellenistic period with
Daniel and Maccabees. ‘Chronography’ better fits the nature of the biblical historical
books than ‘historiography’. A historian compares sources and then writes a coherent
narrative of what he determined as what most likely happened, whereas the historical
collection simply joins previously independent books with minimal redactional
activity to establish the transition. This is particularly obvious with the books of
Joshua and Judges (Davies 1998:112-3; Schmid 1999:218-20.374; Guillaume
2004:227-253). On the other hand, some books dealing with the same subject are
merely juxtaposed, like Samuel-Kings and Chronicles. The formation of the historical
collection does not constitute historiography per se, but a repository of material
presented chronologically, a chronography of Hebrew past produced in the wake of
Eratosthenes’ work. Such chronography would enable historians to do what Hekataios
could not do for lack of material.
That Josephus’ Antiquities are the earliest instance of such a History of Israel
transmitted to us does not exclude the hypothesis that Alexandria produced previous
ones, since in the preface of his Antiquities, Josephus admits that before him “some of
the Greeks took considerable pains to know the affairs of our nation.” (Ant. Preface
2). These elements call for a fresh appraisal of the origin of the Joshua-Kings
sequence. Many Biblical scholars still consider that it was created by the
Deuteronomistic Historian. If they have abandoned Noth’s hypothesis, they still
imagine that the Former Prophets were organized as a chronological collection well
before Ptolemaic times. This must be questioned for two reasons. The Joshua-Kings
succession is congruent with the Hellenistic concept of historiographic periodization,
but this very concept is rejected in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew collection of
Former Prophets contains almost the same list of books as the Greek Historika, but
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PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
presented as prophecy instead of historiography. If the Former Prophets had been
organized on the lines of historiographic periodization since the sixth century BCE, it
is strange to find that the first attestation of their order is as late as 175 BCE and comes
from Alexandria in Ecclesiasticus 44-49. Ben Sira labours to show the relevance of
the Prophets after the Torah (Goshen-Gottstein 2002:253-4), while the Joshua-Kings
sequence is perfectly at home in the LXX’s Historika.
To replace Noth’s Deuteronomistic Historian, it is even possible to suggest a
name for the creator of the Biblical Chronography. The most likely candidate is
Demetrius the Chronographer, a kind of Jewish Eratosthenes who worked during the
third century BCE, and who also happens to be the first witness of the use of the
Greek Torah. Fragment 6 of his work follows the chronology of the LXX. His
consistent use of the Greek text and his chronological precision places him very close
to the school that organized Joshua-Esther into a Chronography. His readiness to
disagree with the chronology of the Masoretic and Samaritan texts indicates that in
Demetrius’ days, there was no authoritative version of the Hebrew past. He was thus
free to produce his own. Is there further evidence suggesting that the historical
collection was organized at Alexandria rather than earlier at Jerusalem?
First, there is Eupolemus (157 BCE) who in a passage about prophets does not
mention any of the figures in the book of Judges. This would not be surprising, had he
not referred to Joshua as prophet—although Joshua is never called prophet in the book
that bears his name: “Then Joshua the son of Nun prophesied for thirty years. He lived
one hundred and ten years and pitched the sacred tabernacle in Shiloh. After this
Samuel was prophet” (Eupolemus Frag. 2:1-2).3 Although he considers Joshua as a
3
Charlesworth 1983, 2.866 and note e. Wacholder 1974, links Eupolemos and Demetrius the
Chronographer with a biblical chronographical school which flourished during the reign of Ptolemy IV
Philopator (221-204 BCE).
CRADLE OF BIBLICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
293
prophet, Eupolemus skips Deborah (identified as prophetess in Judg. 4:4) and the
anonymous prophet of Judg. 6:7. Either Eupolemus did not know Judges, or he did
not consider it part of a prophetic collection. In any case, he did not know the
‘Deuteronomistic History’. This casts doubts on the existence of the collection of
Former Prophets prior to the second century BCE. The individual books were long
written and almost completed, but Judges had not yet been inserted between Joshua
and Samuel-Kings to produce a particular period between the Conquest and the age of
the Kingdoms.4
Dead Sea Scrolls
The large number of biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea scrolls provides
an indirect indication on the circulation of individual books in the centuries before and
after the turn of the era. Evaluating the evidence from Qumran is difficult since we do
not know whether the assemblage reflects the stock of a scroll factory or the holdings
of a library; but it is all that we have, and the sample is sufficiently large to offer some
reasonable statistics.
While the canonicity of the Torah is beyond doubt at this time, only one of the
Pentateuch books belongs to the top three most represented books in the Dead Sea
scrolls: Deuteronomy—the two others being Isaiah and Psalms, indicating that
Qumran statistics cannot be used to establish canonicity (Flint 2001:45-103). In spite
of those reservations, Flint confidently identifies as Scripture the Torah, the Latter
Prophets (including Daniel) and David (Psalms). He concludes that the Qumran
community was less concerned with Israel’s later history and with wisdom traditions
4
Schmid 1999, 218-20 shows that the transition Joshua/ Judges and Judges/Samuel is no earlier than
Joshua 24, the latest chapter of the book.
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PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
than it was with the covenant although the community did regard as Scripture Samuel,
Kings, Tobit, Proverbs, and Lamentations (Flint 2001:81).
There is no need to enter the debated issue over the Qumran community and
its relation to the Dead Sea scrolls. It is enough for the purpose at hand to note that all
of the historical books (excepted Esther) are attested among the Dead Sea scrolls, but
in very small quantities. Flint concludes that “Almost all the Prophets, including
Daniel, were viewed as scripture; however, the status of Joshua, Judges, and the
Epistle of Jeremiah are not fully assured” (Flint 2001:82). It is, however, misleading
to claim that only the status of Joshua and Judges is in doubt. Such uncertainty applies
to the entire collection of Former Prophets. The Dead Sea scrolls contain a dozen of
manuscripts of ‘books’ of the Former Prophet or texts referring to figures from the
Former Prophets (Flint 2001:62-3):
Joshua: 2 Mss (4QJoshab)
Judges: 3 Mss: (1QJudg, 4QJudgab)
Samuel: 4 Mss (1QSam, 4QSamabc). Samuel has the best attestation, possibly as
a consequence of the Davidiphilia of 11QPs that ascribes more Psalms to David
than the LXX and the MT.5
Kings: 3 Mss (4QKgs; 5QKgs; pap6QKgs). The status of Kings is thus as
insecure as that of Judges.
Among biblical citations in non-biblical works (Florilegia, Catenae, Pesharim
and specific works like Rule of the Community and Damascus Document), the only
citation from the Former Prophets is found in Testimonia (4Q175) with a quote of
5
Charlesworth 1997.
CRADLE OF BIBLICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
295
Apocryphon of Joshuab (4Q379 22.ii) (Bernstein 2000). The only books for which
pesharim are extant are from the Latter Prophets.6
In all, this amounts to 2% of some 800 manuscripts. Another half dozen
manuscripts (a 50% increase) can be added if the attention shifts from the Former
Prophets to the Septuagint’s historical collection. Ruth (2QRuthab, 4QRuthab) is
attested four times, like Samuel, and better than Joshua, Judges and Kings. It is easier
to argue that the LXX’s historical collection is older and was thus better established
even in Palestine, than claiming that the LXX is a Christian alteration of the Hebrew
corpus of Former Prophets. The period of the Judges represented by the Judges-Ruth
combination transmitted by the Greek historical books is likely to predate the Hebrew
canon which places Ruth among the Writings.7 Indeed, the sample is so small, that no
difference of status in canonicity can be inferred, but it is sufficient to raise serious
doubts over the existence of a venerable Deuteronomistic History before
Philadelphus.
Recensions of Biblical Historical Books in Greek
Greek recensions of the historical books support the same conclusion. Isaiah was
probably the first prophetic book translated after the Torah. But the situation
concerning the Former Prophets is less clear. Whereas Joshua is fairly close to the
MT, Greek Judges present a freer translation with a number of facilitations. The most
striking feature is the transition between Joshua and Judges, which suggests that
LXX’s longer text at the end of Joshua points to a shorter combined version of
6
7
Ulrich 1999, 60: Pesharim Isaiah (4Q161-165); PMicah (1Q14; 4Q168?); P.Nahum (4Q169);
P.Zephaniah (1Q15; 4Q170); P.Hosea (4Q166-7); P.Malachi (5QpMal). Joel is attested in Catenaa
(4Q106). Jeremiah is mentioned in 4QCatenaB (4Q182) but as book, not as prophet.
This must be qualified by the fact that both 4QRutha and b transmit the first verses of Ruth with no
trace of the last verses of Judges. The same applies to 4QJudgb that bears the last verses of Judges
(21:12-25) with no trace of the beginning of Ruth. However, the scope of these lacks of transition is
reduced by the fact that the DSS are scrolls and not codices.
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PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
Joshua-Judges (Tov 2003:127). This combined version replaced the first chapters of
Judges with various additions at the end of Joshua. It was a kind of epitome
improving the awkward transition in the Hebrew version or produced before the
Hebrew transition was written. Not only did it translate Joshua and Judges, it also
summarized and harmonized their contents so that each one presented a distinct
period with the era of the Judges clearly subsequent to that of the Conquest. Such a
work would more likely be produced before the canonicity of Joshua and Judges was
established.
Greek recensions reveal that during the third century BCE, the Former Prophets
were not considered as a canonical collection like the Pentateuch since they were not
dealt with in a unified manner. The evidence available so far suggests that the first
attempt to place Judges after Joshua came from Greek translators rather than from a
Deuteronomistic Historian during the sixth century BCE.
Conclusion
The available evidence suggests that the historical books of the Bible were assembled
into a neat succession of eras spanning from Israel’s entry into the Promised Land to
the destruction of Jerusalem at Alexandria and no earlier. Alexandria did not simply
translate the Torah. It organized the others works that were not included in the Law
(Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kingdoms [Samuel-Kings], Chronicles, Esdras [EzraNehemiah], Tobit) in order to produce the succession of eras that is still visible in
modern Bibles that follow the Greek canon. The aim was academic as is demonstrated
by all pre-Christian users of the Greek bible (Demetrius, Philo, Josephus), providing
historians with sources on Israel’s past. Although these books were written in
Jerusalem, Alexandria organized, translated, and canonized them. Hence, Alexandria
was the cradle of Jewish historiography.
CRADLE OF BIBLICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
297
In such case, the old hypothesis of the Alexandrian canon has to be brought
back into the discussion concerning the formation of the historical collection. Put
forward in the eighteenth century, this hypothesis understood the LXX as reflecting a
pre-Christian canon established at Alexandria and that this canon was older than the
Hebrew canon (Grabe 1715; Sundberg 1964:7-24). This hypothesis was refuted by
Albert Sundberg (1964:51-2) because it implies that Alexandria was “a kind of Mecca
for non-Palestinian Jews”. The time has come to recognize Alexandria as the Medina
of biblical canons.
The role of Alexandrian translators, chronographers and canonizers on the
present shape of the Bible cannot be overdone. For sure, the Hebrew canon did not
accept the Alexandrian Chronography wholesale. It turned its first part into the
Former Prophets, and removed Ruth. Nevertheless, the chronographic order of the
books was retained; the Alexandrian model was too pervasive to be discarded. Paul
McKechnie (2000) has shown that it was most likely from Alexandria that Ben Sira
and his grandson worked to uphold the value of the Former Prophets, and thus
facilitated their canonization in Jerusalem.
Therefore, the influence of Ptolemy Philadelphos goes far beyond the
translation of the Torah. Judging from the lack of interest in the biblical historical
books in antiquity,8 without Philadelphus and the scholars working at his Library, the
historical books (nearly half of the OT), may never have been canonized. The
common wisdom is that Alexandria translated the historical books because Jerusalem
8
The Samaritans and the Sadducees did not accept them as Scripture. The New Testament never
quotes Joshua and Judges, and only four times from Kingdoms, two of which indirectly through
the Psalms (2 Kgdms 22:50 through Ps 27:50 in Rom 15:9, 2 Kgdms 7:14 through Ps 2:7 in
Heb 1:5. The two direct quotes are 2 Kgdms 7:8.14 in 2 Corinthians 6:18 with Heb 1:5 and 3
Kgdms 19:10.14.18 in Rom11:3-4). The Mishnah quotes the Torah overwhelmingly and to a certain
amount Psalms and Proverbs, but rarely the Nebiim. The Tosephta and the Minor Tractates
mark a clear difference between Torah scrolls and those of the Nebiim in terms of covers and
line spacing: Beckwith 1985:113-115.
298
PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
had canonized them. This is based on the assumption that a Deuteronomistic History
was produced shortly after 586 BCE and was subsequently canonized in the following
centuries, before Ptolemaic times. Against such assumptions, evidence from
Alexandria and Qumran points towards a more likely canonization scenario.
Jerusalem canonized half of the historical books as Former Prophets because
Alexandria had first organized and translated them as a Chronography.
GENDERING HEALING BOTH HUMAN AND DIVINE
THE CASE OF SIRACH 38:1-15
Elaine M. Wainwright
It is generally agreed that within the health care system of biblical Judaism, healing
was depicted as the exclusive work of Israel’s God, or what Seybold and Mueller call
“Yahweh's healing monopoly,”1 with the key illustrative text being Exodus 15:26:
He [God] said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God,
and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep
all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon
the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you” [ὁ ἰώµενός σε].
As with Apollo, in the early Greek tradition, so too the claim is made for Israel’s God,
“I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal [κἀγὼ ἰάσοµαι]” (Deuteronomy 32:39;).2
Life and death, health and illness are entirely in the hands of the divine, with religion
and theology providing beliefs about the causes of illnesses and the options available
to patients. Israel does not, therefore, seem to have developed the complex health care
system that was present in Egypt, Hellenistic Greece and the early Roman Empire.
Hector Avalos, on the other hand, critiques Seybold’s analysis and claims that
“medical anthropology… has helped us to become aware of the variety of
consultation options that were available in ancient health care systems”, noting that
1
K. Seybold and U.B. Mueller, Sickness and Healing (Biblical Encounters Series; trans. D.W. Stott;
Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), 105.
2
See also Genesis 20:17; Numbers 12:13; Job 5:18; Isaiah 19:22; 57:18; Jeremiah 30:17, 33:6L. Wells,
The Greek Language of Healing from Homer to New Testament Times (BZNW 83; Berlin: de Gruyter,
1998), 104. As can be seen by these early examples and as demonstrated by Wells, the verb ἰάοµαι
characterises this divine healing which is central to the LXX.
300
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
Israel “had a variety of consultation options.”3 This chapter will briefly explore these
claims and counter-claims in order to develop a context for consideration of Sirach
38:1-15 within biblical Judaism and its health-care system. Particular attention will be
given to the gendering of that system and the relationship, if any, with the gendering
of the divine. Biblical texts will be considered in the context of Thomas Römer’s
claim that “[t]he Hebrew Bible is to a large extent a literary product composed by
intellectual elites from the Persian period in order to reorganize or even create
Judaism out of the crisis of the exile.”4
Israel’s Health Care System and its Gendering
Israel’s foundational story, the Exodus, provides a brief glimpse of a possible health
care professional in biblical Judaism, namely the midwife/maia (Exodus 1:8-21),
suggesting that midwives may have been as natural in Israel's health care system as
was divine healing power. They are, however, rarely mentioned in the biblical texts,
whose authors are predominantly if not exclusively male, and whose concerns were
not women’s care of women (see Genesis 35:17, 38:28 and 1 Samuel 4:20, outside of
Exodus 1:8-21). Hector Avalos says in this regard that “[a]lthough precise statistics
are not available, the midwife may have been one of the most ubiquitous health care
consultants in the ancient Near East.”5 Evidence for such a claim is supported by the
analysis of Nancy Demand who has shown that a number of funerary monuments
from the third and fourth centuries BCE across Greece and Anatolia, which were
3
H. Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece,
Mesopotamia, and Israel (Harvard Semitic Monographs; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 418-419. It
should be noted, however, that Avalos too recognises that in Israel’s health care system “Yahweh was
the only healing deity that could be consulted, and consulting any other deity was a grave offence
(245).”
4
T.C. Römer, “Competing Magicians in Exodus 7-9: Interpreting Magic in the Priestly Theology,” in
Tood Klutz (ed.), Magic in the Biblical World: From the Rod of Aaron to the Ring of Solomon
(JSNTSS 245; London: T & T Clark International, 2003), 13.
5
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 280.
GENDERING HEALING
301
traditionally believed to portray women dying in labour, are, in fact, in recognition of
the midwives who were attending the women.6 Other inscriptional material further
affirms the ubiquity, as Avalos calls it, of the midwife as health care consultant,
especially as inscriptions honouring midwives became more common from this period
into the first and second centuries of the Common Era.7 In Egypt also, there is general
recognition of women’s role as midwives and also as wet-nurses, but these are
generally seen as ancillary services to the male physician.8
Tal Ilan includes the profession of midwife among the occupations available to
the women of Palestine in the Graeco-Roman period, noting that this profession must
have been limited to women, since only feminine forms of related words are used in
rabbinic literature.9 She conjectures from this, and also from Josephus’ reference to
Joseph, son of a ἰατρίνη (Vita 185), which she translates as “midwife”, that women
may have supplemented the knowledge gained in midwifery to enable them to work
as physicians also. The inscriptional material from this period in Asia Minor, Greece
and Rome, has, however, demonstrated that those designated ἰατρίνη were not simply
midwives but were, indeed, physicians, although just exactly what medical tasks they
6
N. Demand, “Monuments, Midwives and Gynecology,” in Ph.J. van der Eijk, H.F.J. Horstmanshoff
and P.H. Schrijvers (eds.), Ancient Medicine in its Socio-cultural Context: Papers Read at the
Congress Held at Leiden University, 13-15 April, 1992 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 275-290.
7
For further evidence of this, see M.R. Lefkowitz and M.B. Fant (eds.), Women’s Life in Greece and
Rome: A Source Book in Translation3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 265-267;
§§375-378. For more detailed discussion of this inscriptional material, see E.M. Wainwright, Women
Healing/Healing Women: The Genderisation of Healing in Early Christianity (London: Equinox,
2006).
8
B. Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 44, makes the general
claim that “there must have been midwives without any professional training who had earned good
reputations; and these women would presumably have been in great demand.” In Jane Rowlandson
(ed.), Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 287-289, she claims that “[i]n the third century BC under Ptolemy II
Philadelphos, the Greek doctor Herophilos … was the first Greek doctor, so far as we know, to write a
book entitled Midwifery.” See also the reference in this same text to the midwife in P.Gen II 103―but
this is a later text, AD 147. R.K. Ritner, “Medicine,” in D.B. Redford (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Ancient Egypt (vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), notes that “[v]irtually all known
medical practitioners are male.”
9
T. Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), 189.
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
302
performed is not available to us.10 Data in this regard in Graeco-Roman Palestine is so
scarce, though, that one is left with the image of women’s healing functioning almost
invisibly in the socio-cultural construction of healing and especially within its
semantic and symbolic universes―despite Ilan’s suggestion that women would have
been familiar with plants and herbs, and hence could have learnt “which had
medicinal uses.”11
Avalos has noted that in Israel, as in the Graeco-Roman world, the home is a
primary locus of health care.12 This is seen in the story of the Shunammite woman and
her son, who becomes grievously ill and is returned to the house by his father (2
Kings 4:8-37), and in the story of Amnon and Tamar (2 Samuel 13). Women’s care of
those ill in the home seems to be assumed to be a natural occurrence, to Tamar’s
detriment when she is raped by her brother Amnon―who is supposedly ill―when she
brings to his sick room the cakes he requested. Adrien Janis Bledstein suggests, on the
basis of an extensive examination of healing or divination rituals known from ancient
Near Eastern texts, that Tamar may have been performing a healing ritual in a way
that was entirely acceptable and hence she had no cause for alarm when requested to
bring cakes to Amnon.13 The popular arena was, therefore, an arena in which women's
healing skills could be wrought. These were skills with the medicinal use of herbs as
noted above; skills gained through midwifery which may have approached those skills
10
See H.T. Parker, “Women Doctors in Greece, Rome and the Byzantine Empire,” in L.R. Furst (ed.)
Women Healers and Physicians: Climbing the Long Hill (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1997), 131-150; J. Korpela, Das Medizinalpersonal im Antiken Rom: Eine sozialgeschichtliche
Untersuchung (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum;
Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987), 160-166, 179, 190, 205; and Wainwright, Women
Healing/Healing Women.
11
Ilan, Jewish Women, 189. 1 Enoch 8:3 attributes such knowledge to the work of the fallen angel
Amastras.
12
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 251-3.
13
A.J. Bledstein, “Was HABBIRYÂ a Healing Ritual Performed by a Woman in King David’s
House?” BR 37 (1992): 15-31.
GENDERING HEALING
303
and arts exercised by the ἰατρίνη of professional medicine; or through religious
rituals which were in place but were condemned by Israel’s official theologians.
That both women and men were engaged in the area of folk healing involving
religious or magical arts and rituals in biblical Judaism is evident to us by way of
prohibition which parallels the stereotyping of these same arts among women in
particular in the literature of Greece and Rome.14 The prohibition of Deuteronomy
18:10 (cf. 18:9-14), is more explicitly gendered in Exodus 22:18, “You shall not
permit a female sorcerer to live.” Saul expels all the mediums and the wizards from
the land (1 Samuel 28:3) but then goes to consult the “woman who is a medium” at
Endor (1 Samuel 28:7). Ezekiel (13:17- 23; also Jeremiah 44:15-30) speaks out
against women who seem to be engaged in some form of magical activity involving
wrist bands and veils (and for Jeremiah, cakes offered to the queen of heaven),
proclaiming that God will save God’s people from their hands. The construction of
the health care system allows for God alone as healer, and fidelity to God’s covenant
as a grounds for health, while the presence and activity of those who might also have
been engaged in healing rituals is prohibited by prescription or by stereotype,
especially those who are female.
Such prohibition, however, raises questions in relation to these women of
undefined power or wisdom (the medium of Endor of 1 Samuel 28:7; and the wise
women of Tekoa and Abel-beth-maacah of 2 Samuel 14:2 and 20:16). They were
women who held power and whose power enabled them to function in the public
arena, outside their homes. This leads Phyllis Bird to speculate that “[i]t is likely that
many of the specialized roles and activities of women outside the home or involving
public recognition and action … were performed by older women no longer burdened
14
See the lengthy discussion of this in Wainwright, Women Healing/Healing Women.
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
304
by the care of small children.”15 Given that women would have been engaged in the
healing of children and family members in their home, we can at least suggest that
some of the wisdom and leadership they brought to the public arena in their later years
was that of healing.
Formally, however, within Israel generally, the only ones who seem to be the
legitimate agents of divine healing are the prophets or the ‘man of God’ as the prophet
is sometimes called (1 Kings 17:24 and passim).16 Elijah and Elisha both carry out
healing functions on God’s behalf. Elijah restores life to the son of the widow of
Zarephath in her home (1 Kings 17:17-24) and an unnamed man of God restores the
withered hand of Jeroboam in the sanctuary of Bethel, a place of prophetic
contestation not a healing sanctuary (1 Kings 13:1-6). Elisha likewise restores life to
the young son of the Shunammite woman in her home (2 Kings 4:8-37) and heals the
leprosy of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-19). Of this latter healing, Avalos says in relation to
its meaning making function within Israel’s health care system that “obedience to
Yahweh and his authentic prophet, not a routine prescription, is the determinant of
therapeutic efficacy.”17 He contrasts this with the “theology of Asclepius which placed
a high value on the temple locus because the god could not be everywhere within a
large geographic area.”18 Isaiah too seems to enact a healing role similar to that of an
ancient physician in relation to Hezekiah in his illness (Isaiah 38:21) and like the
healing acts of Elijah and Elisha, it is separate from cultic activity and location.
Women seem to be excluded from the role of prophet as healing intermediary,
although a few women are given the title of prophet. Miriam is named such and
15
Ph. Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 60.
16
For a more extensive discussion of this aspect of Israel’s health care system see Avalos, Illness and
Health Care, 260-277.
17
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 265.
18
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 265-266.
GENDERING HEALING
305
engages with other women in cultic dance and proclamation (Exodus 15:20-21).
Deborah too is called prophet (Judges 4:4), but she acts as judge in Israel without any
accounts of healing activity. Huldah provides a typical prophetic proclamation in
response to the consultation of the priest Hilkiah and his companions (2 Kings 22:1420) and Noadiah is simply called prophet (Nehemiah 6:14). Once again, women are
visible in leadership roles in the public arena but healing roles are not ascribed to
them as they are ascribed but rarely to their male counterparts who are prophets.
During the period of the formation of Israel’s biblical traditions into coherent
narratives during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, professional medicine was
developing in Hellenistic Greece alongside the rise of the religion of Asclepius. In
Egypt also, which had a long tradition of swnw reaching back to Pharaonic Egypt, it
seems that as J. Worth Estes claims, “... the swnw had developed a sufficiently strong
sense of professional self-identification by the sixth century B.C. that they finally
came to feel they deserved their own divine patron.”19 And so the apotheosis of
Imhotep, the vizier of Zoser, and the growing significance of the professional healer
in Egypt, parallel the rise of Hippocratic medicine and the significance of the
Asclepium in Greece and the Hellenistic world.20 Given the centrality of Israel’s
theology of God as healer with itinerant prophets acting on God’s behalf as healer on
rare occasions, however, there is little evidence of professional medical personnel
presented positively in Israel, male or female. Jeremiah 17:14 reiterates the claim that
healing belongs to God “Heal me, O God, and I shall be healed” and Jeremiah 30:17
promises “I shall restore your health and I shall heal your wounds”. Jeremiah 8:22
asks the somewhat sarcastic rhetorical question “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there
19
J.W. Estes, The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt (Canton: Science History Publications, 1989), 125.
See J.B. Hurry, Imhotep: The Vizier and Physician of King Zoser and afterwards the Egyptian God
of Medicine2 (London: Humphrey Milford: 1928), 169-180.
20
306
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
no physician [ἰατρὸς] there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been
restored?” Both physicians and healing materials such as balsam are decried as
equally ineffective in the face of God’s healing power. Only the leaves of the trees
that grow by the river flowing out of the restored temple (Ezekiel 47:12) escape the
condemnation of Israel’s theologians, and these because they are connected to the
cultus through which God’s healing powers function. There is little room here for an
ecological reading of the materia medica unless one reads against the grain of the
biblical text, in order that the rich material resources for healing hidden within the text
can be uncovered together with those who worked with them, some of whom may
have been women as suggested earlier.21
Another text which contributes further to Israel’s construction of the physician
as a danger to its theology of healing is 2 Chronicles 16:12: “Asa was diseased in his
feet, and his disease became severe; yet even in his disease he did not seek God, but
sought help from physicians [ἰατρούς].” Tobit too consults with physicians (Tobit
2:10), but even though they treat his eyes with ointments [φάρµακα], they are unable
to heal him and he becomes totally blind. There is a strong tradition, therefore, within
Israel’s health care system of negating the role of the physician and his materials in a
way which differs from the surrounding Hellenistic and Egyptian worlds, in which
divine healing and the work of the physician co-existed. This does not mean,
however, that there were not physicians or a rich tradition of pharmaka or materia
medica in Israel. Our investigations to date have uncovered hints that may point to a
richer stream of healing tradition and healing personnel below the surface of the
biblical narrative. The constant biblical theme of proclaiming their illegitimacy points
21
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 290, in light of not only Jeremiah 8:22 but also 46:11 and 51:8-9,
suggests that Gilead “was a center for medicinal resins such as balsam”…and that the physicians of
Gilead “were famous for their knowledge of these medicaments.” Estes, Medical Skills of Ancient
Egypt, gives an extensive “Glossary of Drug Substances,” 139-157.
GENDERING HEALING
307
to their presence and their function in biblical Judaism. There seems, however to be a
slight indication of a change in this theology, with the decline of the prophet in the
Second Temple period.22
Enter Sirach 38:1-15
By the mid-Hellenistic period, the Testament of Job 38:7-823 and Sirach 38:1-15
recognise physicians and their healing power as well as the pharmaka or materia
medica with which they worked. Let me turn, therefore, to a consideration of Sirach
38:1-15.
The Greek text contained in the LXX known as Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom
of Jesus ben Sira is generally believed to be a translation of a Hebrew text written by
the translator’s grandfather in Jerusalem, probably for a scribal school which he
headed, between 190 and 180 BCE, just after the high priesthood of Simon from 219196 BCE.24 Israel, at this time, was under Seleucid rule, but Ben Sira would, no doubt
have also known the Ptolemaic control over Syria/Palestine up to approximately 200
BCE.
Paul McKechnie has argued quite persuasively, however, in a recent article,25
contrary to the dominant opinion and predominantly on the basis of the I-passages,
22
Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 298.
The Testament of Job is a later work, probably from the first century BCE or CE. The brief reference
there in 38:7-8 may well reflect Sirach 38:1-15: “My healing and my treatment are from the Lord, who
also created the physicians.” See Testament of Job (First Century B.C.-First Century A.D.): A New
Translation and Introduction by R.P. Spittler,” in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (vol. 1, London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1983), 829-868.
24
This is the position claimed by M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in
Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (vol. 1; trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1974), 131138; D. Harrington, "Sirach Research since 1965," in Pursuing the Text: Studies in Honor of Ben Zion
Wacholder on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. John C. Reeves and John Kampen;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 170-171, discusses Th. Middendorp and H. Stadelmann,
both of whom locate the work of Ben Sira in Jerusalem as does Harrington himself in "Sirach," in The
International Bible Commentary: a Catholic and Ecumenical Commentary for the Twenty-First
Century, ed. W.R. Farmer (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1998), 923, where he states that Ben Sira
conducted a school in Jerusalem. Many other scholars also hold to this position which is the majority
one.
25
P. McKechnie, “The Career of Joshua Ben Sira” JTS 51.1 (2000): 3-26.
23
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
308
that the original Hebrew text was written in Egypt to which Ben Sira traveled around
200 BCE. I will take account of the import of both locations in what follows.
There is no disagreement, however, that the translation of Ben Sira’s Hebrew
text was carried out by his grandson in Egypt to which he came in the thirty-eighth
year of Euergetes according to the prologue to his translation, namely around 132
BCE,
his translation being completed, many believe, around 117 BCE or at least some
years after 132 BCE. The Greek text has been the dominant canonical one, but
substantial parts of the Hebrew text have been recovered during the last century from
the Cairo Geniza, at Masada and at Qumran.26
There seems to be a general scholarly agreement that Ben Sira tries to
integrate, for his students, traditional Jewish beliefs with international wisdom
traditions and Hellenistic perspectives.27 The section on physicians and pharmaka
participates in this aspect of the work but it stands uniquely in the text in that no other
parts of Ben Sira’s collection deal with this same topic whereas all his other topics
like creation, death, happiness, justice, wisdom and women are scattered across
various segments of the book.28
Sirach 38:1-3 opens the section under consideration with an imperative to
honour the physician [τίµα ἰατρὸν], a very significant shift from the suspicion and
condemnation in other parts of the biblical tradition seen above. The Greek text gives
the reason: because God has created him.29 The Hebrew, however, which Noorda
26
A.A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AB39; New York: Doubleday, 1987), 50-62 for a discussion
of “The Original Hebrew Text and Ancient Versions” and Harrington, “Sirach”, 923.
27
See Harrington, “Sirach”, 923; and J. Snaith, Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1974), 184.
28
See for instance Harrington’s list, “Sirach”, 924. Note, however, the passing reference to a physician
at 10:10 and the reference to visiting the sick at 7:35. J.T. Sanders, Ben Sira and Demotic Wisdom
(SBLMS 28; Chico: Scholars Press, 1983), 75, discusses the possible influence on the author of the
Egyptian health care perspective in which physicians had long been significant.
29
The Greek text uses the masculine singular –πρὸς τὰς χρείας. I will retain this (although the NRSV
translation uses the plural) in order to convey the gendering of this text by ben Sira.
GENDERING HEALING
309
favours as Ben Sira’s original, contains the verb חלקwhich is best translated ‘to
appoint’ or ‘to assign’.30 The physician is to be honoured because God has assigned
him to his task. Verse 2 gives the reason for the honour: first his wisdom [Hebrew
text] or his gift of healing [ἴασις LXX] come from God and he receives rewards from
the king. McKechnie, in arguing for Ben Sira’s writing in Egypt, plays out the
arguments which demonstrate that references to the king do not alone help to
determine context but the long tradition of physicians in Egypt together with their
growing public recognition in Hellenistic Greece, would suggest Alexandria as a more
favourable context for the honouring of the physician by the king than Seleucidcontrolled Jerusalem.31
In the opening verses, the physician is doubly honoured and the gifts of
healing and wisdom are intimately linked. Earlier, the author of Proverbs proposed a
tradition of wisdom as source of life and holiness in distinction to the temple and
cultus,32 but the very general references there to life and healing are not sufficient to
point to the healing art, the ἴασις of the professional medical practitioner that we find
here in Sirach 38. They do, however, provide fertile ground in which this tradition
could be developed. Verse 3 continues the honouring process, recognizing the skill
[ἐπιστήµη] of the physician, or the knowledge according to the Hebrew text, a gift
which Sirach 1:19 recognises as being rained down from Sophia, female gestalt of
30
S. Noorda, “Illness and Sin, Forgiving and Healing: The Connection of Medical Treatment and
Religious Beliefs in Ben Sira 38, 1-15” in M.J. Vermaseren (ed.), Studies in Hellenistic Religions
(Études Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans L'Empire Romain 78; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 219.
31
McKechnie, “Career”, 9-15.
32
See R.E. Clements, Wisdom for a Changing World: Wisdom in Old Testament Theology (Berkeley
Lectures 2; Berkeley: Bibal Press, 1990), 37-55, argues for an alternative tradition of healing in
Proverbs, especially 1-9, but the texts he cites are very general with reference to life and wholeness and
are, therefore, not sufficiently strong to indicate an alternative to the strong tradition already seen of
healing belonging in the hands of God and fidelity to the covenant being the constitutive element in
Israel's health care system. Two passing references earlier in Sirach may also belong to this faint but
developing tradition when Sirach, advised in relation to health to take care of it before becoming ill
(Sira 18:19) and praised health as more valuable than riches (Sira 30:15).
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ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
Israel’s divine Wisdom.33 As well as being rewarded by kings (v. 2), the physician
will also be admired by the great (v.3). Given the significance of honour in
Mediterranean society generally and in the book of Sirach in particular, as Claudia
Camp has demonstrated,34 this opening exaltation of the physician is quite significant
and might give us an insight into Ben Sira’s purpose, namely the establishing of the
tradition of professional medicine which had been considered illegitimate in biblical
Judaism’s dominant theological tradition not only within the divine realm but also the
human. Physicians are honoured by God as well as by kings and noble or great men.
Verses 4-8 turn to the praise of pharmaka which God created out of the earth
(v.4). The symbolic universe of the centrality of Israel’s God to the healing process is
not being undermined, but into this universe both the healing art of the physician and
the power of the fruits of the earth are being included as sources of healing―contrary
to their prior exclusion from Israel’s health care system. Ben Sira uses the example
from Exodus 15:23-25 (v. 5), in which Moses was commanded to throw a piece of
wood into the bitter waters of Marah, and the water was made sweet. Grandfather and
grandson as well as subsequent scholars differ over how to attribute the power which
changed the water: to properties of the wood as the NRSV translation of the LXX
does; or to God as Noorda reads the Hebrew ms B text.35 It is rather ironical, but
perhaps an irony not missed by Ben Sira, that this text immediately precedes the
central affirmation of Israel’s exclusive position in relation to healing in Exodus
15:26:
33
See E. Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian
Origins2 (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 132-133, in relation to such a designation of Wisdom.
34
C.V. Camp, “Understanding a Patriarchy: Women in Second Century Jerusalem through the Eyes of
Ben Sira” in A.-J. Levine (ed.), Women Like This: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the GrecoRoman Period (Early Judaism and Its Literature 1; Atlanta: Scholars, 1991), 1-39.
35
Noorda, “Illness and Sin,” 219 n. 14.
GENDERING HEALING
311
If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is
right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I
will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians;
for I am the Lord who heals you.
As the verses of Ben Sira continue, the interrelationship between the healing work of
God, the skill of the physician and the healing effect of the fruits of the earth
[pharmaka] is highlighted:
God gave skill to human beings
That they might be glorified in God’s marvellous works
By them the physician heals and takes away pain;
The pharmacist makes a mixture from them.
God’s works will never be finished;
And from God health spreads over all the earth. (Sir 38:6-8)
Ben Sira has made a very strong case with his students for the wisdom of the
professional healing role of those named physicians, and the significance of pharmaka
in the healing process, all within the context of the centrality of the healing power of
the God of Israel. These elements were common within the Hellenistic world, as is
evident from inscriptions which abound recognizing physicians, from the Hippocratic
writings which were emerging at this time and from works such as those of
Theophrastus of Eresus on Lesbos (c. 370-288 BCE) who devoted almost sixty years
of study to his multiple-volume works History of Plants and Inquiry into Plants.
Egypt also had a long and vibrant tradition of botanical and pharmaceutical cures for
illness―much longer, in fact than Greece.36 Ben Sira’s reflections could therefore
have emerged from either a Jerusalem wisdom school seeking to combine Hellenistic
medical wisdom with Israel’s cultic theology or from Ptolemaic Alexandria where
Hellenistic and Egyptian professional and folk medicine met.
36
See di Lella, Wisdom of Ben Sira, 442; J.F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine (London: British
Museum Press, 1996), 24-41 and 136-162, which discusses the drug therapy evidenced in the ancient
medical papyri as well as other sources; and Estes, Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt, 136-157, for an
account of the materia medica of Pharaonic Egypt. A later sage, namely the author of The Wisdom of
Solomon 16:12, seems to deny the efficacy of “herb and poultice” but this is related to a very specific
incident rather than healing generally. Note too that we have already drawn attention to the prophetic
healing role of Isaiah who applies a fig poultice to Hezekiah’s sore (Isaiah 38:21).
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ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
The second stanza, Sirach 38:9-15, one could imagine as a response of Ben
Sira to a student or students who may have been shocked by the wisdom their teacher
was proposing in the first half of the text. The author moves as it were through the
traditional Jewish beliefs in vv. 9-11.37 Verse 9 counsels prayer whose outcome will
be healing from God; verse 10, righteous living and avoidance of sin; verse 11, the
cultus, including sacrificial offerings. This is the world with which the students would
have been familiar from “the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the other books
of [the] ancestors,” for devotion to which Ben Sira’s grandson praises his grandfather
in the Prologue to the book. Within this health care schema, Ben Sira reiterates again,
the physician must be given a place [δὸς τόπον], a place of honour, one might
presume, when the second half of v. 12 reiterates the LXX rendering of v. 1b―God
has created him [αὐτὸν ἔκτισεν κύριος] who is to be honoured (38:1a). Verses 13-14
draw the physician and his healing into Israel’s God-centred universe. The physician
can, indeed, bring healing, but like the patient, he ought to pray so that his diagnosis
would be right for the sake of healing and preserving life. Verse 15 forms an inclusio
with v. 1 around the poem, ending with reference to the physician as v. 1 began, but
the obverse: as v. 1 called for the physician to be honoured, v. 15 notes that the sinner
will be defiant toward him. The physician in Ben Sira’s schema belongs legitimately
to Israel’s symbolic universe of healing in contrast to the sinner who places himself
among the illegitimate where the physician has been in Judaism’s earlier theologizing.
Ben Sira draws the wisdom of the emerging medical sciences, presumably as
37
Noorda, “Illness and Sin” 220 n. 16.
GENDERING HEALING
313
encountered in the influence of Hellenism and, in all probability, Egypt, into
Judaism’s theological world view.38
The physician in this text is gendered male, but whether this is intended as
generic or whether the role of physician is reserved for men in the mind of ben Sira is
not absolutely clear. It could be argued, however, that the symbolic universe of
Israel’s healing dominated by a single male divinity seems to conspire with Ben Sira’s
portrayal of women according to the degree of honour or shame they bring to the male
(see for instance Sirach 23:22-26; 25:16-26:18; 36:26-31 on wives; and 7:24-25; 22:35; 26:10-12 and 42:9-14 on daughters)39 to continue the tradition in Israel of giving no
official public space to those female healers who, we have already argued, may have
been exercising their healing arts not only in private but subtly through their public
roles.
Gendering Divine Healing
When looking to the relationship between the gendering of divine healing and
women’s role in this arena, Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s words provide a guide as well as
a warning:
When modeling is done by the divine, the modeling does not simply illustrate; it
authorizes and approves what it models. This is a powerful two-edged sword.
On the one hand, divine modeling for women’s family roles gives women
esteem within these roles so that these roles become a source of self-satisfaction
and nourishment. On the other hand, this same divine modeling makes cultural
attitudes and stereotypes part of the realm of the sacred, lending powerful
support to these attitudes and inhibiting change.40
38
Noorda, “Illness and Sin” 224, who makes this more specific by suggesting that ideas such as those
contained in the Hippocratic treatise, De Morbo Sacro, might have provided a model which lead Ben
Sira to “a positive appreciation of medical science.”
39
See in detail Camp, “Understanding a Patriarchy”.
40
T. Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation
of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), 25.
314
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
If we take this into the realm of women’s participation in public professions and
divine modeling of female healing, one could expect that the presence of female
divine healers might be seen to be modeling women’s participation in healing
professions―but such is not the case. Women are described as midwives as well as
physicians on inscriptions across Anatolia and Greece and their healing facility with
herbs and all manner of pharmaka is stereotyped in classical literature. They are
healers, therefore, in the professional and folk areas of healing, but the religious realm
is dominated by Asclepius and male priests/physicians. The presence and participation
of Hygieia and Isis in divine healing seems to have little relationship to women
exercising healing roles in Greece. These women healers do not function in any
explicit way in the religious arena. The presence of Hygieia may, however, have
modelled and authorised female healing in very subtle ways. Her presence may not
have explicitly modeled women healing but given that professional women healers
emerged in the public arena during the time when women were becoming more active
in numerous public professions, her presence may have authorised their cultural
participation along with other sanctioning processes. Perhaps the constant presence of
Hygieia with Asklepius is one way in which we might account for the equal number
of women dedicants as men at the Athenian Asclepieum as well as the significant
number of women who frequented Epidauros and, even though records are not
available to us, we might assume equally at other shrines such as Kos, Pergamum,
Olympia, and Corinth. Compton says in this regard that “like other male-female deity
pairings”, the presence of Hygieia with Asclepius may have made the sanctuaries
“more approachable for women seeking divine aid.”41 That the first known supplicant
41
M.T. Compton, “The Association of Hygieia with Asklepios in Graeco-Roman Asklepieion
Medicine” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 57 (2002): 322.
GENDERING HEALING
315
of Hygieia was male, Perikles, and that women dedicants and women healed
acknowledge Asclepius’ healing power, warns us, though, to avoid too static a gender
distinction within the divine-human nexus of healing.
In Egypt, which had a longer tradition of professional medicine than Greece,
as well as female deities of healing such as Sekhmet, Selqet and Isis, there is, as in
Israel, almost no evidence of women in professional medicine.42 Estes notes the
reference to Peseshet who lived in the Old Kingdom and who was said to be “Lady
Overseer of Lady physicians”. Her presence suggests other women practising
medicine also, but to date no evidence of such women is available.43 There is only one
other explicit reference to a woman physician in ancient Egypt and that is Tawe who
is named in an early Ptolemaic papyrus.44 Barbara Watterson notes that there were
five professions open to Egyptian women: priesthood, midwifery, mourning, dancing
and music;45 and Jane Rowlandson’s sourcebook for women in Greek and Roman
society which yields a wider range of public activities for women still gives no
account which would point to their being public healers.46 We noted earlier, however,
that by the Ptolemaic period in Egypt, Imhotep had assumed a place in Egypt's
pantheon similar to that of Asclepius in the Greek pantheon: each dominated the
healing role. The role of other divine healers, male or female, was secondary.
Even though recent feminist scholarship has provided glimpses of the silenced
female divine in Israel’s symbolic universe, especially as Sophia,47 she does not
42
Ritner, “Medicine” 353.
See Ritner “Medicine” 353.
44
Estes, Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt, 21.
