Chapter 3 - The Integration of Indigenous Elites and the Development of poleis in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires

Summary

This chapter focuses on Babylon and Egypt and offers a systematic comparison of the role of the local elites in the temple administration within the Seleucid and Ptolemaic governmental structures. While in both regions temples were the “centers of public life” before the Macedonian conquest, the traditional religious role of the king offered to the Ptolemies in Egyptian temples granted them a unique position that was not paralleled by the Seleucids in Babylonia. Moreover, the authors emphasize that the temple’s elite were representative of the local elite in Egypt, but that it was not the case in Babylonia. Therefore, these different traditions, notably the conception of the Egyptian king as a high priest superior to all the other priests, may explain why the administrative functions of the temples in Egypt, as well as the priestly elites, were largely integrated into the state structures of power, and why this did not happen in Babylonia. There, Seleucid kings could not play this role through the existing temple institutions and instead founded poleis as tools of governance of local communities.