The rehabilitation of the technology of road transport in Greek and Roman World is now accepted, after a long time of rejection during the 20th century. The ancient harnesses used, yoke and little yoke, belong to the universal categories of carriage traction. They are efficient and assume correctly the economic necessities, even during the economic growth of the Roman Principate. So it became necessary to bring together the dispersed data about the weights that could possibly be carried on the road and the mechanical context of the animal energies that were used. That is the aim of this contribution. We further propose an original solution to understand the ‘minimalist’ passage of the Codex Theodosianus (CTh 8.5) which is still in debate. The data brought together should be of interest for economic historians and archaeologists of Greece and Rome.
The article seeks to develop a greater understanding of two previously undescribed elephant statuettes held in the Nubia Museum, Aswan. These elephant statuettes, one of which bears an armed rider, are claimed to emanate from the Kushite kingdom of Meroe, which clearly had some sort of interest in elephants, as evidenced by representations at the enigmatic complex of Musawwarat es-Sufra. The statuettes, whose provenance is unknown but are seemingly devoid of Hellenistic influence, could add weight to views that Meroe trained elephants for war, and perhaps even supplied Ptolemaic Egypt with war elephants. Yet the unrealistic nature of the warrior’s depiction, when taken together with (a) the non-military nature of other Meroitic elephant depictions and (b) the failure of any Greco-Roman writer to record Meroitic war elephants in battle, remains problematic. Our discussion suggests that, if Meroe did keep or train elephants, they were used to advertise Meroitic power in a more symbolic way, and so their depiction in these statuettes, particularly with respect to the mounted animal, might be more fanciful than accurate.
Only four formae, inscribed plans of divided landscapes, have been preserved, and they have only been analysed and researched in individual, local contexts despite obvious similarities. They have been used mainly to discuss the actual land divisions that they depict, in attempts to connect the inscriptions to the landscape of each of the depicted colonial hinterlands. Consequently, they have been used mainly for the information they provide and have been classified as administrative documents. In this article, I will show the problems connected to this administrative objective, and suggest that instead these documents had commemorating or even propagandistic objectives. For the first time, the inscriptions are analysed together and interpreted as a coherent group. In order to separate the inscriptions from suggestive previous interpretations, the focus will be entirely on the inscriptions themselves. The strongly material-based approach puts the inscriptions front and centre, placing them in an appropriate epigraphical context. Whether or not the depicted landscapes were actual divisions which can be retraced in the landscape is not directly relevant, and in any case virtually impossible to establish; rather, it is the appearance, intended audience and effects of the inscriptions themselves that matter. This approach leads to the conclusion that the formae were not solely administrative documents, but they can be compared to the display of foundational documents such as important laws. Following this, agency is placed firmly with the emerging local colonial community, and the formae played a significant role in commemoration of the foundational rites, and the formation of a group identity.
During the Ptolemaic period, individuals who could move between the Egyptian and Greek cultural systems were critical for the continued functioning of the government. I maintain that an important aspect of Ptolemaic Egyptian elite identity was the conscious manipulation of the value bestowed by a politicized history of Egyptian languages and scripts. Translating new genres of text, in this case political decrees and religious treatises, was a manipulation of traditional means of communication within the contemporary reality of Hellenistic control. Egyptian scribes, who learned Middle Egyptian as an aspect of their cultural heritage, recognized the antiquity of the Egyptian language and were still regularly composing new texts in Hieroglyphs and Hieratic, and the syntax of ‘classical’ Middle Egyptian. However, a decrease in the breadth of the social value of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, from a symbol of traditional pharaonic power to an enigmatic relic, unfolds under early Roman rule. I argue that although Egyptians, mostly priests, continued to read and copy texts in older language phases, the beneficial and strategic use of Hieroglyphs by elite members of Egyptian society that appeared in the Ptolemaic period tapered off significantly with the integration of Egypt into the Roman Empire.
