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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 Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. 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

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a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, .. Graeco-Roman Egypt; his new book Gli edifici termali di Sabratha will Christopher Haas, author of Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and.
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