Corpus of the Greek Administrative Papyrological Sources from Ptolemaic Egypt

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Charikleia Armoni; Professor Dr. Jürgen Hammerstaedt; Professor Dr. Stefan Pfeiffer
• Subject Area: Ancient History ; Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524370723

The project aims to collect approximately 6,500 Greek papyrological sources of administrative content from Hellenistic Egypt (4th century B.C. - 30 B.C.) and to study them from various perspectives. The historical and philological value of this documentation is unique: as everyday texts, papyrological documents provide a genuine insight into the multifaceted administrative and legal organization of an ancient society in its entirety. Moreover, they are our only source for the specifics of Hellenistic official and elevated everyday language. The aim of the project is, on the basis of this rich documentation, to investigate the question of how ruling administration was organized in an ancient multicultural society and to record for the first time the entirety of the state-administrative institutions and their activity in Ptolemaic Egypt. The sources will be revised, historically evaluated and translated, and presented together with their images and various metadata in a dynamic digital text corpus. The results of the historical evaluation of the sources are to be presented in a multi-volume monographic work that refers to the digital text corpus. The influence of ruling administration on all socio-economic levels of a pre-modern society can be observed particularly clearly in Egypt from the 4th century BC onwards. Papyrus and pottery sherds (ostraca) contain a sufficient amount of particularly revealing evidence of everyday life sources that are almost completely lacking for all other regions of the pre-modern world up to the High Middle Ages. The investigation of the administration of Ptolemaic Egypt seems to have a key function not only with regard to a better understanding of a Hellenistic monarchy. The project will provide the basis for new insights of interdisciplinary relevance, which can lead far beyond a purely antiquarian interest and are of relevance to social and economic history. The reality-based content of administrative sources from Egypt, which is generally not influenced by any long-term intention of transmission, offers the unique opportunity to identify the origins of numerous principles and practices of state administration and influence and to make their further development visible.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Belgium
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Claes Neuefeind
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Mark Depauw