Chapter 4 - Contextualizing a Ptolemaic Solution

Summary

This chapter examines the question of precisely why politeumata are not found in other Hellenistic kingdoms. Sänger argues that they were a specific response to the internal and external conflicts faced by the Ptolemies in the second century BCE. By offering the opportunity of founding a politeuma, the kings tightened the loyalty of ethnic groups settling or settled in Egypt and attracted new immigrants. The core members of a politeuma belonged to the army as mercenaries and would identify to a given ethnic group. After their settlement, they formed an “ethnic community” sharing a temple and a quarter of the urban space. Sänger suggests, furthermore, that since poleis in the Greek constitutional sense played a limited role in Egypt (see other chapters in the same volume), constitutional terms connected to the Greek polis were applied freely and allowed derivatives such as the politeuma to develop. The apparent specificity of Ptolemaic politeumata emerges as just a particular case of binding soldiers to urban spaces and attracting them as identity groups. These show altered ruling strategies when compared with the Ptolemaic cleruchies and army organization of the third century BCE.