45
Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt, 38.
46
Rowlandson (ed.), Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998). Similarly, S.B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in
Classical Antiquity (New York: Shocken, 1975), who takes account of women in Hellenistic Egypt, has
no reference to women physicians in this context.
47
E.A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York:
Crossroad, 1992); J.E. McKinlay, Gendering Wisdom the Host: Biblical Invitations to Eat and Drink
43
316
ELAINE M. WAINWRIGHT
function as one of a pair with Israel’s God as Healer as does Hygieia, nor is healing a
sole or even a significant quality associated with her or other female deity condemned
in Israel’s scriptures.48 Divine and human healing in biblical Judaism is gendered
predominantly male in the texts available to us.
Conclusion
In the world whose wisdom, both divine and practical, Ben Sira seeks to introduce
into biblical Judaism, healing is strongly gendered male except for inscriptional and
literary evidence in Hellenistic Greece. Ben Sira has succeeded in adding more
complexity to Israel’s health care system during the second century BCE, and given
legitimacy to the work of physicians which was previously considered illegitimate. He
has not, however, extended this to the gendering of the system either in the divine or
the human realm.
(JSOTSS 216; Gender, Culture, Theory 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); and S. Schroer,
Wisdom Has Built Her House: Studies on the Figure of Sophia in the Bible (trans. L.M. Moloney and
W. McDonough; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000) are among those who explore the female gestalt
of the divine in the figure of Sophia/Wisdom. O. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images
of God in Ancient Israel (trans. T.H. Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), provide the most extensive
study of the imaging of the divine in Israel to date and the only link they offer to a female divine healer
is that health may have been one of the areas of responsibility of the “Queen of Heaven” to whom the
women offer libations and cakes in Jeremiah 44:15-19, see §339.
48
Although she is said to save in Wisdom 9:18, Sophia is not named as Saviour as was Hygieia nor is
healing, as we have explored it in this work, a specific characteristic associated with her despite the
influence of the religion of Isis on the characterization of Sophia. See Schroer, Wisdom Has Built Her
House, 104-107.
SECTION EPSILON
... and with Zeus make end, ye Muses
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB? HIEROGLYPHIC TEXTS FROM THE
TIME OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHOS*
Joachim Friedrich Quack
When, in the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander the Great, his generals divided
the empire, Egypt fell to Ptolemy, son of Lagos. He and his successors1 had to cope
with the fact that they were a minority ruling in a populous country with an enormous
indigenous cultural tradition. It was an obvious necessity to adapt to that cultural
tradition. So it is logical that the involvement of the Greek dynasty with indigenous
language and writing was considerably more intense in Egypt than elsewhere. This is
evident in the enormous number of Egyptian-language official inscriptions in the
Ptolemaic period.
For Ptolemy II, the case is remarkable. We have several highly important
historical inscriptions of his time, stylised as official royal declarations, in purely
hieroglyphic form, without any Greek version. This should be pointed out all the more
because, from Ptolemy III onward, the high actions of the state were declared mostly
in the synodal decrees, and these are mostly trilingual—hieroglyphic, demotic and
Greek; sometimes, especially the later ones, only hieroglyphic and demotic. The
language of the inscriptions in question strives for imitation of the classical Middle
Egyptian language, even if often falling short of its goal and visibly influenced by the
spoken idiom of the time.2
*
Kurt Sethe, Hieroglyphische Urkunden der griechisch-römischen Zeit (Leipzig, 1904) = Urkunden.
For recent histories of their times see Hölbl 1994 and Huss 2001.
2
For the language, see Engsheden 2003.
1
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
319
It is clearly not possible in this brief chapter to go into the details of every
hieroglyphic inscription from this period. Quite a few, indeed, concern only the
ordinary cultic activities. They present Ptolemy II in a way typical of an Egyptian
pharaoh caring for the cult of the gods.3 Although this is in itself a not unimportant
fact, the historical value of any individual instance of this kind is very slight. The
most important are probably those which show Ptolemy II in adoration before his
divinised dead sister and wife, Arsinoe II.4 Instead of listing all this in detail, I will go
into the specific longer inscriptions which tend actually to describe historic events.
The first text I will discuss in detail is the famous and well-known stela of
Mendes (Urkunden II, 28-54), so called after its find-spot.5 It has a well-preserved
lunette showing the king, the queen and the king’s son before the actual living goat of
Mendes, the child-god Harpokrates, the deity goat of Mendes, the goddess Hat-Mehit,
and finally Arsinoe II as goddess.
The text proper starts with a eulogy of the king, who is declared to be beloved
of the Ba of Mendes, a god in goat form. This takes about six of the twenty-eight lines
of the main text. After this traditional and rather stereotyped introduction, we pass to
actual narration. Unfortunately, the first date in the text is not preserved. We can
suppose that it was to the very beginning of Philadelphus’ reign, because it mentions
that the king came to the sacred goat of Mendes in order to beg life and kingship from
him. This encounter of king and sacred animal is told explicitly as being the first
occasion on which the king encountered a sacred animal after ascending the throne.
The text insists on the fact that the other gods came only afterwards, and that the
action was in accordance with what kings had done before. It describes the ritual
3
See e.g. George 1982, Sambin and Carlotti 1995, Sambin 1995, Thiers 1997, Vassilika 1989, 27-38.
Quaegebeur 1971.
5
Modern translations at Roeder 1959, 168-88, and de Meulenaere and MacKay 1976, 173-7 (lacking
most of the last line of the text).
4
320
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
action in some detail and stresses that it was done according to traditional writings.
The insistence on the ancient models makes it all the more surprising that we do not
actually know of any older stela where an Egyptian king makes a similar pilgrimage
to a sacred animal.
Afterwards, the king restores a temple building from damage done by
rebellious foreign countries and establishes his rules for the cult in accordance with
the writings of Thot. After returning to his residence Alexandria, the next fact narrated
is that he married his sister Arsinoe; it is described how her titles are fixed. No new
date is given, although the marriage took place at the earliest in 279 BC, about three
years after the beginning of the sole reign of Philadelphus, and perhaps even as late as
274 BC.6 Restoring monuments is, of course, a quintessential action of any Egyptian
king. The actual description of the marriage within the framework of a stela, however,
does not really seem very usual according to Egyptian norms. Even the well-known
so-called marriage scarab of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye7 does not really describe
the marriage: it only presents the fact of her being the queen, and her ancestry. The
most pertinent parallels are probably the marriage-stelae of Ramses II8 describing his
marriages to two Hittite princesses, and that had been a relatively unusual
constellation.
In our case, the quite problematic background of this marriage might have
made it necessary to proclaim it a bit louder than usual, perhaps connected with the
fact that the later divinisation of Arsinoe II plays a prominent role in the text. Here, a
new date intervenes: regnal year fifteen, first month of summer, when the queen dies
6
See Huss 2001, 307.
Blankenberg-Van Delden 1969, 4-7, 16 and 21-56.
8
New edition KRI II 233, 5-257, 16 and 282, 1-284, 1.
7
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
321
(270 BC). She gets a ceremonial opening of the mouth9 according to Egyptian
custom—but it is equally unusual to mention that on a historical stela. The proper
place to document such a ceremony according to traditional Egyptian usage would
have been in the decoration of a tomb. Perhaps it is most significant that the very
instant of the Mendes stela was specifically cited in the seminal study of the ritual of
the opening of the mouth, simply because it is such a rare case where the actual
enactment and the duration of four days is given. Funerary rites of an Egyptian type
are enacted for her, as for other male and female gods.
The king sets out a decree, which meets the approval of the priests, to the
effect that, given the acts of Arsinoe towards gods and men, her statue should be made
to appear in Mendes beside that of the local god, and also that cult images of her
should be made in every nome of Egypt, with a cult name of “the one beloved of the
goat, the goddess who loves her brother, Arsinoe”.
With this act, we enter in principle well-known Egyptian territory.
Divinisation of human beings in gratitude for their extraordinary merits had been
known for a long time, beginning about late Old Kingdom.10 But most cases are not
attested as being due to royal decree. The act of Philadelphus for his dead wife should
not, of course, be seen in isolation. We know that he also deified his father, and that
he had already decreed a cult of himself and his wife as theoi adelphoi, effectively
laying the ground for a cult of reigning Ptolemaic rulers as gods.11
More problematic is the next item told to us. King Ptolemy selected Egyptian
natives to act as recruits for his army. It is stressed in the text that the king loved
Egypt more than any country serving him, and that he trusted the Egyptians,
9
Otto 1960, II, 28.
A global study by A. von Lieven is in preparation.
11
Huss 2001, 325; Minas 2000.
10
322
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
Obviously, such a note is only understandable in the new situation of the Macedonian
conquest—it would be most surprising if any indigenous pharaoh had felt any
necessity to stress his choice of Egyptian troops.12 There is, however, a contrary
interpretation, which prefers to see a reference not to indigenous Egyptians but to the
recruitment simply of Greeks born in Egypt.13 I, however, fail to see why such an act
would be worth mentioning, especially in a text written in the Egyptian language.14
The following items concern tax reductions or exemptions. Specifically, the
ferry toll and the bread tax15 are cancelled for the region of the Mendesian nome. This
is justified by some age-old custom—in the case of the bread tax, even by a decree
issued by Thot at the order of Re for all future kings. This is nicely posed by
introducing a citation from the much older Hymn to the Inundation.16 For all of the
country, the king decides to reduce the amount of taxes paid. The amount per year is
given as more than six hundred thousand deben, at least 5460 kg. Such tax
exemptions are quite frequent already in earlier times for specific temples, but I
cannot see any reduction for the whole country being proclaimed this way.
The next measure narrated is the excavation of an artificial canal in order to
protect the eastern border of Egypt. We will hear more about it in connection with the
Pithom stela.
12
The case of Ramesses II who chides his troops after the battle of Kadesh and stresses that he had
trusted them is, of course, of a quite different nature.
13
Derchain 1986, 203-4.
14
Lloyd 2002 amasses at 120-122 evidence that already in the third century Egyptians were
participating in the Ptolemaic military.
15
The expression p# ôn| n oQ causes some difficulty in understanding. Earlier translators have
understood it as “Hälfte des Einkommens” (Sethe, Urkunden II, p. 43), “Anteil der Abgaben” (Roeder
1959, 183) or “revenues alimentaires” (de Meulenaere 1976, 175). It can hardly be doubted that the
first part is the masculine noun p# ôn| “the tax”, for which see Erichsen 1954, 639. Unfortunately, there
seems to be no demotic attestation of such a tax, and no Greek expression which could be a likely
correspondant.
16
Recognised by Peter Seibert (1967, 100 n.102).
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
323
Finally, a new date—in this case, regnal year twenty-one introduces a new
section. The restoration of the temple of the he-goat of Mendes is finished, and its
inscription tells the name of the king as well as his father and the brother-loving queen
Arsinoe. A great inauguration-festival is celebrated, and the god introduced into his
house. The festival is directed by the son of the king. It is enacted country-wide.
Afterwards, some class of people (probably mentioned in a lacuna) goes to the
residence in order to pay homage to the king, and the prophets follow them, bringing
wreaths and amulets to the king. He and his clothes are anointed, and the same
happens for the king’s children.
The next date is unfortunately not preserved in the text, but it can still be seen
that it was precise at least to the month-indication. It is reported to the king that a
living goat has been found and should be installed as god by the king. As is proposed,
the king sends to all main temples of the land for the staff of the scriptorium. The
competent Egyptian specialists recognise that the animal has the correct shape
according to the traditional writings, so it is really recognised, enthroned and given a
title. This is actually one of relatively few cases where an Egyptian text confirms what
we know from Greek writers, namely that a sacred animal is recognised by specific
bodily marks. Although we can suppose that recognising sacred animals had always
been an official act, we have no pre-Ptolemaic text at all describing how the king was
involved in such decisions. I will come back to this matter in my general discussion.
Furthermore, the king devises a plan which is introduced as not having been
made by any king before him: he lets statues appear and be brought to the Mendesian
nome by a delegation of prophets, priests, dignitaries and military leaders—
unfortunately, the stela is broken exactly at this place, but what is still recognisable is
324
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
that a statue of Arsinoe was part of the ensemble, and perhaps also one of the goat: at
least, that would tally with the depiction in the lunette of the stela.
The exact date of arrival, the sixteenth day of the second month of spring, is
indicated—and this is the occasion for a great festival. Perhaps it should be noted that
nowhere in the text is the personal attendance of the king mentioned. Therefore his
depiction in the lunette of the stela before the newly-found goat is as unreal as that of
the long-dead Queen Arsinoe. He was present at Mendes only once, at the beginning
of his reign, and his queen probably never. Ptolemy the Son who appears behind them
was there for the inauguration of the restored temple, but for the introduction of the
statues, none of the three seems to have been present in person—only a high-ranking
delegation of courtiers and priests. Compared to pharaonic precedents, that seems a
bit like a devaluation of the Egyptian cult.
The text concludes with the idea that in return for his benefactions, the king
may expect a long and stable rule, and the succession of his son(s) forever—a quite
typical Egyptian idea. I will come back to some especially pertinent questions later,
but already now some conclusions are appropriate. The inscription plays at the same
time on two seemingly mutually exclusive ideas, to wit, the following of established
traditional norms, and innovation by doing things which have never been done before.
Strange as it might seem, both of these are well rooted in the traditional Egyptian
phraseology.17 Innovation is accepted, and even actually encouraged, if it can be
presented as an improvement—especially one involving more piety towards the gods,
or greater constructions of buildings. Still, the text has some innovations not marked
as such, and even where ancient models are cited, we sometimes fail to corroborate
them.
17
Vernus 1995.
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
325
Probably more discussed in recent times is another stela of this period, the
stela of Pithom (Urkunden II, 81-105), named after its find-spot in the eastern Delta.18
The stela has a rather bad epigraphy, with many signs distorted or difficult to read,
and this is responsible for some controversies about its interpretation. A lot of the
discussion has centred on calendrical questions and problems of exact date.19
The lunette is divided in two parts. The right one shows the king offering Maat
before five gods: Atum, Osiris, Horus, Isis and Queen Arsinoe II. The left one is in
itself divided. On the outside, an Udjat-eye is presented before a god whose identity
has been somewhat debated: probably it is Harsomtus.20 In the inner area, the king
presents wine before Atum and Isis. Like the Mendes stela, the inscription sets out
with the titles and a stereotyped eulogy of the king. Here also, it takes about six of the
twenty-eight lines of the main text, so that the proportions are quite similar to those of
the Mendes stela.
The first event described takes place in regnal year six of the king, when the
temple of Atum in Tjeku is completed. On the third day of the third month of
inundation, the king renders him to Tjeku, and the next morning, the building is
completed, during a festival. The king also visits another place with a view to
providing Atum with benefactions—in particular, a land grant seems to be intended.
Now we reach a passage which is in all probability connected with the first
Syrian war.21 It should, however, be critically remarked that we do not have a new
date for this event indicated in the text, and that nothing is told of any battle—nor,
indeed, are we told anything which would definitely force us to believe that
18
Original publication Naville 1902-3; see also Andersson and Sjöberg 1904. For recent discussions,
see Thiers 1997, Minas 1994, Lorton 1971, Goedicke 1989. Full translation in Roeder 1959, 108-28.
19
Bingen 1943; Grzybek 1990, 69-112.
20
Minas 1994, 205.
21
Winnicki 1990.
326
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
Philadelphus ever left the area of the Ptolemaic possessions. It is stated that the king
went to the regions of Asia—if the decipherment of the last word is correct.22 A long
discussion has taken place about this campaign of Philadelphus, whose specific aim is
indicated in the hieroglyphic text as prs—and a group of two t-signs, a throw-stick,
another t and the determinative of the foreign country. Some people have taken it to
mean Palestine,23 while others have even thought of Persia.24 Personally, I think the
equation with Palestine is highly dubious, to say the least.25 The group of two t-signs
and the determinative of the foreign country normally stand simply as a determinative
without phonetic value, and besides, I see no convincing explanation of how the n
could be omitted in the rendering at this time. Persia, even while geographically
obviously wrong, would make sense insofar as the motive of deporting stelae from
Egypt was connected with the Persian occupation.
In any case, the king found there images of the gods of Egypt, and he sent
them back to Egypt where they were received with jubilation. There are some tricky
details in the description of the voyage of those statues. If I understand it rightly, it
says that the king was on board ship with them, and that they sailed from the
canal/swamp of the east of Egypt till the harpoon nome (Pithom), and this is presented
as something never before done in the land. The regaining of the statues is also
connected with a royal decree issued on the tenth (?) day of the fourth (?) month of
winter, to the effect that priests from the temples of Egypt should come for them. This
section is concluded in a way promising rule to the king and his son after him, which
sounds as if he could conclude a composition.
22
This was at least confirmed by Winter (apud Winnicki 1990, 158), from a collation of the original.
So Lorton 1971, 160-64; also Winnicki 1990, 161-3. Most recently Huss 2001, 267.
24
So Sethe at Urkunden II, 91, and Roeder 1959, 119.
25
It is normally based on an inscription of a royal messenger, last discussed by Schipper (1999, 193-6):
the problematic question of dating (not all of Schipper’s arguments are pertinent) impinges upon the
problem of geographical interpretation.
23
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
327
The motive is well known for the early Ptolemaic period. In the inscriptions of
Ptolemies I, II, III and IV reference is made to bringing back Egyptian cult images
taken away by the Persians.26 We also have this idea in a demotic literary text, the socalled Prophecy of the Lamb, and its reflections might even be seen in an unpublished
tale about King Djoser looking in Nineveh for the body relics of Osiris.27 I will not go
into the factual veracity of those statements but it should be evident that they
constitute innovations insofar as no Egyptian king of the pre-Assyrian time would
have had much reason to look abroad for lost divine images.
A new section is introduced by a date, regnal year twelve, first month of
inundation, day three. Then his majesty travels around Egypt, together with his queen
Arsinoe, and they reach the harpoon nome. The couple thinks of protecting Egypt
there against its neighbours. We could of course speculate whether this tour was in
any way related to the royal marriage, even if that would mean setting it at about the
latest possible date nowadays discussed by the specialists. In any case, the royal ideas
seem to have taken some years to come to fruition, because only for regnal year
sixteen is it narrated how the king actually has a canal excavated, leading from
Heliopolis to the Lake of Scorpions, intended to drive off invaders. Here follow
several lists of royal benefactions by the king for Atum. Mainly they concern victuals,
but also clothes, and besides, a quarter of the caravan tax. Such lists are quite well
known also from earlier periods.
Then the king sets out to found a new city, named after the daughter of King
Ptolemy. What exactly her name was seems a bit doubtful, since it is not directly
given in hieroglyphs. Sethe, in his edition, proposed Ptolemais, whereas Roeder
26
27
Winnicki 1994.
Quack 2005, 27 and 153.
328
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
assumes Arsinoe. Perhaps the best solution is that it was Berenike Hormos.28 Then a
fleet of high-sea ships is sent out to sail the Red Sea, and there, a city is founded,
named after the king—so obviously to be identified as Ptolemais Theron. This is
presented as something never before done, and it is clearly stated that the goal was to
capture elephants—which, again, is unprecedented. Furthermore, the sacred bulls,
Apis, Mnevis and the speckled bull were distinguished: probably their stables were
built anew.29 In any case, king and queen were present, and this is recorded as not
having been done before by any king of Egypt. Further benefactions of the king for
the temples in general, and specifically in the one of Per-Kerehet, are enumerated.
There are quite considerable amounts of precious metal, especially silver, but
unfortunately without indication of the basis for the count. Perhaps staters were
intended, since the word ‘silver’ is directly followed by a number. It is told that they
were engraved on a stela in the dromos of the temple of Tjeku when he appeared as a
king and inaugurated the temple, and there was a festival in the city. The stela
concludes with the usual blessings for the king, the force of his rule and the
submission of foreign countries.
In general, the Pithom stela has a visible stress on the new achievements never
before accomplished by any king. Still, in its form and structure it stays quite close to
earlier models, perhaps more so than the Mendes stela. What are new are the actual
achievements—and that is the act of positive surpassing which was always considered
appropriate in Egypt.
28
Huss 2001, 289 n.284.
Roeder assumes in his translation that they visited one another, but that should be r@+.n=f sXn=sn, not
|r+.n=f sXn=sn.
29
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
329
In recent times, a fairly fragmentary monument has been able to be
reconstructed to some degree, thanks mainly to the efforts of Christophe Thiers.30 It
was originally inscribed for the Delta city of Sais, but later transported to Rome,
where it was placed in the Gardens of Sallust. Today, some of its fragments are still
preserved in the Museum of Naples and in the Louvre, but for other parts we are
dependent on a renaissance sketch made without knowledge of hieroglyphs. The
sketch was, however, done so carefully that most is safely legible nowadays. And yet
the lack of the original seems highly important to me, in view of one specific
question: Is the text quite complete as it stands? Is the last preserved line really the
last one of the text? Thiers seems to suppose without further discussion that it is, but I
disagree. One factor speaks in favour of completeness, namely the somewhat larger
spacing of the column-divider after the last preserved line. There are, however, two
other indications militating against such a solution. The offering-scene in the top part
has only some feet of the participants preserved in the renaissance drawings, but the
composition seems highly unbalanced as it stands now. We have two persons on each
side: behind those to the right (who are more probably the ruling couple, offering
something), there is quite a bit of space; those to the left (probably divinities) appear
squeezed against the end, with no space left. In principle, the lower part of a sceptre
visible between the two couples should mark the very centre of the original stela.
Calculating like that, we should conclude that four additional columns of hieroglyphs
come after the last preserved one.
While being less conclusive as to the absolute amount missing, another
indication points in the same direction. While most of the text is in vertical columns,
there is one horizontal line on the top containing the royal protocol. This cannot be
30
Thiers 1999 and 2001.
330
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
complete as it stands. It gives the throne-name of Ptolemy II, Userkarê beloved of
Amun. Behind that, we would expect his personal name Ptolemy rendered in
hieroglyphs, and after that most likely a blessing formula such as ‘given life in
eternity’, perhaps even with the addition of ‘beloved of Neith’ (or some other god or
goddess). So this shows again that we have to reckon with more text written on the
stela.
This does not immediately help us with understanding, because that text is
irremediably lost, but it helps to get a more balanced view of the composition of the
text. Among the preserved parts, the first six and a half lines of the text are simply an
elaborate eulogy of the king, derived from traditional stock phrases. It is only with the
second part of the seventh line that actual narration of facts and actions is initiated. In
the reconstruction given by Thiers, that would make the second part definitely the
shorter one, with only four and a half lines; and it would end in quite an awkward
way, with the description of a royal appearance at the end of the last preserved
column. My new proposal for the overall restitution would not only make the factual
narrative longer than the eulogy—now with probably eight and a half lines—but also
provide space for a more fitting end, with some decision taken and put in place by
royal edict.
Now, what is preserved in the text? The first date given at the very beginning
is year twenty-two of Ptolemy II, and then we have the eulogy describing his valour in
battle as well as his actions for Neith and the gods of Sais. The second part begins
with another date, this time regnal year twenty, and the king is speaking to his
courtiers. He orders them to assemble all the provincial governors of Upper and
Lower Egypt. When the text resumes after a lacuna, he declares his intention to let a
statue of Isis-Arsinoe appear, and to embellish the city. The courtiers concur.
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
331
Afterwards, we have a new date in regnal year twenty-one. The king arrives at Sais
and is greeted by the prophets and god’s fathers of the temple. They wish to show the
place of the gods to the king. Now we have a new date, but this time without a new
indication of a year, only giving the fourth month of the season of spring, and then the
day-date is lost. A great number of chariots and cavalry are supposed to follow the
king, who appears and proceeds to the temple—and then the text breaks off. We can
suppose that the priests granted the wish of the king to put up a statue of his dead
queen and to give her divine honours, and especially to include her in the offeringcult. As a reward, Philadelphus would stick to his promise and embellish Sais with
new cult-buildings, and probably also establish a material basis for the cult in the form
of land-grants or tax-exemption.
Now for some general remarks. Philadelphus was certainly not the first
actually to appropriate the form of hieroglyphic stelae for promoting his
achievements. Already before him, we have the so-called Satrap stela (Urkunden II,
11-22) dating from before Ptolemy I officially took the title of king. That is quite
similar to the inscriptions discussed here, and most specifically in one remarkable
point which I would like to stress: all these texts have a tendency to be episodic, that
is, they tell about a lot of different events, often years apart, and sometimes with a
very loose internal coherence. Although not unheard-of, this is not the most usual way
earlier pharaonic stelae were organised. Most of them focused on one of only few
historical events or they gave overviews of building programmes in one area. Perhaps
it is noticeable that there are some Egyptian texts which came rather close to the
Ptolemaic stelae by also narrating long chains of events, often intermixed with
narrations of spoils and donations. But the best cases, like the annals of Thutmosis
332
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
III31 or the chronicle of Prince Osorkon,32 are not stelae: they are long texts written on
temple walls. We should ask ourselves whether the Ptolemies were influenced by such
models or if they had any other reasons for proceeding as they did. Here it would be
interesting to hear the opinion of a specialist in Greek history, comparing how
historical facts are presented in inscriptions in the Greek context. At least there are
some Late Period royal inscriptions which record events over a number of years,
although mostly with a clear thematic focus.33 There are, for example, stelae of
Taharqa (twenty-fifth dynasty) enumerating his donations to the temple from years
two to eight34 and years eight to ten.35 Besides, the genre of inscriptions summing up
different and not closely related events was alive in the Meroitic region, e.g. in the
inscription (on the temple wall, not on a stela) of Anlamani at Kawa,36 the
fragmentary stelae of Ary,37 or the long stelae of Harsiotef and Nastasen.38 Perhaps
those examples indicate that it might be a general trend of the later first millennium to
change the scope of royal inscriptions; in any case, the Philadelphus inscriptions owe
more to recent development than to old traditions in this respect.
In the Mendes stela, the Egyptian worship of animals figures quite
prominently, and in the Pithom stela, it is mentioned as well. The tradition of the
Ptolemies to style themselves as protectors and patrons of sacred animals is amazingly
rich. Also in the decrees of Canopus and Memphis, care for them, especially Apis and
Mnevis, comes into play. Even the Raphia decree, although mainly concerned with
bellicose activities, does not neglect to mention that Ptolemy IV looked after the
31
New study and edition, Redford 2003.
Caminos 1958.
33
See also Gozzoli, 2003, who is not concerned with the points I am analysing here.
34
Macadam 1948, 4-14 and plates 5-6.
35
Macadam 1948, 32-41 and plates 11-12.
36
Macadam 1948, 50-67 and plates 17-26.
37
Macadam 1948, 76-81 and plates 32-34.
38
Both republished and studied in Peust 1999; see also Quack 2002.
32
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
333
sacred animals in the Asiatic provinces which had been maltreated by the Seleucid
troops. The stress on such actions definitely surpasses what is known for the
indigenous pharaohs. For examples, in the great Papyrus Harris, where he recounts all
the important deeds of his reign, Ramesses III speaks quite briefly about the cows of
the Apis and Mnevis bulls, without even enumerating anything he did for the bulls
themselves.
Two different kinds of explanation offer themselves. One would be that, as
foreign invaders, the Ptolemies had a greater need to get connected with Egyptian
religion in order to make their rule acceptable. The second would be that we are
facing a global trend towards greater veneration of animals, which took place perhaps
around 700 BC when large-scale necropoleis of animals begin to appear. For the prePtolemaic rulers of the first millennium BC, we have only a fairly limited record of
preserved inscriptions, and it is possible that it was really then when the behavioural
models were set which the Greek dynasty followed.
Now it is time to speak of a specific Ptolemaic institution, namely the priestly
synods and their decrees.39 Huss has tried to establish the meetings of priests at Sais
(266/5?) and Mendes (between 264/3 and 259) as the earliest attested cases. He
considers the inscriptions of the Mendes stela and the Sais text as examples of such
decrees. I see difficulties in following such reasoning because the formal structuring
of those two inscriptions is utterly different from the later, more assured synodal
decrees. Nowhere is the text stylised as a decision taken by the priests.40 It is always
the king who acts, and the most the priests do is to agree with him. Still, in the Sais
inscription the king really orders the governors and prophets of the temples of Upper
39
40
See for them Huss 1991, Kügler 1994 and Pfeiffer 2004, 9-12.
Pfeiffer (2004, 9) expresses doubts whether they can be taken as a real synod.
334
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
and Lower Egypt to come to his court, and this can be considered as a forerunner of
the true synod—the development would be to grant more power of decision, at least
nominally, to the priests, who can take the initiative and propose measures to honour
the king and his family on their own.
In terms of the development of the relations between the Egyptians and their
Macedonian king, this should be considered as a fairly decisive factor, in the long
term, and it means a serious change from all earlier models. Before, the standard
situation is what Egyptologists frequently call the ‘king’s novel’.41 I do not intend to
discuss whether this is justified as a term of literary analysis, but the way political
decision-making is presented to the public should be evident. The pharaoh proposes
some action. Either his courtiers acclaim this immediately, or in the rare cases where
they have some doubts, the pharaoh overcomes them and is always justified by the
outcome. Philadelphus still follows that ancient model in his historical inscriptions—
he takes the lead, and the priests and courtiers agree. With the inauguration of the
genre of the synodal decree, a far-reaching change in the official presentation of
decision-making is reached. It might be possible to read it in two diametrically
opposite ways. On the one hand, it might be interpreted as granting more power to the
indigenous element against the foreign rulers; and normally scholars see the internal
development of those decrees as showing growing Egyptian influence in content,
although this can be somewhat doubted.42 On the other hand, as an Egyptologist I
cannot totally overcome the impression that the new stylisation of decisions might be
due to the prevailing Hellenic model of popular assemblies voting for public honours
being given to some person.43 Normally, people see no pharaonic antecedents for such
41
For this, see most recently Hofmann 2004.
Pfeiffer 2004, 11.
43
Kügler (1994, 56-8) already goes in this direction.
42
INNOVATIONS IN ANCIENT GARB
335
assemblies of priests in one place to take decisions. I might propose at least some
hints, although they contain more problems than solutions.44
First, I know of an unpublished text preserved in at least three hieratic papyri,
all dating to the Roman period. They purport to be copies of royal decrees or early
rulers. Neferkasokar, Djoser and Kheops are explicitly named in the preserved parts.
The main topic is a complete renovation and restoration of the cult buildings, and one
section (of which fairly extensive remnants are preserved) seems to be an official
order to the specific priests and priestesses of all individual nomes of Egypt to come
to the residence. The formulations have some similarity to the way the Sais inscription
runs. Unfortunately, I have no way of ascertaining the real date of these royal decrees,
so that proposing them as the forerunners of these synods is not without difficulties—
they might also be totally pseudepigraphic compositions modelled after an already
existing system. Perhaps future research will bring more clarity in this matter.
Another passage, also preserved in papyri of the Roman period, concerns related
problems. In this case, I am speaking of the equally unpublished Book of the Temple,
whose edition I am currently preparing. Of specific interest for us is a passage in the
instruction for the governor and overseer of the prophets. Unfortunately, it is quite
fragmentary, but I would like to present a translation in its entirety. Of the governors
and overseer of the prophets, it is told:
It is they who receive the decrees of the king which come from the residence,
and who hear the words which come about them, in order to command [...
repo]rt thereof to the majesty of the palace [...] proceed to the residence together
with [...] thrice a year, the senior governor at the new year’s festival and the
feast of [...] sed-festival together with [...]
The many lacunae in the text make any precise interpretation difficult, but it seems at
least likely that the highest ranks should assemble at the royal palace from time to
44
See the brief presentation of both of them in Quack 2000.
336
JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK
time when it came to important political decision, or also routinely from time to time.
Again, I have only Roman-period manuscripts, and cannot yet give a definite answer
for questions of dating the archetype; but at least it must be older than the decree of
Canopus (238 BC), because the text always operates with a system of four phylae—
and one of the most important measures of the decree of Canopus was to create a fifth
phyle. So I cannot simply say that I have evidence for an earlier tradition of priestly
assemblies, but at least there seems some probability for it.
THE PROBLEM OF THE PTOLEMAIC SIBLING MARRIAGE:
A CASE OF DYNASTIC ACCULTURATION?
Kostas Buraselis
One of the salient features and the never finally resolved (or resolvable) problems of
Ptolemaic history is sibling marriage. It all started ca 278 BC with the return of
Arsinoe II to Egypt,1 after an adventurous queenship first beside Lysimachos of
Thrace and then Ptolemy Ceraunus, her half-brother, in Macedonia. Ptolemy II then
married his full sister and subsequently acquired the official by-name Philadelphos
(‘brother-loving’).2 The ancient tradition that refers to that act is limited. The only
contemporary literary evidence for the new royal marriage is an eulogy by the court
poet Theocritus and a metaphorical invective by Sotades. Theocritus refers to it in
sublime verses of his Encomium to Ptolemy.3 He emphasizes the unique love of
Arsinoe II for her brother and husband (κατασίγνητόν σε τε πόσιν τε) and skilfully
compares the pair’s relation to the sacred marriage (ἱερὸς γάµος) of the established
divine sibling royalty on Olympus (βασιλῆας Ὀλύµπου), Zeus and Hera, the
1
On the probable temporal context of Arsinoe II’s return to Egypt and marriage with Ptolemy II
(between 279 and 274) cf. recently Huß 2001:307 n. 22, who offers a useful summary of the relevant
problems and views.
2
Criscuolo 1990 was right in emphasizing the wider use of this epithet, that is not restricted to sibling
marriages and eventually denoting more generally the fact of excellent relations between royal children
of the same parent(s), inside the Ptolemaic dynasty and the rest Hellenistic world. However, its first
dynastic application in the case of Arsinoe II cannot be separated from the exact character of her
relation to her brother and the need to exalt the fact of their marriage (cf. Fraser 1972: I.217). A similar
relation was certainly implied in all further cases of royal brothers and sisters called together
philadelphoi: Criscuolo’s effort (94 with n. 24) e.g. to disprove such a content in the use of the epithet
for Mithridates IV and Laodice of Pontus simply cannot convince.
3
Theoc., Id. 17. 128ff. Theocritus’ case cannot have been isolated, of course: cf. n. 10 below.
Callimachus also wrote an epithalamion for that royal sibling wedding (frg. 392 Pfeiffer), and it seems
quite probable that he used a similar imagery to conciliate Greek opinion with offending court
developments.
338
KOSTAS BURASELIS
common bed Iris prepared with myrrhed hands.4 On the other hand, Sotades was
executed in an exemplarily way for accusing the king εἰς οὐχ ὁσίην τρυµαλιὴν τὸ
κὲντρον ὠθεῖς “you are pushing the prong into an unholy fleshpot” (Green 1990:82).
The latter incident and Sotades’ verse are known from both Plutarch (Mor. 11a) and
Athenaeus (620f), while Plutarch further comments on the endogamous marriage of
the king in another passage5 describing it as something held to be “strange and
unlawful” (ἀλλόκοτον... καὶ ἄθεσµον).6 Sotades’ suicidal comment and Plutarch’s
remark unmistakably show that the Greek public opinion in both Philadelphos’ and
later ages distanced itself from the new royal habit of the Ptolemies, to the effect that
divine parallels had to be dexterously mobilised by Theocritus.7
However, was this sort of marriage a complete Ptolemaic novelty or did it
have to do with atypical Greek or Egyptian traditions? In the Greek world, we know
that marriage between half-siblings was well-known and sometimes lawful, although
at least in Athens (where we have some evidence to work with) it was rather rare and
somehow morally unpalatable.8 Thus Cimon’s half-sister (from the same father but
from a different mother) Elpinice was probably for a period formally accepted but
also socially disputed as his wife in Athens,9 while in the first royal house of
Macedonia, the Argeads, Ptolemy of Alorus, a son of Amyntas III, seems to have
4
It is noteworthy that Theocritus wisely places the mention of the sibling marriage just before the
conclusion of the poem, in a sort of consummation of Ptolemy II’s divine identity.
5
Mor. 736f. On these Greek reactions to the marriage cf. Modrzejewski 1998.
6
‘Unlawful’ in the grave sense of ‘violating socially accepted rules’ as is best shown by Plutarch’s,
Caes. 10 own use of the same adjective to describe P. Clodius’ sacrilegious intrusion into the Bona Dea
festival of 62 BC but also with the undertone of ‘immoral, criminal’ as e.g. in the Old Testament, 3
Maccabees 5. 12 where Philopator's plan of having the Jews trampled by his elephants receives the
same characterization.
7
Cf. also the case of the otherwise unknown rhapsode flattering Ptolemy II (on the day of his wedding
with his sister) with a similarly adroit citation of Homer in Plut. (n. 8). Cf. Hazzard 2000:89.
8
Cf. esp. Karabélias 1991; Modrzejewski 1993:59-60 and 1999:270-3; Vérilhac & Vial 1998:91-101
(esp. 94).
9
Half-sister: Nep., Cim. 1.2. Social reactions/illegality of the relationship: Plut., Cim. 4.6, 8; 15.4.
Athen. 589 e.
SIBLING MARRIAGE
339
married a half-sister from the same father, Eurynoe (Ogden 1999:14-6, 78). While
such rare cases do appear, one should emphasize that a marriage between full siblings
simply cannot be attested among ancient Greek customs, while the reprimanding
testimonies of Euripides (Andromache, 173ff) and Plato (Laws, 838 a-c) sufficiently
show that such unions were morally rejected.
On the other hand, it is noteworthy that there is ample ancient literary
evidence connecting the custom of full sibling marriage specifically with Egypt and
its local traditions. Pausanias (I. 7. 1) wrote that Ptolemy II Ἀρσινόης ἀδελφῆς
ἀµφοτέρωθεν ἐρασθεὶς ἔγηµεν αὐτήν, Μακεδόσιν οὐδαµῶς ποιῶν νοµιζόµενα,
Αἰγθπτίοις µέντοι ὧν ἦρχε “fell in love with his full sister Arsinoe, not behaving in
accordance with Macedonian custom but with that of his Egyptian subjects”. Without
connecting this ‘Egyptian custom’ with Ptolemy’s marriage, other authors also
ascribed such a practice to an Egyptian tradition. The earliest10 evidence of this sort
appears in Diodorus (I. 27, 1-2) who states that sibling marriage (γαµεῖν ἀδελφάς)
was an Egyptian custom, differing from the practice followed in the rest of the world,
and traces it back to the example of Isis (Ἰσιδος ἐπίτευγµα). The Egyptian goddess,
says Diodorus, had set that example through her devotion to the memory of Osiris, her
valiant revenge of his death and her lawful and for all people beneficent royalty
(βασιλεύουσαν νοµιµώτατα, καὶ τὸ σύνολον πλείστων καὶ µεγίστων ἀγαθῶν
αἰτίαν γενέσθαι πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις). Our source goes then on to explain against this
background its view of a superior position of woman versus man in royal and private
Egyptian setting.
10
The date of Diodorus’ testimony (around 30 BC) increases its value especially because it predates the
development of Egypt in the Roman Empire when such sibling marriages actually became
characteristic of Egyptian society. Apparently, the few known certain (cf. n. 78 below) instances of
such private unions during the Ptolemaic period correspond to a more widespread contemporaneous
view of the existence of the sibling-marriage-custom in Egypt.
340
KOSTAS BURASELIS
In later, imperial contexts Memnon of Heraclea (FGrH 434 F 8, 7), Philo of
Alexandria (Spec. Laws, ΙΙΙ. 23-25 = Loeb Philo, VII, pp.486ff.), Seneca (Apocol. 8.
3) and Sextus Empiricus (Pyr. I. 152, III. 205, 234) also refer to sibling marriage as
part of Egyptian tradition. Memnon speaks of such an “ancestral Egyptian” custom
(πἀτριον τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις) commenting on the marriage of Ptolemy Ceraunus to
Arsinoe II, that is a marriage between half-siblings, while Sextus Empiricus attributes
to the Egyptians sibling marriage in general, that is not specifying whether full or not.
Philo and Seneca are more specific in regarding the ‘extreme’ form of sibling
marriage, that is between full siblings, as a part of Egyptian tradition, connecting the
half forms of the same practice with Athens or Sparta (in Philo, not verified by other
sources: Vérilhac and Vial 1998:94). Philo is the most categorical in his moral
rejection of this custom as a sort of unnatural vice.11
Interpreting the sibling marriage of the Ptolemies as the adoption of a longstanding Egyptian custom needs to be verified by earlier Egyptian evidence. In actual
fact, documentary evidence from Egypt presents a more differentiated picture. While
the custom of sibling marriage (also in its full form) is well attested in Roman Egypt,12
Jaroslav Cerny (1954:29) detected only two practically certain private Egyptian cases
during Pharaonic period, leaving it uncertain whether the same marriages were
between full siblings or not. Later research has even called the sibling character of
11
To demonstrate this best he uses the extreme example of twins, separated by nature but reunited
against its wish in the case of such a marriage (23), while he also comments on the unreasonable
neglect of actually limitless possibilities for social expansion by families practising it (25). The
background is, of course, the full justification and praise of Mosaic Law.
12
The main bibliography includes: Hombert and Préaux 1949; Thierfelder 1960; Middleton 1962;
Hopkins 1980; Shaw 1992; Modrzejewski 19932; Bagnall & Frier 1994:127-134.
SIBLING MARRIAGE
341
these two unions into question.13 Full sibling marriage within the Pharaonic families
are not numerous and are also disputed.14
Confronted with this evidence, Joseph Mélèze-Modrzejewski considers that
the Ptolemaic habit was essentially of Greek origin, the Lagids having pushed to its
extreme limit “une tendance véhiculée par les traditions grecques en ce qui concerne
l’endogamie des proches parents collatéraux”.15 In a similar way, Brent Shaw treats
Egyptian sibling marriage from an anthropological viewpoint,16 and traces back the
boom of sibling marriages in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to the feeling of racial
prejudice and intentional seclusion of the Greek and Hellenized elements of the
population of Egypt, in a sort of ancient apartheid spirit17. A variant of this
Hellenocentric interpretation is supported by Hazzard (2000:85-93) who considers
that Philadelphos was simply seeking to present himself and his sister-queen as close
to the ruling divine couple of the Greek pantheon, Zeus and Hera, as possible.
Another approach was initiated by Elizabeth Carney in a penetrating study
under the characteristic title The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in
Ptolemaic Egypt. She is disinclined to explain the ‘reappearance’ of sibling marriage
among the Lagids with Pharaonic precedents on the grounds that the disadvantage of
the foreseeable Greek opposition to the new royal marriage practice was not
negligible, while the general policy of the early Ptolemies would not betray any
tendency of the dynasty to please primarily its Egyptian subjects or deviate from a
basically Hellenocentric concept of kingship (Carney 1987:431-2). Moreover, the
13
Robins 1979: esp. 202f. on the terms sn and snt. Cf. also Meskell 2002:98f.
Examples of scepsis concerning such a Pharaonic practice: Bowman 1986:24; Hölbl 1994:106; Shaw
2000:228/9 (B.M. Bryan) and 408 (A.B. Lloyd). However, one may contrast with these views Robins
1993:69; Shaw and Nicholson 1995:171; Ziegler 2002:254: Schmitt 2005:373, where the existence of
the phenomenon in the history of the Pharaohs is unreservedly affirmed.
15
Modrzejewski 1999:270-273; 19932; 1998:573-576.
16
Shaw 1992:283: “...the family of the Ptolemies took the Greek tendency to endogamy to its logical
limits”.
17
Shaw 1992:286, adopting a relevant formulation of N. Lewis.
14
342
KOSTAS BURASELIS
Pharaonic examples of such marriages were sporadic and never assumed the
significance of “a fundamental element in Pharaonic kingship” (Carney 1987:433), so
that its adoption by the Ptolemies would have given sufficient sense. Instead, she
prefers to see this peculiar Ptolemaic marriage practice as “an isolationist custom”,
stemming from a similar geopolitical context as that of Pharaonic times and intending
“to consolidate a dynasty, by significantly reducing potential rivals for the throne
descended through the female line” (Carney 1987:434). On the other hand, she is
ready to admit that in later phases the frequency of sibling marriage in the Ptolemaic
dynasty was also due to “the growing Egyptianization of Ptolemaic rule” (Carney
1987:436). Her views have been positively evaluated by Daniel Ogden (1999:77-8).
