Primary Sources for Ptolemaic Egypt

[MButcher]

I'm going to be writing a paper on Ptolemaic Egypt for one of my classes this semester, and one of the requirements for the paper is that we must use only primary or secondary sources. So aside from the plethora of secondary sources such as Polybius and Arrian, what primary sources are there?

So far I have thought only of coinage, papyri, and inscriptions.

As the paper will most likely deal with how the Ptolemaic government interacted with the native Egyptians, it seems as though a good source will be the various papyri which the natives used. Does anyone know where I can find a book of those papyri?

[keravnos]

This isn't a primary source, but a great start on your subject,
http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft4r29p0kg&chunk.id=0&doc.view=print

You might want to try "The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure"
Ludwig Koenen
For P.O. Steiner

from page 25 on.

[MeinPanzer]

I'm going to be writing a paper on Ptolemaic Egypt for one of my classes this semester, and one of the requirements for the paper is that we must use only primary or secondary sources. So aside from the plethora of secondary sources such as Polybius and Arrian, what primary sources are there?

So far I have thought only of coinage, papyri, and inscriptions.

As the paper will most likely deal with how the Ptolemaic government interacted with the native Egyptians, it seems as though a good source will be the various papyri which the natives used. Does anyone know where I can find a book of those papyri?

I'm a bit confused by your use of the terms "primary source" and "secondary source." Usually contemporary historians are considered primary sources while critical literature is considered a secondary source. Do you mean to say that you are allowed to use nothing of the latter? Are you expected to translate your own sources?

If by primary source you mean only an actual source from Ptolemaic Egypt, then you are probably going to be working almost entirely with papyri on the matter of interaction between the government and the Egyptian populace. Are you concerned with the Egyptian workforce or religious life, or anything else in particular? Both "Kerkeosiris: An Egyptian Village in the Ptolemaic Period" by Dorothy Crawford and "Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt" by Naphtali Lewis are good accessible works on Ptolemaic history taken from papyri and, despite the name of the latter, both deal with interaction between Egyptians and Greeks. As far as I know, scholarship on Ptolemaic Demotic texts is fairly specialized, and so you'd have to go through numerous books in order to find a comprehensive body of sources for such a paper (though how many depends on how thorough your professor expects you to be).

[MButcher]

keravnos - Thanks for the link, hopefully it'll make a good start.

MeinPanzer - Sorry for the confusion. For the purposes of the paper, the professor defines primary sources as first-hand accounts or archaeological findings. He defines secondary sources as accounts which used primary documents for information.

He doesn't expect me to translate the information myself (thankfully).

Did that answer some of your questions?

Granted, this time period is not my professor's specialty. When I explained how scarce first-hand information is, he suggested that I look through the ancient historians and see what they used for information and try to backtrack.

[Gaivs]

Well, even though Arrian etc might use Ptolemy for his work, Arrian is still considered a primary source. As is plutarch and all of them etc.

[MeinPanzer]

MeinPanzer - Sorry for the confusion. For the purposes of the paper, the professor defines primary sources as first-hand accounts or archaeological findings. He defines secondary sources as accounts which used primary documents for information.

I'm still a little confused. So would an author like Polybius be a primary source? Or would he only be a primary source for parts that we think he observed first-hand?


He doesn't expect me to translate the information myself (thankfully).

But in order to use these sources, then, you must draw on modern critical literature, right? Or are you allowed to use translations, but not to use other people's interpretations? I have to say that that strikes me as a bit irresponsible on your professor's part, as to expect a student who is not familiar with Hellenistic history to interpret papyri or epigraphic sources without the aid of critical literature is ludicrous. Official documents of this time period often use a very complex bureaucratic vocabulary that is not easy to work out without prior knowledge. Many papyrologists and epigraphists study for decades in their respective fields and are still uncertain about how to interpret documents. If you, for instance, wanted to use a royal document from the time of Ptolemy III, would he simply expect you to know that king's full royal title in order to be able to place it into context?


Granted, this time period is not my professor's specialty. When I explained how scarce first-hand information is, he suggested that I look through the ancient historians and see what they used for information and try to backtrack.

Ironically, of all the societies of Classical and Hellenistic Graeco-Macedonian world, we have the most first-hand information about Ptolemaic Egypt, as we not only have an abundant epigraphic record like we do with most other Graeco-Roman societies, but we also have plentiful papyri.

[MButcher]

You both brought up excellent points, I'll need to talk with him some more about the ancient writers to clarify. If I can convince him that Plutarch and the like are indeed primary sources then the assignment will be much less complicated.

[Megas Methuselah]

You both brought up excellent points, I'll need to talk with him some more about the ancient writers to clarify. If I can convince him that Plutarch and the like are indeed primary sources then the assignment will be much less complicated.

No kidding. As Mein Panzer previously stated that there is plentiful information, your report should indeed be much easier.

Hey, man. You should post it here when you're done. I'm sure we'll all agree that it would be quite an interesting read. Besides, we could all give advice, grammar corrections, and so forth.

Happy hunting! :crowngrin:

[Moros]

Oh well look at the bright side. Last year I was expected to translate greek literally and find other greek sources about a subject. Now this isn't that much of a pain, except for these two facts:
-At the start of the year when I was chosing my classes I took it as they told me you didn't need to do or know about greek
- and mainly I don't know greek (yet?)

Which is quite a pain, as I know have to take an other first year class in my second year. Gah!

