The ultimate aspiration of the Ptolemies was to project an image of power and wealth by generating revenue. State control through a civil administration was one of the main achievements of the Ptolemaic dynasty. A pivotal role was played by Ptolemy II, whose reign has produced a lot of documents, but we may easily underrate Ptolemy I who greatly expanded the empire, made Alexandria the capital of Egypt, founded a new Greek city in the south (Ptolemais), and started land reclamation in the Fayum basin. His successor consolidated the empire, brought the Fayum irrigation works to a new high, carried through fundamental monetary and fiscal reforms, and secured state income, as shown by his Revenue Laws (Bingen 2007: 157-88). Ptolemies I and II brought prosperity, economic growth, and political stability. Their reigns were milestones in history, and they considered the time ripe to write Egypt’s history: by order of one of the two kings the Egyptian priest Manetho produced his Aigyptiaka, ‘‘History of Egypt,’’ and his division of Egypt’s past into dynasties is still used by Egyptologists today.
In the Age of Crisis internal harmony was disturbed, and several foreign possessions were lost. The later Ptolemaic period is characterized by official abuses, inflation, and temporary lack of control of local administration and taxation, but the periods of crisis were, at the same time, the driving forces behind even stronger state intervention and increased administrative systematization. After the Great Revolt, for instance, Ptolemy V successfully installed a hierarchic system of court ranks, such as ‘‘kinsman’’ of the king, assigned to higher officials in Egypt and overseas and thus linking the elite more closely to the royal court (Mooren 1975 and 1977). The control of Upper Egypt is another example. The region was called the Thebaid in Greek sources, as it was, in part, controlled by the mighty Amun priesthood of Thebes. Ptolemy I had already created a political counterweight here by founding Ptolemais, a Greek capital for Upper Egypt perpetuating his name, and Ptolemy III installed a new religious symbol of Ptolemaic rule by initiating the building of a new Horus’ temple at Edfu (Manning 2003b: 74). After the revolts the later Ptolemies took a series of measures leading to greater state control in that region. The kings introduced new military camps, sometimes using the enclosure walls of temples like like that still extant in Medinet Habu (Dietze 2000), they employed local soldiers, confiscated land, and sold it at public auctions, and they gradually introduced more state banks, more state granaries, and more Greek notarial offices (Vandorpe 2010). One of the highlights may have been the foundation of a new Greek city Euergetis in 133 BC in the northern Thebaid by the high official Boethos (Heinen 2000).
How were the Ptolemies able to create, almost unopposed, an increasing level of state control? How could they govern through a minority of Greeks who represented 5 to 10% of the population and held higher offices in the administration and the army? The key-word is balance, between tradition and innovation and between give-and-take vis-'a-vis the native population and Egyptian elite. They ruled over a country that had a well-developed administration adapted to the specific needs of the Nile regime. ‘‘The Ptolemies adapted in a practical manner to the realities of Egypt’’ (Manning 2009), but at the same time they introduced new elements to enhance the control or to adapt to new realities such as the intake of Greek immigrants and the use of coins. The kings preserved the traditional division of the chora, the Egyptian countryside, into provinces called ‘‘nomes,’’ but replaced the ancient nomarch by a strategos, ‘‘general,’’ who had by 230 bc become a civil official. Greek replaced Egyptian Demotic as the official language of government. The temples continued their own systems for administering business, but the government supervised them through the newly created office of temple epistates, though the function was soon to be taken over by temple personnel (Clarysse 2003). The Egyptian judges (laokritai) remained part of the legal system but had to tolerate the supervision of a government clerk, the eisagogeus (Allam 1991, 2008). Similarly, the Egyptian temple notaries continued to function but experienced competition from Greek notarial offices.
The traditional taxes in kind were retained by the Ptolemies (Muhs 2005b), but the government gradually took over the assessment of several taxes from the temples (Vandorpe 2000), except for taxes which were closely linked to the temple’s burial practices (Muhs 2005: 87-103). The government installed instead a civil administration, though the people appointed were often the former priests of the temple. In order to maximize control and minimize risk to the royal treasure the Greek tax-farming system was introduced for several taxes, though in a modified form (Bingen 1978). Other fundamental fiscal reforms were the introduction of money taxes and state banks (Reden 2007) and the creation of census procedures on the basis of which a new poll tax was levied (Clarysse-Thompson 2006).
The army also became a mixture of old and new. The Ptolemies introduced a Graeco-Macedonian army. The immigrants became military settlers called klerouchoi (cleruchs) and later on katoikoi, as they were allotted an Egyptian kleros, a parcel of land for lifetime and eventually inheritable by their offspring (Uebel 1968). The Egyptian army was at first under-utilized (Lloyd 2002a), but Ptolemy IV trained native Egyptian troops to fight in a Macedonian-style phalanx during the Fourth Syrian War, and they proved a great success at the battle of Raphia in 217 bc. Consequently, the Egyptian soldiers were brought into the Greek system of land allotment, though their plots of land were smaller in size and of inferior quality. In Upper Egypt a lot of native Egyptian soldiers were employed in the Age of Crisis, but the system of land allotment was rarely applied there: the soldiers received a salary (Vandorpe 2008).
The Egyptian population were able to continue their traditions: they could turn to their temple notary or Egyptian judge, and they could profess the religion of their choice. The tax burden was heavy but probably not heavier than in previous times. The main difference was that people no longer paid all taxes through the temple which used to control economic life. Taxes were now increasingly levied by state officials, to the advantage of a far away foreign ruler, and the administration became a civil one. The pill was sweetened by calling in local people, often members of the priestly elite, who acted as tax officials or administrators. The royal house was propagandized in the countryside by the Egyptian dynastic cult and by Ptolemaic coinage which was wide-spread in large sections of the population as shown by private money loans. The Ptolemies invested in local traditions by supporting the cults and by impressive building projects as far south as Philai and even beyond. Popular local forms of religion were stimulated, like the oracular cult of Thoth-the-Ibis in Qasr el-Aguz, and local forms of jurisdiction were supported, as shown by the Bab el-Amara, the monumental propylon of Khonsu’s temple at Karnak built by Ptolemy III, known as the ‘‘Gate of Justice’’ where oaths were sworn and judgements were pronounced (Quaegebeur 1993). The Ptolemies also from time to time left their home at Alexandria to make a progress through the Egyptian countryside (Clarysse 2000c). Another positive factor was social mobility. Native Egyptians gained promotion in the administration and army, became part of the more privileged and Hellenized groups, and in some cases obtained the highest positions. Even Egyptian women had mobility, since they could marry into the privileged groups.
How did the Egyptian priestly elite feel about the new foreign rulers? The ‘‘Greek organization of the country slowly undermined the clerical pillars of the Egyptian
Figure 9.4 Karnak. Propylon of the temple of Khonsu built by Ptolemy III. Courtesy Katelijn Vandorpe.
Cultural system’’ (Bingen 2007: 254-5), but at the same time the kings supported the temples by setting them free from several taxes, by royal gifts, by paying them a yearly allowance or syntaxis, and by generously stimulating temple building and cults in general. Memphis became a second capital, having a palace and being regularly visited by the king. The Memphite coronation of Pharaoh by the High priest of Ptah would become standard (Crawford et al. 1980; Thompson 1988), and the priestly caste was able to strike bargains with the kings as shown directly in the priestly trilingual decrees of Canopus and Rosetta. Moreover, individual priests increased their personal benefits as they received fiscal privileges and had access, from the very start of Ptolemaic rule, to the highest administrative and military offices (Lloyd 2002a). As a result, the priestly elite had no difficulty in supporting the Macedonian dynasty (Huss 1994).
World History