Peter Fraser (1972: I.117, II.209) and the late Keith Hopkins “feel sure that Pausanias
was right, although some modern scholars have disputed it. The Greek kings of Egypt
were following Egyptian custom”.18 Eric Turner (1984:136-8) carefully adhered to the
indigenous interpretation of the Ptolemaic custom. What follows is a modest attempt
to elaborate on the same line of thought. The effort is worth making, I think, after
Ager’s ambitious study of the whole practice of incest by the Ptolemies. Here the
initiation of the phenomenon and the Egyptian policy of the dynasty are on the whole
accorded a relatively secondary role, while more importance is ascribed to symbolic
aspects of dynastic behaviour, luxury and power towards an interpretation of this
marital policy in a richly variegated spectrum of conscious and subconscious
motives.19
18
Hopkins 1980:312. The same view had been also expressed in a short form among older literature
especially by Macurdy 1932:118; Hombert and Préaux 1949:137; Green 1990:404.
19
Ager 2005:17, where it seems difficult to accept her view that the “Egyptian angle” cannot provide a
full answer because “in a sense, it only begs the question: after all, why should the Pharaohs have
practised incestuous marriage (even to the limited extent that they did)?” We cannot seek an answer to
all historical questions at once. If the Pharaohs built a precedent (as she also suggests), then they could
be used and projected as a model by the Ptolemies irrespective of the initial Pharaonic reasons for
SIBLING MARRIAGE
343
First of all, it would be useful to achieve clarity on Pharaonic precedents,
especially as their inclusion of full sibling cases has been questioned (see above). Two
examples of the latter sort seem beyond doubt. The oldest I could spot is Pharaoh
Mentuhotep II of the eleventh Dynasty who, around 2000 BC, married his full sister
Nefuru III.20 Two hundred years later, Amenemhet IV (twelth dynasty) married his
sister Nefrousobek who succeeded him on the throne.21 Two hundred years later (ca
1600 BC), Seqenenre Tao II (seventeenth dynasty) has his full sister Ahhotep I as
consort.22 In the following years Pharaoh Ahmose and his sister-queen Ahmose
Nofretere should be the children of the previously mentioned sibling Pharaonic
marriage.23 Also Amenophis I (Amenhotep) seems to have married Ahhotep II his
own full sister.24 Amenophis II first married his sister Meretamun.25 The famous
Hatchepsout was married to her half-brother Thutmosis II (Grimal 1988:250). In
about 1000 BC Pharaoh Psusennes I married his sister Mutnodjmet.26 Not all these
cases were marriages between full sibling but together they constitute a set of
Pharaonic precedents. Moreover, queen Amessis who appears in Manetho27 to have
succeeded her brother has been correctly identified with Hatchepsout, sibling
marriages in Pharaonic times must have been signalised in a work written down under
and probably for Ptolemy II himself.28 Thus the cases of full sibling marriages of the
Pharaonic dynasties were remembered in Ptolemaic times. Despite their rarity against
initiating that practice, which did not need to be identical with the Ptolemaic ones. On the whole, I
regard her attempt at an interpretation of Ptolemaic incest as thought-provoking but unconvincing.
20
W.C.Hayes, in: CAH3, I.2, 478, 481.
21
J. v. Beckerath, LdÄ, I. 192, s.v. Amenemhet IV.
22
W. Seipel, LdÄ, I. 98, s.v. Ahhotep I.
23
M. Gitton, LdÄ, I. 102, s.v. Ahmose Nofretere (A).
24
W. Seipel, LdÄ, I. 99, s.v. Ahhotep II.
25
J. v. Beckerath, LdÄ, IV. 89, s.v. Meretamun (3).
26
A. Kitchen, LdÄ, IV. 1176, s.v. Psusennes I.
27
Frg. 50 Waddell (Loeb), with the editor’s comment.
28
Manetho, frg. 3 Waddell (Loeb), p.14.
344
KOSTAS BURASELIS
the usual Pharaonic marriage practice, they certainly built up an indigenous royal
precedent.29
Far more significant is the divine-royal precedent. Brother-sister marriage
inside the pantheon of the country certainly constituted a basic trait of Egyptian
religious beliefs. Isis and Osiris, Nephthys and Seth were sibling pairs and symbols of
the perfect love and union inside the divine family in its founding stage.30 As Gay
Robins has aptly remarked, this sort of marriage naturally matched a creation myth,
where the first gods must resort to such expedients, and at the same time inspired a
similar act by the Pharaonic king who thus “removed himself from his subjects and
approached the divine circle”.31 By removing himself ideally from his subjects, the
king only held them more tightly in the bonds of faith and loyalty to the state and to
the divinely ruled universe.
One should also recall that Isis and Osiris were not only gods but also
members of the first recognized Pharaonic Dynasty of Egyptian tradition, as it
officially appeared in Manetho’s work. In Manetho’s Aegyptiaca we find precisely as
the fifth reign of this Dynasty, following that of Cronus: Ὄσιρις καὶ Ἴσις, ἔτη λε (35
years).32 The divine sibling couple and its joint government in exemplary love to each
other had a formal, dated place in the sequence of Pharaonic reigns as systematized by
Manetho. The exemplum divinum was also conceived in Philadelphos’ time as an
archetypal concrete exemplum regium, no doubt sanctioning later such Pharaonic
cases but also surpassing by far their value as a basic model for the Ptolemies.
29
Dynastic marriage between half siblings appeared also in the Achaemenids of Persia and the
Hecatomnids of Caria but full sibling marriage is certainly attested only among the former, where it
seems to have taken the place of a spectacular exception: the case of Cambyses having married two full
sisters according to Hdt. 3.31. Cf. Briant 1996:105 and Ogden 1999:125-7 with further discussion.
30
Cf. S. Allam, LdÄ, II, s.v. Geschwisterehe (569).
31
Robins 1993:70. Ziegler 2002:254: “These unions reenacted the creation of the world...”
32
Frg. 3 Waddell (Loeb), from Syncellus.
SIBLING MARRIAGE
345
It is well-known how systematic the connection or the identification of the cult
of Isis and Arsinoe II was (Hölbl 1994:95; Huß 2001:309). Two examples might
suffice in this context. In the famous Vatican statue of Egyptian provenance
(Heliopolis?) the deified Arsinoe II is expressly called “daughter of Geb” and “image
of Isis” (Quaegebeur 1988:49; 1998:86 no. 5). Perhaps more pertinent in respect to
her combination with brother-loving goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon is her
representation on the reliefs of the Philadelphos Portal at Philae where the king is
sacrificing once before Isis and Arsinoe and once before Nephthys and Arsinoe (Hölbl
1994:95; Quaegebeur 1998:93 no. 37).
It is probably not a coincidence that the royal sibling marriages noted above
are contemporaneous to the use of the terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ for the mutual
address of beloved or married persons even without a sibling connection (Cerny
1954:25; Robins 1979:203). The metaphorical use of the words in most of these cases
seems established but, psychologically, this practice meant that the quality of
endearment natural in marriage or similar relations could be ideally expressed in
terms of love between brother and sister. We have no similar phenomenon in ancient
Greek and other societies. Therefore we may here grasp a part of genuine ancient
Egyptian mentality, probably inspired by the divine models of sibling love that were
not followed (and did not need to be followed) by common people but at the same
time did not fail to shape powerful, venerated ideals. To realize an ideal would not be
primarily the cause of mortals but of immortals in the heaven or on the throne.
The importance of the introduction of the Ptolemaic dynastic cult of living
kings has not been sufficiently recognized. Ptolemy II had taken care of founding a
cult of his dead parents, the Theoi Soteres, after the beginning of his sole rule.
Nevertheless, that act was something very different from the next step he did by
346
KOSTAS BURASELIS
creating the cult of his sister and consort Arsinoe, already bearing the title
Philadelphos, and himself as Theoi Adelphoi.33 Unfortunately, there is still no general
agreement on the date of this religious innovation. I am inclined to accept Koenen’s
date of Philadelphos’ fourteenth year in P.Hib. 2. 199, where we first find the joint
cult of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi, in 272/1 BC, counting back Philadelphos’
regnal years not from his sole rule (282) but from his coregency with his father three
years earlier (285). This means that both sibling consorts were alive and reigning
when they first appeared as gods on the side of Alexander in the Greek edition of the
official Ptolemaic dynastic cult. We move here in the extremely disputed terrain of
early Ptolemaic chronology where Grzybek’s detailed observations have brought
some new light but also further dissent. Widely disputed is his dating of Arsinoe II’s
death to 268 instead of the traditional 270.34 However, even if we assume that Arsinoe
II was deified and the cult of her and her brother was instituted and added to that of
Alexander after the queen’s death, it is indisputable that this would mean again the
religious elevation of at least the still reigning Ptolemy II to the status of living god.35
The acceptance as incarnation or identification of the rulers as traditional Egyptian
gods (as in the case of Arsinoe and Isis) must have been highly instrumental.
This was no minor change on the level of official dynastic cult in the
Ptolemaic kingdom. Simultaneously, it was a decisive progress towards the firm
ideological establishment of Ptolemaic kingship both in the eyes of Greeks and
Egyptians. Especially concerning the latter, Arsinoe II was the first Ptolemaic queen
with a really extensive native cult and figural representations on many art
33
On the cult of the Soteres and the Theoi Adelphoi see esp. Koenen 1993:51f.; Huß 2001:325.
See Hölbl 1994:38,288 n. 29; D.J. Thompson, OCD3 (1996), s.v. Arsinoe II, 177; Huß 2001:310 n.
41; Ager 2003:40.
35
Cf. already the remarks in the same spirit by Quaegebeur 1988:47f; Huß 2001:325.
34
SIBLING MARRIAGE
347
monuments,36 appearing already during her life and really thriving after her death as
we shall see. In the framework of the native dynastic cult of the Ptolemies, the first
link of the chain of deified rulers was the cult of the Theoi Adelphoi (Koenen
1993:54). It was obviously at this stage that the Ptolemaic dynastic cult achieved its
appropriate and regular enshrinement in the indigenous world of Egypt. On a base
once bearing the statues of Amun, Arsinoe and Ptolemy II at Alexandria (Museum of
the Serapeum), the god addresses the deified queen with the prophetic phrase: “I will
make you a goddess at the head of the gods on earth...” (Quaegebeur 1988:43).
We should not forget here the context of political history. The Ptolemaic
kingdom had survived without serious loss the First Syrian War (274-271) with its
eternal rivals, the Seleucids, over the possession of Koile Syria. However, a serious
problem for Ptolemy II remained in the continuing direct neighbourhood of Magas’
separatist royal rule over the Cyrenaica. The defence of Egypt against Magas ca 274
had exposed Philadelphos’ rule to serious danger averted in the last moment, not far
from Alexandria itself, because of internal problems of the ruler of Cyrene with his
own African subjects.37 Thus the Ptolemaic power lavishly celebrated and exhibited in
the famous Alexandrian procession (pompe), which also belongs to the seventies
(probably 279/8 or 275/4),38 forged solid bonds and links inside Egypt to view the
future with confidence. With Magas on his western flank, an internal front would have
been fatal for Philadelphos.
This was a critical age of internal crystallization and consolidation for the
Hellenistic kingdoms. The Ptolemies’ great rivals, the Antigonids of Macedonia, went
through a difficult re-adjustment to the natural capacities and traditions of their
36
See Quaegebeur 1978:260f.; 1998 listing the relevant evidence; Hölbl 1994:94-8. On the importance
of the Pharaonic queen-title and headdress of Arsinoe II: Hauben 1983:108-110.
37
Paus. I.7.2; Polyaen. II.28; Huß 2001:268.
38
Cf. Fraser 1972: I.231; Huß 2001:321-3.
348
KOSTAS BURASELIS
dominion under Gonatas, the success of which has then assured his dynasty’s stable
position up to the confrontation with Rome. Bengtson once entitled the period from
the aftermath of Curupedium to Rome’s military intervention in the East as that of a
“balance between the (great) powers” (Gleichgewicht der Kräfte) in the Hellenistic
world.39 If present at all, this balance presupposed the effort of each separate kingdom
to attain a sufficient balance among the major players of its interior game.
The sibling marriage of Ptolemy II and the cult of Arsinoe II did prove their
expert reasoning in regard to the feelings of the Egyptians especially through the
widespread acceptance and abiding popularity of the cult of the dead queen. Of
course, her loving brother promoted the veneration of his sister inside traditional
Egyptian religion through establishing her as synnaos thea of all Egyptian gods
(Mendes stele) (Quaegebeur 1978:249; 1998:87; Hölbl 1994:94). His decision to
devote a certain part of the tax on orchards and vineyards (the apomoira) to the
sustentation of that cult assisted its duration (Koenen 1993:66-9; Hölbl 1994:97,304
n. 164). However, all this would not have been effective with the real popularity of
the queen in Egyptian eyes. That the Egyptian cult of Arsinoe Philadelphos is attested
in more than twenty five different places is indicative enough (Huß 1994:98). Also
indicative is the further success, almost regularity of such sibling connections in the
sequel of Ptolemaic history, notably reflected in Egyptian cult. Thus in the case of the
Theoi Philopatores, the couple of Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III, it is perhaps
characteristic that the addition of their names to the Egyptian edition of the dynastic
cult predates now that in the Greek one (Koenen 1993:54). On the other hand, Arsinoe
II’s veneration in Egyptian cult survives even in Cleopatra VII’s age, that is after the
39
Bengtson 1969:399. The precariousness of that situation has been now aptly assessed in the title of
Ager 2003 as “uneasy balance”.
SIBLING MARRIAGE
349
latest extant testimonies of the Greek dynastic cult (Quaegebeur 1998:83). The
divinity of the brother-loving queen was promoted in successful ways in Greek cult
(Hauben 1983:111-4; Huß 2001:326) but it seems to have exerted an especially
abiding appeal to Egyptian religious beliefs.
The obvious popularity of Arsinoe II and the sibling marriage practice of the
dynasty explains the boom of sibling marriages in Roman Egypt. Of course, the zeal
of the civic elite of Roman Egypt to remain and look as Greek as possible in front of
the fiscal arrangements of the Romans was a serious motive for the intensity of the
phenomenon.40 On the other hand, sibling marriage was gradually connected with the
specific Ptolemaic tradition among common Egyptian people before the Romans.41
To conclude, personal feeling and raison d’état seem to have been dexterously
combined in the case of the Ptolemaic sibling marriage. Philadelphos adapted to the
highest ideological level of the local traditions of the land he and his descendants
were to govern. He managed to increase his family’s popularity by following and
elevating to regular dynastic practice a distinguished trait of Egyptian religion though
much less of Pharaonic tradition. He chose to identify himself with and project the
aspect of local culture that suited both his personality and the internal balance of his
kingdom. After all, not just the body of Alexander but an important part of his
political wisdom towards non-Greeks may have constituted vital capitals of Ptolemaic
Alexandria.
40
This motive has been properly stressed by Modrzejewski 1989:275; 19932.
The idea of a possible continuity in the practice of private sibling marriage between the Ptolemaic
and the Roman period of Egypt had already been the basic idea of Thierfelder 1960, and then found
some support in two cases of the former period: Modrzejewski 1999:272; Shaw 1992:287. On an
eventual influence of the royal example on the Ptolemaic subjects: Vérilhac and Vial 1998:99.
41
THROUGH A WOMAN’S EYES, AND IN A WOMAN’S VOICE: IHWERET AS
FOCALIZOR IN THE “FIRST TALE OF SETNE KHAEMWAS”*
Steve Vinson
One of the principal problems of the Ptolemaic Egyptian “First Tale of Setne
Khaemwas”1 is to explain its employment of what is, in the context of Egyptian belles
lettres, an extremely unusual device: a major subplot presented through a long firstperson narration by a female character, Ihweret. For a significant portion of the tale,
Ihweret narrates the story of her brother and husband, the magician and prince
Naneferkaptah, who undertakes a disastrous search for a magic book written by the
god Thoth himself. In narratological terms, this tale is ‘focalized’ through Ihweret.
Focalization–which is a property of any narrative,2 however presented, and
whether fictional or not–can be external, through a narrator who is not a character in
*
J. Johnson (ed.), The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
abbreviated as CDD.
1
For photographs of the text, see W. Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Denkmäler 2, plates 44-47. Initial
decipherment: Brugsch, Roman de Setnau (1867). The fundamental philological study remains that of
Griffith, Stories, 13ff. and 82ff. Accessible modern English translations include Ritner, trans., “Setna I”
and Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:127-138. For other Setne stories, see n. 97 below.
2
The very definition of narrative is problematic, and there is no real consensus either within literary
theory broadly speaking, or among Egyptological scholars of literature, on what the specific
characteristics of ‘narrative’ are; nor–particularly problematic for Egyptology–on which genres or
categories of texts should be considered completely or partly ‘narrative.’ Largely following Bal
(Narratology, 5 and 19) and especially Chatman (Coming to Terms, 8ff.), I adopt a very expansive
view of narrative: that it is the semiotic representation of action and/or a process, which action/process
is either instigated or undergone by persons or other personified entities, and which is posited to exist
outside of, and prior to, the narrative. And, just as the process unfolds in time, so too a ‘narrative’–or
the narrative elements of an otherwise-non-narrative composition–has its own internal narrative time.
The process and any sub-processes may be termed the narrative’s ‘fabula,’a term coined by the Russian
formalist Viktor Shklovskii. Its correlative term is ‘sjuzhet,’ the way in which the fabula is realized in a
concrete instance of narration (on the terms, see Shklovskii, Theory of Prose). Although the terms have
only recently found their way into Egyptological literary scholarship (e.g., Dieleman, Priests, Tongues,
and Rites, 230), a generally similar distinction underlies the discussion of myth in Assmann,
“Zeugung;” idem, “Verborgenheit;” Baines, “Myth and Discourse;” idem, “Myth and Literature;” and
Frankfurt, “Narrating Power,” esp. 474. The term ‘semiotic’ is used advisedly. At least three categories
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
351
the story.3 Or it can be internal–that is, through the mind of one of the story’s
characters. In either case, the question is: “who sees”? Internal focalization can be
signaled in a variety of ways, but in fiction or in drama, direct first-person
retrospective speech (or ego narrative) is perhaps the most obvious way for an author
to make it clear that we are seeing events unfold from the perspective of a specific
character in the story, with everything that may entail. That said, the correlative
question–“who speaks?”–must also be kept in mind in addressing issues of
focalization; as we see more than once in Ihweret’s narration, the most immediate
focalizor and the narrator are not necessarily the same entity.4
In searching for an explanation for the First Setne author’s choice of such an
unusual mode of presentation, two categories of questions arise. The first comprises
historic questions: viewed diachronically, does this particular technique have any
direct or indirect antecedents that we can point to in the long tradition of Egyptian
literature? And, viewed synchronically, is there anything about the culture of
Ptolemaic Egypt specifically that might have encouraged our author to frame the tale
in this way? The second category comprises hermeneutic questions: what literary
purpose is served in presenting the tale in this way? What meanings are suggested by
focalizing the tale through Ihweret? What is gained that might otherwise not be
of signs can convey information about a fabula: language, physical action, and images. On the narrative
nature of ‘dramatic’ compositions (plays as well as films), see Markantonatos, Tragic Narrative;
Chatman, Coming to Terms.
3
On φοχαλιζατιον, see Bal, Narratology, 100ff. An external focalizor may be only implied, as in the
case of third-person-omniscient narration. However, the identity of a narrator/external focalizor may be
made explicit in the case of a character in a frame-story who narrates an embedded story in which she
or he is not a character, paradigmatically in the case of Sheherazade in the One Thousand and One
Nights. In Egyptian belles lettres, an example would be Bauefre, who narrates the tale of Snefru and
Djadjaemankh in Papyrus Westcar (text in Blackman, King Kheops; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL,
1:215-222 [216-217 for Snefru and Djadjaemankh]; Simpson 2003, 13-24 [16-18 for Snefru and
Djadjaemankh]). An external focalizor will probably be at the top level of a multi-level focalization.
4
Ball, Narratology, 101.
352
STEVE VINSON
present in the story if it had been presented in the third person, or in the voice of
Naneferkaptah himself?
In this chapter, I will argue that the key to understanding Ihweret’s role in the
tale is to recall that the only female character who is consistently encountered in
major speaking roles–including many instances of first-person narration–in a wide
variety of Egyptian compositions and genres is the goddess Isis. The tale of
Naneferkaptah acquires meaning in large measure through its resonance with the myth
of Isis and Osiris. However, the tale is not a straightforward allegorical restatement of
the classic Osiris myth, in the manner of the Ramesside ‘Blinding of Truth by
Falsehood’. Instead, the story of Naneferkaptah, both in its own internal structure and
in the way in which it functions in the larger context of First Setne, goes beyond the
classical myth, responding to new cultural developments characteristic of Hellenistic
Egypt, and most especially building on the special place that Isis had in GraecoRoman Egyptian religion.
To be sure, Ihweret’s tale is in some respects situated squarely within the
mainstream of Egyptian fictional narrative as it crystalized in the pharaonic period.
First-person narration is among the commonest of Egyptian story-telling techniques.5
Well-known examples of tales told primarily in the first person include the
Shipwrecked Sailor6 and the Story of Sinuhe,7 both from the Egyptian Middle
Kingdom; or the “Report of Wenamun” from the terminal New Kingdom/early Third
5
See in general Suhr, “Zum fiktiven Erzähler.”
Text in Blackman, Middle Egyptian Stories, 41-48; English translations in Lichtheim, ed. and trans.,
AEL, 1: 211-215; Simpson 2003
7
Text in Koch, Sinuhe; English translations in Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 1: 222-235; Simpson
2003.
6
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
353
Intermediate Period.8 Ihweret’s narration in First Setne, however, is different these
and from most other examples of first-person narration in Egyptian tales in at least
four significant ways. First, in the great majority of instances of first-person narration
in fictional tales, the narrator is male. Secondly, nearly all other Egyptian first-person
narrative is put in the mouth of the central character in the narrative. A first-person
narrator like Sinuhe or Wenamun recounts his own story, not someone else’s. Thirdly,
most Egyptian first-person narration is almost pure ‘ego narrative’ in the sense that
the narrator typically recounts only what he, himself, directly experienced. That is to
say, the answers to the questions ‘Who acts?’ ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’ are all
identical. And finally, Egyptian fictional narratives of all kinds typically have happy
endings: the hero survives his ordeal and re-establishes his place in Egyptian life; the
villain (if there is one) is decisively punished.9
But in Ihweret’s narration in First Setne, not only do we have a rare example
of a story told by a woman; here we have a story told by a person who, though she
had participated in many of the events that she narrates, speaks primarily as a
witness.10 Further, Ihweret’s narration departs from true ‘ego narrative’ in that she
also recounts a number of events that she could not have witnessed, either because
they occurred in the world of the gods, or because they occurred in this world after her
own death. Yet, in these cases, Ihweret does not narrate her own experience of having
learned of the events. Rather, Ihweret herself becomes in effect a third-person,
omniscient narrator, and the characters whose actions she narrates, in one case the god
Thoth, in another her brother Naneferkaptah, now both act and focalize the action.
8
Text in Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 61-76; English translations in Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL,
2: 224-230; Wente, trans., “The Report of Wenanum.” For the date: Baines, “Wenamun as a Literary
Text,” 329.
9
See my “The Accent’s on Evil,” forthcoming.
10
Similarly Quack, demotische und gräko-ägyptische Literarur, 18.
354
STEVE VINSON
That is to say, in Ihweret’s tale, we have a number of instances of multi-level
focalization which, in comparison with most preserved Egyptian narrative fiction, are
unusually complex.11 Finally, Ihweret’s tale is quite literally tragic, in that it recounts
the story of an essentially good man who is destroyed for defying the gods and
transgressing mAa.t (ma‘at), the moral order of the universe. In other Egyptian tales
that end with the punishment or destruction of a character, that character is quite
clearly marked as a villain, with no redeeming characteristics.12
The method we will pursue in this contribution is to: (1) Survey the types of
non-divine female characters that appear in earlier Egyptian fictional narrative. (2)
Discuss the range of genres and texts in which Isis appears as a speaker, and
especially as a narrator. (3) Explore the ways in which Ihweret is an obviously–or, as
the case may be, unobviously–Isis-like character. (4) Conclude with a discussion of
the ways in which Ihweret’s resonances with Isis help us to understand her as a
character, and more broadly First Setne itself, both as a work of literature and in its
cultural/historical context. But to set the stage for this investigation, I first present a
short description and summary of the story.
First Setne
11
On levels of focalization, see Ball, Narratology, 110ff. Following Bal, the way in which, e.g., the
focalization of Naneferkaptah’s internal monologue on whether or not to return to Memphis following
the deaths of Ihweret and Merib (First Setne 4.17-19; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:132; Ritner,
trans., “Setna I” 461) could be diagramed as follows: EF - [np CF1 (‘I-present’)] - [np CF2 (‘I-past’)] [np CF3 (Naneferkaptah)] - [ np (alternatives)], where an implied external focalizor (EF; the thirdperson narrator of the frame story) focalizes the narration of the first character focalizor (CF1) Ihweret
in the story’s present; who focalizes the prior experiences of her earlier self (CF2); who focalizes
Naneferkaptah (CF3); who focalizes the alternatives before him. At none of these levels is there an
instance of a focalizor physically perceiving what is being focalized, so in each case the focalized
object is non-perceptible (np). This case is actually somewhat ambiguous because it is not made clear
precisely when and how Ihweret will have learned of Naneferkaptah’s interior monologue, which took
place after her own death. It is thus unclear precisely where to draw the line between the ‘present’ and
‘past’ Ihwerets. It might be preferable to think of the levels of the past Ihweret and the monologue of
Naneferkaptah as parallel, not sequential, both focalized by the current Ihweret.
12
On this, see my “The Accent’s on Evil.”
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
355
First Setne is the best-preserved of a number of Graeco-Roman Egyptian tales that
deal with a character named Setne Khaemwas. This character, who is presented as a
not-overly-competent magician, is the fictional counterpart of a real Khaemwas, a son
of Ramses II.13 The historic Khaemwas was, among other things, the high priest of the
god Ptah in Memphis, and in that capacity bore the religious title sm, the basic
meaning of which is unfortunately not clear. From the Nineteenth Dynasty forward,
this religious title is occasionally spelled with an intrusive consonant t, so that in
hieroglyphic/hieratic, the spelling stm appears.14 The spelling stm is also common in
Demotic, alongside a further development, stn.15 The scribe of First Setne used a form
(Stne) based on this last spelling, but a number of other Setne stories, including the
Second Tale of Setne Khaemwas, use spellings based on stm. By the time Khaemwas’
legendary persona had crystalized, it seems that the title had come to be regarded as a
component of his personal name, and in fact ‘Setne’ (or variants) is used far more
often for Khaemwas’ literary alter-ego than the full form ‘Setne Khaemwas.’ For this
reason, it is not certain that all characters called ‘Setne’ in the Demotic tales in this
group–some of which are quite fragmentary–are necessarily to be identified with
‘Setne Khaemwas.’16
13
See in general Gomaà, Chaemwese; Fisher, Sons of Ramses II, 1:89-105; 2:89-143.
Wb. 4, 119, 3-9
15
Erichsen, DG, 479
16
Aside from First Setne, only the Roman-era “Second Tale of Setne Khaemwas,” is essentially
complete; see Griffith, Stories, 41ff. (translation), 142ff. (transliteration and philological notes);
Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3: 138-151; Ritner, trans., “Setna II;” idem, “Childhood of Si-Osire.”
Two fragmentary stories appear to be closely related to First Setne, with both mentioning the character
Naneferkaptah. The first of these is preserved in one column of a Ptolemaic-era manuscript; see CGC
30692 in Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Denkmäler, 2: 112-115 and plate 51; further discussion and
important corrections by Zauzich, “schlimme Geschichte.” A second tale, which comprises a number of
fragments, will be published by Kim Ryholt; see Ryholt, “Tebtunis Temple Library,” 155 (my thanks
to Dr. Ryholt for this information and reference). For a Roman-era Setne story that does not preserve
any mention of the name Khaemwas, see Tait, “Two columns of a Setna-text;” additional discussion
and improved readings in Quack and Ryholt, Miscellany of Demotic Texts, 141-163. Additionally, in
the Roman P Petese Tebtunis A + B, 8.2, there is a mention of a stm who does not appear to have a
central role in the story; see Ryholt, Petese, 20 (transliteration) and 58 (translation). Two other more
distantly-related tale mention a stm-priest named Ptahhotep; see the fragmentary CGC 30758
14
356
STEVE VINSON
The one existing manuscript, housed in the Cairo Museum under the number
CGC 30646, is dated to year 15, the first month of pr.t (emergence) season–that is, the
month of Tybi–of an unnamed king. In view of the colophon’s silence on the reign in
which the manuscript was produced, the papyrus’ precise historical position remains
uncertain. Francis Llewelyn Griffith’s impression was that the text is late Ptolemaic or
early Roman.17 Wilhelm Spiegelberg, however, thought that the character of the
writing “stark an die aus der Zeit des Ptol. Euergetes I. (i.e., Ptolemy III) datierten
Texte von Elephantine (erinnert),”18 and a date early in the Ptolemaic period continues
to be the modern opinio communis.19 If the manuscript belongs to Ptolemy II, the
colophon would point to a completion date of late February/late March, 268 BCE; if
to Ptolemy III, then mid-February/mid-March, 232 BCE.
First Setne concerns a magic book written by Egypt’s god of magic and
writing Thoth. The story is actually presented as two parallel subplots, structured as a
third-person framing story and a first-person embedded tale, linked by a unifying
ending. Although the use of a framing story is common in Egyptian narrative fiction,
First Setne is unusual–if not unique–in having a framing story and an embedded story
that are both fully-worked-out, extended tales, each with its own structure and with its
own (albeit partly-overlapping) cast of characters. The two tales are also thematically
(Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Denkmäler, 2:145-148 and plate 58); and P Dem. Saq. 1, 7.x+3; 14.2021 (Smith and Tait, Saqqâra Demotic Papyri I, 1-69, pls. 1-3). The story of a pharaoh and priest of
Hephaistos (Ptah) named ‘Sethon’ (?) in Herodotus 2.141 has been considered by some to be linked to
the broader Setne tradition–that is, with stories about priests who bore the title, if not necessarily about
the specific character Setne Khaemwas; see Griffith, Stories, 1-12; Rutherford, “Kalasiris and Setne
Khaemwas,” 205; Ritner, trans., “Setna I,”454. The equation of this ‘Sethon’ with the character name
or title ‘Setne’ depends in part on the identity of this ‘Sethon’ as priest of Hephaistos/Ptah, but largely
on the final -n of the name as given in Herodotus. However–as Griffith concedes–Herodotus’ text gives
the name only in the accusative case, so it cannot be ruled out that the nominative form will have been
‘Sethos,’ a name that would instead suggest some connection to, or conflation with, one of the
Egyptian pharaohs named Sety. Further doubts expressed by Lloyd, Herodotus Book II: Commentary
98-182, 100 ad loc.
17
Griffith, Stories, 14.
18
Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Denkmäler, 2: 88.
19
Most recently Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 454.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
357
very closely linked, parallel in structure, and, in important respects, precise inversions
of one another in their respective tones. That is, First Setne provides a relatively rare
instance of an Egyptian tale with an embedded narrative and a primary narrative that
are ‘mirror-texts’ of one another.20
Although the first two columns of the story are missing, the tale undoubtedly
begins with the third-person framing story. Setne, ostensibly the ‘hero’ of the story,
will have learned, likely from an aged priest, that a magic book written by Thoth
himself was to be found in the tomb of a certain Naneferkaptah, a long-dead magician
and prince. He will have broken into the tomb, which was located in the royal
necropolis near the capital of Memphis. There he will have confronted the mummy of
Naneferkaptah, along with the ghost (Ax) of Naneferkaptah’s wife and sister Ihweret,
and that of the couple’s child, Merib. Ihweret and Merib were not physically present
in the tomb–they were actually buried in the distant town of Koptos, near ancient
Thebes. Their ghosts were in the tomb only through the craft of a good scribe, magic
performed by Naneferkaptah. Ihweret will have attempted to dissuade Setne from his
purpose, and to this end will have begun to tell Setne the story of how she and her
husband came to be in possession of the book.
The preserved text of the tale begins at this point, with Setne in the tomb and
the embedded story underway, narrated in the first person by Ihweret’s ghost. Ihweret
has apparently described how she and Naneferkaptah had fallen in love, and now goes
on to explain how she had persuaded their father the Pharaoh to allow them to marry.
She next recounts how Naneferkaptah had been accosted by an aged priest who had
20
For the term, see Bal, Narratology, 144-146, esp. 146. In The Shipwrecked Sailor, the tales of the
Sailor and of the Snake might also be regarded as ‘mirror’ texts, in that both treat themes of loss and
perseverance, and both include sudden natural disasters that leave their respective heros bereft. On the
other hand, the simplicity and brevity of the embedded tale told by the Snake in Shipwrecked Sailor
distinguishes it significantly from Ihweret’s complex tale in First Setne.
358
STEVE VINSON
informed him of the existence of the book, and offered to tell him where it was to be
found. Ihweret then narrates Naneferkaptah’s own theft of the magic book, and its
disastrous sequel. Following Naneferkaptah’s seizure of the book, the sun-god Prea
had decreed death for Ihweret and Merib, which drove Naneferkaptah to kill himself.
Worse yet, the family then found itself separated in eternity, a fate that reflected an
already-implicit estrangement between Naneferkaptah and Ihweret, who had strongly
opposed the project from the first.
As the third-person frame story recommences, Ihweret expresses the hope that
her tale will convince Setne to leave the book and the tomb in peace. But Setne will
have none of it. Using his own magic power, Setne escapes from the tomb with the
book. But Setne then undergoes a terrifying encounter with a mysterious woman
named Tabubue, in which he appears to agree to the murder of his own children in
exchange for sex. Fortunately, we learn that this is an illusion, apparently arranged by
Naneferkaptah. Setne now resolves to return the book, and all turns out for the best.
Setne reconciles with Naneferkaptah, then fetches the mummies of Ihweret and Merib
from Koptos for reburial along with Naneferkaptah–locating the long-lost tomb with
the help of Naneferkaptah, who appears in the guise of an aged priest to guide Setne
to the correct place. The estrangement between husband and wife is thus resolved, and
the reader is left with the distinct impression that Naneferkaptah had arranged
everything as an elaborate scheme to reunite himself with his family–indeed, that it
was probably he who tempted Setne to steal the book in the first place.
Women in pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian Fictional Narrative
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
359
As a general rule, pharaonic Egyptian fiction tended to relegate non-divine female
characters to secondary roles.21 (I use the term ‘non-divine’ here somewhat loosely, to
refer to females who are not among the great gods with their own cults; some of the
characters I discuss here are in fact part of the divine/mythical/fairy-tale world.)
Extended speeches by female characters are rare, and those who do get to speak at
length are often presented in a rather dim light. No female character actually appears
in the Shipwrecked Sailor.22 The women of the household of Sesostris I make a brief
speaking appearance at the end of the Middle Kingdom Story of Sinuhe, as they
welcome the aged Sinuhe back to the royal court after his years of exile in Palestine.
In this instance, the women are part of Sinuhe’s reintegration into Egypt and
Egyptianness, and certainly are not portrayed negatively. But in the late Middle
Kingdom Papyrus Westcar tales, no non-divine female is presented as anything other
than foolish at best, positively evil at worst. The first with even a minimal speaking
role is the adulterous wife of the lector priest Weba’iner, who is burned alive for
betraying her husband.23 The first to speak at length is a harem girl who has dropped a
piece of jewelry into the river, and importunes the pharaoh Snefru to get it back for
her. Here the impression is of a flighty young girl who mouths off to someone she
should not mouth off to, and who is protected only by the king’s weakness for
scantily-clad young ladies.24 Later in the tale, a less-fortunate servant girl is beaten
and then devoured by a crocodile after she announces her intention to tell the pharaoh
21
See in general Baines, “Wenamun as a Literary Text,” 226-227.
Females are mentioned in the tale in the context of a brief narration of an incident in which a ‘falling
star’ had wiped out the entire family of the divine snake who holds sway on the magical island,
including his beloved young daughter; and in a brief mention of the wife of the Shipwrecked Sailor, in
the context of a prediction that the Sailor will return home to kiss her and embrace his children.
23
P Westcar 4.9-10; Simpson 2003, 16 (this portion of the tale is not translated in Lichtheim, ed. and
trans., AEL, 1).
24
P Westcar 12.25-26; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 1: 216-217; Simpson 2003, 16-17.
22
360
STEVE VINSON
Khufu that the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty–that is, the one that will supplant
Khufu’s own family line–have been born.25
In the New Kingdom’s Late Egyptian tales, non-divine females with speaking
roles are negative characters more often than not. The best example is the unnamed
wife of Anubis, the elder brother in the Tale of Two Brothers.26 Here a female
character actually does narrate a short first-person tale. But the tale is a lie–a false
accusation of rape against Anubis’ younger brother Bata. The accusation drives the
two brothers apart and, when the truth is discovered, results in the woman’s own
death at Anubis’ hand when the truth is discovered. Later in the tale, the gods fashion
a wife for Bata, who has gone into self-imposed exile in Syria-Palestine. But this
unnamed woman (perhaps a reincarnation of the wife of Anubis27) is lured to Egypt by
Pharaoh, and repeatedly betrays Bata. First she asks the Pharaoh to cut down an
evergreen tree, on top of which Bata had mystically deposited his heart. Later, Bata
appears to her in Egypt in bull-form, and she persuades the Pharaoh to kill the bull
and permit her to eat its liver. And when Bata is reincarnated as a pair of persea trees,
she asks Pharaoh to have the trees cut down. At this juncture, Bata gets the last laugh:
his wife inadvertently swallows a fragment of one of the persea trees as it is being
chopped down, and it is through this that his soul enters her in order to be reborn yet
again.28
A similar example of a Late Egyptian femme fatale is the unnamed woman
who takes the character Truth (Ma‘at) into her home in The Blinding of Truth by
25
P Westcar 5.15ff.; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 1: 222; Simpson 2003, 24.
Text in Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 9-30; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 203-211; Wente,
trans., “The Tale of Two Brothers.”
27
Baines, “Wenamun as a Literary Text,” 226.
28
For the motif of metempsychosis effected through the mother-to-be’s consumption of a plant that
contains a soul awaiting reincarnation, see also “Second Setne,” 1.3 (Griffith, Stories, 144-145;
Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:138; Ritner, trans., “Setna II,” 472). However, rather than Griffith’s
qmqmy (?), ‘gourd (?)’ (followed by Lichtheim and Ritner), read nwn, ‘root;’ see CDD, N-volume, 44.
26
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
361
Falsehood.29 Like the evil wife of Anubis, this woman too conceives a powerful
sexual desire for a helpless male character who in this case seems to be willing and
able to oblige her. She has Truth’s child, but nevertheless keeps Truth as her servant
rather than making him her husband–leading Truth’s son to reject her and express a
wish for her death when he learns who his father is and how he has been treated.
A contrary example of a faithful spouse is to be found in the Tale of the
Doomed Prince, in which the young Egyptian prince’s wife, a princess from Naharin,
clearly loves him and makes every effort to protect him from his fated death.30
Unfortunately, the end of the tale is lost but the general tone of the story suggests
that–like the great majority of Egyptian stories–it probably has a happy ending. And
the female characters in Wenamun are generally sympathetic, but again, not especially
prominent.31 The only one of the three who speaks is Hatiba, the ruler of Alashiya
(Cyprus).32 In no case are these female characters either the dramatic centers or the
narratological focalizors of their respective tales.
Isis as a Literary Character
The examples in the preceding section, from some of the best-known Middle and New
Kingdom tales, should serve to show how unusual Ihweret is in the broader history of
Egyptian fiction–both in her positive characterization and in her complex role as a
teller of both first- and third-person stories. Among non-divine fictional characters,
there is really no pharaonic precedent for a female speaking, let along telling a story,
at any great length. The only real antecedents in any Egyptian narrative literature to
29
Text in Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 30-36. Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 211-214; Wente,
trans., “The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood.”
30
Text in Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 1-9. Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 200-203. Wente,
trans., “The Tale of the Doomed Prince.”
31
Baines, “Wenamun as a Literary Text,” 226-227.
32
Wenamun, 2.83; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 229; Wente, trans., “The Report of Wenamun,”
123-124.
362
STEVE VINSON
the role that Ihweret takes on in First Setne are the roles that the goddess Isis takes on
as a prominent literary character and as a story-teller in her own right. With the
possible exceptions of her husband/brother Osiris and her son Horus, no divinity from
ancient Egypt has a more developed narrative cycle than Isis. And none, not excepting
Osiris and Horus, is more directly involved in actual narration or in other instances of
extended direct speech.
Three things are especially noteworthy about this. In the first place, although
Isis’ role as literary character has a long history, she becomes ever more prominent in
the literature of the New Kingdom and the Late and Graeco-Roman periods. In part,
this is because mythological literature itself is produced in ever greater quantity at this
time.33 But also during these years, Isis’ own position vis-B-vis the other gods
becomes more and more pronounced.34 This means that, to the extent that the
Ptolemaic Ihweret is an Isis-like figure, we should (as we would expect) link her not
merely the Isis of age-old myth, but specifically to the Isis who had by the GraecoRoman period became a truly universal divinity.35
In the second place, Isis’ role as a speaker and narrator is intimately bound up
with her mythological role as protector and helper of her brother/spouse Osiris and
their son Horus. Many of the examples we have of Isis as speaker or narrator are
instrumentally connected to this role. There are two aspects to this. In part, Isis’ role
as protector is closely connected to her knowledge of magic, which is actualized
through her speech. As the Louvre Osiris hymn expresses it:
33
Baines, “Myth and Discourse,” 92; Assmann, “Verborgenheit,” 9; Sternberg, Mythische Motiven, 1516.
34
One interesting manifestation of this–among many–is the inauguration of the formal practice of
burial of the mother of the Apis bull, who was identified with Isis, in the late Saite period; see Smith,
“Death and Life of the Mother of Isis,” 217.
35
Schulz, “Warum Isis,” 253; Dunand, “syncrétisme isiaque,” 87ff.; Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 328.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
363
His sister has made his protection: (Namely,) the one who has driven away the
malevolent ones; the one who drives away the deeds of the mischievous with
the effectiveness (Ax) of her speech; the excellent of tongue, whose words do not
fail; she who is effective of command...36
Many of the preserved narrative texts connected to Isis, comprising a great deal of
Isis’ quoted speech and a great deal of Isis’ own direct first-person narration, come in
the context of historiolae, narrative mythological episodes embedded in magical
spells. By using them, the magician hoped to ‘piggyback’ onto Isis’ role as magician
and to re-enact for his own benefit (or the benefit of a client) some primordial episode
in which she had efficaciously employed her power.37 But the second major locus of
her action as a speaker and narrator is in her capacity as mourner by the bier of the
slain Osiris. Much of Isis’ quoted speech, including narration, appears in the context
of rituals that re-enact Isis’ mourning over her brother, in which dead persons were
identified with Osiris and, it was hoped and expected, taken under the protection of
Isis.
Finally, magic and mourning rituals are not at all the only contexts in which
Isis speaks or narrates–she appears in genres of all kinds, including free-standing
tales, ‘dramatic’ texts, and many other types of ritual compositions. Even when Isis
appears in texts that are not primarily narrative, still we will often find embedded
within them brief instances of minimal narration or else what might be termed
‘incipient narration’: descriptions, names, or existential statements that evoke, rather
than narrate, known or presumed mythological fabulae. It cannot be emphasized
enough that, although Isis’ husband Osiris and her son Horus are kings of their
respective domains and that her formal role is to support and protect them,
nevertheless Isis is far more active in the mythical world than either of the two male
36
Louvre stela C286, early Eighteenth Dynasty, ls. 13-14; see Moret, “légende d’Osiris,” 93; Assmann,
Hymnen und Gebete, 446. Cf. the comments of Sternberg, Mythische Motive , 217, n. 2.
37
Frankfurter, “Narrating Power;” Schulz, “Warum Isis,” 256-57.
364
STEVE VINSON
figures with whom she is most closely associated.38 As a result, she is a far more
prominent, and a far more complexly layered, literary character than any other
Egyptian divinity.