Lithegoi (stone-carrying ships) on the Nile and the canals were employed in the context of large-scale irrigation and construction works, both public and private, in the Arsinoite nome. The enterprises, which reached their climax in the fifth decade of the third century bc, are documented by the main archives of the time, that of the architect Kleon — recently made fully accessible — and that of Zenon. Among these documents only five mention that type of ship. First, a thorough analysis is given of P. Petrie Kleon 86, 114 and, in particular, 123 (ll. 1-13), at first sight hardly transparent texts. On the basis of the latter document and other circumstantial evidence found in the archive, an attempt is made to reconstruct the decisionmaking process and to track down the way the captains of these very exceptional vessels were remunerated. In the second part, the focus is on two Zenon texts from Cairo: P. Cair. Zen. II 59172 and IV 59745. Twice the same lithegos is mentioned, obviously the private property of Apollonios the dioiketes, each time under the command of the Egyptian Pasis. Together with other respectable and financially solid men, whose social backgrounds are clarified, he acted as security for different entrepreneurs of similar irrigation works, this time in the (private) service of Apollonios and his dorea. Finally, in the light of the foregoing, the ever recurring and insoluble problem of the relationship between the public and private sectors in Ptolemaic Egypt is touched on.
Circumstances regarding the practice of civic munificence by women in the ancient Roman Empire have been obscured by scholars who focus primarily on literary accounts or the body of legal opinions. In this article I take a quantitative approach in analyzing a corpus of about 400 inscriptions from the western provinces, and in applying a high level of scrutiny, assumptions about the types of benefactions women made can by dispelled. By examining the variety of gifts over time and place, I show that women had the financial resources to afford costly expenditures and, overwhelmingly, women undertook projects of munificentia publica on their own, rather than jointly with family members as others have suggested. Women acted in public in ways that were socially and legally accessible to them. In certain donations, such as public feasts and cash distributions, women followed the same civic ideals as male donors.
This paper presents an adjustment to the ‘weighed dates’ method developed by Van Beek and Depauw in 2011, and which was updated by Depauw in 2015. By spreading the date range of sources across all respective years, it is thus possible to incorporate imprecisely dated material in detailed chronological overviews. Plotting individuals raises extra challenges, however, especially since many people mentioned in ancient source material are often only attested as genealogical identifiers. In these cases, the dates of the texts they appear in do not reflect the period in which they themselves were active. To remedy this, I have fine-tuned the weighed dates method by adding an extra step in which the date range of these individuals is recalibrated.
The present article offers a philological analysis of P. David 14, a private letter dated to the second century ad. This letter is of particular interest because of the vocabulary as well as the rhetorical and stylistic devices used, the majority of which are literary and philosophical. The analysis of the text consists of locating motifs and linguistic elements pointing to literary works. The elaboration of style and the density of literary loans along with other linguistic properties indicate that the text was written by a local scholar, who consciously displays his familiarity with literature. The style of the letter reflects the spirit of the Second Sophistic.
The Ptolemies faced an immense task in constructing an identity for their country and their rule, for which they exploited the ancient Egyptian past to create a successful social imaginary. Arsinoe II, as a living and then a deceased queen, provided a vital image for the dynasty, offering legitimacy for herself, her brother-husband, and their successors through iconographic and textual media, of which several are analysed in this article. With the epithet 'the perfect one of the ram', for example, Arsinoe II received a title that was used not only for later Ptolemaic queens, but also for Isis. From the pattern of attestation, it seems that this epithet was first given to the powerful queen and then transferred to Isis, whose queenly role was thus enhanced. Arsinoe’s successor Berenike II, elevated to the status of a female Horus, became central to the development of the standing of the Ptolemaic queens, but she still needed to base her lineage on Arsinoe II, drawing on her predecessor’s legitimating authority and divine ancestry. Arsinoe’s and Berenike’s status was elevated by the divine honours accorded to them as well as by their acting as ritualists. This article focuses on the roles of Arsinoe II and Berenike II as ritualists and recipients of cults and is intended as a first step in a larger study of the Ptolemaic queens.
Bringing together, for the first time, the relevant evidence from Ugarit to the High Roman Empire, this study seeks to clarify the role of privately organized groups in Levantine societies. It connects these findings to recent advances in the study of ancient private associations, which stress their capacity to create a ‘fourth space’ next to (and combining) politics, cult and the members’ personal life. Applying this model to a region with a long history of sociability has the potential to change some basic assumptions about the development of Near Eastern societies. Instead of the timeless continuity often postulated for the region, the sphere of private corporate organization underwent significant changes in the course of time. As the ‘fourth space’ never develops in isolation from other societal spheres, this observation has broader implications, and highlights the impact of both the Hellenistic and the Roman conquests.
