Quote Originally Posted by MButcher View Post
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.