Isis in Tales
The best-known narrative literature that deals with Isis includes free-standing tales
like the primary narration of Middle Egyptian Papyrus Westcar, and the New
Kingdom Contendings of Horus and Seth,39 in both of which Isis figures prominently.
In P Westcar, Isis is the most prominent speaker among the gods;40 in Horus and Seth,
Isis also speaks extensively, and she also narrates a short lying tale herself in order to
trap Seth.41 As far as we know, these are tales that, in the form in which we have
them, may well have been intended simply as entertainment fiction.42
But most other preserved Isis tales, whether related in the third or first person
or–as not seldom happens–in mixed form, appear as historiolae.43 The best known of
these are the Nineteenth Dynasty Tale of Isis and Re (third-person, but with
substantial direct speech by Isis);44 and the Tale of Isis, the Rich Woman, and the
Marsh Woman (first-person narration by Isis) attested from the Nineteenth Dynasty
into the Ptolemaic period, most famously as one of the texts inscribed on the
Metternich Stela in Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.45 Many other
38
See also the comments of Sternberg, Mythische Motive, 223-224 on the passivity of Osiris; we
discuss this in more detail below.
39
Text in Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 37-60. Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 214-224; Wente,
trans., “The Contendings of Horus and Seth.”
40
P Westcar 10.7 ff. See Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 1: 220; Simpson 2003, 22-23; in which Isis
takes the lead among the divinities assisting with the birth of the children of Ruddedet.
41
“Horus and Seth,” 6.4ff; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 217; Wente, “Contendings of Horus and
Seth,” 96.
42
Categorized as “Unterhaltungsliteratur,” “Entertainment literature,” by Blumenthal, “Erzählung des
Papyrus d’Orbiney,” 15, and Assmann, “Kulturelle und literarische Texte,” 77ff.
43
See in general Frankfurter, “Narrating Power.”
44
P Turin 1993 vs. 6.11 - 9.5. Bourghout, Egyptian Magical Texts, text 84.
45
See Klasens, Magical Statue Base, Spell I; 9-19 (synoptic text); 52-53 (translation) = Borghouts,
Magical Texts, text 90 (Borghouts, Magical Texts, 122, adding O Gardiner 333 to the eight exemplars
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
365
magical texts include shorter snippets of stories about Isis, stories which were or
presumably might have been more fully developed in oral literature or in written
narrative literature now lost to us. Often these short fragments of narration involve
Isis hiding and protecting the infant Horus from Seth and his allies, or curing him of
various afflictions. One particularly unusual one appears in the magical papyrus P BM
10042, rt. 7.8-12,46 which presents an Oedipal episode that begins with Isis magically
stopping the flow of water in the Nile, exposing the fish on the river bottom:
Isis struck with her wing; she sealed the mouth of the river.47 She caused the fish
to lie down on the mud; the waves did not cover it. Isis became weary <on> the
water. Isis arose <on> the water, her tears falling into the water. See, Horus has
copulated with his mother Isis! Her tears are falling into the water.
In point of fact, one might not go far wrong in characterizing Ihweret’s own narration
in First Setne as a sort of extended historiola: a tale of an episode in the past, one in
which the gods figure, and which is intended to prefigure and influence the future.
And indeed, Ihweret’s tale does point forward to the magical forces that come to bear
used by Klasens). Other historiolae that present Isis narrating in the first person include: (1) Middle
Kingdom P Ramesseum III, B.23-34 = Borghouts, Magical Texts, text 69 (Isis recounts a desperate
search for Horus, who had suckled a baa-demon from her breast); (2) Nineteenth-Dynasty P Leiden I
348 rt. 3.8-4.3 = Borghouts, Magical Texts text 45(very brief retrospective allusion to the episode in the
“Contendings of Horus and Seth” in which Horus decapitates Isis and she receives a cow’s head as
substitute); (3) Ptolemaic Metternich Stela 168-251 = Socle Behague x + c.1-g.1 (Klasens, Magical
Statue Base 22-34 [text], 54-58 [translation] = Borgouhts, Magical Texts, text 91 (complex and lengthy
text, which includes both an extended first-person narration by Isis of her discovery of the infant Horus
ill from a scorpion bite, as well as extended third-person narration); (4) a Roman-era Demotic spell
from the magical papyrus P London-Leiden Magical, vo. 20.1-5, Griffith and Thompson, Demotic
Magical Papyrus, 193; cf. also Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites,141 with n. 103 (first-person
narration in which Isis reports that Amun has cured Horus by means of striking him on the head with
three spells written in the Nubian language; cf. First Setne, in which Naneferkaptah strikes Setne on the
head three times with a game board, causing him to sink into the ground a little further with each blow;
see Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:133; Ritner, trans., “Setna I” 462). In many other spells, Isis
speaks directly, but does not actually narrate. Among the most interesting of these are a historiola from
P London-Leiden rt. 20.1 ff. (Griffith and Thompson, Demotic Magical Papyrus1: 128-129; 3: Plate
20), a first-person narration by Anubis, with considerable direct speech by Isis, recounting how Isis
rescued Anubis from Syria (pA tA n #r), inhabited at that time by cannibals (wnm-rmT, ‘man eaters’);
and a first-person declamation by Isis of her magical power, a text attested in the Nineteenth Dynasty
(in P Turin 1993 and P Chester-Beatty 11) and in the Ptolemaic period (Socle Behague); see Klasens,
Magical Statue Base, Text V, 35-36 (text), 58-59 (translation); we will return to this text elow.
46
Borghouts, Magical Texts, text 129.
47
Cf. Socle Behague Spell IV, f 26; Klasens, Magical Statue Base 32 (text), 57 (translation): “The
(Nile) source is blocked; the crops are withered, food is taken from humanity, until Horus is healthy for
his mother Isis.”
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STEVE VINSON
on Setne and that compel him to return the Magic Book of Thoth to the tomb of
Naneferkaptah.
Isis in Dramas and Quasi-dramatic Rituals
Isis figures prominently in what appear to have been publicly performed dramas like
the Triumph of Horus at Edfu (in which she is given the most to say of any character,
and in which she has the most complexly-delineated personality),48 as well as quasidramatic rituals like the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys and related texts in which,
so it seems, priests or acolytes will have assumed the personas of the relevant
divinities in ceremonies which, in all likelihood, were restricted to the participants
themselves.49 In either case, ‘actors will have either declaimed speeches ascribed to
their respective divinities, as well as physically acting in ways characteristic of them;
or else simply represented them while a ritualist (Xry-Hb) actually read the text. As a
result, as regards their formal construction, such texts typically include indications of
dialogue or at least alternating speeches ascribed to their characters; to this there may
48
On Isis’ characterization see Fairman, Triumph of Horus, 26.
Aside from the lamentations, the Songs of Isis and Nephthys also thematizes the mourning of Isis and
Nephthys; see Faulkner, The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind (text); idem,“The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus–I”
(translation). Other texts the dramatize mourning for Osiris, but that include a larger cast of characters,
include the “hourly watch ritual,” in which Isis generally speaks in the role of one of the two kites
(Dr.ty), occasionally in a solo declamation (e.g., E.I. 41ff.; Junker, Stundenwachen, 35ff.), occasionally
in duet (e.g., E XIII, 61ff.; Junker, Stundenwachen, 70ff.); the Glorification Ritual of Osiris and the
Glorification Ritual of the Festival of the Valley (editions in Haikal, Funerary Papyri 1 and 2; for the
Glorification Ritual of Osiris, see now Goyon, Papyrus d’ImouthPs 49-62); and the Great Decree
Promulgated for the District of Silence see Goyon, Papyrus d’ImouthPs, 17-48. Isis also speaks at
considerable length in the Ritual of Overthrowing Seth (Schott, Urk. VI.1), and in a Demotic drama on
the struggle of Horus and Seth (Gaudard, “Demotic Drama of Horus and Seth”). Most of these
compositions are best known in texts of the Ptolemaic period, but are generally thought to have their
roots in far older literature; for example, Isis speaks at length in the “Birth and Apotheosis of Horus,”
which may be an extract or citation from a quasi-dramatic ritual text that appears in the Coffin Text
spell 148 (CT II, 209c - 226a); see Fairman, Triumph of Horus, 10-13. On the other hand, the very
frequent appearance of material of this type in the Ptolemaic period suggests that it responds to needs
and interests that are, in some respects, peculiar to the later phases of Egyptian religious history. On
dramatic and quasi-dramatic rituals, see now also Gillam, Performance and Drama in Ancient Egypt.
49
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
367
be added ‘stage directions’ and descriptions of objects (props) that might be employed
in the ‘performance.’50
The narrative nature of an extended dramatic text like The Triumph of Horus
at Edfu is perhaps more obvious than that of ritual texts like the Lamentations of Isis
and Nephthys, of which the primary fabula could be simply narrated by some such
sentence as “Isis and Nephthys came to kneel by the bier of Osiris, and said the
following...” The performance of this ritual and its parallels was evidently not
public,51 but an onlooker would have seen something similar to a tableau vivant
consisting of two female figures kneeling besides the bier of Osiris. Nowhere in this
text, neither at the level of the text’s principal action, nor at the level of narratives
embedded in the characters’ speeches, do we find anything like a plot. Nevertheless,
to the extent that such texts represent in words and actions events believed to have
occurred prior to the performance, even quasi-dramatic ritual texts of the lamentations
genre conform to the minimal definition of narrative that we have adopted here. It is
true, however, that whatever narrative features the texts possess are largely
subservient to the compositions’ overall descriptive or characterizing purpose.52 But in
the end, narrative, dramatic and ritual texts dealing with Isis, Osiris and Horus all
attempt to communicate similar truths–that is, they presuppose very much the same or
similar fabulae. For this reason, each category of text presents, mutatis mutandis,
many of the same themes and much of the same imagery as the others.
In most dramatic or quasi-dramatic ritual texts, it is the narratives embedded in
characters’ speeches that are most accessible to analysis, because a dramatic text is by
50
Blackman and Fairman, “Myth of Horus – II” (part 1) 33.
P Berlin 3008, 5.13 - 16; Faulkner, “Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” 341.
52
On the subordination of narrative to description, see Chatman, Coming to Terms, 17-18; on
narrativized description–i.e., tableaux–in specifically sacralized contexts analogous to our Egyptian
examples, see Coming to Terms, 32, quoting Kittay, “Descriptive Limits,” 239.
51
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STEVE VINSON
definition most easily characterized by a relative lack of explicit language narrative
matter at the level of the text’s principal action: that is precisely the level at which
past action was to be represented by performed action.53 And for our specific
problem–discussing Isis as a speaker and narrator–it is also the level of characters’
speeches that most interests us. At this level, fully-developed tales are relatively rare.
It is, however, worth noting that functionally, first-person historiolae may actually be
better thought of as language narratives embedded in a quasi-drama, since they appear
to have been intended for recitation by a magician who might assume the persona of a
divinity in the course of a ritual; indeed, aside from the roles that a ritualist might take
on personally, children might also be cast in the role of the young Horus or another
child god who figured in the fabula around which the ritual was constructed.54
But most often, the language narratives embedded in Egyptian dramatic or
quasi-dramatic texts are not so complex. Among the best examples is a lengthy speech
by Isis from the Glorification Ritual for Osiris in which she narrates the posthumous
conception of Horus and the funeral rituals performed for the murdered Osiris.55 Here
we have an instance of extended narration that falls between the minimal narration of
a single event and a fully-plotted story:
53
Although this distinction is difficult to rigidly maintain, especially in the case of Egyptian dramatic
or quasi-dramatic ritual texts, which often include narrative elements around the characters’ speeches.
In some cases (e.g., the “Memphite Theology”), those narrative elements may be quite extensive, in
fact exceeding the characters’ speeches. It is often unclear whether these elements were intended to be
part of the ‘performance’ of the play/ritual, perhaps read by a narrator/ritualist; or whether they are part
of the texts’ adaptations into secondary contexts (i.e., monumental inscription, as in the case of the
Memphite Theology or the Triumph of Horus); or whether they are ‘stage directions’ framed in a way
that has not fully detached itself from the decorums of narrative tales. It seems possible, for example,
that the Demotic Myth of the Eye of the Sun as we have it is actually a script for an oral performance; it
reads like a straightforward narrative, but also includes the occasional notation xrw=f mi-tAy, “his voice
thus” (e.g., 3.24; 5.10; 5.21) which would seem to be a direction to the reader to adjust his voice as
appropriate for the situation or for the character who is actually speaking.
54
See M. Stadler, “Das Kind sprach zu ihr” 315-316, with n. 27; Ritner, “Horus on the Crocodiles,”
105.
55
P BM 10208, 1.9-1.17; Haikal, Funerary Papyri, 1:49-52 (text); 2:51 (translation).
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
369
I am Isis; there is no god or goddess who has done what I have done: Even
though I am a woman, I acted (the part of a) male,56 from the desire to make
your name live upon the earth. Your divine semen was within me; I gave birth
to him (scil., Horus) so that he would defend your character, so that he would
heal your suffering, and so that he would inflict great pain on the one who did it.
Seth has fallen to his (own) spear; the henchmen of Seth are turned into burnt
offerings. The throne of Geb is yours: you are his beloved son.
Ha’y,57 Sokar-Osiris, Osiris Ns-Mn, justified, born of TA-Sr.t-n-tA-iH.t, justified!
When that slaughter took place in primaeval times, there was made for you a
Great Place in Busiris, in order to mummify you and to sweeten your smell.
Anubis was made for you in the place of embalming, to conduct his funerary
rituals, while I together with your sister Nephthys lit the lamp of the Great
Place, in order to expel Seth at night. Anubis went forth from the districts of
Wabet to overthrow all of your enemies. Mourners made their lamentations for
you, while your son Horus overthrew your enemies, hurling the harpoon rope at
Seth.
The gods stood up in lamentation over the great injury that had happened to
you; they launched their voices on high, those in the horizon hearing the
goddess mourning and lamenting; they saw what ‘that one’ (scil., Seth) did to
you. Thoth stood at the door of the embalming place, reciting his ritual, so that
he might make your ba live every day (my translation).
Isis in Self-revelation (aretalogy)
A major locus of the Graeco-Roman Isis’ role as speaker and narrator is in Greeklanguage texts that comprise the category of self-revelation. These texts are often
assimilated to the category of aretalogy but it is worth distinguishing them, both
formally and in their contents, from the other sorts of texts that are typically classified
56
iry.n=i TAy iw=i m Hm.t. Haikal translates “I took a man, though being a woman” (Funerary Papyri,
2:51); similarly Goyon, Papyrus d’ImouthPs, 52, with n. 7; idem, “Cérémonial de glorification,” 111, n.
22. Transitive use of the verb iri “to do” in the sense of “have sexual intercourse with” (as colloquially
in English) seems a not-impossible extension of iri “erwerben” of Wb. II, 109, 3-4. Note also the
intransitive usage in the phrase Hr ir.t m Hm.wt, “acting (sexually)/‘doing it’ with women;” see
Blackman and Fairman, “The Myth of Horus – II” (part 3), 7, with note d. However translated, the
essential point clear: Isis has taken the leading role in the conception of Horus, reversing the normal,
ideal pattern of male-female sexual interaction; and Goyon (in his discussion in “Cérémonial de
glorification”) appositely points to the common image of the conception of Horus, in which the passive
Osiris lies on his back, while the active Isis (in the form of a kite) hovers above. But, with earlier
translators, it seems to me that translating “act the male” makes this point more strongly, since it
suggests an existential paradox (a paradox also strengthened if the translation takes account of the
apparent ‘emphatic’ bare initial sDm.n=f used to stress the following circumstantial clause). For an
unambiguous parallel, cf. P Chester Beatty VII vo., 1.10 - 2.1: anti.t tA ntr.t nxt.ti(.t) s.t-Hm.t ir.t aHAwty,
“Anat the goddess, she of might, woman who acts the fighter (or, male),” in Gardiner, Chester Beatty
Papyri,1:62-63; 2:Plate 36 (I owe this reference to Nicole Hansen).
57
A vocative interjection, often approximated in English with the archaic expression ‘Ho!’
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STEVE VINSON
in this way.58 Stricto sensu, aretalogies were products of the Graeco-Roman religious
experience. The word refers to oral or written compositions which relate some action
by a god. In some instances, it seems that these might be narrated by aretalógoi,
professionals who specialized in tales of the miraculous.59 However, the actual tales
told by aretalógoi seem to have been evanescent, and so ‘aretalogy’ as a category can
only be approached by reference to dedications by individuals who published in
monumental form narratives of divine interventions that affected them personally.
The self-revelations by Isis are related to this category in the sense that they do
enumerate the excellences or miracles (aretaí ) of the goddess, and they, too, were
often commissioned and dedicated by devotees who wished to commemorate some
special favor bestowed upon them.60 However, rather than narrate specific and unique
deeds of the goddess as they relate to the dedicator, the self-revelations thematize in
Isis’ own words aspects of her identity and deeds that are of universal significance.
And they do so via the medium of a series of individual statements–some minimally
narrative, others incipiently narrative or purely descriptive–that are typically
introduced with strongly emphasized, anaphoric personal pronoun I (egó).
The best and most complete example of the monumentally-preserved Greek
self-revelations is the Kyme text, which presents itself as a copy of an inscription on a
stela placed in front of the Hephaistion (temple of Ptah) in Memphis.61 Other Sitze im
Leben are attested, especially in literature. The text that appears in the Kyme
inscription also figures in abbreviated form in Diodorus Siculus, who claims to
58
On this terminological question, see Grandjean, nouvelle arétologie, 1ff; Beck, “Mystery Religions,”
137; Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 113, n. 4.
59
Beck, “Mystery Religions,” 137.
60
Grandjean, nouvelle arétologie, 6.
61
Text editions: Harder, Karpokrates von Chalkis, 20f.; Bergman, Ich bin Isis, 301-303. Text with
translation in Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 113-118; hypothetical back-translation into Demotic Egyptian
in Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 336-339.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
371
reproduce here a text written in hieroglyphic script at the grave of Isis in a place
called Nysa, which Diodorus locates in Arabia.62 An Isis self-revelation forms the
center-piece of Book 11 of Apuleius’ Latin novel The Golden Ass.63 The selfrevelations could also be recast in the second or third person, in which case selfrevelation as a genre passes over into the genre-complex of hymns, eulogies, encomia,
etc.64
Certainly the self-revelations’ deployment in historiography (Diodorus) or
fiction (Apuleius) is–at least–a secondary function of the form. What is unclear is
whether the Greek-language self-revelations as we know them were originally
intended primarily for public display, or whether their use in public contexts (Kyme,
etc.) was parasitic on a less-public use that is not visible to us in the record. And,
because the Kyme text and its parallels present Egyptian (or Egyptianizing) subject
matter but are all in Greek, the related question of whether they originate in the
Egyptian or Greek milieu is still an open one.65
Even though the ancient tradition as reported in Diodorus Siculus holds that
the text of the self-revelation at Nysa was written in hieroglyphic, early studies,
naturally undertaken by classicists, often (but not without exception) emphasized the
Greek features of the genre, and assumed that Egyptian elements were, at most, an
attempt to give the text the required exotic character.66 However, a series of studies
proceeding from Egyptological parallels, which stress the self-revelations’ evident
affinities in substance with a wide variety of Egyptian ritual texts, including the kinds
62
Diodorus I.27.
See Griffiths, Isis-Book for a comprehensive study.
64
On the relationship between Isis’ self-revelations and hymns that often treat the same or similar
material, see Grandjean, nouvelle arétologie; Žabkar, Hymns, esp. 159-160.
65
An excellent survey of the relevant bibliography may be found in Dousa, “Imagining Isis,” 151-152,
n. 9.
66
Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 320.
63
372
STEVE VINSON
of dramatic or quasi-dramatic texts we have already examined, have made it
increasingly likely that the Greek self-revelations should be seen as adaptations of
essentially Egyptian models.67 This is true of form as well as content: statements of
divine identity (beginning with the Egyptian first-person singular independent
pronoun ink) have a long history in Egyptian religious literature, appearing already in
the Coffin Texts.68 More broadly, the hymnic genre of litanies is likewise
characterized by repeated, anaphoric formulations that introduce each strophe.69
A Nineteenth-Dynasty example that is particularly close to the Greek selfrevelations in its use of a series of statements beginning with an anaphoric firstperson-singular pronoun ink is to be found at the entrance of the Osiris chapel in the
funerary temple of Seti I at Abydos: 70
Words spoken by Isis:
I am awake, I am awake (iw[=i] rs.kwi)!
I (ink) am Isis;
I (ink) am the fiery one;
I am awake!
I (ink) am the mother of Horus;
I (ink) am the sister of the god;
I (ink) am the Hmmy.t; 70
I (ink) am the great maiden;
I have come (iy.n=i)–oh father, hear!–
Having fought (iw ir HA.n=i) in the river of the Two Lands,
To overthrow all of your enemies.
Behold, I (mk wi) am at your side as the Great Kite;
I (ink) am the beloved of your heart.71
The Greek revelations and their presumed Egyptian prototypes may well have been
used in a similar way, with a priestess or acolyte assuming the role of Isis to proclaim
67
Dousa, “Imagining Isis;” Quack, “Ich bin Isis;” Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites 274, n. 273.
See Assmann, LdÄ, 1: 425-434, s.v. “Aretalogien.” Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 332ff.
69
See Burkard, Spätzeitliche Osiris-Liturgien, 32; Assmann, LdÄ, 3:1062-1066, s.v. “Litanei.”
70
My translation, from the text given in Münster, Göttin Isis, 193.
70
See Münster, Göttin Isis 193, n. 2051, quoting Wb. III, 95, 13: Hmmy, “name of a magical being;”
Münster also quotes instances of a word Hmm.t referring to Nut in a funerary context.
71
My translation, from the text given in Münster, Göttin Isis, 193.
68
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
373
the greatness of the goddess.72 Although this has been doubted73 and may be
impossible to prove, parallel cases of ritualists taking on the persona of Isis and
speaking in her name in the context of magical praxis make the supposition at least
plausible. In this context, both narrative historiolae like Isis, the Rich Woman, and the
Marsh Woman as well as non-narrative (i.e., at the macro-level) discourses by Isis
may appear side by side, as in this example that appears in both the Nineteenth
Dynasty and in the early Ptolemaic period:74
Another spell. Recitation.
I am Isis (ink s.t), mistress of Chemmis;
She who is effective of words in the Secret Place.
My father Geb created his magical power for me,
In order to make protection for my son Horus,
In order to seal shut the mouth of every snake;
In order to chase away for him every lion in the wilderness,
Every crocodile in the river.
As for all ‘mouthy ones’ (i.e., snakes) who bite with their mouths,
I am repelling their poison in its moment…
Although this text lacks the emphatically-repeated ‘I am...’ statements of the Abydos
text just quoted and of the Greek self-revelations, the opening “I am Isis” and the
retrospective exposition of her mythological role and magical power–though without
taking the step into more fully developed, sequential or plotted narrative–invite
comparison to the Greek self-revelations both in form and content. And here, the
text’s appearance with collections of other magical spells, some of which include
other kinds of first-person narration by Isis (the New Kingdom exemplars, P Leiden
1993 and P Chester-Beatty XI both also include the tale Isis and the Secret Name of
Re and the Ptolemaic ‘Socle Behague’ includes the tale of Isis, the Rich Woman and
the Marsh Girl which likewise begins with an anaphoric ink Is.t) both blurrs the
72
Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 114; Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 364-365; Schulz, “Warum Isis,” 267; cf. Beck,
“Mystery Religions,” 134-136 on sacred performances in the course of mystery initiations.
73
See Gordon, review of Isis Regina, 234.
74
Socle Behague, Spell V; in Klasens, Magical Statue Base, 35-37 (synoptic text, including P Leiden
1993 and P Chester-Beatty 11), 58-59 (translation), 98-99 (commentary).
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STEVE VINSON
distinction between narrative and non-narrative texts as well as making the selfrevelation’s ritual Sitz im Leben, and its probably use in a quasi-dramatic ritual
involving impersonation of Isis, highly plausible.
What is certain is that the Greek self-revelations are replete with instances of
minimal narrative–that is, individual statements that purport to represent some action
in the past, framed as direct speech of the goddess. Specific historical claims that Isis
makes about herself in the Kyme text include the discovery of writing along with, or
with the help of, Hermes (Thoth);75 the discovery of grain;76 the division of the heaven
and earth;77 and the determination of the paths of heavenly bodies.78 How far such
claims may represent mythological fabulae developed more extensively elsewhere
may never be known in every case; but the claim to have “put a stop to cannibalism”
(along with, or with the help of, her brother Osiris)79 certainly suggests a story crying
out to be told, one perhaps also alluded to in the Middle Kingdom Birth and
Apotheosis of Horus, in which Isis identifies Osiris as the one who “ended the
slaughter (in) the Two Lands” (wp Sa.t [m] TA.wy)80 and, conversely, perhaps also in
The Ritual of Overthrowing Seth, in which Isis charges Seth with “having instigated
slaughter against people in Busiris” (iw ir.n=f Sa.t r rmt.w m +dw);81 and cf. again P
London-Leiden Magical rt. 20.1ff., which refers to cannibals said to be in Syria, and
from whom Isis rescues Anubis. And of course the incipiently-narrative self-
75
Kyme 3c; the not-unambiguous formulation is “grámmata heûron metà Hermoû” which seems
intended to claim for Isis a role in the discovery of writing essentially equal to Thoth’s; the preposition
metá plus a personal name in the genitive case can mean ‘in common, along with, by aid of, in one’s
dealings with’ (LSJ 1108b - 1109a).
76
Kyme 7.
77
Kyme 12.
78
Kyme 13.
79
Kyme 21.
80
CT II, 211c; so also J. Quack, “Ich bin Isis, 349, with further references at n. 121.
81
P Louvre 3129 C.4-5 = Urk. 6.1, 23.5
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
375
affirmations of Isis’ identity as “wife and sister of King Osiris”82 or as “mother of
King Horus”83 nevertheless unleash a flood of associations, many of which are
developed in Egyptian ritual or mythological texts or in interpretationes graecae like
that of Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris or in Greek-language Isis hymns like the hymns of
Isidoros84 or the Isis hymn of P Oxy. XI 1380.85
Where self-revelations differ most noticeably from most other quasi-dramatic
ritual texts is at the macro-level: unlike, e.g., the mourning over Osiris that is the
subject of the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys and its parallels, divine selfrevelation as an event is not an element of any single, specific mythological fabula.
Instead, insofar as the Greek and Latin self-revelations have a narrative setting, it is in
the context of an irruption of divinity into the present world–paradigmatically in the
case of Isis’ self-presentations in The Golden Ass. The undeniable facts that an
appearance of, and speech by, Isis must be conceived of as having taken place prior to
being memorialized in a text, and as having unfolded in time, suffice to define the
text-type of self-revelation as ‘narrative’ in those senses in which any drama may be
considered narrative. But like the fabulae of texts like the Lamentations of Isis and
Nephthys and its parallels, the primary fabula of the self-revelations is minimal
indeed, consisting of nothing other than Isis’ epiphany and subsequent discourse.
Ihweret as Isis-like Figure
At this point, we are in a position to appreciate the extent to which themes and images
in First Setne resonate with narratives that concern Isis, in the tales that Isis herself
tells, in the implied narrative settings and imbedded language narratives of the ritual
82
Kyme 6.
Kyme 8.
84
Vanderlip, Four Greek Hymns.
85
Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part XI 190-220; see Dousa, “Imagining Isis.”
83
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texts in which she figures, and in her direct speech as a character in these rituals.
Apart from the Isis-as-narrator theme, sixteen further themes or motifs with at least
approximate analogs in First Setne present themselves: 1) Isis and Osiris as brother
and sister. 2) Osiris young and beautiful. 3) Osiris dies an untimely death. 4) Osiris
drowned. 5) Osiris identified with the Nile. 6) Bull and cow imagery. 7) Love and
sexual desire. 8) Isis active, Osiris passive. 9) Search for Osiris. 10) Mourning for
Osiris. 11) Physical protection of the corpse of Osiris. 12) Isis as instrument of justice
or vengeance. 13) Isis physically transformed. 14) Isis as seductress. 15) Maternal
imagery/protection of Horus. 16) Demand for justice before a divine court.
1-2 Isis and Osiris as brother and sister; Osiris young and beautiful
The most immediate and obvious parallel between Ihweret and Isis is that each is both
sister and young bride to her royal husband. While Isis’ youth is not, to my
knowledge, thematized in texts on Isis and Osiris, it is especially common in the texts
of the Lamentation genre to stress the youth and beauty of Osiris.86 A characteristic
example, from the Songs of Isis and Nephthys ls. 3.7-8 (duet of Isis and Nephthys; my
translation):
Come, sistrum-player, shining of face,
The unique youth, beautiful when one seems him!
And then 10-12 (likewise Isis and Nephthys):
Divine youth, beyond all beauty,
Would that we might see you in your former shape!
As Quack has pointed out, the Egyptian origin of Plutarch’s report that Osiris had
either reigned as earthly king for twenty-eight years, or else (according to others) had
86
Cf. the remarks of Coenen, “New Stanzas,” 18, n. b to l. 17.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
377
lived a total of twenty-eight years,87 can now be confirmed in the (probably
Ptolemaic) P MMA 35.9.21 13.14-15, where a numeral read by Goyon as 107 is to be
correctly understood as a Demotic writing of the numeral 28. The relevant passage is
to be translated as: “Where are you, oh man of twenty-eight years, of the nomes’
searching?”88
Although we do not learn in the preserved text of First Setne specifically how
old Naneferkaptah and Ihweret are when they fall in love and marry, general cultural
considerations should probably lead us to imagine them in the first blush of youth.
The Instructions of aOnchsheshonqy recommends that a young man marry at the age
of twenty;89 such evidence as exists suggests that brides were typically younger, in
their mid- to late teens.90 Likewise, there is no definite way to know how long after
the marriage we should imagine Naneferkaptah’s quest for the Magic Book of Thoth.
However, the story seems to suggest that Merib was born in the first year of the
couple’s marriage, and Merib’s minimal role in the story (as well as the way in which
the story draws a parallel between him and Isis’ son Horus-the-Child/Harpokrates; see
further below) might be taken to imply that he is still quite young when the expedition
takes place, though he appears to be at least old enough to walk.91 An age for
87
Chapt. 42; Griffith, De Iside et Osiride, 184-185 (text and translation).
Goyon, Papyrus d’ImouthPs 42, with n. 82; cf. Quack, “Der pränatale Geschlechtsverkehr von Isis
und Osiris,” 331. Goyon’s somewhat free translation of n HH n nA spA.wt as “de la recherche que mPnent
les nomes,” requires taking HH as an infinitive, and each n in this expression is the genitive particle;
Quack translates similarly, noting Spiegelberg’s discussion of Demotic n plus infinitive at demotische
Grammatik, §224β. This usage, however, does not really convey the passive sense of the passage as
strongly as one might expect. It may be that the phrase as it appears in the present text represents an
attempt to ‘modernize’ an underlying Middle Egyptian *m HH n=f m spA.wt, in which the initial m is the
m of predication and HH is a substantivized passive participle, used in an ‘extended’ construction
(Gardiner, EG §376). The original phrase would then have meant “namely, he who is searched for in
the nomes.”
89
11.7; Glanville, aOnchsheshonqy, 28-29, with n. 141.
90
Pestman, Marriage, 3-5.
91
See 4.8-9; Griffith, Stories, 26; 108-109; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3: 131; Ritner, trans., “Setna
I” 460, in which Merib has “come” (iw) out on the deck of the expedition’s boat and fallen into the
river. A difficult passage (First Setne 3.8) has been interpreted by Ritner to suggest that Merib was at
least old enough to have already receives some sort of instruction in reading and writing: ti=w sX=f n
88
378
STEVE VINSON
Naneferkaptah in the mid- to late twenties–thus reasonably close to the traditional age
of twenty-eight for Osiris at his death–would seem a plausible interpretation of the
(admittedly vague) time-line suggested in First Setne for the events in Ihweret’s tale.
3-5 Osiris dies untimely death; Osiris drowned; Osiris identified with Nile
Aside from–but related to–the (presumed) fact of his youth, Naneferkaptah is also
marked as an Osirian character through the fact of his untimely death, and through the
specific fact that his death comes through drowning, and then the fact that his body is
eventually found in the Nile. Compositions of the lamentations genre are full of
allusions to these features of the Osiris myth. From the Songs of Isis and Nephthys, on
Osiris’ untimely death:
(1.14-15) Oh, fair youth, who departed at the wrong time; young man, whose
time it was not! (Here duet of Isis and Nephthys)
And on the drowning of Osiris, here first from the Twenty-Fifth-Dynasty Memphite
Theology l. 62:
For Osiris is drowned in his water, while Isis and Nephthys looked at him and
saw him, and were astounded (?) over him. Horus commanded without delay
that they seize Osiris and protect him, he having drowned.
And from the Songs of Isis and Nephthys:
(6.2, similarly 14.28): Iha’y!92 You are protected, you who were drowned in the
nome of Aphroditopolis!
Of course this method of death leads to Osiris’ identification with the Nile itself.93
Sa.t n(?) pr-anx, where Ritner translates: “He was taught to write letters in the House of Life” (“Setna
I,” 455, with n. 5). If so, perhaps it could be conjectured that Merib should have been at least six or
seven years old at the time of the expedition. Griffith, on the other hand, assumed a passive meaning
for sX=f here, and understood: “He was caused to be written in the record in (of?) The House of Life”
(so also Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:128); see Griffith, Stories, 87-88; also n. 6 on p. 87, for a
passive sDm=f after ti; cf. also Spiegelberg, Demotische Grammatik, 59, §114. The difficulty with
Ritner’s understanding is that if sX=f is taken actively, the sentence says literally “he was caused to
write in/with a document in the House of Life”–the clear n before Sa.t would not be expected before the
direct object of a finite verb. For the meaning assumed by Ritner, one might rather expect some such
formulation as *ti=w rx=f sX-Sa.t n pr-anx, “he was caused to know the script of documents (i.e.,
Demotic) in the House of Life.”
92
A vocative interjection more often approximated in English with the archaizing “Oho!”
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
379
6-7 Love and sexual desire; bull and cow imagery
According to Plutarch, Isis and Osiris had fallen in love and even experienced one
another sexually in the womb of their mother Nut;94 recently, Quack has plausibly
argued that this story has Egyptian roots.95 While First Setne obviously suggests no
such thing about Ihweret and Naneferkaptah, a strong sexual and romantic attraction
between young siblings is central to the beginning of the tale of Naneferkaptah.
The love between Isis and Osiris is often expressed in terms of bull and cow
imagery, especially passages from texts of the lamentations genre. From the Songs of
Isis and Nephthys ls. 5.24-6.1 (solo speech of Isis):
Oh, great bull, lord of sexual pleasure,
Burden (?)96 your sister Isis;
Then remove the pain in her limbs;
So that she can embrace you, without you being far from her;
Place life upon the forehead of the cow (wSb[.t])!
Other characteristic epithets of Osiris from the Songs of Isis and Nephthys include
‘bull of the two sisters’ (kA n sn.ty 2.6) and ‘the bull who ejaculates within cows’ (pA
kA sty m k.wt 3.6).
It seems possible that the specific names ‘Ihweret’ and ‘Naneferkaptah’ are
intended to resonate with this imagery and these associations. The name
‘Naneferkaptah’ is apparently attested only in First Setne and in two other Setne texts:
93
See Burkard, Osiris-Liturgien,28 (Iri-iri papyrus, x+2.13-14); 29 (Iri-iri x+2.23-24); Glorification of
Osiris 2.16ff; Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys (P Berlin 3008), 5.1ff.
94
Isis and Osiris chapt. 12; Griffiths, de Iside et Osiride, 136-137.
95
Quack, “Der pränatale Geschlechtsverkehr von Isis und Osiris,” 328-330.
96
The word is spelled Apd, with bird determinative, and is evidently a hapax in this orthography. It is
defined as “begatten” at Wb. I, 9, 11; Faulkner translates “lie with.” The writing suggests a
metaphorical connection with birds, but the exact nature of the metaphor is not immediately apparent.
To ‘bird’ someone may well be plausible as a term for sexual intercourse; if this word is connected to
Apd ‘hurry, rush’ (Wilson, Ptolemaic Lexikon, 7), then perhaps the specific connotation is along the
lines of ‘ravish or ‘take violently.’ An alternative, which I tentatively propose here, is that this Apd
might be a by-form of Atp ‘to load; to burden’ compare wbt, opt-, opt-, Bohairic by-forms of wtp ‘to
load’ (Crum, CD 532a), which are similar or identical in their orthography to Bohairic wbt ‘goose’
(Crum, CD 518b). If so, then the bird-determinative will have been an orthographic error motivated by
phonetic confusion, and the expression might refer to the weight of Osiris as he lies on top of Isis
during love-making.
380
STEVE VINSON
CGC 30692 and in the unpublished Setne text from the Tebtynis temple library.97 In
the Demotisches Namenbuch, the name is translated “Schön ist der Ka des Ptah”–that
is, the kA-element is interpreted as the word for ‘soul’ or ‘life-force.’ However, this
word appears to have been largely obsolete in Demotic, and in First Setne, the writing
of the element kA is graphically identical to the common writing of the word kA ‘bull’.
While it may well have been the case that knowledgeable readers of the tale
understood that the name was constructed on an earlier pattern in which the old word
for ‘soul’ was evoked, still the actual orthography of the word in First Setne would
inevitably have created associations with the common word kA ‘bull.’ Accordingly,
Erichsen in the Demotisches Glossar quotes the name under his entry for kA ‘bull’98
and Griffith likewise translated the name “Beautiful is the bull of Ptah.”99 Although I
have been unable to locate any other instance of the phrase ‘bull of Ptah,’ I would
presume that Griffith’s conjecture of a connection to Apis is in all likelihood correct.
Apis, in turn, is linked not only to Ptah (of whom he is most often referred to as the
wHm, ‘herald’ or ‘avatar’),100 but also to Osiris, most especially in the syncretic forms
Apis-Osiris, Osiris-Apis or Sarapis. Like Naneferkaptah, the Apis bull was buried in
Memphis101–as was, according to the tradition preserved in the Memphite Theology,
Osiris himself.102
97
DNB 619, citing only First Setne; the name also appears in CGC 30692, 1. For the Tebtynis text, see
again Ryholt, n. 1 supra.
98
Erichsen, DG, 556.
99
Griffith, Stories, 16, n. 1; Griffith does note that this is probably a reinterpretation of an earlier name
pattern in which the element kA does mean ‘double,’ ‘life-force.’ And, in fact, the writings of the name
Naneferkaptah in the Setne texts CGC 30692 and in the unpublished Setne text from the Tebtynis
, not the Demotic kA-bull
temple library spell the name with the more historically-correct kA-arms
group. Even in these cases, however, it may be at least possible that the meaning of ‘bull’ is intended;
cf. the remarks of Burkard, Osiris-Liturgien 24, n. 16 to the Iri-iri papyrus, x+1.12, citing Wb. V, 94.
100
See Holmberg, The God Ptah, 196-198.
101
See in general Kessler, Die heiligen Tiere, 57-104.
102
“Memphite Theology,” 20b - 22; Sethe, Dramatische Texte, 40-41, with n. d) on p. 41; “Memphite
Theology,” 63-64, Dramatische Texte, 73-77, with n. c) on p. 74.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
381
Like the name ‘Naneferkaptah,’ the name ‘Ihweret’ is all but unattested
outside of First Setne–aside from our Ihweret, the Demotisches Namenbuch quotes
only one other example,103 and the name does not appear at all in Ranke,
Personennamen. The name was left untranslated by both Griffith and the Namenbuch;
but it is more than tempting to connect the initial element Ih-, spelled with the reedleaf and the first h, with Ihet, a manifestation of the Celestial Cow who appears
frequently as Ihet-weret.104 It would certainly not be unexpected to find an Isis-like
character with a name suggestive of cow-theology. Largely because of her close
connection with Hathor, Isis begins to take on cow-like attributes as early as the
Middle Kingdom, when she first appears with cow horns in a determinative in one
version of Spell 49 of the Coffin Texts.105 Literary references to Isis in cow-form
become common from the New Kingdom forward, but Isis is not actually pictured as
fully cow-headed or indeed completely in cow-form until the Late Period, at which
point this visual imagery becomes common.106
While direct equations between Isis and Ihet are rare–none are recorded in
Leitz, Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen–neither are they
entirely absent. One example appears in some Ptolemaic versions of Chapter 142 of
the Book of the Dead, which include a passage that identifies Isis with a number of
other goddesses, including Neith, Selqet, Ma‘at and Ihet.107 For our purposes, a more
telling example appears in column 15.1 of the Songs of Isis and Nephthys. Here, Ihet
(spelled
AhA[.t]) and the sky-goddess Nut are presented in the context of a
first-person discourse by Isis as mourners for Osiris; the goddesses appear to be
103
DNB 1.2,74, non-literary.
For Ihet, see Leitz, Lexikon 1: 537a - 538b; on Ihet-weret, 538b - 539b. On the Celestial Cow(s)
generally, see Hornung, Himmelskuh, 96ff.
105
CT I 215b; Münster, Göttin Isis, 119, n. 1310.
106
Münster, Göttin Isis, 202.
107
See 142 §S, Var. 4; Allen, The Book of the Dead, 120.
104
382
STEVE VINSON
metonymic references to Isis herself. And the equation can go the other way as well,
especially in the Graeco-Roman period, when ‘Isis’ appears as an impersonal term for
heaven.108
But if the specific equation Isis = Ihet is uncommon, Ihet can nevertheless be
freely identified directly with Hathor, less often with Neith, each of whom appears
both in association and assimilation with Isis at all times, but especially prominently
in the Graeco-Roman period, both in Egyptian sources109 and in interpretationes
Graecae.110 Isis and Hathor, moreover, are closely connected to the Apis bull. Isis is
often identified as the mother of the living Apis,111 who–explicitly so in the Ptolemaic
period–could be identified with the ruling monarch.112 But it is evident in the
Ptolemaic stelas dedicated to Isis the mother of Apis in the Memphite Sarapaeum, that
in this context Osiris-Apis is viewed as Isis’ consort, and is distinct from the living
Apis of whom Isis was the mother.113 This is consonant with those Greek-language
sources that make Sarapis assume the position of Osiris in the Isis-SarapisHarpokrates triad.114 Even if it is correct to see in Naneferkaptah’s name a reference to
the Apis bull, nevertheless Naneferkaptah–being dead, and inhabiting the (or an)
Underworld–is more likely to resonate with Osiris-Apis/Sarapis than the living
Apis.115
108
Kurth, “Act (Isis): Eine Bezeichnung des Himmels.”
Leitz, Lexikon, 1:538b - 539a.
110
On Isis as both Hathor and Methyer, or Mh.t-wr.t, an alternative Celestial Cow, see Griffiths, De
Iside et Osiride, Chapt. 56 (206-207 for text and translation, comments on 512). On Isis as Neith, see
De Iside et Osiride, Chapt. 9 (Griffiths, 130-131 for text and translation, with useful comments on 283284).
111
Smith, “Death and Life,” 217; also P Vienna D6920-22 x+2.5-6, in Hoffmann, “Der literarische
demotische Papyrus Wien D6920-22,” 173-174; Kessler, Die heiligen Tiere 62; 96-97.
112
Kessler, Die heiligen Tiere 80; Assmann, Mind of Egypt 375.
113
See in general Smith, “Death and Life.”
114
Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 71-86 (on Osiris and Sarapis); 87-93 (on Harpokrates).
115
On the parameters of the problem, see in general Stambaugh, Sarapis; Kessler, Die heiligen Tiere,
65-88; Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 374-375.