[Jorduan]

Use archaeological evidence my friend - there is loads from the ptolemaic period - included within sites such as edfu, deir el medina and elephantine...
there is an excelent online search engine for ancient egypt = search for "aigyptos" in google - the 1st result is the one you want - enter the site in english and log in with the name 'guest'
then you can enter specific topics into the search engine and it will show give you the best matches - then you can use your library to find the best matches..

its always nice to see others following an academic interest in ancient egypt..
good luck!

:beam:

[MButcher]

Jorduan, you have just made me a very happy researcher!

Hopefully my college library can order some of those books :sweatdrop:

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm still a little confused. So would an author like Polybius be a primary source? Or would he only be a primary source for parts that we think he observed first-hand?

I thought it was a requirement of a primary source that it had to be witnessed first-hand, or at least be contemporary. Not like those writing centuries later, and from the writings of others.

[MeinPanzer]

I thought it was a requirement of a primary source that it had to be witnessed first-hand, or at least be contemporary. Not like those writing centuries later, and from the writings of others.

That is a primary source as well in the context of ancient history. If an author drew on contemporary sources, then his writings are considered a primary source.

If you see divisions in the bibliographies of articles on ancient history, you almost always see ancient authors of any sort listed as primary sources and modern critical literature listed as secondary sources.

[QuintusSertorius]

That is a primary source as well in the context of ancient history. If an author drew on contemporary sources, then his writings are considered a primary source.

If you see divisions in the bibliographies of articles on ancient history, you almost always see ancient authors of any sort listed as primary sources and modern critical literature listed as secondary sources.

That sounds inherently unsafe to me. The original texts were often biased by whatever agenda the person writing them was trying to forward, then we've got yet another layer of bias and selective interpretation from someone who wasn't there, and wasn't even a contemporary in a lot of cases.

Now I'm not saying this is reason to simply toss them out, but I'm rather dubious at classifying them as primary sources. Why would an ancient historian, writing from an older source be considered primary, yet a modern historian writing from the same older source be secondary? At least the latter is going to have some degree of authenticity in mind, and will have peers ready to jump on the slightest inaccuracy and bias.

[MeinPanzer]

Now I'm not saying this is reason to simply toss them out, but I'm rather dubious at classifying them as primary sources. Why would an ancient historian, writing from an older source be considered primary, yet a modern historian writing from the same older source be secondary? At least the latter is going to have some degree of authenticity in mind, and will have peers ready to jump on the slightest inaccuracy and bias.

Because ancient authors had many more resources available to them that we don't have (and, in some cases, vice versa, which presents interesting difficulties of interpretation) and we can't always determine which sources they used. It is often simply impossible to determine exactly how reliable most ancient literary sources are, so they are all classed as primary sources.

I agree that there are difficulties in identifying every ancient literary source as a primary source, but I'm just saying that that's the way they are classified in most modern historical literature. In this usage, "primary" does not necessarily mean firsthand; it simply means ancient.

[MButcher]

Does anyone know a website that can translate ancient Greek into English? I've found a few collections of papyri, but have no way to read them.

[MeinPanzer]

Does anyone know a website that can translate ancient Greek into English? I've found a few collections of papyri, but have no way to read them.

Unfortunately, I don't, and this is why I think your teacher is a bit irresponsible to give you an assignment like this. The huge majority of papyri are not available in translation, or if they are, they are hard to get a hold of.

Your best bet is to find yourself a copy of Liddel & Scott's Greek English Lexicon (or use Perseus Online's (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/) version) and go through word by word, but even then, you will lose a lot of meaning because words often have different meanings in Greek depending upon the context they are in.

[paullus]

your best bet by far is with Lewis' Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt. It has sources in translation, is rather relevant to your topic, and is far more accessible than most other sources you'll find. If I remember correctly, it also should help you find other secondary or primary sources that may be of use to you. For a quality secondary source, try Jean Bingen's Hellenistic Egypt. Its a collection of older essays by the author, several of which could be pretty handy for you. I think there's also a collection of translated papyri from Bagnall, but I don't recall the title.

[MButcher]

The collection of translations by Bagnall, was it "Historical Sources in Translation: The Hellenistic Period"?

[paullus]

yup.

[MButcher]

I've bought the Historical Sources in Translation book and I've got to say it is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much! :beam:

So my next question would be how would I cite the papryi in a Works Cited page? I've asked the professor and he said that every source must be cited individually. For example, if I wanted to use a letter from that book, I need to cite the letter itself, not just the book itself.

[Foot]

Your professor will know best how you should cite your work (nearly everyone has their own preferences and its best to know what your prof prefers), so ask him.

Foot

[MButcher]

I have a quick question about the Galatians that were stationed in Egypt. Here is part of the description of the Galatikoi Kleruchoi:

"Historically, Galatai were imported in such numbers as to have changed the ethnic makeup of some parts of the country. They often intermarried with the Hellenes and to this day the area around the Fayuum depression in Aigyptos is populated by fair skinned people with light eye colors."

I'm especially interested in the remark about them changing the ethnic makeup of some parts of Egypt. What were the sources for this information?

[abou]

I think we decided that that statement was a bit of hyperbole. The Galatians were certainly present in enough numbers that specific phenotypes are still present in Egypt, which is a good indicator that enough was added to the gene pool that traits didn't simply disappear over time due to genetic drift. But "ethnic makeup" doesn't really work.

It get a little more complicated than that, but that is about a semester's worth of ecology, genetics, and population evolution boiled down into a paragraph. More to the point, however, that paragraph was written way early in EB's development. In the recent work we've done, I don't think you would see a description like that.