PTOLEMAIC EGYPT

This book is about land tenure and the structure of the Ptolemaic state (332 bce–30 bce). The taxation from agricultural production was an important element of Ptolemaic wealth – a common theme in Hellenistic literature – and the assignment and use of land was the primary method of establishing rents (i.e. income) for the bureaucratic, temple, and military hierarchy. The relationship of the ruler to the elite constituencies and to the local population is one of the key subjects in Hellenistic history, for which Ptolemaic Egypt provides important evidence. A study of the organization of land tenure, therefore, raises questions about the nature of social power in the state, and the economic structure of the land tenure regime. Most models of the Ptolemaic state have assumed that it was a highly centralized, rational bureaucratic state imposed on a passive rural peasantry.

THE PRE-PTOLEMAIC FAYYUM

The Fayyum is a natural depression, or, more technically, a “deflation hollow,” formed by wind erosion and located some sixty miles southwest of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. The region was fed with water by the Bahr Yusef, “Joseph's Canal,” as the Copts called it, which runs parallel to the Nile river from around Asyut, through the Lahun gap. A lake, formed originally by a much higher Nile level, was fed by the Bahr Yusef. Determining its level in antiquity is an important, if not yet settled, aspect of assessing the agricultural potential of this region in antiquity. Irrigation in the area was fed by gravity, as it still is today.

This book has its origins in a time and place far from where I am now sitting. Yet despite those distances, these origins seem very close in my memory. My interest in demotic papyri was fired when, as a young high school student, I visited the office of Professor George Hughes at the Oriental Institute in Chicago. It was a “Members' Day,” a time when faculty opened their offices to the public. I entered the interesting-looking office of Professor Hughes, a warm and kind man as I quickly discovered, who showed such exuberance for his work. He took me over to a table where a demotic papyrus was laid out, and he explained that it was a house sale contract dating from the Ptolemaic period from a place called Hawara, and he began to translate the document. I was hooked for life on demotic legal papyri.

It has often been a criticism of the documentary papyri that the texts proffer only local or, more biting, merely parochial evidence. Perhaps true. But history is a composite of local histories, and in the new regime of the Ptolemies, local village-based social networks continued to be a factor in, and at times a focus of resistance against, the new economic realities of the Hellenistic world. For Greek-based Classical historians, the history of the Hellenistic world has been the study of the triumph of Greeks and Greek culture in the “East.”

In this Chapter I will be concerned with the “reach of the state,” and its ability to control land tenure and the surplus agricultural production. The traditional power of the ruler in Egypt with respect to these issues was asserted in assigning rights to land and in taxing production (and on some land collecting rent). The Ptolemies retained these traditional powers over the land. I begin with a discussion of the structure of the state itself, and the organization of social power within the state. From there, I move on to discuss more specifically one aspect of social power, economic power, and the relationship between state economic power and land tenure.

In this Chapter, I shift the focus from the institutions of the central state and its power, to the local organization of land tenure. I discuss the Egyptian tradition of property transmission, and the interaction of the Ptolemaic state to this ancient system. I will concentrate primarily on documents from the Thebaid, where the Egyptian material is at its fullest, and I will be concerned with two things: (1) the ancient institutions and social networks relating to land holding, and (2) the Egyptian tradition of property rights in land that were transferred by inheritance as well as by lease and sale contracts. In both cases, the documentary material shows that there was strong continuity with the pre-Ptolemaic period in the social and economic patterns of land tenure, and in the tradition of scribal practice with respect to contract-making. The Ptolemies did not alter the ancient property regime but, rather, established institutions designed to capture taxation revenue from production and from the circulation of property, and asserted the ancient pharaonic power of assigning rights to land.

In this Chapter I discuss the land tenure regime in Upper Egypt. More specifically, I examine the documentation from the region known as the Thebaid, that stretch of the Nile valley from Aswan down to roughly Abydos, and I will focus on the well-documented town of Edfu. The entire region was administered through the new regional capital of Ptolemais, founded by Ptolemy I Soter. This continued an ancient practice of treating the Thebaid as a political unit.

I have advanced in this book a neoclassical model of the Ptolemaic state. I have done so because I believe that this model better explains the development of the state over the course of the three centuries of the Ptolemaic regime. The rulers negotiated with local elites and institutions in exchange for revenue. A colonial model that understands Ptolemaic history as an imposition of a uniform political order throughout Egypt and without opposition is no longer tenable.

The text is recorded on the outside of the retaining wall of the temple of Horus at Edfu. It consists of 65 columns of text in 8 panels, each introduced by an offering scene, lower register (above base) of the external face of the eastern enclosure wall, starting from the northern extremity (PM 6.167.337–344 third register, plan p. 130).

Graphic writing of fractions 60 and 80 only used in the donations suggests that the intermediate manuscript was written in the hieratic script. The rest of the text was certainly composed in demotic. Only P. Wilbour allows comparison. This is not a cadastre, but, rather, a tax list of cultivated land where each parcel is defined by its topographic situation, status of ownership, the name of the cultivator, the area of plot and tax assessment.

This translation is heavily indebted to the work of Meeks. Numbers in parentheses refer to the hieroglyphic text of Meeks 1972. Note ar. = aroura.

PRINCIPAL TEXT (4*3)

Protocol

The perfect god, son of the lord of Hermopolis, divine seed of the lord of largesse who reckons the amount of the measured fields of Egypt, filling the healthy eye of that which is necessary, satisfying the gods and goddesses by means of their offerings, the lord of gardens, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, heir of the gods Euergetai, select of Ptah, who acts justly, living image of Amun-Re.

The 6th year, Choiak 8. Paid into the bank at Hermonthis in charge of Dionysios, to the private account of the sovereigns in accordance with the report of Hermias, overseer of the revenues, and Phibis the royal scribe, a copy of which is appended, by Senpoeris daughter of Onnophris as a fine upon a palm-grove of two cubits, 1200 copper drachmas (and) the taxes 180 drachmas (Signed) Dionysios, banker.

Hermias to Dionysios, greetings. When we reached the Pathyrite nome we sent out agents to the toparchies to look after the collection of debts owed on account of both rents in corn and taxes in money; and as they were engaged upon exacting payment at the Memnonia it was reported that there were certain pieces of land which had been enclosed for the purpose of growing palms. Whereupon I sent for Totoes the village scribe, and we went to the place of Senpoeris d. