ancient alexandria between egypt and greece

350 Pages·2006·4.88 MB·English

ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA BETWEEN
EGYPT AND GREECE
COLUMBIA STUDIES
IN THE
CLASSICAL TRADITION
under the direction of
WILLIAM V. HARRIS (Editor) • EUGENE F. RICE, JR.
ALAN CAMERON • JAMES A. COULTER
RICHARD BRILLIANT • SUZANNE SAID
KATHY H. EDEN
VOLUME XXVI
ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA
BETWEEN EGYPT
AND GREECE
EDITED BY
W.V. HARRIS AND GIOVANNI RUFFINI
BRILL
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2004
On the cover: limestone stela of Psherenptah from Saqqara (41 BCE), left part of scene at top.
British Museum EA 886. Photo courtesy British Museum.
Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights to use of the materials printed
herein. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed we would be glad to take
up contact with them.
The publication of this book was aided by a grant from the Stanwood Cockey Lodge
Foundation.
This book is printed on acid -free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece / edited by W.V. Harris and Giovanni Ruffini
p. cm. — (Columbia studies in the classical tradition ; v. 26)
“In their original forms, the papers were almost all written for a conference entitled,
Alexandria between Egypt and Greece, that was organized by the Center for the Ancient
Mediterranean at Columbia on October 11th and 12th, 2002.”—Pref.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-14105-7
1. Alexandria (Egypt)—History—Congresses. 2. Egypt—History—Greco-Roman period,
332 B.C.-640 A.D.—Congresses. I. Harris, William V. (William Vernon) II. Ruffini,
Giovanni. III. Series.
DT73.A4A395 2004
932—dc22
2004054502
ISSN 0166-1302
ISBN 90 04 14105 7
©Copyright 2004 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
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PRINTEDINTHENETHERLANDS
CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................ vii
Abbreviations .............................................................................. xi
List of Maps, Tables, Plates, and Figures ................................ xiii
Notes on the Contributors ........................................................ xvii
Chapter One Creating a Metropolis: A Comparative
Demographic Perspective ...................................................... 1
Walter Scheidel
Chapter Two Egyptian Elite Self-Presentation in the
Context of Ptolemaic Rule .................................................... 33
John Baines
Chapter Three Posidippus’ Poetry Book: Where Macedon
Meets Egypt ............................................................................ 63
Susan Stephens
Chapter Four Realismo ed eclettismo nell’arte
alessandrina ............................................................................ 87
Nicola Bonacasa
Chapter Five Les hiérothytes alexandrins: une magistrature
grecque dans la capitale lagide ............................................ 99
Fabienne Burkhalter
Chapter Six The oikos of Alexandria ...................................... 115
Livia Capponi
Chapter Seven Portrayals of the Wise and Virtuous in
Alexandrian Jewish Works: Jews’ Perceptions of
Themselves and Others .......................................................... 125
Ellen Birnbaum
vi contents
Chapter Eight Alexandria and Middle Egypt: Some
Aspects of Social and Economic Contacts under
Roman Rule ............................................................................ 161
Mohammed Abd-el-Ghani
Chapter Nine Galen’s Alexandria .......................................... 179
Heinrich von Staden
Chapter Ten Hellenism and Opposition to Christianity in
Alexandria .............................................................................. 217
Christopher Haas
Chapter Eleven Some Unpublished Wax Figurines from
Upper Egypt .......................................................................... 231
Mona Haggag
Chapter Twelve Late Antique Pagan Networks from
Athens to the Thebaid .......................................................... 241
Giovanni Ruffini
Chapter Thirteen The Island of Pharos in Myth and
History .................................................................................... 259
Mostafa el-Abbadi
Bibliography ................................................................................ 269
Index
Index of Subjects .................................................................... 291
Index of Papyri ...................................................................... 295
PREFACE
We publish here a collection of papers, cutting across a number of
scholarly disciplines, concerning what may be considered the most
elusive of the great cities of Mediterranean antiquity. In their orig-
inal forms, the papers were almost all written for a conference enti-
tled Alexandria between Egypt and Greece which was organized by the
Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia on October 11th
and 12th, 2002.