109
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
383
It is worth noting, however, that, despite the frequent and strong sexual
connotations of the bull- and cow-imagery in the texts that deal with the Isis and
Osiris myth, First Setne largely avoids dwelling on the erotic aspects of the
relationship between Naneferkaptah and Ihweret, pointing out only that at the very
beginning of their marriage:
He (scil., Naneferkaptah) slept with me on that very night; he found me [very
pleasing; he slept] with me over and over again, and each of us loved the
other.116
The story goes on to imply that Ihweret became pregnant almost immediately, and
from now on there is no overt statement about the sexual aspect of Ihweret’s
relationship with Naneferkaptah. This reticence may be for reasons intrinsic to the
structure of story itself: the strongly sexual relationship between Setne and Tabubue is
placed in contrast to the relationship of Ihweret and Naneferkaptah, in which the
feminine roles of sister and mother are fore-fronted. While Ihet can certainly be
identified with Hathor, Ihet is nowhere (to my knowledge) directly connected with
explicit sexual imagery in the way Hathor and Isis often are. It may be that Ihweret is
identified in the story with Ihet-weret, whose epithets often stress her role as mother
of the sun-god Re,117 precisely so as to present her Isis-ness in a way that avoids
drawing attention to her sexuality and instead emphasizes her maternal aspects.118 At
the same time, the name pleasingly complements the bovine connotations of the name
‘Naneferkaptah,’ and complements in an interesting way the name of the other major
character in the tale, Tabubue, as we will see presently.
116
First Setne 3.6-7. For the restoration “very pleasing” (as Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 455, though
without comment), note that the statement is framed emphatically: iir=f gm.t=y [ ... ], which suggests
the need for some adverbial expression in the lacuna; m-Ss, ‘very, exceedingly’ would fit the sense.
117
See Hornung, Himmelskuh, 97.
118
On this aspect of the cow-image, see in general, J. Berlandini, “La déesse bucephale.”
384
STEVE VINSON
8-11 Isis active, Osiris passive; search for Osiris; mourning for Osiris; physical
protection of the corpse of Osiris
Although Naneferkaptah is by no means entirely passive in the main narration–he
appears outside of his tomb to interact with Setne, and in fact seems to have arranged
everything that happens in the story–nevertheless Ihweret’s active role in the tale is
unusual and bears comparison with Isis’ conspicuously active role in the Isis-Osiris
myth. In texts of the lamentations genre, it is Isis who is the active urger of sexual
union–necessarily so, since Osiris is dead.119 And before this union can take place, it is
Isis who must take the initiative to search (with the help of her sister Nephthys) the
land for the fragments of Osiris’ corpse, a search especially nicely expressed in a
speech by Nephthys in the early Ptolemaic P MMA 35.9.21, 11.13:120
I have crossed the flood; and I have penetrated as far as the sky for my brother!
My heart cries for him; my eyes weep for him! Oh, my powerful one (wsr,
punning on Wsir Osiris);121 I spend the days searching for you; I spend the
nights longing for you! Where are you? <Are you yet> alive?
With the body of Osiris found, Isis must then reassemble his members, and then–most
importantly–rouse Osiris from his slumber with the promise of renewed sexual vigor.
We have already considered one relevant passage from the Glorification Ritual for
Osiris:
I am Isis; there is no god or goddess who has done what I have done: Even
though I am a woman, I acted (the part of a) male, from the desire to make your
name live upon the earth.
Similarly, the Maronea Isis hymn is also explicit in making Isis the active sexual
partner at l.17, where it is said to Isis that “you chose Sarapis as your companion
(súnoikos).” Isis’ active sexual role may be compared specifically to Ihweret’s
119
On the passivity of Osiris, see Sternberg, Mythische Motive, 216 with n. 1.
Goyon, Papyrus d'ImouthPs, 39.
121
Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, Chapt. 37, in which Plutarch reports a tradition that explains the name
of Osiris as “Mighty;” Griffiths, De Iside et Osiride, 176-177 (text and translation); 442 (comment).
120
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
385
remarkably active role in arranging her marriage to Naneferkaptah. Although we learn
nothing in the preserved text of the couple’s courtship, we do see that it is Ihweret
who appears to convince the pharaoh to approve the marriage–first approaching him
through intermediaries (as Setne does in his attempt to seduce Tabubue), then finally
cajoling him in person. Naneferkaptah has no visible role in these events at all.
Furthermore, in First Setne, Ihweret’s physical location by the mummy of
Naneferkaptah, narrating the sad events that led to his death, inevitably recall Isis’
role as mourner by the bier of Osiris. And Ihweret’s specific purpose in telling the
story–to dissuade Setne from stealing the Magic Book from Naneferkaptah’s tomb–
resonates as well with Isis’ role as defender of the body of Osiris.
One other detail within Ihweret’s narration also resonates with Isis’ search for
Osiris, and her distress at being unable to locate him. When Naneferkaptah returns to
Koptos with the Magic Book, Ihweret describes herself (3.39) as
[sitting] above the sea of Koptos, not having eaten or drunk, without having
done anything at all, having the appearance of a person who has reached the
Good House (i.e., an embalming chapel).122
Ihweret’s description of her distress at her separation from Naneferkaptah, and of her
state at his return, bears comparison to many of Isis’ descriptions of herself and her
devastation at the loss of Osiris. See, e.g., Songs 6.32-37 (Faulkner’s translation123):
Darkness is here for us in my sight even while R‘ is in the sky;
the sky is merged in the earth and a shadow is made in the earth to-day.
My heart is hot at thy wrongful separation;
My heart is hot (because) thou hast turned thy back to me;
for there was never a fault which thou didst find in me.
The two Regions are upheaved, the roads are confused...
The darkness stressed here, the merger of sky and earth, and the upheaval of Egypt,
are all suggestive of cosmic catastrophe worse by far than Ihweret’s feeling of the
122
Griffith, Stories, 25; 104-105; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3: 130; Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 458459.
123
Faulkner, “Bremner-Rhind Papyrus - I,” 126.
386
STEVE VINSON
approach of death; but these passages are not dissimilar in the way in which each
frames the sister’s distress at the loss of her brother/spouse in terms of a (potential)
end to existence.124
12-14 Isis as instrument of justice or vengeance; Isis physically transformed; Isis as
seductress
A specific and special aspect of Isis’ role as the ‘active’ partner in the Osiris-Isis duo,
and as defender of her husband/brother and her son, is Isis’ role in assuring the
punishment and destruction of Seth and his confederates, the enemies of Osiris and of
Horus. This is only the most specific manifestation of Isis’ identity as Isis-Ma‘at,125 a
conception that appears in Greek Isis theology in the titles Isis -Dikaiosúne (‘IsisJustice’) and–more threateningly– Isis-Némesis. While this latter constellation has
been considered to be a purely Greek formulation,126 in fact Isis’ cosmic role in
helping to ensure the destruction of Seth,127 and her this-worldly role in bringing low
the arrogant and impious,128 suggests that this, too, is an Egyptian conception. One
particularly vivid description of Isis’ role as punisher of evil and defender of Osiris
comes in the Ritual for the Destruction of Enemies in which Osiris describes in direct
speech the invincibility of Isis:
My sister Isis is behind me, behind me; she prevented [for me?] that they carry
me away on this beautiful day, on which I have appeared in the nomes. [As for
those among them, who] [hurried] to heaven as birds, my sister Isis raged
against them with the bird-net, and [she has removed their] places [ ... ] my
enemies. She wrapped their arms and [their feet] with white fabric (?). She cut
short [their hearts through a cutting short; she cut away] their arms and their
124
Useful discussion of this passage in Assmann, Death and Salvation, 117-118.
Griffiths, “Isis as Maat, DikaiosunL, and Iustitia.”
126
See Griffiths, Isis-Book, 153; idem, “Isis as Maat, DikaiosunL, and Iustitia,” 262, with n. 47.
127
Note that Seth’s outright destruction and exclusion from the community of the gods is a
phenomenon of the Late Period; pharaonic material tends to stress the eventual reconciliation (Htp) of
Horus and Seth; cf. Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 41-42; 200; 389ff.
128
See again the tale of “Isis, the Rich Woman, and the Marsh Woman;” and cf. the remarks of Quack,
“Ich bin Isis,” 353-354. As Schulz points out, the impious dead also had reason to fear Isis’ punishing
aspect; see “Warum Isis,” 255 with n. 35.
125
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
387
legs ... she laid snares against them with the (?) bird-net. She chopped up their
bodies with (?) ... on their straw (?). The gods have lifted up what she did for
Osiris in Hw.t-wTs (House of Lifting-Up).129
A similarly vengeful Isis speaks for herself in the Triumph of Horus at Edfu (in a
direct address to Horus, urging him to attack the Seth-hippopotamus with a harpoon;
Fairman’s translation):
I, yea, I am the lady of the shaft.
I am the beautiful one, the mistress of the loud-screamer,
When it comes forth upon the banks
And gleams after the robber-beast,
Which rips open his skin,
And breaks open his ribs
When the barbs enter his belly.
I forget not the night of the flood,
The hour of turmoil.130
In the course of her combat against Seth, Isis is seen more than once to physically
transform herself, and to use trickery, including sexual entrapment, to thwart Seth’s
designs. To the extent that Ihweret is an Isis-like figure, then this raises the possibility
that–as others have conjectured–Tabubue is nothing other than a manifestation of
Ihweret. It is worth noting the parallelism between Setne’s encounters with
Naneferkaptah and with Tabubue. In Naneferkaptah’s tomb, Setne plays a board game
with Naneferkaptah for possession of the magic book.131 In the course of the
competition, Naneferkaptah strikes Setne on the head three times with the game
board, causing him to sink further into the ground each time–first to his ankles, then to
his phallus, and finally up to his neck. In Tabubue’s encounter with Setne, she
likewise makes three successive demands on her victim, each of which mires him
further psychologically. A natural interpretation of this parallelism may be that now,
129
Iri-iri papyrus, x+5.11-15. The translation here follows Burkard, Osiris-Liturgien, 65-66.
Blackman and Fairman, “Myth of Horus at Edfu – II (part 3),” 9; Fairman, Triumph of Horus, 104
(Act II.i.85ff); text in Chassinat, Edfou, 6:81.4-6.
131
First Setne, 4.28ff.; Griffith, Stories, 116-117; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:132-133; Ritner,
trans., “Setna I” 462.
130
388
STEVE VINSON
Ihweret has taken on Setne in a game of her own. Tabubue’s presence outside of the
tomb is no obstacle to this conclusion: Naneferkaptah is also able to materialize
outside the tomb and interact incognito with Setne.
The best known of Isis’ literary transformations are, perhaps, in the Ramesside
Contendings of Horus and Seth. In the first of these, Isis appears as an old woman to
convince the ferryman Nemty to transport her to the Island in the Midst so that she
can interpose herself into the deliberations of the Ennead.132 She next appears as a
young girl beautiful in all of her members, in which form she hopes to trick the
sexually-voracious Seth into damning himself with his own words.133 Just as Isis in
Contendings is able to use her sexual power against Seth, so too does Tabubue force
Setne to confront his own culpability. Tabubue’s near-nudity in this episode may also
be compared with the numerous Graeco-Roman representations of Isis/Hathor in
which the goddess has raised her dress to expose her vulva,134 or in fact appears
entirely naked.135 The same image of the raised dress recalls Herodotus’ description in
2.60 of women exposing their own genitals while traveling to the annual festival of
Bastet at Bubastis, which then returns us to First Setne’s specification that Tabubue is
a daughter of a priest of Bastet. An even closer parallel to Tabubue’s costume as
described in the tale would be statues of Ptolemaic queens, identified with Isis/Hathor,
which render their subjects in very revealing garments, sometimes all but invisible.136
132
Horus and Seth 5.6ff.; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 317; Wente, “Contendings of Horus and
Seth” 95.
133
Horus and Seth 6.4ff. Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 2: 317; Wente, “Contendings of Horus and
Seth” 96.
134
On the type, see F. Dunand, Terres cuites gréco-romaines, 136-138, cat. nos. 358-363; cf. also idem,
“pseudo-baubo.”
135
A particularly nice example is the Isis-Hathor statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art 1991.76; cf.
also Dunand, Terres cuites gréco-romaines, 125-135, cat. nos. 327-358.
136
For example, the statue Hermitage Museum 3936, variously identified as Arsinoe II or Cleopatra
VII; see Walker and Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of Egypt, 160. In this statue, the dress is indicated only by a
hem-line, a neck-line, and lines at the wrists; breasts, belly and pubic area are strongly emphasized.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
389
Isis’ transformations can, however, be more threatening, just as Tabubue’s
initial sexual appeal becomes a deadly trap for Setne. In the Ptolemaic P Jumilhac,
Isis undergoes three transformations that are connected with violent confrontation
with Seth and his allies. In 2.22 - 2.24 and at 21.23-25, Isis transforms herself into
Sakhmet and produces fire to incinerate the confederates of Seth.137 In Jumilhac 3.1 3.5, Seth in bull-form attempts to rape Isis, who transforms herself into a dog with a
knife attached to the tip of her tail; she escapes and Seth ejaculates on the ground.
And in 3.6-11, Isis (here also identified with Hathor) transforms herself into a snake
and destroys the confederates of Seth with her poison.138 Earlier, it had been Hathor
who became Sakhmet to attack mankind in the pharaonic myth of the Celestial Cow139
and in fact in Jumilhac 21.23-25, there is a triple identification between Isis, Hathor,
and Sakhmet. Isis’ role as punisher and avenger, then, is no less compatible with her
shared identity with Hathor than is her role as a symbol of sexuality. The femme fatale
Tabubue certainly seems to carry within her character precisely these Isis-Hathoric
traits: those of seductress, and those of avenger.
It may be possible to find some corroboration of all of these associations in the
name of Tabubue, which has never been satisfactorily interpreted, but which appears
to me to be an evocation of precisely those punishing, threatening aspects of IsisHathor that we have just discussed. The initial Ta- means ‘She of ...’ and is part of a
common pattern that typically includes a divine name. The element Bwbwe has been
most often interpreted as ‘The Shining One’.140 A god by this name is otherwise
unknown, however, and in his study of the text, F. Ll. Griffith suggested a connection
137
Isis is equated with Sakhmet only late in Egyptian religious history; see Hoenes, Göttin Sachmet,
191-192; cf. also the Demotic magical text P London Leiden Magical 20.2.
138
Vandier, Papyrus Jumilhac, 114; Sternberg, Mythische Motive, 145.
139
See Hornung, Himmelskuh, 39, l. 58; also n. 39 ad loc. on p. 55.
140
Griffith, Stories, 33, n. ad loc., and 122, with n. ad loc., comparing Coptic boubou “shine, glitter”
(Crum, CD 29a). Cf. also bwbw “Glanz” in Erichsen, DG 115, discussed further below.
390
STEVE VINSON
to Baubo, an old woman who figures in the Greek Homeric Hymn to Demeter.141 In
this narrative poem, Baubo exposes her vulva to the goddess Demeter to ‘cheer her
up’ after Demeter has lost her daughter Persephone to the underworld god Hades.
Recently, R. Jasnow has suggested a connection to the god BAby, who is connected to
raucous sexuality, though he acknowledges the orthographic difficulties.142 The more
common approach is to take the Bwbwe-element as an epithet; R. Ritner accepts the
interpretation of “She of the Shining One,” and thinks the reference is to either the
goddess Bastet or the goddess Hathor.143 In favor of the latter of these interpretations,
one might compare the numerous epithets of Hathor that involve connections to
gold,144 and Tabubue is indeed said to be wearing a large amount of gold jewelry
when Setne first sees her.145
Perhaps more tellingly, however, the rare verb bwbw ‘to shine’ is used of Tefnut
in the Demotic Myth of the Eye of the Sun, immediately following her transformation
from the more pacific ‘Ethiopian cat;’ the word here is closely connected to images of
fire and power.146 More recently, the word–otherwise unattested in published Demotic
literature–has been identified in the second of a pair of ostraca bearing a hymn to a
relatively obscure goddess, variously called NHm-any.t and ay, a patroness of the hrw
nfr, the ‘good day, festival.’ This term can characterize a time spent in feasting and
141
Griffith, Stories, 33, note to l. 3.
Jasnow, “Pharaoh Laughed,” 80.
143
Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 463, n. 27.
144
Leitz, Lexikon, 4:181ff. Cf. also the epithet “Mistress of Illumination” (nb.t sHD) which appears in
connection with Hathor already in the Coffin Texts; see the Hathor “aretalogy” at CT IV, 177f., quoted
in Quack, “Ich bin Isis,” 333.
145
First Setne 4.39; Griffith, Stories, 121; Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:133; Ritner, trans., “Setna
I,” 463.
146
P Leiden I 384 12.13-19; the phrase ir=s bwbw, “she shone, gleamed,” occurs in 12.19. Discussion
in Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy,” 76; see also Spiegelberg, Mythus, 34-35 and plate 11; de
Cenival, Mythe, 36-37; 97, note ad loc.; plate 11.
142
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
391
song, and not seldom also drunkenness and love-making–most of which characterizes
Setne’s hrw nfr with Tabubue.147 The hymn to ay begins:
(ls. 1-4) They say, ecstatically: “May she shine (bwbw=s)!” (The goddess) ay
will cast them into a state of desire(?),148 they being beside themselves (?)149
through (?) (the effect of) her body (?)150 on the festival day. May it be granted,
the appearance of ay.151 Let him drink, let him eat, let him copulate in the
presence of TAy.
As Depauw and Smith point out, TAy here is a Demotic writing of the noun ti.t,
‘image,’ an epithet of divinities like Hathor and Sakhmet, who are daughters of Re,
and manifestations of the Eye of the Sun, a quality that has both benign and dangerous
aspects:152
Goddesses who are identified with the eye of Re frequently have a double
nature, at certain times displaying a dangerous, destructive aspect, and at others,
a more benevolent or erotic one. These two aspects are often hypostasized as
separate deities, each being given a distinct name, although in reality they are
complementary parts of a single divine entity.153
Depauw and Smith here think of NHm-any.t as the benevolent side of the goddess,
while ay, like Sakhmet or Tefnut, is a violent, lion-headed divinity. This
147
Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy,” 76 with ns. 29 and 30 note the connection to Tabubue but
do not explore her meaning in this light.
148
s(.t) wxA: Depauw and Smith translate concretely “place of seeking;” see comment at “Visions of
Ecstacy,” 88-89.
149
iw=w wbA=w: apparently literally, “they being in relation to themselves.” Erichsen, DG 84-85 does
not record a spatial sense of wbA, but cf. Crum, CD 476a, s.v. oube, where a number of spatial uses,
including “along side of,” are recorded; this is the basis of my suggested translation here. If this is the
correct interpretation of the phrase, the expression would seem to bear comparison with the Greek
ékstasis ‘standing outside of oneself, ecstacy.’ Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy,” 74-75,
tentatively translate “they will take care of them.”
150
(n)-Dr.t X.t=s: Depauw and Smith translate “in the hand of her corporation.” I wonder if X.t=s ought
to refer to the body of the goddess (Erichsen, DG, 373-74 records a number of writings that lack the
flesh determinative, as here; the use of the suffix pronoun is at least consistent with this interpretation);
and, if so, if (n)-Dr.t ought to be taken in its instrumental sense of “through, by means of” (Erichsen,
DG, 644; Crum, CD, 428a; Quack, in his review of Res Severa Verum Gaudium, 181, suggests
similarly (n)-Dr.t <=s> Ha =s, “durch <sie> selbst”). The first ostracon of this pair reports (l. 4) that
devotees of NHm-any.t will see the mrAr.t, evidently a vision of the goddess induced by drink and/or
religious frenzy; see “Visions of Ecstasy,” 69-70, and 72 n. c. It could be that it is the physical
appearance of the goddess ay that drives her worshipers into their ékstasis, just as the sight of
Tabubue’s body incites Setne to the ultimate crime.
151
my ti=w s pA Sm ay: So Depauw and Smith. Quack, review of Res Severa Verum Gaudium, 181,
suggests here my ti=w n=y HD, “möge man mir Silber geben,” which is attractive paleographically but
difficult to explain semantically in the broader context of the hymn. The following Sm ay would then be
an independent optative, “May ay come forth!”
152
Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy,” 83-84, with n. 64.
153
Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy,” 84.
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STEVE VINSON
complementarity parallels the complementarity of Hathor and Sakhmet in the Myth of
the Celestial Cow or the ubiquitous complementarity of Bastet and Sakhmet.154 In both
the Demotic Eye of the Sun myth and in the Leuven ostracon, it is tempting to
interpret the verb bwbw ‘to shine’ as a reflection of Tefnut’s and NHm-any.t/ay’s
identity as projections of the power of Re. Tabubue’s connection to a generalized
‘Shining One’ and her simultaneously erotic and punishing role in the tale would
certainly appear to resonate with these and other fiery Eye-of-the-Sun manifestations
like Sakhmet, whose power is closely connected with the image of fire from the late
Eighteenth Dynasty onward;155 or like ay; or Tefnut in the Demotic tale, or at Philae,
where she has among her most important epithets ‘mistress of the nsr.t-flame’ and
‘mistress of the nbi.t-flame;’156 or Isis-Sakhmet as she appears in P Jumilhac; or
similarly, Isis in her various scorpion forms, in which she is also described as
daughter of Re, charged with protective and apotropaic functions, Re and described
with epithets connected to light. It may not be possible to conclude that Tabubue’s
name refers directly to any specific manifestation of the Eye of the Sun, though the
episode’s Memphite locale, and the status of Tabubue’s father’s as a priest of Bastet,
might be taken to point to Sakhmet.157 But the name ‘She of the Shining One’
expressed with a word that appears otherwise only in connection with Eye-of-the-Sun
manifestations, would strongly suggest that she is intended to resonate with this
complex of goddesses. That is: despite Setne’s own first impression, Tabubue is
quickly shown to be fundamentally unlike the transgressive women condemned in
154
Hoenes, Göttin Sachmet,168-171.
See Hoenes, Göttin Sachmet, 70-71.
156
Inconnu-Bocquillon, Déesse Lointaine, 238ff. Goyon, “Isis-scorpion,” 452-454.
157
Griffith himself suggested that Sakhmet is intended in the reference to Bastet here; see Stories, 33,
n. to l. 3.
155
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
393
Egyptian wisdom texts.158 Nor is she to be interpreted in a manner similar to entirelynegative female characters like the Ramesside wife of Bata in The Tale of Two
Brothers, or the lover and mistress of Truth in The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood.
And if Tabubue is correctly interpreted in relationship with the threatening aspect of
Eye-of-the-Sun divinities, then this again underscores her complementarity with
Ihweret, whose name evokes the Celestial Cow and the resolution of the conflict
between Re and humanity.
It is worth noting, however, that the role of eros in First Setne does not
precisely fit the model suggested here by Depauw and Smith, in which sexuality is
assigned to the ‘benign’ end of the spectrum of attributes characteristic of Eye-of-theSun manifestations. While Ihweret’s relationship to Naneferkaptah is of course
sexual, the more strongly erotic character in the tale is Tabubue, and–like Isis in
Contendings of Horus and Seth–it is precisely her sexual power that she uses to bring
Setne low. The reason for this may have to do with the tale’s comic intent and
structure. Though her name may be evocative of Sakhmet and her dangerous sisters,
Tabubue’s role is not to obliterate Setne, but to persuade him to give up his own
selfishness. Therefore the punishment she inflicts is, relatively speaking, light. Sexual
escapades are generally characteristic of comedy in all cultures; the lustful magician is
an attested motif in Egyptian folklore,159 and it is interesting to point out that lust for
158
See Lichtheim, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature, 48-50; 161-162; Troy, “Good and Bad Women.”
E.g., the fictionalized Nektanebo II in the Greek Alexander Romance, who masquerades as the god
Amun in order to seduce Olympias, the future mother of Alexander the Great; convenient English
translation by Dowden, “Alexander Romance.” On the connection of Egypt’s Nektanebo legends with
the Alexander Romance, see Jasnow, “The Greek Alexander Romance;” Ryholt, “Nectanebo’s Dream.”
Another anecdote of a lustful magician appears in a Christian anti-pagan polemic; see Kugener,
“Sévère, Patriarche d’Antioche,” 18, which includes an anecdote of an Egyptian magician named
Asklepiodotos who goes so far as to have sex with a statue of Isis in order to secure her assistance in
conceiving a baby with his barren wife. The precise procedure is not described, but in any case is not
efficacious; so Asklepiodotos and his wife secretly adopt the child of an impoverished priestess and
present it to their gullible fellow pagans as the fruit of a miraculous intervention by Isis (my thanks to
Nicole Hansen for this reference).
159
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STEVE VINSON
illicit sex and forbidden magical knowledge is precisely what initiates the humiliation
of the character Lucius in the ‘Ass’ tales of Apuleius and (pseudo-) Lucian.160
Finally, it may be worth considering the name Ta-Bwy (?), which it may be
possible to read in Demotic Chronicle 3.5.161. Even if correct, the relationship of the
name Ta-Bwy (?) to Tabubue is far from certain; but it is at least interesting to observe
that in the Demotic Chronicle, this Ta-Bwy (?) is equated with the uraeus, the
protective cobra that Pharaoh wears on his brow, and which is another manifestation
of the Eye of Re.162
15 Maternal imagery
If First Setne could be said to have a narrative or aesthetic flaw, it might be the
character of Merib, the son of Ihweret and Naneferkaptah. As a character, he is
completely colorless, and–so one might think–could have been eliminated from the
tale with little loss. But this is not quite correct. Merib’s importance in the tale has
nothing to do with anything that he does, which is little more than die. This death may
add to the pathos of the story as a whole, but Merib’s real function is to confer on
Ihweret the status of motherhood, and thus complete the expected triadic structure of
the family of Ihweret and Naneferkaptah. Maternal imagery is an essential aspect of
Isis’ identity; in First Setne, Ihweret and her son Merib are specifically identified with
160
Cf. the remarks of Griffiths, Isis-Book, 47ff. (on the ambivalence of magic in the Golden Ass); 24ff.
(on sexual excess as a ‘Sethian’ characteristic, and its relation to ass-imagery).
161
Vs. Spiegelberg’s tentative reading Tnt-tj-’Aj (?); see Spiegelberg, demotische Chronik, 11, with n. 1.
A more modern transliteration that reflects this reading would be Ta-Tiy; should this reading be correct
after all, one might be tempted to think of a connection to TAy, Ti.t, the hypostasized ‘image’ of Re;
compare again Depauw and Smith, “Visions of Ecstasy” 83-84, with n. 64. Spiegelberg in his note to
this passage conceded that the first sign following Ta appears to be a b, but considered that the
following vertical stroke would more likely belong with a ti-group. Felber, “demotische Chronik,” 79,
follows Spiegelberg’s first instinct in reading Ta-bi. It may be, however, that the vertical stroke in
question ought to be read as w, rather than taken as part of the b (this possibility emerged in discussion
of the “Demotic Chronicle” in Prof. Janet Johnson’s Demotic seminar at the University of Chicago in
the fall quarter of 2005; my thanks to Prof. Johnson for the opportunity to participate in her class). One
other apparent variant of the name Ta-Bwbwe.
162
LdÄ, 6: 865-66.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
395
Isis and Harpokrates by virtue of the fact that the pair are buried in Koptos, the
location (as the story repeatedly stresses) of a temple to Isis and Harpokrates.163
16 Demand for justice before a divine court
The image of the divine court is intrinsic to the myth of Osiris, and is ubiquitous in
the Ramesside Horus and Seth in which Isis is crucial in pressing the case of Horus
before the Ennead.164 The image is also central to Ihweret’s tale in First Setne.165
However, this aspect of the Osiris myth is completely inverted in First Setne. Here,
justice is demanded by the aggrieved party, Thoth. Isis is conspicuous in her absence,
and Ihweret’s Isis-like attributes are of no avail; for all the goodness that is ascribed to
this couple through their resonances with Isis and Osiris, Ihweret and Naneferkaptah
are nevertheless found to have fundamentally transgressed against the gods. Unlike
the melodramatic Osiris myth, in which the divine hero’s destruction is the
undeserved outcome of a wanton attack on ma‘at,166 Naneferkaptah is a literally tragic
hero: one who is all too human and who brings his own destruction upon himself. On
the other hand, as the tale is broadened out with the further development of the Setne
subplot, we see that Naneferkaptah and Ihweret have, themselves, become identified
with the divine order. Naneferkaptah is now Osirian, and he and Ihweret pass their
own judgment on Setne. But it is a comic judgment that is conspicuously painful and
embarrassing, not fatal, and that results in re-integration and reconciliation, not
destruction or exclusion.
163
See Dieleman, Priests, Tongues and Rites, 243, with n. 143. Feasting with the priests of Isis and
Harpokrates on Naneferkaptah’s and Ihweret’s arrival in Koptos: Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:
129-130; Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 457; on Setne’s arrival in Koptos, Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:
136; Ritner, trans., “Setna I,” 468. On Koptos as a location sacred to Isis, see Münster, Göttin Isis, 171173; Griffith, Stories, 23, n. to First Setne 3.25-26.
164
For discussion, see Assmann, Death and Salvation, 64-86.
165
See Jasnow, “And Pharaoh Laughed,” 77-78.
166
See again Assmann, Death and Salvation, 67; cf. also my “The Accent’s on Evil.”
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STEVE VINSON
Interpretations
Taking all of this into account, we can now to try to answer the hermeneutic questions
we posed at the beginning of this discussion: why is the tale of Naneferkaptah
presented through first-person narration in the voice of Ihweret, and why is Ihweret
such an obviously Isis-like character? I would suggest that, for an Egyptian author in
the Graeco-Roman period, the very ubiquity of the myths of Isis and Osiris in
literature of so many genres suggested an attractive narratology—natural types of
characters, natural types of conflicts, natural plot patterns—that could be adapted in
novel plots and contexts. Indeed, it may well have been the case that the myth will
have all but imposed itself on many would-be story-tellers. And when it did, the
prominence, and the many inflections, of Isis may have made it all but inevitable that
the female characters would be drawn more vividly than the male characters.
This is not to say that either Naneferkaptah or Setne are without interest in the
story. But Setne is, at the end of the day, a relatively simple stock character: his
essential identity as a bumbling anti-hero has antecedents in Egyptian fiction
stretching back to Wenamun and the Shipwrecked Sailor.167 If he is interesting in this
tale, it is largely because the author has put him in interesting situations—situations
whose real interest derives from the tale’s female characters, Ihweret and Tabubue.
Naneferkaptah, for his part, derives his interest primarily from the ways in which he
departs from the basic Osiris topos: in the embedded narrative, he partially negates his
own goodness through his willful defiance of the gods, and through his suicide; in the
framing narrative, he appears as a prankster. On the other hand, the reader
167
Cf. the remarks of Ritner, trans., ‘Setna I’ 453-454, though I would hesitate to place the character
Sinuhe in this category. Although the ‘Story of Sinuhe’ has in common with most other Egyptian
fiction a reconciliatory ending and a stress on re-integration, it is difficult to detect humor or a comic
intent in this story.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
397
sympathizes with him precisely because his character is in other ways fully consistent
with the Osiris topos, especially in his undying love for Ihweret.
But because of Isis’ active role in the myth of Isis and Osiris, Isis has a far
richer persona and more extensive range of characteristics and roles—mother, sister,
lover, tale-teller, mourner, defender, avenger, scribe, magician—than does Osiris or
any other figure in Egyptian mythology. It was, perhaps, a simple, straightforward and
even obvious procedure to transfer Isis’ active role and much of her personality to the
two Isis-like characters of Ihweret and Tabubue, each of whom takes a far more
extensive part in ‘working on’ Setne than does Naneferkaptah. Given the numerous
cultural precedents for Isis as mourner and as story-teller, the choice to make Ihweret
the focalizor and teller of the tale of Naneferkaptah may be best explained as a crucial
part of the author’s strategy to identify Ihweret with Isis.
And in pursuing this strategy, the author gains considerable dramatic purchase.
In the first place, in having Ihweret tell the story, the author is able to increase the
dramatic tension of the ‘Naneferkaptah’ subplot. Once we know that Naneferkaptah is
both brother and husband to Ihweret, then we probably begin to suspect that
something like the myth of Osiris is being recounted. In one way or another, there is
going to be an untimely death and an occasion for mourning. And once we realize that
Ihweret is far more far-sighted than Naneferkaptah and that she anticipates disaster
from the search for the Book of Thoth, we anticipate it as well, which we might not
have done had the story been told from the third person omniscient point of view, or
focalized through Naneferkaptah himself. True enough, a third-person narrator or
Naneferkaptah could have told us that Ihweret was against the expedition, but with the
tale focalized through Ihweret, we not only hear her words, we are invited to identify
with and even experience her thoughts and fears.
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STEVE VINSON
Focalization through Ihweret also serves to increase the pathos of the tale. If a
reader sees in Ihweret a reflection of Isis, then he knows how solicitous Ihweret is of
her brother/husband and of her child. And finally, there is the dramatic purpose of the
tale itself. The story is not told for Setne’s amusement (in contrast to the tales told to
Khufu in the Westcar cycle), or to comfort or edify him (as is the Sailor’s tale in the
Shipwrecked Sailor). Rather, Ihweret specifically hopes to persuade Setne to abandon
his quest for the magic book. And Isis’ purpose in telling stories is often to persuade:
to force Seth to give up his quest for kingship, or to force a scorpion’s poison to
retreat from the body of its victim. A character with Isis-like qualities would be the
natural focalizor for a tale with the dramatic purpose that Ihweret’s tale in fact has.
And in focalizing the tale in this way, this Isis-like figure would–as Ihweret in fact
does–speak as a witness and act as a defender of the main character in the story.
Context
The ways in which the tale of Naneferkaptah, and First Setne as a whole, depart from
the pattern of the classical Isis-Osiris myth are significant in establishing the story’s
historical position and importance. I have claimed more than once above that the
Naneferkaptah subplot is genuinely tragic, in that it narrates the story of a
fundamentally good man who, through his own stubbornness, defies the moral order
of the universe and suffers complete destruction as a result. One possible explanation
of this pattern is that it results from increasing awareness on the part of Egyptians in
the Graeco-Roman period of Greek tales with precisely such plots. But without
discounting this possibility, it may be at least as likely that Egyptian ‘tragedy’ is a
largely independent narratological development that responds to new structures in
religious experience and a more complex conception of morality and of the individual
in Hellenistic/Roman Egypt. As Assmann has pointed out, the classical view of moral
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
399
excellence, with its strongly communitarian basis, was now in decline; the judgment
of divinity was decisive and the judgments of society might be entirely erroneous.168
First Setne may be consciously ironic in its treatment of the theme of the disjunction
of surface appearance with truth, when Ihweret refers to the doomed Naneferkaptah as
a “very wise man” (rmT-rx m-Ss) invoking the rhetoric of Demotic wisdom texts and
their term for a man who lives in harmony with ma‘at and the divine will.169 There is a
similar disjunction between Setne’s estimation of the type of girl that Tabubue is, and
her true nature. A recognition (at the level of cultural discourse) that an individual can
come to an erroneous judgment as to the nature of the good may well lie at the root of
an indigenous Egyptian tragic pattern in the Graeco-Roman period.170
Related to this is the extent to which First Setne is of a piece with the growing
cultural importance of female ‘characters’ in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods in
Egypt. I place ‘characters’ in quotation marks because within this category I would
place not only purely mythical or literary figures, but also Arsinoe II and subsequent
Ptolemaic queens, whose public roles were often directly modeled on Isis and who, in
their public propaganda and in the religious cults founded to do them honor, drew on
168
See again Assmann, Death and Salvation, 410-414. To Assmann’s remarks on the ‘underworld’
episode in “Second Setne,” with its ‘first shall be last and the last shall be first’ theme, one might also
add that the Ptolemaic tale “Isis, the Rich Woman, and the Marsh Woman” treats this theme as well:
the poor woman becomes rich through her superior virtue, and the rich woman is required to abase
herself to prove her piety.
169
First Setne 4.3; Lichtheim, AEL, 3: 131; Ritner, “Setna I,” 459; on the term rmT rx ‘wise man’ cf.
Lichtheim, AEL, 3: 185; idem, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature, 45-48; 116-128; CDD, R-volume, 589.
170
Even in the Graeco-Roman period, however, it is not easy to identify other clear examples of
Egyptian ‘tragedy.’ One might suggest, as at least a partial example, the framing narrative of the
Ptolemaic “Instructions of aOnchsheshonqy,” in which an Egyptian finds himself forced to choose
between his duty to a friend and his duty to the king. The conflict is in some respects not unlike that in
Antigone (cf. Roche, Tragedy and Comedy, 74-76), though the worthiness of aOnchsheshonqy’s stance
might seem questionable to a modern reader. Moreover, unlike Antigone, aOnchsheshonqy does not
pay the ultimate price for his refusal to put the state before personal/social obligations, and there is no
indication that the pharaoh pays any price at all for his insistence upon his own exclusive claim to
obedience.
400
STEVE VINSON
many of the motifs and topoi that we have described above.171 And beyond this, we
also find in the late and Ptolemaic periods other instances of lengthy compositions
with first-person direct speech by females in one other new and important context:
funerary inscriptions, most famously the Ptolemaic inscriptions of Taimhotep172 and
Tathotis,173 or the similar Saite inscription of Isetemcheb.174 As Richard Jasnow has
recently pointed out,175 these are obvious, if partial, contemporary comparanda to
Ihweret’s long narration. While the narrations lack the dramatic features of Ihweret’s
tale and contain little if any imagery directly related to the Isis-Osiris myth, they do
mirror Ihweret’s narration in being extended first-person declamations by women, and
in being presented as voices from beyond the grave. Lichtheim sees these
compositions as a fusion of the Greek tradition of epitaph writing as well as the
Egyptian tradition of tomb autobiography,176 but one might also see in them a
reflection of Ptolemaic mourning compositions like Isis’ and Nephthys’ Lamentations
or Songs, with the female mourner here merged with the dear departed.
This observation also raises the question of how far First Setne’s interest in the
feminine may be compared with Greek tales or plots that feature prominent female
characters. Here we can point to three distinct phases in the development of the
female literary persona in ancient Greek literature: characters like Antigone or
Lysistrata from Classical Greek literature; women from the New Comedy known from
the Ptolemaic period itself; and the heroines of the Greek romances or novels that
mainly date to the Roman period, but that likely have their roots in the Ptolemaic
171
The literature on this issue is extensive; Koenen, “Ptolemaic King as Religious Figure” is an
extensive examination of all related issues with much bibliography. On Ptolemaic queens more
specifically, J. Quaegebeur, “Cleopatra VII and the Cults of the Ptolemaic Queens” may be
recommended.
172
Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:59-65; Otto, Inschriften der ägyptischen Spätzeit, 190-194.
173
Vittmann, “Autobiographie der Tathotis.”
174
Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3:58-59; Otto, Inschriften der ägyptischen Spätzeit 187-188.
175
Jasnow, “Pharaoh Laughed,” 74, with n. 79.
176
Lichtheim, ed. and trans., AEL, 3: 6-7.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
401
period.177 To the extent that the ‘Naneferkaptah’ subplot is correctly characterized as
‘tragic,’ then it is at least worth considering how far Ihweret’s character might be seen
as a reflection of the prominence of female characters in Greek tragedy.
But the more compelling comparison between First Setne and Greek literature
is with Roman-era Greek novels–which suggests that First Setne (and Demotic
literature more broadly) will have exerted more influence on Greek story-telling than
the other way around. It has been repeatedly noted that the Greek novel strongly
stresses feminine characters and romantic, mutual love.178 And it has been pointed out
more than once that, at least in a general way, the loving pair of Ihweret and
Naneferkaptah in First Setne bears comparison with the canonical protagonists of
Greek novels–typically a loving, faithful young couple who had fallen in love at first
sight.179 The other element of First Setne most often compared to elements in Greek
novels is Setne’s encounter with Tabubue, which has been compared more than once
to the encounter between the Egyptian sage Kalasiris and the femme fatale Rhadopis
in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika.180
Other features of First Setne that would appear to look forward to typical
elements of Greek novels include the strong emphasis on travel in the story, and
177
On this progression, see in general Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine, 20ff.
On the prominence of female characters in the Greek novel, see Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine;
B. Egger, “Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe;” Johne, “Women in the Ancient Novel.” On the
prominence of romantic love specifically in Greek novels, cf. Konstan, “Xenophon of Ephesus,” 62:
“The classical image of erōs was that of a one-sided, aggressive and transient passion. The lover was
likened to a hunter, and the prey was a young man or woman whose charms inspired the ardour of the
pursuer. The Greek novel inaugurates an ideal of erōs as the basis of a mutual and lasting union which
achieves its ultimate expression in marriage.”
179
Jasnow, “Pharaoh Laughed,” 73 with n. 68; Stephens and Winkler, eds., Ancient Greek Novels,
12ff., esp. p. 13.
180
See Montserrat, Sex and Society, 110; 114-115; Jasnow, “Pharaoh Laughed” 76, with n. 92;
Rutherford, “Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas” 205. Further discussion in my “They-Who-Must-BeObeyed,” forthcoming. On femmes fatales in the Greek novels, see Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine,
102ff.
178
402
STEVE VINSON
especially travel by boat;181 the prominence of the specific locales of Memphis and
Koptos, which are also featured prominently in a number of Greek novels;182 and the
general theme of metabolé, or change in fortune. As Ruiz-Montero points out, Greek
tragedy has its hero fall from happiness to ruin, which certainly characterizes the
Naneferkaptah subplot taken in isolation; but Greek novels trace a fall from, but then
a return to, happiness.183 This is also the overall pattern of First Setne, which recounts
Naneferkaptah’s and Ihweret’s fall from their happiness together, through lengthy
separation (occasioned by death), to reunion in eternity. And the unusually complex
structure of First Setne, with its fully-worked-out embedded narrative and its unifying
ending, bears comparison with the complex structure of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, with
its embedded stories within embedded stories and its frequent shifts in point of view.
That said, the differences between First Setne and the Greek tales to which it
has been compared should not be underrated. For example: even though strong and
vivid contrasts between good and bad women might appear at first glance to be
central to both First Setne and to Greek novels, especially in Xenophon and
Heliodorus,184 there are important differences in the way First Setne and Greek novels
like the Aithiopika delineate their respective femmes fatales–differences that go to the
heart of the meanings of the respective tales. As I have tried to make clear, Tabubue is
ultimately a positive character, who appears in a comic episode. Her simultaneously
alluring and threatening aspects, and her thematic and dramatic complementarity with
Ihweret, have much to do with Egypt’s complex conceptualization of the intersection
181
On this as an aspect of Greek novels, see Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 343; cf. Griffiths, Isis-Book, 33ff.
(and often) on Isis’ connection to ships, shipping and the sea.
182
See Merkelbach, Isis Regina, 346; On Koptos, Memphis and Alexandria (not mentioned in First
Setne) as locales prominent in other Egyptianizing Greek literature, see also Dieleman, Priests,
Tongues and Rights 241ff.
183
Ruiz-Montero, “Rise of the Greek Novel,” 49.
184
Johne, “Women in the Ancient Novel” 199-201.
IHWERET AS FOCALIZOR
403
of the divine and the feminine–far less, if anything at all, with any contemporary
discourse in Ptolemaic Egypt on the proper place and role of real women in this
world. In contrast to this, the women of Greek novels are types that reflect social
constructs, not cosmic truths. The role of these femmes fatales is largely to emphasize
and define, in a negative sense, the perfections of the novels’ respective heroines. If
Tabubue or characters like her are in any way ancestral to melodramatic villainesses
like Heliodorus’ Arsake and Rhadopis, the Greek authors have transformed their
Egyptian ‘models’ into something else altogether, something more acceptable,
comprehensible, or entertaining to their own audiences.
It is therefore difficult to judge the significance and extent of the Egyptian
contribution to Greek fiction in the Hellenistic and Roman periods with any certainty,
and I hesitate to make here any detailed claims about texts other than First Setne.185
The origin of the Graeco-Roman novel ought in principle to be highly
overdetermined, and many of the streams of tradition that flow together in these
novels are clearly to be traced back to Greek sources: the traditions of historiography,
rhetoric, epic, and others. Neither can influences from non-Egyptian Near Eastern
cultures be overlooked.186 But it is striking to observe the extent to which First Setne,
and especially its ‘Naneferkaptah’ subplot, is a clear example of a complete
fictionalization and re-working of the myth of Isis and Osiris in an entirely Egyptian
context. First Setne clearly inhabits the same intellectual universe as that inhabited by
Egyptian ritual texts that thematize the myth of Isis and Osiris, but it also responds to
new cultural and intellectual developments in Hellenistic Egypt–ideas about Isis, ideas
about the nature of the individual, about the nature of morality. Perhaps in
185
For discussion of Demotic Egyptian fiction in the context of its relationship to the Greek novel, see
Tait, “Egyptian Fiction in Demotic and Greek” for a wider discussion of Egyptian literature generally
in this context, see Griffiths, Isis-Book, 20ff.
