Primary Sources for Ptolemaic Egypt

[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 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.