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Texts, contexts, subtexts and interpretative frameworks. Beyond the parochial and toward (dynamic) modeling of the Ptolemaic state and the Ptolemaic economy

Texts, contexts, subtexts and interpretative frameworks. Beyond the parochial and toward (dynamic) modeling of the Ptolemaic state and the Ptolemaic economy

JG Manning

Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, March (2006)

Abstract

My concern in this paper is the historical interpretation of the Greek and demotic documentary papyri of the Ptolemaic period, the role of Archaeology in the context of Ptolemaic economic history, and the application of social science theory towards an understanding of Ptolemaic Egypt.

I am concerned with two things in this paper. First, with the economic history of Ptolemaic Egypt, and how Papyrology (in the broadest sense, to include the important corpora of Greek and demotic ostraca) and Archaeology can help build a better, more dynamic, model of the Ptolemaic economy. That goal is, after all, what should unite papyrologists, archaeologists, numismatists and others. My ideas presented here are merely a sketch, and they can hardly be comprehensive with respect to recent literature or to the possibilities (and limitations).



I must confess that I have stated my own skepticism in the past about developing a dynamic model of the Ptolemaic economy. The main point I want to make is that whereas the history of the Ptolemaic economy has been written generally from an ideal and static perspective (and mainly from a state-centric perspective), I think now, with the combination of social science thinking and the better use of archaeological material together with the papyri and inscriptions, we may begin to understand at least some Greco-Roman developments over time, and the economy as a whole. The relationship of economic history to the many specialized, technical fields that together make up the study of Greco-Roman Egypt (I use the term merely for convenience to refer to the historical period from 332 BC to the fourth century AD), is too large to tackle in this brief paper, but that it should be tackled there is no doubt.

Click here to read this article from theĀ Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics

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