186
See Ruiz-Montero, “Rise of the Greek Novel.”
404
STEVE VINSON
consequence, First Setne appears to contain in embryo more than one element that
comes to typify Graeco-Roman novels.
Needless to say, even if these correspondences are evidence of real
connections between Egyptian tales and Greek novelistic fiction, First Setne itself
should not be viewed as directly ancestral to any particular Greek novel or romance–
at least, not any of those currently known to us.187 Even though First Setne appears to
us to be, in some respects, unique in Egypt’s preserved literary legacy, it is likely to
have been at least approximately representative of a larger genre, or genre complex,
that comprised tales with many of these characteristics. Demotic Egyptian tales like
First Setne may well comprise an important source–one among many–for some of the
basic structures, themes and images of the Graeco-Roman novel. But the real
importance of First Setne, as well as other Demotic tales both known and yet to be
discovered, is the way in which they illuminate the cultural and intellectual fabric of
their home culture: the still-sophisticated, still-vital culture of Ptolemaic and Roman
Egypt.
187
Rutherford, “Kalasiris and Setne Khaemwas” 205, argues that Setne Khaemwas may be the direct
prototype of Heliodorus’ Kalasiris in the Aithiopika. As with the parallels between Tabubue and Arsake
and Rhadopis, I would expect that if there is any connection, it would be very indirect and involve
substantial transformations as the character made the jump from an Egyptian to a Greek fictional world.
First Setne has, on the other hand, had a surprisingly active Nachleben in modern popular fiction and
cinema since its initial decipherment by Brugsch in 1867; see discussions in Ritner, trans., “Setna I”
454, and in my “They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed” forthcoming.
BILISTICHE AND THE PROMINENCE OF COURTESANS IN THE PTOLEMAIC
TRADITION*
Daniel Ogden
How do we know what we know about the various courtesans of the Ptolemaic kings?
The randomness and almost entirely fragmentary nature of the material surviving in
the tradition for them invites the immediate response ‘quite by chance’. It is indeed
appropriate enough to credit ‘chance’ (i.e. the sum of all the processes of retention,
selection, abandonment and destruction of texts and monuments that have intervened
between the ancient world and our own age) with the preservation or suppression of
data about the courtesans in the tradition. But how did that data get into the tradition
in the first place? It is likely to have done so because the kings either actively
promoted them and their image or heedlessly flaunted them. This chapter proceeds on
the basis that most of what we hear about the Ptolemaic courtesans, for good or ill,
comes to us because, at some point prior to their entry into the texts, the women were
indeed publicly promoted, in some shape or form, by their kings. It then asks whether
any significant pattern within a dynastic system may be detected behind such
promotion, and tentatively suggests that it may.
The Courtesans of Ptolemy I Soter
We can name up to three women who may have been courtesans of Soter, Thais,
Lamia, and, arguably Berenice, but, for different reasons, it seems that none of them
Abbreviations: PP = Peremans and Van’t Dack, 1950-81; SH = Lloyd-Jones and Parsons, 1983; Syll.3
= Dittenberger 1915-24.
*
406
DANIEL OGDEN
can be considered to have been publicly promoted qua courtesan by him. The
following fragment of Cleitarchus is our only key to Thais’1 apparently important role
in Soter’s life:
And was it not the case that Alexander the Great kept Thais, the Athenian
courtesan, by his side?2 Clitarchus says of her that she was the cause of the
burning of the Persepolis palace. This Thais, after the death of Alexander, also
(καί) married Ptolemy, the first one to rule Egypt, and she bore him Leontiscus
and Lagus, and a daughter Eirene, whom Eunostus, king of Soli in Cyprus,
married. (Athenaeus 576de, inc. Cleitarchus FGH 137 F11)
The other sources bearing upon Thais concentrate, in what is evidently a highly
fictionalised and dramatic fashion, on her role in the Persepolis story during
Alexander’s campaign.3 All the literary sources to name her support the simple
impression conveyed by Athenaeus and Clitarchus that she was a courtesan of
Alexander’s until the latter’s death, whereupon Ptolemy married her and began to sire
children from her. There is nothing here to suggest that Soter promoted Thais in the
role of courtesan. Not only do we learn nothing of her in her Ptolemaic context
beyond the facts of her marriage and maternity to three of Soter’s children, but
Athenaeus and Clitarchus imply that Ptolemy only knew her in the role of wife.
However, Bennett has recently contended that she was by Ptolemy’s side before 323,
with the wedding constituting a legitimation of a long-standing camp relationship, this
only becoming possible after Alexander’s death. His considerations relating to the
ages of her male children are fairly compelling: both were presumably adult at the
time that Lagus won his victory in the Lycaean games of 308/74 and Leontiscus was
1
PP no. 14723; Berve 1926 no. 359.
The speculation of Bevan 1927:53 n.3 that she was rather an Egyptian named Ta-Isis need not detain
us.
3
Diodorus 17.72, Curtius 5.7.2-11 and Plutarch Alexander 38. There is no mention of Thais’
involvement in the burning of the palace at Arrian Anabasis 3.18.11. If her role in it had been a
historical one, then it is possible that Ptolemy passed over it in silence in the history of which Arrian
made so much use.
4
Syll.3 no. 314 (Lycaean victories) B v line 7.
2
BILISTICHE
407
captured at the battle of Salamis in 306.5 This would mean that Lagus was born by
326 at the latest. Less compelling is his contention that the relationship began as early
as ca. 335 on the basis that her daughter Eirene was married to Eunostus of Soli in the
context of Soter’s conquest of Cyprus in ca. 320.6 Nonetheless, are we to infer that
Thais had been shared by Alexander and Ptolemy? Or is her association with
Alexander wholly fictitious?7 It perhaps remains possible to hold that she was with
Alexander until Persepolis in 330, whereupon she was transferred to Ptolemy.
The second courtesan associated with Soter, Lamia, is the single Hellenistic royal
courtesan of whom we know most,8 but unfortunately the light of history only begins
to shine upon her at the point at which she is detached from Ptolemy’s control or
employ by Demetrius at the Battle of Salamis in 306:
Not a single thing escaped Demetrius’ clutches from the hordes of [sc.
Ptolemy’s] servants and friends and women, which were moored nearby in
merchant ships, nor yet of his weapons, money and siege engines, but he seized
the lot and brought it back to his camp. Amongst these was the famous Lamia.
She had first attracted admiration for her skill, for it seemed hard to dismiss her
flute playing, but later on she became renowned for sex too. But at that point,
although her prime was past, and Demetrius was himself much younger than she
was, she captured his heart, conquered him with her grace and held him
enthralled to such an extent that she was the only woman he pursued, whilst
other women would pursue him. (Plutarch Demetrius 16)
It has recently been contended that Plutarch’s account here of her acquisition does not
license the supposition that she was Soter’s personal courtesan, as opposed to that of
5
Justin 15.12.
Bennett 2005 s.vv. ‘Lagus’ (son of Soter), ‘Leontiscus’ and ‘Eirene’ (daughter of Ptolemy I). The
dating conjectured for Eunostus’ career is compromised by too many weak speculations.
7
Tarn Alexander ii 47-8, 82-3, 324 contended that Alexander had no relationship with her, but the
vigor with which he pursued his agenda to desexualise Alexander in these pages is notorious.
8
PP no. 14727. The sources are: Plutarch Demetrius 10, 16 and 23-7 (including Philippides F25 K-A
and adepsota F698 K-A and quoting Lynceus of Samos and Demochares of Soli FGH 75 F7);
Athenaeus 101e (including Lynceus of Samos), 128b (including Lynceus), 252f-253b (including
Demochares FGH 75 F1 and Polemon F13 Preller), 577c-f (including Polemon F45-6 Preller and
Machon F12-13 Gow) and 614ef (including Phylarchus FGH 81 F12); Clement Protrepticus 4.48;
Alciphron 4.16 and 17; Aelian Varia historia 12.17 and 13.8-9; Diogenes Laertius 5.76 (inculding
Favorinus FHG iii 578 F8); Choiroboskos Bekker Anecdota Graeca 1395. For discussion see Ogden
1999:173-7 and 219-68, passim. The evidence for Lamia and her career in relation to that of Demetrius
career has now been subjected to detailed analysis by Wheatley 2003.
6
408
DANIEL OGDEN
one of his retinue,9 but this still strikes the current author as the most natural reading
of Plurarch’s text. But again it is significant that we learn nothing whatsoever of her
career at Soter’s court.
Finally, it remains possible that Berenice, ultimately the super-legitimated
mother of Philadelphus and Arsinoe II (whom we now know from the Milan
Posidippus to have been of Eordaean descent),10 first entered Soter’s bed in the guise
of courtesan.11 Philadelphus had first encountered her in the role of a lady-in-waiting
to his earlier-married wife Eurydice, and Pausanias asserts (albeit perhaps reflecting
subsequent Philadelphan propaganda) that it was a love match.12 The relationship
must have begun by about 316, since her daughter Arsinoe II was married to
Lysimachus soon after the Battle if Ipsus in 300.13 She was not only married by ca.
299, when Pyrrhus encountered her, but by this point the most influential of all
Soter’s wives.14 However, it should be stressed that the possibility that Berenice
passed through a phase of courtesan status depends upon (admittedly respectable)
modern inference: it is in no way projected by the ancient sources.
But none of this gets us very far in trying to understand Soter’s courtesans as
part of a dynastic system as such. Almost everything we know about Thais relates to
the period before Ptolemy entered Egypt, and probably to the time when she belonged
to Alexander. Everything we know about Lamia relates to the period after Demetrius
took her from Ptolemy. According to the strictest interpretation of the concept of a
9
Thus Wheatley 2003:31 and Bennet 2005 s.v. ‘Lamia’.
Posidippus no. 88 Austin/Bastianini.
11
Thus, most recently, Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 18; but at 29 she contradictorily contends that it
would have been out of the question for Philadelphus to marry his courtesan Bilistiche after the death
of his wife Arsinoe II.
12
Pausanias 1.6.8-1.7.1.
13
Plutarch Demetrius 31; cf. Bennett s.v. ‘Arsinoe II’.
14
Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4.
10
BILISTICHE
409
dynastic system, this only came into existence for Ptolemy in 306 at the point at
which he lost Lamia, had already been married to Thais for almost two decades, and
doubtless to Berenice for one decade.
Athenaeus’ List of Philadelphus’ Courtesans
We find a very different situation when we turn to the reign of Philadelphus, to whom
our sources attribute up to eleven courtesans in all, more than to any other Hellenistic
king.15 The starting-point for all discussions of Philadelphus’ courtesans is the passage
of Athenaeus (following on directly from that quoted above), which preserves two
important fragments, one from the Commentaries of Ptolemy Physcon, and one from
Polybius:
And the second king of Egypt, surnamed Philadelphus (Φιλάδελφος δ’
ἐπίκλην), as Ptolemy Euergetes recounts in the third book of his Commentaries,
had a great many girlfriends (ἐρωµένας), Didyme one of the native women,
extraordinarily beautiful to see, and Bilistiche, and also Agathocleia and
Stratonice, whose great memorial stood by the sea at Eleusis, and Myrtion and a
great many more, since he had a strong sex drive. In the fourteenth book of his
Histories Polybius says that many statues of Cleino, his wine-pourer, were
dedicated the length and breadth of Alexandria. She was depicted wearing just a
tunic and with drinking horn in hand. ‘Are not the most beautiful houses called
Myrtion’s, Mnesis’ and Potheine’s?’, he says. But Mnesis was a flute girl,
Potheine too, whilst Myrtion was one of the mime actresses, exposed before the
public. (Athenaeus 576ef, inc. Ptolemy VIII Physcon FGH 234 F4 Polybius
14.11.2)
Here we find mention of eight courtesans in all. What more can we know of these
women and the manner of their projections? For five of Athenaeus’ women we have
little or nothing to add to the information he gives us: Agathocleia,16 Myrtion,17
Cleino,18 Mnesis19 and Potheine.20 Some have thought that the Agathocleia of
15
Ogden 1999:221-2.
PP no. 14713.
17
PP no.14729.
18
PP no.14726.
19
PP no. 14728.
16
410
DANIEL OGDEN
Athenaeus’ list may represent a ghost of Philopator’s famous courtesan Agathocleia,21
but Physcon ought to have known what he was talking about, and if she did have a
separate existence, them some potentially interesting conclusions may follow (see
below).22 Myrtion is the only courtesan Athenaeus positively implies to have been
mentioned by both Physcon and Polybius. Athenaeus gives the same information
about Cleino elsewhere, at which point he also tells us that she was mentioned by
Ptolemy of Megalopolis in the third book of his Histories of Philopator.23 There is no
strong reason to identify her with the woman of this name, a daughter of one
Admetus, who dedicated silver statuettes of Apollo and Artemis at Delos before 279.24
Bennett seems to me to infer it improperly from Polybius’ recycled words that
Potheine (and presumably too ipso facto) Myrtion and Mnesis owned houses amongst
the finest in Alexandria.25
Of the remaining women mentioned by Athaenaeus here, there is rather more
to say about Didyme,26 Stratonice and in particular Bilistiche, the last of whom will
receive separate treatment below.
Physcon and Athenaeus describe Didyme as one of the Egyptian women, of
outstanding beauty. Her Greek name Didyme (‘Twin’) no doubt supplemented a
native Egyptian one (‘Hatre’?),27 and as Cameron has noted, the name Didyme,
together with its masculine equivalent Didymus, are frequently sported by ethnic
20
PP no.14732 . Cf. Bennett 2005 s.vv. ‘Agathoclea’, ‘Myrtion’, ‘Cleino’, ‘Mnesis’ and ‘Potheine.’
For the ghost theory see Mass 1946:74, Hauben 1975:290, Pomeroy 1984:53 and Bennett 2005 s.v.
‘Agathoclea’ (of Philadelphus).
22
Cf. Ogden 1999:248, 251-2.
23
Athenaeus 425e (including Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGH 161 F3 and Polybius 14.11.1); cf. Ogden
1999:223, 232, 239 and 260.
24
Thus Tréheux 1957 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Cleino’.
25
Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Potheine.’
26
PP no. 14719.
27
Ogden 1999:249; Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 25.
21
BILISTICHE
411
Egyptians.28 It is likely that it is she that is described by Asclepiades in the following
epigram:
Didyme carried me away with her eye. Alas, in seeing beauty, I melt like wax
beside fire. If she is black, what of it? So are embers, but when we heat them,
they glow like rosebuds. (Asclepiades PA 5.210 = Gow and Page 1965 no. v
lines 828-31)
The blackness of Didyme in Asclepiades’ epigram need not speak of anything darker
than an average Egyptian skin-colour, since the Greeks regularly referred to the
Egyptians as black-skinned.29 I think Cameron goes too far in constructing a more
anxious and contentious context for the poem, supposing as he does that the Greek
audience to the court poem on Didyme may have been critical of the liaison.30 This
poem highlights the important role of poets, whether ‘of the court’ or not, in
managing public perceptions of, and indeed no doubt basic awareness of, the royal
courtesans, and further examples of this will follow. It is in general impossible to tell
if this is rooted in any significant and serious interactions between courtesans and
poets, although one may well imagine them encountering each other on a regular basis
at royal symposia. It should be admitted that the notion that Asclepiades was himself
based, in any way, in the Alexandrian court depends upon no evidence more direct
than this poem itself. The Didyme poem might be thought to raise the question in its
consumers’ minds as to whether Asclepiades himself was celebrating, revealing or
hinting at a relationship between Didyme and himself, improbable as this may seem.
Cameron rightly points out that the poem speaks only of the impact of Didyme’s
beauty on Asclepiades’ emotions. But Machon’s Chreiai, for what they are worth
28
Cameron 1990:287-8.
The point is made at length by Cameron 1990:287-9, citing numerous examples. I do not regard his
speculations, 290, about Didyme’s eye being the more striking for standing out against a dark face as
plausible. Cf, also Pomeroy 1984:55 and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 19.
30
Cameron 1990:287-95.
29
412
DANIEL OGDEN
here, do portray a world of symposia in which the Antigonid Demetrius Poliorcetes
and the comic playwright Diphilus appear to share courtesans.31
Athenaeus and Physcon tell that Stratonice’s32 funerary monument used to
stand by the shore at Egyptian Eleusis. The monuments erected to courtesans
evidently had an important role in preserving traditions about them and perhaps
generating and developing new ones. Amongst Philadelphus’ other courtesans, we
may note that Glauce also had an inscribed tomb, Bilistiche had a temple (as well as
having her name on inscribed victory and canephorate lists), and Cleino had statues
throughout Alexandria (see the various dedicated treatments).33
We may have a further garbled reference to Stratonice from a scholiast to
Lucian. A passing reference in Lucian’s Icaromenippus “Ptolemy in bed with his
wife” is explained by the scholiast with “Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, took his
own sister Stratonice to wife.”34 This is obviously gibberish as it stands. Whilst there
may lurk behind this the information that Ptolemy took his courtesan named
Stratonice to bed with him, it is more likely that a copyist has substituted the correct
name ‘Arsinoe’ with the name ‘Stratonice’, since the scholiast goes on immediately to
talk of Stratonice, daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes and wife, in turn, of Seleucus I
and Antiochus I. The case for indentifying this Stratonice with Stratonice the wife of
Archagathus, the epistates of Libya,35 first made by Moretti and recently championed
again by Bennett,36 is peculiarly thin and depends upon no more than the coincidence
31
Cf. Ogden 1999:233-4, with the sou rces cited there.
PP no. 14733 and cf. no 14570.
33
For the association of Hellenistic royal courtesans with monuments more generally, and the role of
these in generating traditions about them, see Ogden 1999:262-5.
34
Scholiast Lucian Icaromenippus 15.
35
Known from SEG xviii no. 636.
36
Moretti 1965:173, Bagnall 1976:195 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Stratonice’.
32
BILISTICHE
413
of name.37 Nor need we be delayed by attempts to identify her as an otherwise
unknown daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes.38 The basis for this theory is a statue
dedication made by a Stratonice, daughter of Demetrius, to Arsinoe II:39 this text
manifestly refers to the same well-known Antigonid princess and Seleucid queen of
this name.40
Cameron tried to press further chronological data from the fragment of
Physcon’s Commentaries. His point was a simple one: since the courtesans here are
not listed in alphabetical order, they must be listed in a chronological one.41 This is
impossible to verify, because we have chronologically specific data of any kind for
one of Philadelphus’ courtesans, Bilistiche. Cameron had an agenda: he wanted to
push Didyme into the early part of Philadelphus’ rein so as to be able to identify the
same as a floruit for Asclepiades. This is all the speculation, perhaps, of an overordered mind. The courtesans need not be listed in any order at all, and if one is to
believe that they are, one may as well suggest, given the content of the gloss on
Didyme, the first in the series, that they are listed in order of beauty. Physcon would
surely have found it difficult to list the courtesans in chronological order unless the
role of royal courtesan had been formalised to the point of constituting an office, the
occupants of which might be recorded as such in the documents of the court. Such an
office need not have borne ‘courtesan’ vel sim. in its title. The favourite of the
moment may, for example, have been assigned a minor annual religious role (one
thinks of Bilistiche serving in the major annual role of canephore).
37
The identification is dismissed by Fraser 1956:54 and 1972:ii 427 n.676.
As Moretti 19765:173 and Bagnall 1976:195.
39
OGIS 14.
40
As Macurdy 1932:80 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Stratonice’. Huss 2001:201 n.89 now argues that OGIS
14 is a fake, largely because of the perceived difficulty of identifying the Stratonice it mentions (see
Bennett’s observations).
41
Cameron 1990:290.
38
414
DANIEL OGDEN
Potential Courtesans of Philadelphus Excluded from Athenaeus’ List
We also hear of three further potential courtesans of Philadelphus who are not
included in Athenaeus’ list: Hippe (likely), Aglais (unlikely) and Glauce (likely). For
all that, Athenaeus (elsewhere) remains the most important source of information
about the former two. What can we know of these? The principal source of
information about Hippe42 is a fragment of Machon Athenaeus preserves for us:
They say that Hippe the courtesan had Theodotus for a lover, who at that time
was Keeper of the Fodder. Once, she arrived late in the day at a drinking party
at king Ptolemy’s. For she always used to drink with him. So, excessively late
as she was, she said, ‘Dear old Ptolemy, I’m desperately thirsty. Have four cups
poured together into one big one for me to drink.’ Whereupon the king replied,
‘Into the drinking-trough, rather, for, Hippe, you seem to me to have devoured a
great deal of fodder’. (Athenaeus 583ab, citing Machon F18 Gow lines 43949)43
The tale is also recycled by Eustathius, who provides a little more context than that
offered by Athenaeus:
‘Hippe’, the name of a courtesan who, they say, took Theodotus, the one in
charge of the royal fodder, as a lover, and, arriving late in the day at a drinking
party, that is a symposium, at king Ptolemy’s, said, ‘Ptolemy, have four cups
poured out for me, and then poured into a big one’. But the king said, ‘Into a
drinking-trough more like, for you seem to me, Hippe, to have devoured a great
deal of fodder’. The king either mocked her in his drunkenness by making
reference to fodder, since her name was derived from ‘horse’, or by making
reference to Theodotus, the keeper of the royal fodder. When a horse is full of
fodder it is induced to drink a lot. And it is clear, that just as Hippe was named
from the horse... (Eustathius 1224.50 on Homer Iliad 21.79)
Neither of these tales makes it clear which Ptolemy is the subject, and for some minds
this in itself may be cause for suspicion. Some scholars have supposed it to refer to
Ptolemy IV, but, as Gow has demonstrated, the most likely floruit for Machon is in
ca. 260-50 BC,44 which leaves us to choose rather between Soter and Philadelphus.
42
PP no. 14725.
Cf. Ogden 1999:225-6, 259.
44
Gow 1965:10-11; cf. Ogden 1999:226. But Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Hippe’ now suggests that Machon’s
floruit was the later second century BC and that he was accordingly the contemporary of Philopator.
This is argued on the basis of the facts that an epitaph was written for him by the early second-century
43
BILISTICHE
415
Now, although Soter is (just about) known to have had courtesans, as we have just
seen, Philadelphus seems by far the more obvious candidate, not least because the
anecdote constructs as its setting a court characterised by luxury and wit. It should
also be said that whatever the date of composition, the fragments of Machon from
which a date of setting can be derived relate to the reign of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and
this again accordingly puts Philadelphus primarily in the frame. Most scholars
accordingly continue to prefer to associate Hippe with Philadelphus.45 We may also
add that the the discovery of the Milan Posidippus with its Hippika (nos. 71-88
Austin/Bastianini) indicates the interest in and exploitation of chariot racing by
Philadelphus’ court to a new degree, and confirms the impression that that is where
the anecdote takes its setting.46
There is a striking degree of over-determination in the joke. The king’s joke is
sufficiently justified by the fact that the courtesan is called Hippe, ‘Horse’. And the
use of her name in this way may carry innuendo, given the Greek use of horseimagery for sexual positions (kelês: see below).47 The character of Theodotus, keeper
of the fodder, seems to have been introduced in order to produce the same sort of
innuendo effect in a less sophisticated way. This confirms what we might in any case
have suspected, namely that there is a high degree of fictionalisation in this story.48
The degree of over-determination can perhaps be reduced if we assume,
historicizingly, with Gow, that the courtesan came to acquire the name Hippe
BC writer of epigrams, Dioscurides (but a mere literary exercise?), and that Machon was the teacher of
Aristophanes of Byzantium, whose floruit was ca. 200 BC.
45
Ptolemy II is advocated by Gulick 1927-41 ad loc., Gow 1965:10-11 and ad loc. and Ogden
1999:235 (cf. 261). Bouché-Leclerq 1903-7:i 331, Otto 1913 and Peremans and Van’t Dack 1950-81
no. 14725 prefer Ptolemy IV. Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Hippe’ discusses the woman under Ptolemy IV to
whom he ascribes the woman ‘probably’, whilst noting the attraction of associating her rather with
Ptolemy II.
46
Cf. Fantuzzi 2004 and Kosmetatou 2004b on the Hippika.
47
Cf. Ogden 1999:260.
48
Cf. Ogden 1999:219.
416
DANIEL OGDEN
precisely because of her association with the keeper of the fodder. But this seems to
stretch belief.49 Attempts to identify Theodotus are limited to the hypothesis that
Hippe belongs with Ptolemy IV. The keeper of the fodder, chortophylax, was
doubtless an exalted royal office; Eusebius implies as such in his phase basilikos
chortos. If Theodotus was a historical figure then it may be that Hippe was shared
between him and the king.50
Aglais51 is described by Athenaeus and Aelian in closely similar terms (and
both cite Posidippus):
And a woman Aglais, the daughter of Megacles, played the processional march
on the trumpet in the first grand Alexandrian procession. She had a wig and a
crest on her head, as Posidippus tells us in his epigrams. She could eat twelve
pounds of meat, four choinikes of bread, and drink a flagon of wine. (Athenaeus
415ab, including Posidippus F3 Schott = no. 143 Austin/Bastianini = SH 702)52
Aglais’ trumpet is a non-sympotic instrument, it may be felt that there is, accordingly,
little basis for considering Aglais a courtesan at all. However, the attention paid to her
gargantuan appetite for drink is reminiscent of the projection of Hippe just discussed,
and we may also note the coincidence between Aglais’s four choinikes (a choinix)
normally being a liquid measure) and Hippe’s four cups.
Pliny describes the Chian hetaira Glauce,53 who is not mentioned by
Athenaeus, as lyre-player to King Ptolemy:
And we also hear of the love of the goose of Aegium, which fell in love with the
beauty of a boy called Amphilochus of Olenus, and we hear of Glauce, lyreplayer to king Ptolemy, whom a ram too is said to have loved at the same time.
(Pliny Natural History 10.51)54
She is mentioned twice by Philadelphus’ court poet Theocritus:
49
Gow 1965 on Machon F18 Gow lines 439-49.
Cf. Ogden 1999:235.
51
Not given a number in PP.
52
So too Aelian VH 1.26.; cf. Ogden 1999:260 and 267 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Aglais.’
53
PP no. 14718.
54
Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Glauce’ is sceptical about her having had any connection with Philadelphus, but
what are we then to do with Pliny?
50
BILISTICHE
417
Epigram of the bucolic Theocritus on the girl Glauce, a courtesan.55 What tomb
this is and who is beneath it the legend will tell you. I am the tomb of the
renowned Glauce. (Theocritus Epigram 23 = Palatine Anthology 7.262)
I can play too, and I’m especially good at the tunes of Glauce and those of
Pyrrhus. (Theocritus Idyll 4.31)
The scholiast to the latter passage similarly locates her in the age of Philadelphus,
although perhaps only by extrapolation from the fact that she is mentioned by
Theocritus, and adds a fragment of Theophrastus:
Glauce was Chian by birth, a string-player. She was born in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus. Theophrastus says that a ram fell in love with her. (Scholiast
Theocritus ad loc., including Theophrastus F567c Fortenbaugh)
The poet Hedylus, also of the age of Philadelphus, also mentioned her:
He [Theon] piped the drunken play-tunes (paignia) of the Muses of Glauce.
(Hedylus Gow and Page 1965 no. 10 apud Athenaeus 176c)56
It perhaps remains conceivable, pace Theophrastus, that Glauce was born fully
formed from the head of Theocritus. Whatever her historical dimension, she was
taken up avidly by the literary tradition, which, continuing after Theocritus and
Hedylus, cited her as a short-hand for the most beautiful kithara music.57 But it was
particularly taken with the notion that her beauty and her music should have
persuaded an animal to fall in love with her. The idea is first found in Theophrastus,
as quoted, but it has the ring of hellenistic poetry about it, and so it too may have
originated in Theocritus or a colleague. The developing tradition (with which the
55
The Palatine anthology’s titular explanation of the epigram is presumably reliable, although it may
have generated it from the traditions about Glauce that had developed in the meantime. It therefore
remains conceivable that Theocritus’ epigram was not intended to relate to the same Glauce.
56
For the dating and context of Hedylus, see Fraser 1971:i 558 and 571-5.
57
Thus Plutarch Moralia 397a. For her instrument as a cithara, see Plutarch Moralia 397a and 972f,
Aelian Nature of animals 1.6, 5.29 (including Theophrastus F567b Fortenbaugh) and 8.11 and Varia
historia 9.39 and Pliny Natural history 10.51. The scholiast to Theocritus 4.31 describes her more
vaguely as a kroumatopoiios.
418
DANIEL OGDEN
Pliny text quoted above should be included) opened up the range of Glauce’s animal
lovers: 58
I will accordingly pass over the goose that pursued a boy in Aegium and the ram
that conceived a desire for Glauce the lyre-player, for they are very famous and
I suspect that you have had your fill from so many accounts. (Plutarch Moralia
972f, De sollertia animalium)
I know that a dog fell in love with Glauce the lyre-player. But some say that it
was not a dog, but a ram, and others again a goose. And a dog fell in love with a
boy, whose name was Xenophon, in Soli in Cilicia. A jackdaw fell sick because
of the beauty of another attractive lad in Sparta. (Aelian Nature of animals 1.6)
In Aegium in Achaea a goose fell in love with an attractive boy, Olenian by
birth, by the name of Amphilochus. Theophrastus tells this. The boy was being
kept with the Olenian exiles in Aegium. So the goose used to bring gifts to him.
And there is nothing surprising in the fact that people fell in love with the lyreplayer Glauce in Chios, for she was very beautiful. But a ram and a goose also
fell in love with the same woman, as I hear. (Aelian Nature of animals 5.29,
including Theophrastus F567b Fortenbaugh)
In his poem Dardanica Hegemon speaks, inter alia, of Aleuas of Thessaly, and
in this he also says that a dragon-snake (δράκων) fell in love with him… If a
ram was overwhelmed by Glauce the lyre-player, and a dolphin with an ephebe
in Iasus, what it to stop a dragon-snake from falling in love with an attractive
neatherd, or the most sharp-eyed creature becoming a good judge of outstanding
beauty? (Aelian Nature on animals 8.11, including Hegemon F462 SH = FGH
110 F1)
Also, a late hellenistic vase apparently illustrates Glauce’s harp-playing in the act of
attracting the goose.59 Pliny, Plutarch and Aelian preserve Glauce’s animal lovers in
the context of series of exempla of animals of various species falling in love with
various humans, and this is no doubt the sort of context in which it thrived.60 This
goes some way towards explaining the variety of the animals with which Glauce is
associated: doubtless, for example, she acquired the ram by association with the tale
58
Cf. Ogden 1999:219, 259.
See Thompson 1964.
60
Cf. Maas 1912, Gow 1952: ii pp.83 and 546-7, Gow and Page 1965 ii pp.296-7, Fraser 1972:i 558,
573 and ii 818 n.165.
59
BILISTICHE
419
of Amphilochus of Olenus. If Theocritus’ epitaph was genuine, then it may imply that
she had a relatively prominent and elaborate tomb.
Bilistiche
But the mistress of Philadelphus to have left by far the most traces in the record,
documentary and literary, is Bilistiche,61 and she seems to have enjoyed a peculiar
prominence, although there is no particular indication of this in the AthenaeusPhyscon fragment. This is a timely occasion to review the evidence for her career,
because there is so much to disagree with in three recent treatments of her, those of
Cameron, Kosmetatou and Bennett. The first foists upon her a possibly Posidippan
poem that surely has little to do with her in fact; the second foists upon her a
speculative concocted biography, in which the ambitious woman suppressed her
Tyrian origins (which even so remain visible to us) and transformed herself into a
grand Macedonian lady of the court; and the third foists upon her a child, Ptolemy
Andromachou, on a wholly arbitrary basis.62 We have some nine or eleven extant
references to her overall, more, that is, than to any other courtesan with the exception
of the notorious Lamia.63 Furthermore, just about every one of these references seems
to mark her out as a rather exceptional courtesan.
61
PP no.14717.
Cameron 1990:295-304, Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 24-9 and Bennett 2005 s.vv. ‘Bilistiche’ and
‘Ptolemy Andromachou’. Kosmetatou’s claim (‘Bilistiche’, 18) that the discovery of the Milan
Posidippus has transformed our understanding of Bilistiche seems to me completely groundless: she is
simply not mentioned in these poems.
63
The sources for Bilistiche are: (1) Athenaeus 576ef (including Ptolemy VIII Physcon FGH 234 F4)
and (2) 596e; (3) Plutarch Moralia 753ef (Eroticus); (4) Pausanias 5.8.11; (5) Phlegon of Tralles (?)
Olympic chronology = FGH 257a F6 = P. Oxy. 2082 F6 lines 6-8; (6) Suda s.v. Σωτάδης; (7) Clement
of Alexandria Protrepticus 4.42; (8) Life of Sotades p. 114 Westermann; (9) Eusebius Chronicles i 207
Schöne. Probable (and important) references to Bilistiche are to be found at (10). P.Cair.Zen. ii 59289
and (11) P.Dem Zeno 6b. A possible (12) might be constituted by P. Hibeh ii 261-2, but it seems
unlikely that this refers to the same Bilistiche, although it is almost certain that this refers rather to a
woman named after her. All these references are discussed in detail below.
62
420
DANIEL OGDEN
Bilistiche distinguished herself in both secular and religious spheres. As to the
former, she won splendid Olympic chariot victories in adjacent Olympiads. The
sources for this will all derive ultimately from official victor lists.64 Pausanias tells
that she won in 264 with a pair of foals, whilst Eusebius tells us that in this year the
victor in the pair of foals was Philistiakus Maketi, apparently a corruption of
Βιλιστίχη Μακετίς, ‘Bilistiche of Macedon’:65
At a later point they added both the race for the pair of foals [sc. to the
Olympics] and that for the foal and jockey. They say that Belistiche from the
Macedonian seaboard was proclaimed victor in the pair, and Tlepolemos the
Lycian in the foal and jockey. The latter won in the 131st olympiad, and
Belistiche in the third before this. (Pausanias 5.8.11)66
And a fragment of an Olympic chronology in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, tentatively
assigned to Phlegon of Tralles, tells that the victor in the 268 four-foal chariot-race
was a courtesan of Philadelphus. Her name is lost from the fragment, but enough
letters of the woman’s ethnic survive to show that it read ‘Bilistiche the Macedonian’.
268 BC: [four]-foal chariot-race victory of [Bilistiche the Ma]cedonian (?). She
is the [hetaira] of Ptolemy Philadelphus. (Phlegon of Tralles?, Olympic
chronology = FGH 257a F6 = P. Oxy. 2082 F6 lines 6-8)67
The new Posidippus epigrams suggest that the queens of the Ptolemaic court at any
rate regularly entered Olympic chariot teams: epigrams imply this for Berenice I,
Arsinoe II and Berenice Phernophorus or Berenice II (nos. 78, 79, 82, 87, 88
64
Cf. Ogden 1999:265 and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 22.
Eusebius Chronicles i 207 Schöne.
66
Pausanias dates the victory to the ‘third’ olympiad before the 131st. If we count inclusively, we
arrive at the 264 Olympics, and so match Eusebius perfectly. If we count exclusively, we arrive at 268,
which coincides in year with the victory recorded in the Olympic chronology, but not in race: for the
Olympic chronology makes the 268 victory a victory in the four-foal chariot race. See Bennett 2005 s.v.
‘Bilistiche’.
67
Phlegon of Tralles (?) Olympic chronology FGH 257a F6 = P.Oxy. 2082 lines 6-8. The restorations
of `Bilistiche' and `Macedonian' are made by the Oxyrhynchus editor, A.S. Hunt, but Jacoby on
Phlegon ad loc. (p.852) did not have the confidence to print them, and they have been doubted more
recently by Criscuolo 2003:319-20. However, most do accept them as secure: thus Moretti 1957:136-7,
Fraser 1972:ii 210 n.206 (considering them certain), Cameron 1990:302 n.52 (noting that the traces of
the word ἑταίρα are faint, but that no plausible alternative suggests itself) and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’,
19-22, the last with a vigorous defence. Fraser 1972:i 210 n.206 gives 264 and 260 as the date for
Bilistiche’s Olympic victories, presumably by mistake: cf. Cameron 1990:298.
65
BILISTICHE
421
Austin/Bastianini).68 Female members of the Spartan royal families are also known to
have entered chariot teams in earlier days, Cynisca in 396 and 392 (who is now
actually found cited as a distinguished precedent for Berenice Phernophoros in the
new Posidippus, no. 87) and Euryleonis in 368.69
As to the latter, the religious sphere, Plutarch tells us that Bilistiche came to be
worshipped by the Alexandrians in shrines and temples dedicated to Aphrodite
Bilistiche:
Was not Bilistiche, by Zeus, a barbarian female bought in the agora, she for
whom the Alexandrians kept shrines and temples, on which the king, because of
his love, inscribed the words ‘of Aphrodite Bilistiche’? (Plutarch Moralia 753ef,
Eroticus)
It has been presumed that she was deified by Philadelphus upon death (and therefore
that she predeceased him, dying, accordingly, at some point prior to 246). Plutarch
implies that the practice of worshipping her continued in his own day.70 Clement tells
that she was buried under the temple of Sarapis on the Racotis promontory after she
had died at Canobus:
When he had received the figure [a statue of Sarapis] Philadelphus set it up on
the promontory they now call Rakotis, where the temple too of Sarapis is held in
honour, and the place is adjacent to the tombs [?]. His concubine (παλλακίς)
Bilistiche71 died in Canopus but Ptolemy transferred (µεταγαγών) her here and
buried her under the shrine just mentioned. (Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus
4.42)
The phraseology of the above passage suggests to me that Bilistiche had initially been
buried at Canopus, and that her coffin was subsequently transferred to Rakotis.
It is highly likely that she exercised religious roles of the highest importance in life
too. A Bilistiche, usually taken as identical with the royal mistress, served as the
68
Criscuolo 2003, Fantuzzi 2004, Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 27-30, 35 and 2004b and Stephens 2004.
Moretti 1957 nos. 373, 381 and 418; cf. Cameron 1990:303 and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 28.
70
Plutarch Moralia 753ef.
71
The accusative form in the MSS is Βλιστιχίν.
69
422
DANIEL OGDEN
eponymous canephore of Arsinoe II in 251/0. Some, particularly in recent times, have
doubted that the canephore is to be identified with the mistress.72 The canephorate was
perhaps the most exalted annual religious role for a woman in Alexandria.73 Ptolemy
IV Philopator’s courtesan Agathocleia was subsequently to take on this same role in
213/12 (as we will discuss below).74 This is particularly interesting because it is
probable that, as at Athens, Alexandrian canephores were supposed to be virgins. Yet
other evidence suggests that both Bilistiche and Agathocleia were established
mistresses when they held the office. Bilistiche was presumably well into her mid
30’s, if not over 40, in 251, since she had been winning races at Olympia since at least
the early sixties. Agathocleia was presumably adult at any rate when canephore
because she was already attested as owning ships in 215.75
Bilistiche interestingly constitutes the only example amongst all the known
Hellenistic royal courtesans, some fifty in all,76 laying claim to the Macedonian ethnic,
and this in itself seems to set her apart.77 The key evidence for her use of the ethnic
derives ultimately from the relatively reassuring context of the Olympic victory lists.
Thus Pausanias, discussing her 264 victory at Olympia with a pair of foals, asserts
that she came from the coast of Macedonia.78 We have noted Eusebius’ seeming
masculinising corruption of her name and ethnic to Philistiakus in his entry for the
72
P.CairZen. ii 59289 and P.Dem Zeno 6b.; Ijsewijn 1961 no. 35. Cf. Fraser 1950:117 and 1972:ii 210
n.206, Pomeroy 1984:57,Ogden 1999:262, Hazzard 2000:85 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Bilistiche’. The
doubters are: Edgar 1920:99, Criscuolo 2003:319 and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 20 and 33. The last
expresses doubt on the basis that Bilistiche the mistress would have been in her 30s at least by this
point, not a young virgin of the sort that normally took on the role, but this is precisely to beg the
question of whether a special exception could be made for such a woman.
73
See Pomeroy 1984:55-9.
74
P.Grad. 16 lines 1-3 etc.; Ijsewijn 1961 no. 74; cf. Pomeroy 1984:57.
75
P.Strasburg i 562-3 and ii 113; see Hauben 1975 and Clarysse 1976.
76
Catalogued at Ogden 1999:278-81.
77
Cf. Ogden 1999:244-5.
78
Pausanias 5.8.11.
BILISTICHE
423
264 victor with the pair of foals.79 And again we depend on the ethnic Μακετίς in
Phlegon’s fragmentary Olympic Chronology, together with the apparent designation
as courtesan, to identify Bilistiche as the woman named as victor with the four in
268.80
Her Macedonian ethnicity, or her claim to such, now seems to be further
confirmed by her name, the proper form of which has long been an object of
contention.81 It seems likely that ‘Bilistiche’ was the woman’s given name, since it
does not appear to have been typical of the names assumed by courtesans. Its
orthography was disputed, with the manuscript traditions of some authors preserving
variant forms: the manuscripts of Pausanias and Plutarch called her Belistiche,82 those
of the Suda Belestiche,83 while those of Clement called her Blistichis84 (not to mention
the bizarre gender-crossing corruption of Eusebius, Philistiakus, i.e. [?]
Φιλιστίαχος).85 But the Athenaean spelling Bilistiche is now confirmed by a
contemporary papyrus from the Zenon archive.86 It is today generally accepted that the
woman’s name, in this form of Bilistiche, represents a Macedonian-dialect version of
a Greek name.87 The first element presumably relates to φιλ-, ‘love’; Philip of
Macedon after all famously knew himself as ‘Bilippos’;88 and the Macedonian reflex
of the Greek phi in beta is similarly found in other well-known Macedonian names,
79
Eusebius Chronicles i 207 Schöne.
Phlegon of Tralles (?) Olympic chronology, FGH 257a F6 = P.Oxy. 2082 lines 6-8.
81
See the discussion at Ogden 1999:251.
82
Pausanias 5.8.11; Plutarch Moralia 753ef; cf. the ‘Tyrian’ Belistiche at P.Hibeh ii 261-2.
83
Suda s.v. Σωτάδης.
84
Clement Protrepticus 4.42
85
Eusebius Chronicles i 207 Schöne.
86
Athenaeus 576ef (including Ptolemy VIII Physcon FGH 234 F4) and 596e; P.CairZen. ii 59289. Cf.
Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 19.
87
Thus Dindorf 1833 s.v., Kalléris 1954-76:ii 329-461, especially 366 with n.2, and Masson 1985:11012, Hatzopoulos 2000:102 n.9, Tataki 1998:281 no.32. The attempts of Pape and Benseler 1911 s.v.
and Schneider 1913:1363 to relate the name to ‘roll’, seem desperate.
88
Plutarch Moralia 292e. Masson 1985:110-1 also notes Macedonian ‘Bilos’ for ‘Philos’ and ‘Bilis’
for ‘Philis’.
80
424
DANIEL OGDEN
such as Berenice for Pherenice, ‘Bringer of Victory.’ It is just possible, then, that
despite its corruption, Eusebius’ account of her name Philistiakus, preserves a trace of
an attempt to revert her name to its Attic or koine equivalent in the first syllable,
Philistiche, a form actually found in a first-century BC inscription.89 The most
probabe full etymological account of her name accordingly construes it as the
superlative stem φίλιστ- followed by the productive suffix -ίχα, found in a number of
other female names, particularly in Boeotia (Doricha, Deinicha, Hippicha, etc.).90
Seldom brought into the debates about the origin of Bilistiche and her name is the fact
that the Bilistiche who was canephore in 251 is given a patronymic in the Zenon
papyrus that tells us this, and her father’s name is Philon.91 It seems quite natural,
given the conservatism of Greek naming conventions, that a father Philon might name
his daughter Philistiche, although one might wonder why he is not calling himself
‘Bilon’. The Philon in question is hard to identify since the name was a common one
in the Ptolemäerreich. Kosmetatou has suggested that he should be identified with
Philadelphus’ admiral of this name who, Pliny tells us, brought topazes back from the
Red Sea and gave them to his mother Berenice.92 Two other daughters of Philon, both
with good Greek names, served as canephore shortly before and after Bilistiche,
Demonice in 257/6,93 and Meniste in 248/7.94 While we might be tempted to suppose
that these were the daughters of the same, clearly very honoured Philon, as was Edgar,
such a supposition raises difficulties of its own.95 Bilistiche would have been a woman
heading for middle age when she served. Were her sisters considerably younger than
89
Petrakos 1980:48 no.60 = SEG 31.477; cf. Masson 1985:112.