Scholars and students came to the conference for a variety of rea-
sons. There is always something fresh to learn about ancient Alexandria,
and recent excavations have provided ample new material for dis-
cussion. The city was always cosmopolitan, or more precisely het-
erogeneous—though that can of course be said about many cities
and towns in the ancient world—which gives it a special interest in
a world in which heterogeneous cities constantly multiply. It is prob-
ably also true that Alexandria is too little attended to by those who
study the ancient world in the United States, and that added to our
wish to have it more talked about in an open academic forum.
But what most impelled the senior of the two editors of this vol-
ume forward while he was putting the conference together was the
hope that by bringing some leading Alexandrian scholars together,
the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean could move us a step fur-
ther towards the construction of a mature multi-faceted urban his-
tory of the second-largest city of classical antiquity. Having seen at
close quarters the difficulties of writing a good history of the city of
Rome (see Journal of Roman Archaeology 8 (1995), 365–75: 368), he was
not in an optimistic frame of mind in this respect.This volume cer-
tainly does not claimto be that mature urban history. That would
require a much more disciplined and a longer-term project, whether
it was the work of one person or several.
We are convinced, however, that such a history will have to bring
together all the themes broached by the contributors to this volume
(as well as many others). It is obvious that it will have to include
some up-to-date demography (see Scheidel). A central theme will be
the relations between the Greek and the Egyptian cultural worlds as
they evolved at Alexandria (see Baines, Bonacasa), and also the rela-
viii preface
tions between Greeks and Jews (see Birnbaum). Alexandrian civil
institutions still present many problems (two are addressed in this
volume, by Burkhalter and Capponi). It is a great challenge also to
delineate Alexandrian social relations, inside and outside the city:
various possible models can be tried out, and we include here two
attempts, by Abd-el-Ghani and Ruffini, to make sense out of the
rather extensive available evidence.
Some of the papers already mentioned bear on the religious his-
tory of the city. Religion is more specifically the subject of the con-
tributions of Haggag (extra-Alexandrian material, but highly relevant
context for Alexandria itself) and Haas. With Haas’s paper we are
once more at the heart of the questions of cultural identity and inter-
action—and we are also able to witness the spread of Christianity
in an intimate fashion, as is possible in very few other ancient places.
Alexandria as a court and a city touched, and in many cases was
the basis for, the intellectual and literary lives of some of antiquity’s
most interesting figures. Two of them only could be dealt with in
this volume, the poet Posidippus (because of a recently published
papyrus), and Galen (see Stephens and von Staden, respectively).
Finally, the doyen of Alexandrian studies, indeed of Alexandria itself,
Mostafa el-Abbadi, analyses the evolution of literary and mythical
traditions unifying Egypt and Greece via the case of the island of
Pharos. It is through Pharos that Homer’s own characters turned
their eyes to Egypt; thus began a process of literary re-interpreta-
tion in which later generations suggested that Helen of Troy spent
the duration of the war at the court of the Egyptian king. Pharos
reappears in the Greek mythic landscape in a version of the foun-
dation of Alexandria itself. But here, in the Greek version of the
Alexander Romance, Alexander’s consultation of the oracle at Siwa
shows similarity to stories surrounding Hatshepsut and other Pharaonic
figures. Thus el-Abbadi is able to show, through the evidence about
Pharos, how Greek literature could shape itself in response to Egyptian
tradition.
We wish to thank a variety of our collaborators and helpers. In
the first place, special thanks are due to Susan Stephens for com-
ing into the project at a relatively late stage, after the Columbia
conference. Her cooperative spirit and promptness were a pleasure
to encounter. The very great patience of our three Egyptian con-
tributors deserves special notice: they were the first to finish and set
an example of efficiency which few American or European scholars
preface ix
live up to. Fabienne Burkhalter earned our most sincere gratitude
for certain diplomatic activities she undertook while the editors were
waiting to receive the revised versions of the conference papers.
The conference itself was largely the work of Elizabeth Mazucci,
the coordinator for the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean and
another model of effectiveness. Our thanks also go to all the Columbia
University graduate students who helped in inconspicuous but essen-
tial ways during those two days in 2002.
Finally the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean would like to
thank Edward E. Cohen and the Arete Foundation for their con-
tinued generosity. We are fortunate indeed to have such friends.
W.V. Harris
Giovanni Ruffini
Columbia University, March 2004