This volume collects the papers from a conference at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (Oxford) in April 2016, serving as a companion to the planned Corpus of the Greek inscriptions of Ptolemaic Egypt (the first volume of which appeared in 2021). Although Egyptian Hellenistic epigraphy is not a new subject, going back at least to André Bernand’s works, this volume is innovative in that it offers an updated and comprehensive overview of the matter from the perspectives of several outstanding scholars, covering the materiality of the objects as well as their historical and cultural environment.
The introduction by the editors presents the general project and outlines the following contributions, making it clear that the aim is not total completeness, but rather ‘to open pathways and to point to possibilities offered by the larger Corpus’ (8). The next two contributions address the relevance of bilingual inscriptions to the history of modern scholarship. Jane Masséglia (‘Imaging Inscriptions: The Kingston Lacy Obelisk’) presents the discovery and travel of the Philae obelisk, the first ever brought to England, its role in Young’s and Champollion’s deciphering efforts and the recent digital imaging enterprise that enhanced its legibility. Rachel Mairs (‘Beyond Rosetta: Multilingual Inscriptions, the Antiquities Trade, and the Decipherment of Egyptian Scripts’) discusses some bi-/trilingual inscriptions that had a significant role in decoding the Egyptian scripts and showing how the circumstances of their discovery affected their understanding. Willy Clarysse (‘Greek Texts on Egyptian Monuments’) turns to the original multicultural environment, focusing on Greek texts purposely inscribed on Egyptian-style monuments. His conclusions stress the concept of ‘self-identification’ (Hellenization, self-promotion, assimilation) working in both directions (Greeks towards Egyptians; Egyptians towards Greeks).
The special environment of the ‘Greek cities’ (Naukratis, Alexandria, Ptolemais) is the common background of the next contributions. Alan Bowman (‘The Epigraphy of the “Greek Cities”’) focuses on official texts revealing political and administrative mechanisms, the perception of Greek citizenship in the indigenous framework and the religious context. Kyriakos Savvopoulos (‘Religious Life in Ptolemaic Alexandria under the Royal Aegis’) tracks the evidence of Alexandrian religious trends under the first kings, especially the cult of Sarapis and its seeming progressive decline from Ptolemy IV onwards. Dorothy Thompson (‘Foundation Deposits from Third-Century BC Egypt’) analyses the Greek/bilingual dedicatory plaques, a curious phenomenon seemingly limited to Alexandria under Ptolemy III and some other places under his successor. Supratik Baralay’s discussion of religious dedicatory inscriptions (‘Hellenistic Sacred Dedications: The View from Egypt’) follows a localized rather than typological approach, unveiling interesting details of the ideology of Ptolemaic dynastic cults and other aspect of Egyptian devotion.
We move to the chora with Christelle Fischer-Bovet (‘Soldiers in the Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt’) and Mario Paganini (‘Epigraphic Habits of Private Associations in the Ptolemaic Chora’). The former examines soldier-authored inscriptions to highlight social, cultural, military and economic aspects less preserved in the papyri. Soldiers are depicted as mobile people, often acting together as groups or associations; and several details about their everyday lives and duties in the territory are disclosed. The latter shows how Greek epigraphic habits developed within local communities through the case study of private associations in the countryside, underlining their practical purposes, their desire for publicity and their general involvement in shaping the local environments with recognizable landmarks of Hellenic flavour. Simon Hornblower (‘The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions: The Metrical Texts’) explains the reasons for including verse inscriptions (and which ones) in the Corpus (essentially, a necessary update of Étienne Bernand’s Inscriptions métriques (Paris 1988) after new discoveries and recent literary reconsiderations) and discusses interesting case studies, relevant not only on literary grounds, but also on social and historical ones.
I have deliberately left Willy Clarysse’s chapter (‘Inscriptions and Papyri: Two Intersecting Worlds’) temporarily aside, as I believe it is worth commenting on it together with the last chapter by Charles Crowther (‘The Palaeography of Ptolemaic Inscriptions from Egypt’). Returning to material issues, both confront the relationship between epigraphy and papyrology. The former discusses relevant cases of overlapping, such as the influence of papyrus handwriting on inscriptions, cross-references of papyri in epigraphs and vice versa, and historical moments illustrated simultaneously by both sources. The latter offers a general and comprehensive palaeographical survey, including comparisons between cursive scripts on inscriptions and papyri, and an admittedly and necessarily incomplete, yet thorough and much-appreciated overview of letter shapes and inscriptional trends. The volume, concluded with a handy list of the texts planned for the Corpus, and the usual bibliography and indexes (sources, places, names, general words), is undoubtedly an indispensable and invaluable guide to Ptolemaic Greek epigraphy.