Cf. Masson 1985:112.
91
P.CairZen. ii 59289; cf. Ogden 1999:246.
92
Pliny NH 37.32; Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 22 and 33.
93
P.Hibeh i. 95.
94
PSI v. 521.
95
Edgar 1919.
90
BILISTICHE
425
she was, or were they doing likewise? How, then, did they qualify for the role? Were
they virgin though elderly, or were they themselves similarly courtesans of the king?
Even if the canephore Bilistiche is a different one from the royal courtesan, the fact
that we find a Bilistiche daughter of a Philon still constitutes an important indication
that the names were cognate, or at any rate were perceived to be so.
Against the ostensibly sober representations of Bilistiche as Macedonian
stands Plutarch’s claim that she was barbarian and a market-bought slave.96 If one
were to take this seriously, one might suppose that, as a (former) slave of such origin
she was given Macedonian citizenship for services rendered. The difficulty with this
supposition is that there was no national citizenship of Macedon, only citizenship of
its constituent cities, nor was the king she benefitted with her services in a position to
bestow citizenship of Macedon or any of its cities in any meaningful way, although he
might have thought he was. It is simpler to suppose that Plutarch’s claim is in fact a
piece of rhetorical colouring used in context to point up the incongruity of a courtesan
being honoured with shrines and temples. If one looks for an origin for such a
representation of Bilistiche, then it may perhaps have been found in Sotades’ On
Bilistiche, if that work was indeed a scurrilous attack upon her. This connection is
made by Kosmetatou in her 2004 article, at first tentatively, but by the end of the
article it has acquired the status of established fact.97
Scholars have long pursued Plutarch’s claim that she was a barbarian and
associated it with her name’s seemingly unstable orthography. In this way they were
96
Plutarch Moralia 753ef.
Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 20, ‘perhaps paraphrasing the jeering Εἰς Βελεστίχην by the ἰαµβόγρφος
Sotades of Maroneia’; 22 ‘Plutarch’s report according to which Bilistiche was nothing more than a
lowly barbarian nobody is confusing, and there is little doubt that it probably originated in Sotades’
derisive verses’; 30-1, ‘The few lines that Plutarch paraphrases probably set the general tone of the
text…’ (here too it is suggested that the version of her name transmitted in Plutarch’s MSS reflects a
deliberately ‘Tyrian’ spelling of it by the abusive Sotades); 32, ‘a cult of Aphrodite-Bilistiche was
established already during her lifetime, as Sotades [i.e. Plutarch!] scornfully pointed out’.
97
426
DANIEL OGDEN
able to license imaginative reconstructions of both her supposedly actual name and
her ethnicity: one theory made her an Iberian, comparing her name to that of Livy’s
Bilistages.98 Another theory turned her into a Phoenician Ba‛alyishthag. Wild as this
hypothesis is, it seems to receive a superficial degree of support from two papyri of
239/8 (from a period, accordingly, after the death of our Bilistiche, the terminus ante
for which is 246),99 in which a possibly Tyrian Belistiche, daughter of someone whose
name possibly begins with Mn-, makes loans at Oxyrhynchus.100 This woman’s Tyrian
ethnicity is a little insecure, depending on the uncertainly restored Τυρία in P.Hibeh ii
261, in which the first letter remains dubious,101 but perhaps invites us to read
something related to Baal or Bel into the first element of the name. On the basis of
these texts Kosmetatou has now suggested that the form Bilistiche consituted a semihellenisation or Macedonianisation of the Tyrian name for the purposes of social
advancement as she approached the centre of power.102 In response to the last one
might wonder why courtesans might have believed their social advancement to be
dependent in any way upon their names, and why, if so, she did not just take on an
established Greek name.103 Perhaps, rather the Tyrian father bore the famous courtesan
in mind when he reformulated for his daughter a traditional Tyrian name in their new
Graeco-Macedonian context.
98
Livy 34.10; cf. Bevan 1927:77, citing a suggestion put to him personally by Petrie.
I had accepted the identification with Bilistiche the mistress at Ogden 1999:238, but now judiciously
withdraw it. Cf. also Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Bilistiche’.
100
P.Hibeh ii 261-2. In 262 the surviving letters of the patronymic appear to be Μν...ίου.
101
P.Hibeh ii. 262; in the Τυ]ρία of P.Hibeh ii 261all three surviving letters are dubious.
102
Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 22-5, going far further than Masson 1985:110. The parallel she offers with
Didyme is not exact: Didyme is (potentially) a translation of a native Egyptian name, not a hellenising
remodelling of it.
103
Cf. the well phrased objections of Bennet 2005 s.v. ‘Bilistiche’.
99
BILISTICHE
427
But the ancient sources do explicitly offer Bilistiche a further ethnicity.
Athenaeus, referring to some mysterious writers of Argive history,104 says that she was
Argive and derived her ancestry from the Atreidai:
Bilistiche, the Argive courtesan was also of high repute, preserving the line of
the Atreids, as the writers of Argolica relate. (Athenaeus 596e)
Kosmetatou’s line of interpretation, we might note, sits peculiarly uncomfortably with
such an emphatic statement that she actually preserved the line of the Atreids. Some
sense can be made of this contradiction if we suppose that what was claimed for
Bilistiche was Atreid or Argive descent rather than actual birth.105 The former royal
family of Macedon itself, the Argeads, also claimed to be descended from the Argive
Perdiccas. Did Bilistiche therefore claim to be, or was it claimed on her behalf that
she was, a scion of the Argead family? Cameron observes of such a claim that it
would have been made naturally with no more justification than the Ptolemies.106 A
third ethnicity may be imputed to Bilistiche: Alexandrian. It is likely that, if she was
indeed canephore, then she will have had, first, to have received the citizenship of this
city.107
Bilistiche also received the attention of at least one poet. The Suda tells us that
Sotades wrote an εἰς Βελεστίχην. We can not know for certain whether the piece was
a graceful compliment to her or a scurrilous attack. The latter supposition might be
favoured by the fact that the Suda has initially introduced Sotades as an iambographer
before assigining this work to him.108 It may also be favoured by the fact that Sotades
is known to have abused Philadelphus’ marriage to Arsinoe II with the famous line
104
Gulick 1937 ad loc. guesses that Athenaeus might have in mind Dercylus, to whom he refers at 86f.
This idea is the view adopted by Cameron 1990:302.
106
Cameron 1990:30.
107
Ogden 1999:246.
108
Suda s.v. Σωτάδης, Κρής, Μαρωνείτης: ‘... the iambographer... His writings included an On
Bilistiche... Cf. Ogden 1999:235.
105
428
DANIEL OGDEN
preserved by Athenaeus, “You are thrusting your stick into an unholy orifice” for
which, Athenaeus tells us, Philadelphus had him dumped in the sea in a box.109
Cameron suggests that, despite Athenaeus’ explicit linking of this line with
Philadelphus’ execution of Sotades, it may rather have been for his abuse of Bilistiche
that he was in fact killed. He builds on the (unfounded) assumption that Sotades wrote
the line on the occasion of Philadelphus’ marriage in 275 and Launey’s precarious
argument that Sotades was not executed until 266, and so seeks a further offence on
Sotades’ part (which would admittedly coincide with Bilistiche’s racing floruit).110
Cameron also argues hard that a dedicatory epigram ascribed to both Posidippus and
Asclepiades in the Anthology refers to and mocks Bilistiche, and this view has
recently been endorsed by Kosmetatou and Bennett.111 Cameron reluctantly prefers the
candidature of Posidippus, both because he is known to have been alive still in 263/2,
and because of his own determination to associate the floruit of Asclepiades with the
earlier part of Philadelphus’ rein.112 The decision is a grudging one for him, however,
as he itches to ascribe the cleverness he finds for himself in the poem to his favoured
Asclepiades. The Posidippus ascription has since been rejected by Bingen and
Kosmetatou.113 The poem reads as follows:
Plangon dedicated this purple whip and these shining reins in the porch of fair
horses (εὐίππων), after beating the very warlike Philaenis in riding-horse
(κέλητι), just as the foals were beginning to neigh/get frisky in the evening
(πώλων ἄρτι φρασσοµένων). Dear Cypris, may you give me the unfailing
glory of victory, and render my gift to you remembered forever.
(Asclepiades/Posidippus Palatine Anthology 5.202 = Gow and Page 1965
Asclepiades no. xxxv)
109
Athenaeus 621a = Sotades F1 Powell. See also Kostas Buraselis’ contribution in this volume.
So Launey 1945, Cameron 1990:300-1 and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 35.
111
Cameron 1990:295-304; cf. Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 31-2 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Bilistiche’.
112
Cameron 1990:291-5, 303-4.
113
Bingen 2002:50 n.6; Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 31.
110
BILISTICHE
429
On the face of it the poem is a simple variation of the type that follows it in the
Anthology, ascribed to Asclepiades alone:
Lysidice has dedicated to you, Cyprian, this riding spur, golden goad of her
beautiful-ankled foot. With is she put many a supine horse through his paces.
Her thigh was never reddened as she gently vibrated herself, for she always
completed the course without the goad. Wherefore, she has hung the golden tool
up for you in the middle gate. (Asclepiades Palatine Anthology 5.203 = Gow
and Page 1965 Asclepiades no. vi)114
Ostensibly both poems are literary fantasies that merely twist a dedication of the type
that might be made by a victorious jockey to celebrate the prowess of a courtesan in
the sexual position of squatting astride her supine lover. This is the position known in
Greek by the term κέλης or ‘riding horse’ and in modern English by the term
‘cowgirl’. But Cameron argues that the Plangon poem is in fact a rather more
sophisticated and specific adaptation of poems like the Lysidice one, and that it is
designed to allude to Bilistiche and her Olympic chariot-racing victories with colts or
foals (πῶλοι) in 268 and 264. The case is as follows. First, the phrase ‘just as the
colts were beginning to neigh/get frisky (πώλων ἄρτι φρασσοµένων) seemingly
remodels Callimachus’ line ‘just as the horses are beginning to neigh’ (ἵππων ἄρτι
φρυασσοµέναν).115 Posidippus has substituted ‘colts’ to reflect the fact that it was
specifically in this category that Bilistiche won. Secondly, the poem constructs a
sexual competition between women notorious for being courtesans, Plango of Miletus
and Philaenis of Samos,116 in order to evoke the courtesan-status of Bilistiche. Thirdly,
Plango’s whip, being purple, evokes a royal context.117 Fourthly, the reference to the
114
Cf. Cameron 1981:294-5.
Callimachus Hymn 5 line 2; cf. Cameron 1990:298.
116
Cameron 1990:299. Plango is referred to by Athenaeus 558ab, 567ef and, in an protracted anecdote,
at 594b-d; see below on Anaxilas. Philaenus is referred to at Aeschrion 1 and Dioscorides 26. See Gow
and Page 1965:ii 140-1.
117
Cameron 1990:299-300.
115
430
DANIEL OGDEN
porch of fair horses evokes the temple Philadelphus dedicated to BilisticheAphrodite.118
Objections to such a reading crowd in. The only point of any potential
substance, to my mind, is the first one on the use of the word ‘colts/foals’ (πῶλοι),
but this can be more than adequately explained both by a desire to vary the
Callimachean model, if such it is, and by a desire to avoid jangling a ἵππων in line 4
with εὐίππων in line 2. And of course it is perfectly appropriate for the courtesan to
boast her prowess above all with younger and more vigorous lovers. As for the other
points, the purple of the third one was not exclusively associated with royalty, and
seems an appropriate epithet for a whip that stands as an alternate to the golden spur
of Lysidice, for whom no royal claim is made. These are both alike the luxury, nonfunctional toys of expensive courtesans. We can say nothing of the architecture or
decoration of the Bilistiche-Aphrodite temple of the fourth point, as Cameron is
compelled to admit, whilst suggesting that it would have appropriately been decorated
with horses given Bilistiche’s equestrian achievements.
But the most difficult point for Cameron’s case is surely the second one, that
Bilistiche is evoked by the poem’s subject matter of courtesans. One might have been
able to concur more easily if the courtesan names were mere ciphers, but, in their
pairing, they ostensibly denote well known established personalities within the
courtesan tradition. So how are we to know that Plangon is to be read, at some level,
as Bilistiche? Even if we could be sure that the poem alludes to a courtesan of
Philadelphus, what would direct us to Bilistiche as opposed to any of the other ten?
Indeed there is a sense in which Bilistiche is the most difficult of all Philadelphus’
courtesans to read into Plangon, in the face of the latter’s featured rivalry with
118
Plutarch Moralia 753ef; Cameron 1990:300.
BILISTICHE
431
Philaenis, because Bil-istiche/Phil-istiche’s name actually corresponds rather with the
rival’s name in its initial syllable. And again, we must ask if Plangon can specifically
be identified as Bilistiche, with whom are we to identify Philaenis? We are surely, in
that case, invited to identify her with someone. We should also note that the
association of the famous Plangon with a riding metaphor makes sense in itself in
terms of her tradition. A fragment of Anaxilas refers to a knight, a ἱππεύς, of hers
who stripped her of all her worldly possessions, dragging her furniture away with him.
Gow and Page note that the term ἱππεύς here may well have had an ‘equivocal’
meaning.119
And then there is the difficulty of the poem’s tone and purpose. For Cameron
the poem, with its scurrilous subject matter, is a scurrilous attack: the association of
the king’s mistress with a crude sexual position, and boasts about he same, can only
have one import. If so, one may ask, then how did the author get away with writing it?
Cameron again refers to the precarious case he has made for Sotades: if there was a
nine year gap between Sotades’ crude line on the marriage of Philadelphus to Arsinoe
II and his execution, then perhaps one could get away, for a time at any rate, with
such poems.120 But such a reading to my mind sits awkwardly with the graceful
address to Aphrodite in the final couplet, which tends to win the listener for the
dedicator. Admittedly, however, complexity of tone, discontinuity of tone and
ambivalence of attitude and purpose are the common rights of all poetry, and ones
exercised by Hellenistic poetry not least. And now, since the discovery of the new
Posidippus collection, with its numerous graceful complements to the women of the
119
120
Anaxilas F22 lines 8-10 K-A = Athenaeus 558b; Gow and Page 1965:ii 140-1.
Cameron 1990:300-1.
432
DANIEL OGDEN
royal family, I would venture to suggest that such an attack just does not look like this
poet.
But now Bilistiche has had more than a scurrilous poem foisted on her. She
has also been given, initially by Buraselis and most recently by Ravazzolo and
Bennett, a husband, Andromachus, and a child fathered by Philadelphus, one Ptolemy
Andromachou, to be identified with Ptolemy of Ephesus.121 These attributions are, it
should be stated categorically, without any secure foundation.122 The case, such as it
is, is as follows. Athenaeus mentions a Ptolemy, son of Philadelphus, killed at
Ephesus with his concubine, the man who has accordingly come to be known Ptolemy
of Ephesus.123 A fragmentary Copenhagen papyrus seems to have been occupied by a
series of potted biographies of minor members of the Ptolemaic family, including
Magas, the son of Ptolemy III. The first fragment seems to read as follows:
…CA]LLED OF ANDROMACHUS (-ἰκλησιν Ἀνδροµάχου)
5
Ptolem(y) called of
this [?]…
and…
Andromachus (Πτολεµαῖς
and…
[or Πτολεµαίς] έπίκλησιν
captures Ainos and many…
Ἀνδροµάχου)
and having fought a sea…him…
battle… Andros [?]…
overwhelmed in faction
by… he was cut down in
Ephesus… hatch[ing] a plot…
(P.Haunienses 6 lines 1-13)124
Since this Ptolemy was apparently killed at Ephesus he is likely to be the same as the
man mentioned by Athenaeus. The death may have occurred shortly after 246, when
121
Buraselis 1982:124-141, esp. 133, Ravazzolo 1996:132 and 131 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Bilistiche’
and ‘Ptolemy Andromachou’. Parts of Bennett’s case can be found also in Fraser 1950, Huss 1998 and
Tunny 2000.
122
Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 23 appropriately comments on Bennett’s case, ‘In my opinion there is not
a shred of evidence to support this elaborate reconstruction of events.’
123
Athenaeus 593ab.
124
The text is conveniently reproduced at Huss 1998:235.
BILISTICHE
433
the capture of Ainos place.125 The abbreviated phrase used by the papyrus to describe
the Ptolemy in question in what appears to constitute a section title, Πτολεµαῖο
ἐπίκλησιν Ἀνδροµάχου, means to tell us that the man was in some way passed off as
the son of Andromachus, even though he was in fact sired by Philadelphus. Bilistiche
is to be identified as the mother of Ptolemy Andromachou because she is
Philadelphus’ best attested courtesan, and because she was canephore in 251/0, the
same year in which a Ptolemy, son of Andromachus (without further qualification),
was eponymous priest.126
Again, the objections vie for attention. I will not waste time on the potentially
spoiling theory that the text refers not to a Ptolemy called ‘son of Andromachus’, but
to a Ptolemy ‘surnamed Andromachus’, with ‘Andromachou’ as a personal epithet of
a ‘Ptolemy’ in the genitive, even though the theory is not as risible as it may initially
appear. But it is ultimately too much to be asked to believe that this Ptolemy should
have taken on Andromachus as a surname, whilst another Ptolemy, the eponymous
priest of 251/0, evidently did bear the genitive Andromachou as a patronymic.127
So to the first objection proper. One is putting an awful lot of weight on a
whimsical interpretation of ἐπίκλησιν to deprive ‘Ptolemy called the son of
Andromachus’ of the paternity he claimed. Huss notes that such a usage cannot be
125
Huss 1988:235, 242.
P.CairZen. ii 59289 and P.Dem. Zeno 6b. Cf. Fraser 1950:116.
127
The point is elegantly made by Fraser 1950:118. See discussion also at Momigliano 1950:112-13
(building on a suggestion by Maas), Huss 1988:244-5 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Ptolemy Andromachou’.
Such a surname might be interpreted, in what might be considered decreasing order of probability, as:
first, a secondary name; secondly, an epithet to be construed ‘Fighter of Men’; and thirdly, an epithet to
be construed ‘Fighter in Andros’, on the partial model of Aristophanes’ famous term Μαραθωνοµάχης
(Acharnians 181). But the last appears to be lent a greater degree of plausibility by the fact that the
Copenhagen papyrus appears to speak of him fighting in Andros: ναυµαχήσας... Ἄνδρον. The battle
of Andros is usually presumed to have taken place in ca. 245-4. In this case the papyrus might well yet
refer to Ptolemy of Ephesus, but detach him completely from any man called Andromachus. In such a
Ptolemy-rich environment as mid third-century Alexandria, it is hardly surprising that Ptolemies,
whatever their origin, felt the need of extra defining epithets.
126
434
DANIEL OGDEN
directly paralleled.128 If we are to think that special emphasis does attach to the term
ἐπίκλησιν, what does such emphasis signify? Does it mean that he was known to be
someone else’s son, and had been adopted by Andromachus? Or does it mean that he
was given out as the son of Andromachus, but that he was suspected of having been
sired by another, perhaps in an adulterous liaison with the wife of Andromachus? The
fact that the papyrus apparently refers to the man twice in quick succession with this
phrase, first, apparently by way of a title section and then, apparently, in a marginal
marker between two columns of narrative text,129 seems to suggest that the phrase is
not being used to make a dark dig at parentage at the point of his introduction, but that
it is being used as an established defining phrase (such things being particularly
useful, of course, in the context of a plethora of Ptolemies). An Andromachus who
may well have been the father in question is identified as the father of the Berenice
who was canephore in 268/7, and he may have had a village named after him.130 If one
supported this general hypothesis of Bilistiche being Ptolemy Andromachou’s mother,
then one might then wonder whether this Berenice, the earliest datable canephore, was
the daughter of Bilistiche, but Bennett thinks this unlikely, since it would imply that
she was already old enough to be the mother of a near-adult daughter at what is
presumed to be her high period with Philadelphus.
Secondly, death at Ephesus need not in itself identify Ptolemy of Ephesus with
Ptolemy Andromachou: both Ptolemies could have died there by coincidence. In this
case, we would have no reason to suppose that Philadelphus had anything to do with
128
As noted by Momigliano 1950:109 and Huss 1998:243-4.
Thus Momigliano 1950:109.
130
PSI vi 639, P.Col.Zen. ii 114j = P.Zen.Pestman 38, P.Sorb. 2440. Cf. Van’t Dack 1961 and Bennett
2005 s.v. ‘Ptolemy Andromachou’.
129
BILISTICHE
435
Ptolemy Andromachou, whatever the reason for the application of the term ἐπίκλησιν
to him.
Thirdly, even if Ptolemy Andromachou is the son of Philadelphus, we have no
means whatsoever of divining who is mother was, be she queen or courtesan.131
Fourthly, the greatest objection to this hypothesis is the fundamental
implausibility of the chain of actions implied. Why would Philadelphus have a son by
a courtesan adopted by another man? Hellenistic kings in general did, admittedly,
have difficulties in managing their large and centrifugal families, sired from many
polygamously held and viciously competitive wives, but even in this context the
notion of a king having one of his own sons adopted by another person, and in this
case apparently a person of at best middling eminence, is simply unheard of. For
Fraser, writing in 1950, Philadelphus’ purpose was to bestow respectability upon his
child. It seems very dubious that such a concept is relevant.132
There have, inevitably, been attempts to identify Ptolemy Andromachou with
other of the stray Ptolemy-lets that haunt the prosopography of Philadelphus’ reign,
who include Ptolemy the Son (Ptolemy Nios), Ptolemy son of Lysimachus (his son by
Arsinoe II), Ptolemy of Ephesus and Ptolemy of Telmessus.133 Ravazzolo attempted to
identify him with the problematic Ptolemy the Son, who is indeed usually identified
with Ptolemy of Ephesus.134 More recently Huss has attempted to identify him both
with Ptolemy the Son and with Ptolemy son of Lysimachus, who in turn is usually
131
Thus Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 23, and as conceded by Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Ptolemy Andromachou’.
Fraser 1950.
133
Huss 1998:237 n.34 provides a most helpful table to chart the various identifications and
differentiations made between the various Ptolemy-lets by older scholars. The most traditional view has
been that ‘Ptolemy the Son’ was an older full brother of Ptolemy III, born, accordingly, of Philadelphus
and Arsinoe I. This was the view I adopted at Ogden 1999:79-80, and it has now been reasserted by
Tunny 2000. Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Ptolemy Nios’ identifies Ptolemy the Son with Ptolemy son of
Lysimachus. Buraselis (forthcoming) now reasserts the case for identifying Ptolemy the Son with
Ptolemy III.
134
Ravazzolo 1996.
132
436
DANIEL OGDEN
identified with Ptolemy of Telmessus. For Huss Ptolemy son of Lysimachus fled to
Egypt to join his mother, who prevailed upon Philadelphus to adopt him and to
bestow a co-regency upon him. His incentive for such a curious move, which
seemingly dispossessed his blood sons, was to lay can indirect claim to the throne of
Macedon, which had been Lysimachus’.135 Marc Domingo Gygax has attempted to
argue that Ptolemy the Son and Ptolemy Andromachou were illegitimate full
brothers.136
Sister-marriage and the Courtesans
Why should Bilistiche have been given, or allowed to develop, such a high-profile
role? No explanation may be needed beyond the king’s favour. This seems to be the
best explanation for the magnificent role that Lamia was able to enjoy under
Demetrius Poliorcetes, although I note that we do know for sure that Lamia did bear
her king a child, Phila, that was raised as his.137
I offer a tentative hypothesis. My starting point is the coincidence that
Bilistiche shares, probably, her peculiar prominence and in one respect her particular
honours, with Agathocleia, the notorious courtesan, specifically a psaltria according
to Jerome, of Ptolemy IV Philopator, whom Strabo actually defines by shorthand as
‘he of Agathocleia.’ Our evidence for Agathocleia and her antics,138 alongside those of
her brother Agathocles and her mother Oenanthe,139 is of a richness and colour sadly
lacking in Bilistiche’s case.140 Polybius and Justin recount at some length how the
135
Huss 1998:237-48; the case is critiqued by Tunny 2000:86-90.
Domingo Gygax 2002, building on Crampa 1969:120.
137
Athenaeus 577c; cf. Ogden 1999:176-7 and Wheatley 2003:34-5.
138
PP no. 14714.
139
PP no. 14731.
140
Polybius 14.11, 15.25-33; Strabo C795; Plutarch Cleomenes 33 and Moralia 735d (Eroticus); Justin
30.1-2 and Trogus Prologue 30; Athenaeus 576f-577a (apparently derivative of Polybius); John of
Antioch FHG iv p.558 F54; Jerome/Hieronymus In Danielem 11.13-14 = FGH 260 F45; Scholiast
136
BILISTICHE
437
three formed a debauched court clique who between them enslaved the weak-willed
Philopator, subverted the entire kingdom and murdered his sister-wife Arsinoe III
before being stripped and torn apart by the Alexandrian mob. Justin further tells how
the women appeared in public, attended by a retinue, to receive salutations, and that
the women initially concealed Philopator’s death so that they could plunder the
treasury. The particular point of contact between Bilistiche and Agathocleia is, as
mentioned, the canephorate, which an Agathocleia described as the daughter of a
Theogenes, Diognetos or Theognetos, undertook in 213/12.141 The family may have
been a complex one, because Agathocleia’s brother Agathocles is said to have been
the son of another Agathocles.142 Maas contended that Oenanthe had married twice.143
Pomeroy noted the perversity of hypothesising that woman named Agathocleia should
have been born to a Theogenes (etc.) rather than to an Agathocles.144 But Bennett now
proposes that Diognetos was a second husband who adopted the daughter of the
first.145 The other characteristic Bilistiche and Agathocleia shared was that they were
the courtesans of the first two Ptolemies to marry their full sisters. Both courtesans
might, it seems to me, have had an important role to play in sweetening the institution
of sister-marriage for the court’s Graeco-Macedonian consumers.
Philadelphus’marriage to Arsinoe II was childless, almost inevitably so given
that she was around 40 at its inception, and perhaps too it was sexless, but whether it
was or not, it would perhaps have seemed advisable to Philadelphus to give out the
message that, whilst he may have been having sex with Arsinoe for business purposes,
Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 1059; P.Haunienses i 6 F6-7 line 3; P.Strasburg i 562, 563 and ii
113(at Clarysse 1976); Ijsewijn 1961 no.71.
141
P.Grad. 16 and P.Hauswaldt 18a; cf. Ogden 1999:246 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Agathocleia’.
142
BGU vi 1262.
143
Maas 1946.
144
Pomeroy 1984:49-50 and 186 n.49.
145
Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Agathocleia’.
438
DANIEL OGDEN
he wasn’t having it with her for fun, at any rate. What was, or seemed to be, good
policy for the dynasty, may have been felt to be potentially disastrous for the moral
perception of the king as an individual. The bind is neatly expressed by the best
known poetic commentaries upon the sister-marriage. Plutarch refers in passing to a
nameless rhapsode who sung the line from the Iliad ‘Zeus called Hera his sister and
his wife’ at the marriage of Philadelphus to his sister, to defuse the revulsion.146
Theocritus too compared the marriage to that between Zeus and Hera in his
Encomium of Ptolemy.147 A fragmentary poem in the Supplementum Hellenisticum
may have made a similar point: it seems to mention Hera, Arsinoe and weddings.
Such comparisons received a visual counterpart in the monument set up by the
Samian admiral Callicrates at Olympia, which consisted of colossal statues of
Ptolemy and Arsinoe II facing the temples of Zeus and Hera.148 On the other side of
the debate, Sotades told Philadelphus that he was “thrust(ing) his stick into an unholy
orifice” (εἰς οὐχ ὁσίην τρυµαλιὴν τὸ κέντρον ὠθεῖς)149 Some believe that Sotades’
poem is alluded to in the large Callimachean fragment on Acontius and Cydippe,
where the poet makes a show of checking himself from speaking, apparently, about
the marriage of Zeus and Hera, and calls himself a shameless dog for venturing to
sing of something unholy (οὐχ ὁσίη).150 Perhaps this was why Philadelphus found it
advisable to give a high and semi-formalised role to a courtesan. Perhaps too that was
why, in a complementary strategy, he took on such a substantial number of courtesans
more generally (again, he is associated with far more than any other Hellenistic
146
Plutarch Moralia 736f; Homer Iliad 18.356.
Theocritus 17.131-4; cf. Gow 1952 and Hunter 2003 ad loc.; cf. also Hazzard 2000: 89-90.
148
See Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 24 and ‘Legitimacy’, 234.
149
Sotades F1 Powell (at Athenaeus 621a and Plutarch Moralia 11a); cf. Ogden 1999:79.
150
Callimachus F75 lines 4-5; cf. Pretagostini 1984:144-7, Cameron 1995:18-22, Hunter 2003:193.
147
BILISTICHE
439
king).151 In this regard, Sotades’ abuse of Arsinoe II and his abuse of Bilistiche, if
abuse her he did, may have been closely related: Bilistiche could have been seen as
part of the same sister-marrying project.
Now, on the hypothesis advanced, it makes more sense for Bilistiche to have
first come to her prominence prior to the death of Arsinoe. However, Cameron and
Kosmetatou have contended that Bilistiche was only brought to prominence after the
death of Arsinoe II.152 The date of the death of Arsinoe is one of the most contentious
dates in Ptolemaic dynastic history, with the options falling between 270153 and 268.154
Cameron favours 268, and on the calculations he himself uses, Bilistiche’s 268
victory will have followed Arsinoe’s death by as little as two months. But even if we
accept the 270 date for Arsinoe’s death, the chronologically-based evidence for
Bilistiche is so vestigial, and even on the most optimistic estimate confined to the
records of her 268 and 264 chariot victories and her 251 canephorate, that we have no
serious grounds whatsover for confining her prominence to the period after Arsinoe’s
death.
Ptolemy III Euergetes I could not follow the precedent of full-sister marriage
even if he had wanted to, for his one and only full sister, Berenice Phernophorus, had
been married off by Philadelphus to Antiochus II in 255 or 253.155 This famous and
provisionally successful act of dynastic destabilisation resulted in her murder in 246,
shortly after Ptolemy III’s accession. All that was left for Ptolemy III was a marriage
to his half-cousin Berenice II that was untroubling to Greek sensibilities about incest,
151
Ogden 1999:221-2.
Cameron 1990:301-2 and Kosmetatou, Bilistiche, 34-5.
153
Thus Minas 1994, Cadell 1998, and Kosmetatou, ‘Bilistiche’, 34.
154
Thus Grzybek 1990:107-12, Cameron 1990:301-2 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Arsinoe II’.
155
Porphyry FGH 260 F43 = Jerome In Danielem 11.6a; cf. Ogden 1999:127-32.
152
440
DANIEL OGDEN
and he seems to have made this marriage close to the point of his accession in 246.156
Accordingly, he had no need to flaunt his courtesans in public. It is potentially
inferable that he may have kept Oenanthe, the mother of Agathocleia, as a courtesan,
but she only comes to prominence alongside her daughter in the rein of Philopator.157
But when Philopator came to marry his full sister Arsinoe III and indeed proceeded to
sire Ptolemy V Epiphanes from her, the first actual sister-born Ptolemy, he perhaps
felt that he similarly had to give out the message that any sex he had with his sister
was strictly for the business of siring, and sought to do this by flaunting a high-profile
courtesan before the populace. The extent of the prominence accorded Agathocleia
may perhaps be judged by Polybius’ remark that Arsinoe III had to live with insulting
and disgraceful behaviour all her life.158
Here I turn again to Polybius’ account of the mob killing of Agathocleia,
during which, we are told, she exposed her breasts to the mob, and claimed that she
had suckled Ptolemy V with them.159 Perhaps this is, still, to be seen as no more than a
piece of rhetorical, melodramatic hokum, but could there be anything to a claim that
she had nursed Ptolemy V, which Polybius does not explicitly undermine? If it were
true, or were, so far as the mob was concerned, potentially true, then it would mean
that Agathocleia had herself been delivered of a child, presumably not so far from the
time at which Ptolemy V was born. Such a child, if male, may perhaps be mentioned
in P.Haunienses 6.160 Who might the father have been? Philopator is the only
candidate to whom we can point in the condition of our data. Bennett has recently,
156
Justin 26.3.2-8; cf. Ogden 1999:80-1 and Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Berenice II’.
This is the inference of Walbank 1957-89 on Polybius 14.11 and Hauben 1975:290; cf. Ogden
1999:242.
158
Polybius 15.25; cf. Ogden 1999:81.
159
Polybius 15.31; cf. Ogden 1999:81-2.
160
P.Haunienses F6-7 line 6
157
BILISTICHE
441
and perhaps playfully, offered what might be seen as a Gordian-knot solution, namely
that it was Agathocleia herself and not Arsinoe III that was the birth-mother of
Ptolemy V.161 This would mean, of course, that Ptolemy V was not after all the first
known sister-born Ptolemy, and this distinction would then pass to the children of
Ptolemy VI and his full sister Cleopatra II (i.e. Ptolemy Eupator, Ptolemy VII Neos
Philopator, perhaps a further, unnamed son, Cleopatra Thea and Cleopatra III).162 But,
on the assumption that Ptolemy V was indeed the sister-born son of Philopator and
Arsinoe III, might Philopator even have gone to the extent of presenting Agathocleia
as his sister-born son’s wet-nurse (whether or not she did take on this role) as a
further, albeit indirect, means of mitigating the act of incest?
Like Bilistiche too, apparently, Agathocleia was subject to abuse in her turn.
Polybius preserves the insults levelled at her and the rest of her family by Tlepolemus:
she and her mother were dismissed as sambuca-player and hairdresser, and
Agathocles as a former catamite of the king’s.163 Again, do these women attract abuse
precisely because their role is to make the indecent relatively more decent?
Agathocleia need not have been chosen lightly for such a role. She could have been
provided it for it by a family specalised in providing courtesans to the Ptolemies. Her
notorious mother, Oenanthe, is also said to have been Philopator’s courtesan,164 and
she may also, for chronological reasons, have been Euergetes’ courtesan before that.165
If the Agathocleia attributed to Philadelphus himself as a courtesan is not a ghost of
Philopator’s Agathocleia in the tradition, then she may well have belonged to the
161
Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Possible child of Ptolemy IV’.
See Ogden 1999:83-7.
163
Polybius 15.25.
164
Polybius 14.11.1 (at Athenaeus 251c).15.25.12, 15.29.8-14 and 15.33.8; Plutarch Cleomenes 33 and
Moralia 753d (Eroticus) and Justin 30.2.3.
165
Walbank 1957-89 on Polybius 14.11 and Hauben 1975:290; cf. Ogden 1999:242.
162
442
DANIEL OGDEN
same family. One begins to understand why Agathocles, brother of Philopator’s
Agathocleia, may have been represented as the beloved of Philopator too.
So what happens in the next generation of sister-marriage, when the full
brothers Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII both marry in turn their full sister Cleopatra II?
The slight evidence for courtesans in this generation, the last, as it happens, for whom
we have any named courtesans, might suggest that the custom of hiding-behind-thecourtesan was in its final phase. No courtesans are known for Ptolemy VI, but
Josephus and Diodorus tell us of one belonging to Ptolemy VIII:
After this Ptolemy saw a terrible vision that prevented him from harming the
people [the Jews]. Moreover, his dearest concubine, whom some name as
Ithaca, others as Hirene [i.e. Eirene] supplicated him not to commit such a great
act of impiety. He conceded to her and repented of the things he had done and
the things he had been planning to do (Josephus Against Apion 2.5).166
As he was celebrating the festival for the birth [of his son Memphites],
displaying his customary bloody cruelty, he ordered the execution of the
Cyreneans that had escorted him back to Egypt, who were now under
indictment on account of his concubine Eirene, because they had made free,
albeit fair, comments (Look in the book On marriages) (Diodorus 33.13).
Whilst these things were being done, his [Ptolemy IX Lathyrus’] brother
[Ptolemy Apion], begotten from a concubine, to whom their father had left the
kingdom of Cyrene in his will, died leaving the Roman people his heir (Justin
39.5.2).
It is not clear whether Eirene or Ithaca or another woman again was the mother of
Ptolemy Apion. I see no strong reason not to take Josephus at face value and to hold
that Eirene and Ithaca were one and the same woman, although Bennett has recently
differentiated them on the basis of a precarious chronological argument.167 The
important point is that Eirene was clearly an influential person in Physcon’s life and
that she was by his side at a time soon after his 145 coronation and his sister-marriage
to Cleopatra II, when her she would have been most desirable for propaganda
166
This part of the text is preserved only in the Latin translation of Cassiodorus.
Bennett 2005 s.vv. ‘Eirene’ and ‘Ithaca.’ He argues that the events Josephus describes as taking
place in 145 would make better sense in the context of his recovery of Alexandria from Cleopatra II in
127.
167
BILISTICHE
443
purposes, according to the hypothesis advanced here. Again we might wonder
whether Eirene attracted abuse, like Bilistiche and Agathocleia, and particularly at this
point, because of her supposed role in deflecting moral opprobrium from the sister
marriage.168 The note inserted by Diodorus’ excerptor, “Look in the book On
marriages”, refers the reader on to another Constantinian collection, now lost. What
might we have found there? The suggestion that Physcon married Eirene? Or perhaps
discussion of the role that Eirene played in the context of Physcon’s incestuous marriage
to Cleopatra II?
168
Justin 39.5.2. The objections of Bennett 2005 s.v. ‘Ptolemy Apion’ to this possibility seem
groundless.
THE GOD SERAPIS, HIS CULT AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE RULER
CULT IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT∗
Stefan Pfeiffer
When Egypt became the kingdom of the Ptolemies, they found a thousand-year-old
culture with a flourishing religiosity focused on the Pharaoh. In order to establish a
stable power base in the country, the foreign rulers had to respond to the needs of their
Egyptian subjects, who made up most of the population of their kingdom. For their
official public image, the Ptolemies therefore assumed not only the Hellenistic
portrayal of a basileus, but they also became Egyptian Pharaohs. On the bas-reliefs in
Egyptian temples, the Ptolemaic kings are depicted during sacrifices to the Egyptian
gods as native Pharaohs.
The obvious appropriation of pharaonic tradition occurred, on the one hand,
because of the basic necessity of adapting to the native environment; on the other
hand, the prerogatives and modes of public display accompanying the office of the
Pharaoh seem to have held a great attraction for the foreign ruler. The two colossal
statues, about 40 ft/12 m high, found during underwater excavations at Qait-Bey,
Alexandria, and said to be Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, demonstrate how much, for
example, the royal couple were concerned with an identification with Egypt and
∗
The present article was written as a part of the project segment A 1 “Creation and Development of a
Multi-Cultural Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt” in the SFB project 600 sponsored by the German
Research Association (DFG) “Foreigners and the Poor: Changing Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion
from Classical Antiquity to the Present Day” at the University of Trier. I am most grateful to Frankie
Kann for the English translation; for the discussion, I am grateful to the research centre Graeco-Roman
Egypt in Trier. The abbreviations of the quoted papyri can be found in “The 5th Edition of the
Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets” at
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
445
especially with the Egyptian kingship.1 Ptolemy is depicted here as Pharaoh, his
consort as Isis, both at the main entry harbour to Egypt. The first thing that foreigners
saw of the ruler upon landing in Egypt was thus his depiction as the Egyptian
Pharaoh. Accordingly, Ptolemy II placed a strong accent on the Egyptian perception
of his rule, not only for his Egyptian subjects but also for the Hellenistic oikumene,
Hellenistic Greek for ‘the inhabited part of the world’. The Greeks and Macedonians
who came to Egypt also seemed to have been quite impressed with the Egyptian
religion and its universe of deities. Baines, for example, has recently demonstrated
that, within the country’s administrative elite, there was very quickly no distinction
according to ethnic classification, because the inhabitants liked to switch between
cultures and religions.2 In addition, the immigrants were given the opportunity
through the interpretatio Graeca of viewing their popular Greek gods in equivalents
to the Egyptian gods. Thus, Zeus was the Egyptian Amun, Aphrodite the Egyptian
Isis. The cult of the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis, created by Ptolemy I or at least
strongly promoted by the dynasty, became of great importance for the leadership elite
of the kingdom and their identification with it.3 In the second generation, the
Ptolemies took a second approach to bind the subjects to them and to the kingdom:
Ptolemy II introduced an official ruler cult. In the course of Ptolemaic propaganda,
and based on Greek ideas, the monarch developed into a god king, who together with
his consort was accorded a divine cult. Ptolemy II did thus not in any way stop at the
religious expression of the Egyptian cult of the Pharaoh–before Ptolemy II, the
Pharaoh was never a god; only his office was divine; the traditional Pharaoh himself
never became the object of a deity cult.
1
Veïsse (2004), 193; Corteggiani (1998), 103; Empereur (1998), 76-77.
Baines (2004), 33-61.
3
Basic information: Huss (1994), 58-68; cf. Fraser (1960), 2, n. 1.
2
446
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
In this chapter, the god Serapis and his importance for the Hellenistic ruler cult
are to be an example of how the newly created official ruler cult was linked to the
Serapis cult from the previous generation in order to offer the subjects of various
ethnic origins a common focus for their religiosity. This close connection of the
Serapis and the ruler cult has already been noted in various places in research,4 but
nowhere has a connection between both phenomena been investigated. However,
before we can make a connection between the ruler cult and the Serapis cult, we need
to look in the following at the deity Serapis himself, his origins and his cult.
The Pharaoh and the Apis Bull
From time immemorial, in Memphis, the old capital of the Pharaonic kingdom, the
living Apis bull along with Ptah was accorded special veneration. Since the period of
the Old Kingdom, the cult of the bull thrived in an extremely close religious
relationship to the Egyptian Pharaoh.5 According to Kessler, the Apis led “to the
merging of the king with the transregional king-father-god, the creator god Ptah”.6
With the words of Hölbl, we may state that the king as bearer of the divine office was
theologically related to the Memphite Apis, when it played a significant role during
“the royal calendar and coronation festivals and, as city god on the king’s standard,
protected him at his enthronement.”7 Thus the Apis was a royal god to the fullest
extent.
The first and most important act conducted by Alexander the Great after the
‘liberation’ of Egypt from foreign Persian rule was to sacrifice to the bull: “Thence he
crossed the river and went to Memphis, where he sacrificed to the gods especially
4
Bommas (2005), 44; Brady (1978), 22-23; Fraser (1960), 18 and 24; Fraser (1972), I, 227; 263;
Grimm (1983), 73; Hölbl (1994), 94; Hölbl (1993), 25.
5
Thompson (1988), 199-207; Kessler (1989). See also Steve Vinson’s contribution in this volume.
6
Kessler (1989), 74.
7
Hölbl (1994), 73.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
447
Apis, and held athletic and musical games.”8 For the first time, we find Egyptian
divinity cult united with Greek cult elements–which is how we must view the games.
Not only Alexander the Great worshipped Apis, but the Ptolemies especially were to
become aware of the legitimising significance of Apis for their power.9 Thus they also
made particular use of the deceased Apis, that is, the Osiris-Apis. According to
Diodorus (I 84.8), Ptolemy I donated 50 silver talents to its burial.10
Osiris-Apis, Osiris and Serapis
When it died, every Apis bull was transformed into the deity Osiris-Apis.11 This deity
had already been worshipped under the name Osorapis by the Greeks living in
Memphis, the so-called Hellenomemphites of the pre-Hellenistic era.12 Ptolemy I and
his advisory staff probably then subjected the Osiris-Apis to a partial interpretatio
Graeca. The specifically Memphite deity was, however, not given the name of any of
the known Greek deities (such as Zeus), but Osiris-Apis received the name Serapis.13
We see the deity for the first time with this name in the sources since the reign of
Ptolemy I.14 With the appellation Serapis, the god Osiris-Apis bore a Graecised
Egyptian name, which was phonetically still recognisable as an originally Egyptian
name for this deity.15 The new name Serapis was in all likelihood promoted by the
8
Arrianus, Anabasis III, 1,3-4; see Hölbl (1994), 9.
See Assmann (1996), 414-415.
10
Thompson (1988), 212-265; Crawford (1980), 12-15.
11
For the different connections between Osiris and Apis, see Kessler (2000), 163, 172-188, who,
unfortunately, cites no sources that can confirm his thoughts; cf. also the remarks by Schmidt (2005),
292.
12
Hölbl (1994), 93.
13
Swiderek (1975), 674, based on Wilcken Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit, 86-87. Bommas (2005), 25,
thinks that the creation of the god can be traced to the Hellenomemphites living in Memphis, which is
also possible.
14
The oldest documentation for the god Serapis is a fragment from the writings of Menander (Körte, fr.
139), who died in 291 BC, cf. Fraser (1960), 2, n. 1; Weinreich (1931), 13-15; Vidman (1970), 31.
15
Despite doubts in the research, I think Mussies’ explanation is quite possible: that the initial sound O
in the name OSerapis was felt to be the vocative case by the creators of Serapis (Mussies [1978]);
Bommas is of the opinion that the O (W) in Osiris (Wsjr) could not drop out, that the name Serapis thus
could not be a short form for OSerapis at all. However, the Egyptian personal name Weser-maat-Ra,
9
448
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
rulers, for only in this way can the spread of the form Serapis and not in the form
Osorapis be explained throughout the oikumene.16
Yet the bilingual temple dedication plaques of the Serapieion in Alexandria
document the equation of Osiris-Apis with Serapis.17 Moreover, the cult temple of
Osiris-Apis in Memphis is described in the papyri as Serapieion, that is, as Temple of
Serapis.18 Naturally, the Serapis of Alexandria displayed other local characteristics
than those of Serapis of Memphis or, for example, of Kanopos,19 a peculiarity inherent
in most Egyptian deities. That also explains why the deity retained the old name
Osorapis especially in the Memphite Serapieion, there where the cult of the deceased
Apis bull held pride of place.20
A ‘simple’ interpretatio Graeca of the Egyptian god, that is, equating it with a
Greek deity, was not possible, however, and most certainly was not what the founder
of the cult in Alexandria, Ptolemy I, wanted. For Serapis, established as the
kingdom’s god,21 was to unite in its nature many more basic functions than any other
Greek deity could offer. Among these were its specifically Egyptian features:
presumably primarily the success and good fortune guaranteed by the Apis and
perhaps also the possible convergence of the kingwith Ptah accomplished in
completion of the ritual during the feast. Serapis could also have assumed from Apis
which can be rendered in the Greek as Zmanre, shows that this is at least possible (Lüddeckens and
Thissen [2000], 128 and 134). Bommas (2005), 25, in contrast, believes that the name Serapis should
be understood etymologically as the translation of the expression “Apis proclaims (the oracle)” (ser
Apis)–documentation, however, does not yet exist. Another possible but also controversial view is that
the Greeks took the O to be an article, this was most recently the opinion of Quack (2001), see,
however, the contrasting opinion of Wilcken Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit, 86.
16
In this case, Wilcken Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit, 87, seems the most convincing to me.
17
Cf. Tod (1942); Grimm (1998), 84-85; see also the Roman Demotic-Greek dedication to Serapis:
Vleeming (2001), No. 260, and the notice of the “great temple of Osiris-Apis which is in Rhakotis”:
Ray (1976), No. 3, verso 18-20.
18
Borgeaud and Volokhine (2000), 71-72; Bommas is of a different opinion (2005), 24.
19
Cf. most recently Kiss (2004).
20
See UPZ I 19,3 (163 BC); 54,22 (161 BC); 57,7 (164-161 BC); 106,10-11 (99 BC); 107,12 (99 BC);
108,10 and 22 (99 BC); a temple of Serapis in Oxyrhynchos/Fayyum would be called Osorapieion as
late as the 3rd century AD: PSI X 1128,22.
21
Cf. Fraser (1972), I, 227 and 263.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
449
the task as oracle deity.22 In addition, however, power over the underworld and the
guarantee of fertility for the land embodied by the pan-Egyptian God Osiris were of
unusual significance.
Despite the emphasis on the Apis aspect in the name, the Osiris element of the
deity in public and private perception of the cult clearly played the leading role.23 For
Egyptians, Serapis was often nothing other than an interpretatio Graeca of Osiris.
Thus they were able to render the Greek personal name Sarapion in the Egyptian form
with ‘The son of Osiris’.24 How close Osiris and Serapis were in the Egyptian
imagination can be demonstrated as well by a bilingual dedication. In Greek, the
inscription reads: “To Serapis, the great god, Paniskos, son of Sarapion.” The
Demotic ‘translation’ reads: “Koptite Osiris, Foremost of the Gold House, gives life
to Pamin, son of Pa-sher-Usir”.25 The Egyptian Pamin/Paniskos thus viewed Serapis
as an interpretatio Graeca for Osiris of Koptos, just as he rendered his theophoric
name “He of Min” in the Greek with “He who is consecrated to Pan”. But he not only
translated the name Osiris as the recipient of the donation with the name Serapis but
chose for the equivalent of his patronymic “Child of Osiris” the Greek form
Sarapion.26 Other documents show, however, that Osiris and Serapis were to be
viewed as two distinct deities. Thus they could occur side by side in dedications.27
Serapis is normally to be viewed as a deity all his own.
22
Cf. Bommas (2005), 25.
Cf. Stambaugh (1972), 37.
24
Lüddeckens and Thissen (2000), 232. However, the name could also simply be a consonant transfer
into Demotic (ibid., 933).
25
Vleeming (2001), No. 250 A and B.
26
On the identification of both gods in the Osiris sanctuary of Abydos, cf. SB I 169; I 1046; I 1053-59;
I 3731; 3742; I 3750/52; I 3776; Stambaugh (1972), 37-38; Fraser (1960). 6, n. 6; cf. also the grave
stele Bernand (1992), No. 92, where Osiris is identified with Serapis.
27
Stambaugh (1972), 50-51; see, for example, Vidman (1969), No. 3132-3, from Mysia: “Serapis, Isis,
Anubis, Harpokrates, Osiris, Apis, Helios”; see also OGIS I 97,4-7, which Fraser (1972), 253,
translates as “Osoros who is also Serapis”. I do not think it is possible to translate the Greek
conjunction “te kai” as an equivalent of “ho kai” and would prefer to translate “Osoros and Serapis”.
23
450
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
If we look at the Greek view of the deity, it can be said that, with this deity,
aspects of the father god and saviour god Zeus and the underworld god Pluto were
also merged with aspects of the fertility god Dionysos and the healing god
Asklepios.28 The perception of Serapis as a Greek deity occurred, however, only
among the Egyptians, who were never able to become reconciled with worshipping
him. For Greeks–and, later, Romans–the god was an Egyptian god: the consort of Isis.
Cult for the Deity
The cult for Serapis forged Greek and Egyptian elements into something new which
appealed especially to the non-Egyptian subjects of the kingdom but also to the
subjects of other Diadochi states.29 Primarily the appearance of the god was Greek;
possibly the cult statue created by Bryaxis was to become the model: a statue
depicting a seated man with a beard (as a mark of the father deity), wearing the
kalathos on his head (as a mark of the fertility deity), with the three-headed dog
Cerberus seated at his side, the guardian of the underworld (to indicate the underworld
deity).30 In addition, significant elements of the tradition of Greek Mysteries appear to
have been incorporated into the cult rituals.31 The annual replacement of the temple
priests in many cult sites outside Egypt can also be traced back to Greek influence.32
The existence of the temple servant office of a neokori could also indicate a strong
Greek influence.33 On the other hand, many typically Egyptian priestly titles are
represented in the Serapis cult, for example, the prophets, stolistai (responsible for
28
Stambaugh (1972).
Huss (2001), 245-247; Fraser (1960), 19: “I would suggest that, in creating Serapis, Ptolemy did not
have the Egyptian population in his mind at all, but aimed at giving the Greek population of Egypt ... a
patron deity.”
30
See Hornbostel (1973); Schmidt (2005), who rejects a creation by Bryaxis.
31
Bommas (2005), 31, even assumes that the cult for Serapis was wholly Greek, which I think goes too
far.
32
Vidman (1970), 37: “In the beginnings of the cult, there were, in contrast, often many hereditary
lifelong priestly offices”; ibid., 48.
33
Vidman (1970), 53-60.
29
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
451
clothing the deity), chanters and pastophorai (bearers of the deity’s dwelling during
processions).34 The Egyptian element in the deity’s appearance is indicated by the atef
crown in some depictions, a crown the bearded god can be seen to wear on coins since
the time of Ptolemy II.35 But the cult and festival trappings associated with the deity
likely assumed Egyptian forms of expression as well.36 Furthermore, the Serapis
priesthood seems to have been subject to an Egyptian training. For example, a sacred
law from Priene has been preserved from the end of the third century BC according to
which only Egyptians were allowed to perform cult proceedings for Isis, Serapis and
Anubis.37 On Delos as well, initially only Egyptians, descendants of a Memphite
immigrant, practiced as priests of the deity.38 And, finally, the union of Greek and
Egyptian elements can be found most significantly in the Serapieion in Alexandria,
which was a Greek temple, but which contained a Nilometer and the subterranean
galleries emulated from the Memphite Serapieion.39
The amalgam of Greek and Egyptian cult forms arising in such a manner are
repeated even in the legend of the founding of the cult, handed down to us in greatest
detail by Plutarch and Tacitus.40 They report that Serapis appeared twice to Ptolemy I
in a dream. According to the story, the deity had given the king the task of bringing
his statue located in Sinope on the Black Sea to Alexandria.41 The god was
worshipped in Sinope under the name Pluto. The king learned that the statue was of
Serapis after advice by the Egyptian priest Manetho and the Athenian Timotheus, who
34
Otto (1905), I, p. 115; Vidman (1970), 60-65.
Castiglione (1978), 208-232, pl. XIX-XXVII.
36
Kessler (2000), 208-211; Wilcken Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit, 92-95, is still important; he supposes
it to have been an amalgam of Greek and Egyptian cult forms; Borgeaud and Volokhine (2000), 75-76,
emphasise the strong Egyptian or Memphite relation to the Serapis cult.
37
Vidman (1969), No. 291.
38
Cf. Engelmann (1975); Vidman (1970), 35-36; Fraser (1972), 254.
39
Cf. McKenzie et al. (2004), 111.
40
Tacitus, Annales IV, 83-84; Plutarch, de Iside 28; cf. Fauth (1976); Scheer (2000), 260-266.
41
Cf. most recently Borgeaud and Volokhine (2000), 38-46.
35
452
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
was descended from the priestly caste of the Eumolpidae that conducted the
Eleusinian Mysteries. Whereupon Ptolemy had the statue brought to his new capital
city and had a new cult site erected where an ancient Serapis and Isis sanctuary had
stood. The god had therefore already existed; only his appearance in the form of the
statue was new. Ptolemy’s support handed down in this manner through the Greek
Mysteries expert Timotheus and the Egyptian priest Manetho may be considered as a
reaction to the efforts of the king to create a cult which united the tradition of the
Greek Mysteries with the Egyptian cult of the gods.
Serapis and the Greek Subjects
The earliest Greek inscriptions transmitted from Alexandria are dedications to Serapis
and Isis.42 For example, the following statue dedication was found in the Alexandrian
Serapieion, dating from the time of Ptolemy I:
Delok[les had it (i.e. the statue) m]ade. Aristodemos, son of Dio[..]os, Athenian,
had it (dedicated) to Serapis and to Isis.43
It is most probable that the benefactor belonged to the classe supérieure,44 so that the
inscription may be considered as documentation for the influence of the new cult on
the ruling elite.45 During the reign of Ptolemy II as well, there were two Alexandrian
dedications to Serapis. One is addressed solely to the deity,46 the second concerns the
endowment of a sacred precinct for Serapis and his cult companion Isis:
42
Bernand (2001), Nos. 1 and 2.
Bernand (2001), No. 2; incorrectly cited by Borgeaud and Volokhine (2000), 58, n. 92, as the
dedication of an altar.
44
Bernand (2001), 18.
45
Even the Fayyum yielded a dedication to Serapis and Isis, established by a Thessalonian soldier
called Aristophanes, son of Aristophanes. The stone is dated to the end of the 4th century BC (SB I
2596 = SEG XVIII 657 = XXIV 1207; for the dating, see Launey (1987), 216, n. 1).
46
See Bernand (2001), No. 4. Some date the inscription to the rule of Ptolemy I; see Borgeaud and
Volokhine (2000), 58, n. 92, with additional literature.
43
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
453
On behalf of King Ptolemy, son of Ptolemy und Berenike, the saviours,
Archagathos, son of Agathokles, the overseer of the (nome [district]) Libya and
his wife Stratonike, (have dedicated) the temenos [precinct] to Serapis and Isis.47
It is not surprising that the endowment of the temenos occurred for the health and
good fortune of the ruler, as Greeks often linked dedications to deities with the hope
for the protection and the health of the king. Serapis especially was doubtless popular
in this respect because of his healing function as the guaranteeing deity. The
dedication clearly shows that the cult for Serapis had already been taken up by the
Greek elite during the reign of Ptolemy II and that the Greeks not only worshipped the
deity with a cult but even erected a sacred precinct for the god out of their own
pockets.
It is remarkable, however, that, in the present case, a sacred precinct was
provided for by private citizens for Serapis as well as for Isis. In fact, no
documentation exists showing that the royal dynasty founded a temple at any time for
both deities together.48 The great Alexandrian Serapieion, for example, was a temple
dedicated to Serapis alone but one where naturally other deities–primarily Isis and
Harpokrates–were worshipped in side chapels. The king viewed Serapis primarily as
an independent deity perhaps because he wished to emphasise the Apis aspect of the
god.49 The Greek subjects, in contrast, seem to have viewed the new deity primarily as
an interpretatio Graeca of the pan-Egyptian Osiris. When they spoke of Serapis, they
were not thinking principally of Apis but of Osiris, the god of the underworld and of
fertility who almost always appeared together with his cult companion and consort
Isis. The popular union of the two deities also found its way into the official King’s
47
Bernand (2001), No. 5; cf. Bagnall (1976).
Fraser (1960), 4-5: “Possibly, therefore, the association of the two in Egypt was due rather to popular
ideas than to official encouragement.”
49
There was a separate cult for the mother of Apis, the Isis cow, at the Serapieion as well; see
Thompson (1988), 194.
48
454
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
Oaths, which have been known in the Greek and Egyptian languages since the time of
Ptolemy III.50 They read as follows:
I swear by King Ptolemy, son of King Ptolemy and Arsinoe, the sibling gods,
and by Queen Berenike, the sister and consort of the king, and by the sibling
gods and the saviour gods, by their ancestors and by Isis and Serapis.51
Thus it is clear that Serapis and Isis, besides the reigning divine royal pair and their
ancestors, had become the most important gods of the Ptolemaic kingdom, on whom
oaths were taken. The ruling divine pair on earth had thus found its counterpart in the
cosmic divine pair Isis and Serapis.52 In addition, the placement of Serapis and Isis
alongside the royal pair could point out that the cult for these gods was closely tied to
the cult for the other and thus also supported the identification with the Ptolemaic
kingdom and the royal dynasty.
Zoilos and his Dream of Serapis
The following illustrates how Greeks during the reign of Ptolemy II actively
attempted to participate in spreading the Serapis cult. A petition from 257 BC to
Apollonios, the “Finance Minister” (dioiketes) of Ptolemy II, was submitted by a
Greek named Zoilos from Aspendos in Pamphylia (Asia Minor).53 At that time, the
area belonged to the Ptolemaic kingdom. Zoilos wrote that as he “was worshipping
the god Serapis for your good health (hugieia) and your success (euhemeria) by the
King Ptolemy (II), it happened that Serapis [enjoined] to me several times in my
dreams to sail to visit you and [tell you about] this injunction: a [temple54] must be
50
Wilcken Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit, 84; Minas (2000), 167; a compilation of the oaths can be
found in the latter, p. 168, n. 643.
51
P.Eleph. 23,8-12; P.Tebt. III 1, 815, col. IV 21-23; cf. Minas (2000), 165; 163-171.
52
Stambaugh (1972), 32-33, dedicated to Serapis and Isis as “cosmic counterpart for the man and
woman on the throne of Alexandria”.
53
Hölbl’s statements demonstrate that this letter counts among the most commented of the Zenon
Archives (Hölbl (1993), 29, with literature on the letter in n. 113).
54
I think that ‘altar’ as a possible reconstruction is less probable, as a temenos must normally have a
naos.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
455
built for him together with a precinct (temenos) in the Greek quarter near the harbour,
and a priest must preside over the sacrifices and the cult on your behalf.”
Serapis appeared to the Greek as an oracle deity in a dream after the Greek had
prayed to the deity, evidently in private, for the good health of Apollonios and his
success with the king. In this manner Zoilos placed the establishment of the cult and
the temple in connection with the well-being of Apollonios. If the temple were
erected, then Apollonios as well would continue to stand in the good graces of the
king and remain healthy.
The sacrifices in the projected temple were to be made then for Serapis, but
“on behalf of Apollonios”. This wording is extremely unusual. Normally sacrifices
were made to the respective deities in the temples, frequently “on behalf of the
king”.55 It is also known from other Ptolemaic documents that sacrifices dedicated to
gods were made in favour of functionaries56–but, as far as I know, these sacrifices did
not occur in a temple. In the present case, the dioiketes of the king had assumed a
royal position in the temple. From that alone, it can be seen how much the petitioner
acting as the endower of a cult wished to influence Apollonios in his own favour.
Zoilos twice refused to grant the deity the wish expressed in the dream, for which he
was struck with grave illness. He finally wrote this letter in which he described the
whole story to the Finance Minister, and he closed the letter by returning to the
essence of his prayer:
It is therefore right, Apollonios, for you to follow the god’s commands so that
Serapis may be merciful to you and may greatly increase your standing with the
king and your prestige (poludoxoteron), and make you enjoy good bodily
health. Do not therefore fear that the expense will prove to be great, for it will
be very profitable; I shall jointly supervise all these works. Farewell.57
55
Cf., for example, IG Fayoum II 118,11-13.
Cf., for example, the endowment (on behalf of) the Epistrategos Boethos OGIS I 111.
57
P.Cair. Zen. I 59034 with the reconstructions according to Clarysse and Vandorpe (1995), 78.
56
456
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
The petitioner thus set the second most important man in the Ptolemaic kingdom
under pressure: If Apollonios made constructing the temple possible, then one could
pray for his welfare–this was, according to the information of the dream oracle,
guaranteed solely by the founding of the cult for Serapis in the city concerned.58 In
addition, Zoilos indirectly pointed out that the endowment was to be entirely
according to the wishes of the king, as the financing by Apollonios would also raise
his prestige (doxa). The costs incurred from the construction were admittedly rather
high, but they would be nothing in comparison to the health of Apollonios and his
success with the king, all of which may be implied from the statement “it will be very
profitable”.
Thus, since the reign of Ptolemy II, not only dedications to Serapis can be
documented in union with Isis, but even temple endowments or attempts at private
temple endowments for the god by Greeks. The new cult had, as can be seen, found its
devotees especially among the Greeks and obviously enjoyed certain popularity. It
was particularly in those possessions outside Egypt that the Graeco-Egyptian hybrid
cult may have, in addition, supported identification with Egypt and its Ptolemaic
ruling power. Whoever performed the Serapis cult, that is, a cult with Greek and
Egyptian elements, identified himself with the power and rule of the Ptolemies, who
also sought to unite Greek with Egyptian elements in their official representation.
Ptolemy II and the Beginnings of the Ruler Cult
Ptolemy II went one step further than his father, who had the cult created for Serapis
and ultimately also the Greek form of the Egyptian god. Whereas his father had been
interested in using the Serapis cult to strengthen his royal power especially with his
58
Cf. Clarysse and Vandorpe (1995), 85: le culte “rest fondé sur le principe primitif du do ut des: érige
un temple et tu obtiendras la faveur du roi; sinon, tu seras frappé de maladie”.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
457
non-Egyptian subjects, his son recognised the possibilities of being deified as a living
ruler by grateful subjects and the thus inherent possibilities of creating a religious
bond for the various ethnic groups of his kingdom. In certain circles, Ptolemy I had
already been worshipped as saviour, indeed even as a deity.59 Ptolemy II then had his
deceased parents officially deified as gods of the Ptolemaic kingdom.60 In 272/271
BC, he had himself and his consort Arsinoe II associated with the cult for Alexander
the Great under the name “sibling gods” (theoi adelphoi).61 With this act, he created
an official ruler cult with the purpose of better propagating it through association with
the cult for Alexander the Great. The Alexander priest residing in Alexandria, by
whom the respective records were dated, had then become a priest of the sibling gods
as well. In this manner, the second Ptolemy pair became gods sharing the temple of
Alexander. As the Alexander priest must be named in the dating prescript of every
Greek and Demotic record, the subjects were reminded daily of the divinity of the
ruler. The new cult demonstrated its autonomy and independence from the Alexander
cult in that Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II received their own sacred precinct (temenos) in
Alexandria.62
The sister consort of Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II, played an exceptional role in this
new ruler cult.63 Ptolemy had already scandalised the Greek world when he married
his own sister. Those who scoffed at the incest between king and queen, as did the
poet Sotades, had to pay with their lives for their mockery. The court poets, however,
compared the sibling marriage with the hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera.64 Even during
59
Cf. Habicht (1970), 109-110.
Hölbl (1994), 87.
61
Huss (2001), 325; cf. P.Hib. II 199,15-17; on the latter, see Hauben (1983), 113, n. 57; Fraser (1972),
I, 216.
62
Herodas I 30; see Fraser (1972), I, 228; Grimm (1998), 73.
63
Basic information: Hölbl (1994), 94-98.
64
Cf. Grimm (1998), 70.
60
458
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
her lifetime, the queen was worshipped under the invocation ‘the brother loving’
(philadelphos).65 She had probably already been the object of a cult by this time as
Arsinoe-Philadelphos. Even during her lifetime,66 Arsinoe had received her own
temple at the Cape of Zephyrion and, there, became the patron goddess of seafaring as
the Cypriot Aphrodite-Arsinoe. Outside Egypt, the cult for Arsinoe II was also to
achieve great significance; even towns were named after Arsinoe.67
According to the Mendes Stele inscription written in hieroglyphics, Arsinoe’s
consort elevated her after her death to the temple-sharing goddess of all Egyptian
temples.68 An Egyptian goddess had now emerged from the Greek goddess Arsinoe,
appearing in a completely Egyptian form on the temple reliefs and votive steles.69 In
Memphis in particular, within the sphere of influence of the high priests of Ptah and
of the Serapieion, the Egyptian cult for the new goddess was accorded great
significance.70 It even seems that she received the honour of temple-sharing not only
in the realm of the Egyptian cult but that Arsinoe was also able to become the templesharing goddess in the Greek sanctuaries. At least this is suggested in a papyrus from
the end of the third century BC. We meet there a “priest of Arsinoe and of Zeus
Kasios”.71 It is probable that the priest in the temple of Zeus Kasios in Pelusion
performed duties where Arsinoe was worshipped as a temple-sharing goddess.72 It is
also important to point out that Arsinoe was identified not only with the Greek
65
According to Fraser (1972), 217; cf. Theokrit XVII 128-130.
Hauben (1970), 42-46.
67
Compiled in Hölbl (1994), 391 [Register 2].
68
Mendes Stele, Z. 13-14; Sethe (1904), 41.
69
Quaegebeur ‘Arsinoe Philadelphos at Memphis’, 239-270; Quaegebeur ‘Ptolémée II en adoration’,
191-217; Albersmeier and Minas (1998).
70
Cf. Crawford (1980), 23-31.
71
P.Heid. VI 378,3-4.
72
Duttenhöfer (1994), 120.
66
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
459
Aphrodite73 but also with the Egyptian counterpart Isis–and not simply by Egyptians74
but also by Greeks.75
The Merging of the Ruler and Serapis Cult and its Spread
Research is divided on whether a temple for the dynasty god had existed before
Ptolemy III erected the great Serapieion in the Alexandrian district of Rhakotis,76 but
it is very probable that Ptolemy I had already had a sanctuary for Serapis erected on
the same spot.77 In fact, floors of polished gravel were found under the Serapieion
built by Ptolemy III, floors presumably belonging to a preceding structure–an older
temenos for Serapis.78 On one of these floors, a Greek altar was found still showing
painted garlands and cyma and bearing the dedication inscription “(Altar) of King
Ptolemy and Arsinoe Philadelphos, (descendants) of the saviour gods”.79 The ruler
cult for Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II was thus evidently performed in the temenos, next
to the sanctuary.80
As Ptolemy and Arsinoe do not appear on the altar under the cult name theoi
philadelphoi, a terminus ante quem of 272/271 is highly likely because the ruling
couple appeared under this cult name after that time. The fact that it was placed in the
Serapieion erected, in all likelihood, by Ptolemy I suggests that the altar was a site for
the official cult of the ruling pair. A terminus post quem for the place of sacrifice
would be the year Berenike I, the consort of Ptolemy I, died, for both had been
73
Tondriau (1948), 16-18.
Sethe (1904), 80,10; Quaegebeur ‘Arsinoe Philadelphos at Memphis’, 242; 246-248.
75
Thompson (1973), 67; 70; 74.
76
For example, Tkaczow (1984), 14.
77
Hölbl (1994), 93-94; Kessler (2000), 192-194; Grimm (1998), 82.
78
It has not yet been resolved to what extent this structure is identical with the “Serapeum of
Parmeniskos” in Alexandria, built in the era of Ptolemy II mentioned in the Zenon Archive (P.Cair.
Zenon 59355,103; 128; 243 BC); Fraser (1967), 39, and Hölbl (1993), 28-29 are opposed; Dunand
(1973), 56, thinks it possible.
79
Bernand (2001), No. 8; Grimm (1983), 70-73.
80
Fraser (1960), 18; Grimm (1983), 72.
74
460
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
worshipped under the name of ‘saviour gods’ after that time, i.e., since 279 BC.
Arsinoe, who came to Egypt around 279 BC, was the consort of Ptolemy II in 274
BC, at the latest. Thus the altar was probably erected between 279/274 BC and
272/271 BC.81 For the official ruler cult, this meant that it had, in all probability,
existed before the introduction of the name ‘sibling gods’ for the ruling pair and, in
any case, already during the lifetime of Arsinoe. In addition, it can be demonstrated
that here, directly at the beginning of the new official ruler cult, it was unified as a
cult with the Serapis cult, for, if an altar stood in the Serapieion where sacrifice was
offered for the royal pair, it meant that the ruling couple counted among the synnaoi
theoi of Serapis. In the period following, (colossal) statues of the Ptolemies stood next
to those of Serapis in the Serapis temple in Alexandria, as is documented, for
example, for Ptolemy III. Thus the successor pair also had themselves elevated to the
temple-sharing gods of Serapis.82 Fragments of statues were also found of which one
head could be attributed to Ptolemy IV and one to Arsinoe III.83 With a third head,
that of Serapis, they had formed a larger-than-life acrolithic statue group.84
As early as the era of Ptolemy II, the officially instituted ruler cult had
frequently been organised by cult associations, so-called basilistai. As can be seen in
the Boethos inscription from the second century BC, these organisations were under
the leadership of high-ranking military officers and administrative functionaries.85 It
81
See Grimm (1983), 72-73. He thinks that the mention of the theoi Adelphoi is not necessary, because
he supposes that the above-mentioned temenos of the theoi Adelphoi was in the Serapieion and the
same place where the altar was erected. Just as Fraser (1972), II, 386, n. 367, I think this is not likely:
“I do not believe that this small and insignificant temenos is the theôn Adelfôn temenos referred to by
Herodas in line 26 (...). If it were, that passage would necessarily have been written before Euergetes’
Serapeum was built, and the sanctuary demolished. His reference is no doubt to the main shrine of the
Theoi Adelphoi, whereever that was.”
82
P.Haun 6, Fgt. 1, Z. 21; for this, cf. Habicht (1980), 4-5.
83
Grimm (1998), 86-87, fig. 85a and 85c.
84
Kyrieleis (1979), 386-387, who points out, however, that it could not have been cult images, as the
cult image of Serapis looked different; see also Grimm and Wildung (1987), Nos. 113-114.
85
Cf. Pfeiffer (2005).
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
461
can be assumed that the cult associations were organised especially within the
military. They offered military personnel from the diverse ethnic groups of
southeastern Europe and the Near East an opportunity for religious worship of the
ruler transcending cultural and religious strictures, a network of social security and,
what was surely very important, also the opportunity of celebrating festivals together.
Under the leadership of a certain Diokles, such a ruler-cult-association of the
Ptolemaic military garrison on the Cyclades island of Thera endowed an offering box
or temple repository (thesauros) at the local temple of Serapis, Isis and Anubis.86 The
pronounced Egyptian character of the cult site can be found not only in the
juxtaposition of Isis to Serapis but primarily because the dog-headed god Anubis, as is
often the case, also shares the temple with Serapis.87 The inscription in question can
likely be dated to the time of Ptolemy II; the temple itself was founded on the island
perhaps as early as Ptolemy I.88 I think this suggests that the basilistai not only
organised the endowment at the temple but also performed the rituals of the ruler cult
at the temple, possibly in the temple itself. No doubt an altar stood here for the rulers,
just as in the Alexandrian Serapieion. Bommas even thinks that two of the four
existing cult niches in the sanctuary were reserved for the statues of Ptolemy II and
Arsinoe II.89 The merging of the cult for Serapis with the ruler cult organised by the
association might, in any case, have been oriented towards the official model of
Alexandria. Apart from that, a dedication to Arsinoe Philadelphos ascribed to the
86
IG XII 3,443 = Vidmann (1969), Nr. 137; Bagnall (1976), 129; on the significance of the Thesauros,
cf. Fraser (1960), 24.
87
Cf. Fraser (1960), 6.
88
Cf. Gaertringen (1899), I, 264.
89
Bommas (2005), 44; one wonders, however, where Anubis would have been put.
462
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
same sanctuary demonstrates the degree to which the cult for Serapis was associated
with the ruler cult on the island.90
The private endowment of a sanctuary in Halikarnassos also illustrates the
close ties of the ruler cult and Serapis cult outside Egyptian territory of the Ptolemaic
kingdom.91 The inscription reads:
Good Fortune! On behalf of Ptolemy, son of Ptolemy the saviour and the god [--], to Serapis, Isis, Arsinoe Philadelphos (or: Isis-Arsinoe Philadelphos), has
N.N., son of Chairemon, [the templebuilder?], dedicated the temple.
The god of the Ptolemies, Serapis, is united not only with his consort Isis in the cult
but also with the goddess Arsinoe. As has been mentioned above, an assimilation of
Arsinoe Philadelphos with the Egyptian goddess Isis frequently occurred. Thus the
temple in Halikarnassos, as Brady rightly assumes, could have been dedicated to the
goddess Isis-Arsinoe as cult companion of Serapis.92 One can hardly imagine a more
explicit relationship of the Serapis cult and the ruler cult.
In summary, it can be said of the Greek Alexandria and the Ptolemaic
possessions outside Egypt that an extremely close relationship existed between the
Serapis cult and the ruler cult and that both cults were actively practiced and
organised by private groups, whether by soldiers, as in Thera, or by urban civil
servants, as in Halikarnassos. It can be assumed that the Alexandrian Serapieion, with
its official relationship of Serapis cult and the ruler cult, had adopted a role model
function for this merging in the Greek world. As can be observed, Ptolemy II had
recognised the popularity of the Serapis cult among his Greek subjects and hoped for
a greater propagation of the ruler cult through the ties to the Serapis cult. He was
evidently successful, as the cited private endowments involving Serapis demonstrate.
90
IG XII 3,462 = OGIS I 34.
Vidmann (1969), No. 270. Cf. the remarks by Fraser (1960), 34. The dating by Mayr (2004), 28, to
the time of Ptolemy I has been obsolete for a long time.
92
Brady (1978), 13; cf. OGIS I 31.
91
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
463
The Serapis Cult in the Chora–the Exceptional Case of Philadelphia
From Apollonios, the Finance Minister of Ptolemy II named above, a not insignificant
part of the correspondence between the most important man after the king and his
administrator Zenon has been transmitted through the so-called Zenon Archive. The
letter of Zoilos cited above is ascribed to this collection of writings. Fraser is, of
course, correct when he writes that Serapis was barely mentioned in the archive,93 but
what we learn from the archive about the Serapis cult and its relationship to the ruler
cult is quite interesting.
Apollonios was responsible for the planning of the village of Philadelphia,
located in the northeast of the Fayyum, in the Herakleides district. The village
originated from one of the military colonies set up by Ptolemy II and was laid out on
the pattern of a chessboard. It was thus a new founding in the Greek sense, designed
essentially for the soldiers of Ptolemy’s army.94 The name Philadelphia itself
demonstrates the close ties of the founder to the royal house, for it was the cult epithet
of the Queen Arsinoe II. A letter concerning Philadelphia by Apollonios from 256
BC95 to his administrator Zenon has been transmitted as follows:
Apollonios sends greetings to Zenon. [You should command] a Ser[apis temple
(Serapieion)] to be built at the Temple of Isis (Isieion), located [beside the
Temple of the] Dioscuri and as far as the measured-off building site for [the
sibling gods/the rulers]. See to it that only one dr[omos (passageway)] leads [to
both] sanctuaries along the side of the canal. Farewell!96
The letter indicates that the highest authorities endeavoured to promote the Serapis
cult in the chora (countryside) as well by having a sanctuary for Serapis erected. The
common use of the dromos mentioned here was possible at the site because the
93
Fraser (1960), 8; on the namings of Serapis in the Zenon Archive, see Borgeaud and Volokhine
(2000), 59, n. 92.
94
On the settlement of the new founding, see Clarysse (1980), 105-122.
95
On the dating, see Pestman (1981), I, 103.
96
P.Cair. Zen. II 59168 (= SB III 6806); cf. Hölbl (1993), 23.
464
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
sanctuaries were located opposite each other to the extent that they were joined by the
passageway for cult processions.97 According to Hölbl, the Serapieion precinct in
Memphis served as a model.98 There, the east temple from the period of Nectanabo II
was also linked with the temple of Osiris-Apis by a straight dromos which was later
also copied at the site of the Isis-Serapis sanctuary on Delos and the Iseum Campense
(Isis Temple on the Field of Mars) in Rome.99 The Isis and Serapis temples were
separated physically from each other but united in the cult processions of public
festivals by a dromos.
Just as on the island of Thera, there in the middle of Egypt, the Serapis cult
was to offer chiefly the soldiers of Ptolemy’s army, as already mentioned the majority
of the Philadelphia inhabitants, a focal point for their religious needs. In addition,
such a hybrid cult could facilitate identification with the new homeland in Egypt. The
military colony Philadelphia represents one of the very few examples from the early
Ptolemaic era for the Serapis cult in the chora. It is also one of the few examples of
cult massively supported by the official authorities and also established principally for
non-Egyptians. Otherwise, there is hardly any evidence for worship of Serapis in the
early Ptolemaic era within Egypt; it appears isolated since in the second century
BC.100 One of the few early examples of the Serapis cult practiced by Egyptians comes
from a village, not localised in more detail, named Temenus in Fayyum and also
mentioned in the Zenon correspondence: the application by an Egyptian priest of Isis
and Serapis named Phemennas, who made sacrifices for Isis and ArsinoePhiladelphos on behalf of the king in his Iseion, that is, perhaps in a small private cult
97
So already Wilcken ‘Papyrus-Urkunden’, 66; also Hölbl (1993), 23.
Hölb (1993), 24.
99
Bruneau (1980); Roullet (1972), 30, fig. 349 f. and 352.
100
Cf. Fraser (1960), 8.
98
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
465
chapel.101 The priest does not mention a sacrifice for Serapis because, in this particular
case, the request was for donations for the Isis and Arsinoe sacrifice. Furthermore,
because of the Egyptian authorship, an Egyptian cult may be assumed; ArsinoePhiladelphos was thus worshipped here as an Egyptian goddess as she had been
elevated by Ptolemy II to temple-sharing goddess of all Egyptian sanctuaries.102 The
Egyptian priest of Serapis and of Isis represents one of the few examples for the
Egyptian Serapis-Isis cult in the chora which was furthermore as in Halikarnassos tied
to the ruler cult. And this leads then to the question of the relationship of the ruler cult
and the Serapis cult in the chora.
The Ruler Cult in Philadelphia
The importance of the papyrus on temple construction cited above is not only that a
Serapis temple was to be newly built in Philadelphia but also that another building
plot (topos) existed and was planned for the construction of a temple for the ruling
pair. The text was reconstructed by the first editor with ‘to the sibling gods’.103
Wilcken, however, suggested the reconstruction ‘to the kings’ (tois basileusin), which
is the same in content, as this reading also means Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II.104 P.Cair.
Zenon II 59169 also points to this projected temple of the rulers, a text which Tait
reconstructed as follows:
Apollonios to Zenon, greetings. [Whenever] Antikritos [arrives, show him] both
the [whole] village, and the site where we propose [to construct the temple] of
the king and of (Queen) Phila[delphos, the Gods Adelphoi,] and the sacred-way,
and the [sacred-grove (?). And show him] both the irrigation-basins and the [---
101
PSI V 539; cf. Hölbl (1993), 25; Dunand (1973), I, 137-138; Rübsam (1974), 192.
Less probable is that Egyptian cult and Greek cult were celebrated next to each other in the chapel in
question, as Dunand (1973), 166, n. 3, suggests.
103
P. Edg. 91,3-4.
104
Wilcken ‘Papyrus-Urkunden’, 66; cf. Edgar, in: P.Cair. Zen. II 59168 (p. 22, commentary): “It is
possible that here too the place in question was the site selected for the cult of the sovereigns”.
102
466
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
of my estate;] and make it clear that we have only recently [begun] to establish
[the village.] Farewell.105
In Philadelphia, besides the temple for Serapis, Isis and the sibling gods, there was
also a temple solely for Arsinoe, the eponymous goddess of the village.106 It is known
from an account of payments to workmen that around 255/254 BC a large canal was
being built in Philadelphia which was to bring water to this Arsinoeion. This temple is
also the topic of the following letter to Zenon:
To Zenon greetings from Peteërmotis, [known to (?)] you from the Serapieion. I
petitioned you then about the temple of Arsinoe which is to be built in order that
I might come here. So, if you agree, let me serve [under you] here–I am not
alone, but have a family–so that I may offer prayers both for the king and [for
your own well-being]. I have written to you so that no one else pushes in, but it
is I who serves you. Farewell. 107
In my opinion, the petition shows how closely the ruler cult was amalgamated with
the cult for Serapis and what sort of person can be ‘read between the lines’ of this
petition. Peteërmotis seems to have been, as Skeat observed, an employee of the
Serapieion of Memphis.108 This Egyptian saw himself as being able to perform a
service, no matter what nature, in the Arsinoe temple in Philadelphia. This temple was
still under construction at the time of the petition. Evidently the founder of the village
and the Finance Minister of Ptolemy II had the authority to determine the appointment
of the employees of the ruler cult temple; perhaps he was even the high priest of the
sanctuary himself, for the Egyptian wanted ‘to serve under him’ or ‘to be at his
service’, ‘to be with him’ (huparchein para soi).
A first, not transmitted petition was not enough for the petitioner to prevail in
his application–in fact, he was worried that another could ‘worm his way in’–so that
105
Tait, in: Pestman (1980), No. 28; cf. Edgar, in: P.Cair. Zen. II 59168 (p. 23, commentary), cf. also
Wilcken ‘Papyrus-Urkunden’, 66-67.
106
Cf. P.Cair. Zen. II 59169,5 according to the reconstruction by Wilcken ‘Papyrus-Urkunden’, 280;
and P.Cair. Zen. IV 59745,32.
107
P.Lond. VII 2046; translation: Rowlandson (1998), 28, Doc. 28.
108
Skeat (1974), 193; PSI V 531 documents Zenon’s stay in the Serapeum in Memphis, where the
priest of Astarte of Memphis presented him with a petition.
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
467
he again pressured the dioikete with the present petition to select him for service. He
underlined his request by emphasising that he had a family (oikeious) whom he
probably had to feed, and he argued further that he could also send up prayers for the
welfare of the king and doubtless for Apollonios as well–Zoilos submitted a similar
reason for his request (see above).
Unfortunately, we do not know what kind of temple of Arsinoe was in
Philadelphia, whether it was a Greek or an Egyptian cult structure.109 The fact that an
Egyptian considered himself suited for service in the temple in question and that he
emphasised his qualification as a cult servant of Serapis could point to an Egyptian or,
as would be possible in the Serapieion in Alexandria, to a Graeco-Egyptian temple for
the hybrid cult.
It can be said that the Serapis, Isis, ruler and Arsinoe cult in the Philadelphia
military settlement was closely associated in its cult forms and that authorities wished
to offer the non-Egyptians the demanded focal point for their religious needs.
Summary
The fate of the living Apis bull was very closely tied to that of the Pharaoh; the Apis
guaranteed the well-being of the king. All the Ptolemaic kings were to take special
care of the royal animal’s welfare. In its after-death form as Osiris-Apis, the god then
entered into one of the most important cults of the kingdom, the cult of Serapis.
Obviously Ptolemy I was interested in a relationship between Egyptian ideas of the
Memphian royal god Apis, the pan-Egyptian underworld and fertility god Osiris and
Greek father deities such as Zeus and Pluto as well as in the fertility and dynasty god
Dionysos and the healing god Asklepios. As early as Ptolemy II, the new creation had
109
It seems somewhat hastily judged when Skeat (1974), 193, writes about the Arsinoeion: “where the
cult was no doubt Greek”.
468
STEPHAN PFEIFFER
been so well accepted by the Hellenistic subjects that they actively worked toward
spreading the cult of the kingdom–as the four cited temple foundings document.110
Serapis and Isis had become deities for identification with the motherland of the
ruling power, especially in the possessions of the Ptolemaic kingdom outside Egypt.
The cult offered the Greeks an inestimable medium for identifying with the kingdom
and offered for the soldiers on Thera and doubtless in other places also a means of
creating identity in a ‘globalised’ oikumene. The same is true for the ruler cult
introduced by Ptolemy II, a cult, as has been demonstrated, which had close ties to the
Serapis and Isis cult. Just as had been done probably by officials in the Serapieion in
Alexandria, the merging of the ruler cult with the Serapis cult initiated by Ptolemy II
was to serve as a model even for the ruler cult instituted privately and by
organisations. With the aid of the popular Serapis religion, the new ruler cult could be
spread among the ‘Greeks’ in the kingdom–the examples of the military from Thera
and Philadelphia and the example of urban Halikarnossos as well as the petition of
Zoilos document this. The merging of the Isis-Serapis cult to the ruler cult was
manifested then beginning with Ptolemy III in the oaths to the king as well. Double
dedications continued as well for Isis, Serapis and the ruling pair.111 In addition,
Demotic statutes from cult cooperatives have been transmitted from the later
Ptolemaic era, in which it is reported that sacrifices for the Pharaohs, Serapis, Isis and
all the gods of Egypt had been made.112 Thus the deified living ruling pair along with
Serapis and Isis, their ‘cosmic’ counterparts, played an exceptional role as the most
110
A fifth founding by General Kallikrathes in honour of Isis and Anubis may be added; Fraser (1972),
I, 270-272, thinks that they belong to the two named gods as synnaoi theoi of Serapis.
111
SB I 585 (for Serapis, Isis, the Nile, Ptolemy III and Berenike II); 586 (for Serapis, Isis, Ptolemy III
and Berenike II); 631a (for Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra III, their children, Isis and Serapis); OGIS I 62 (for
Ptolemy III, Berenike II, Isis, Serapis und Harpokrates); 63 (for Serapis, Ptolemy III und Berenike II);
82 (for Ptolemy IV, Arsinoe III, Serapis und Isis); Bernand (1970), 235-236, No. 6.
112
Cf. P.dem.Prag, Z. 5-6; P.dem.Cairo 31178,4-5; cf. De Cenival (1972).
SERAPIS AND RULER CULT
important deities of the kingdom in the lives of their subjects, as they were present
everywhere.
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INDEX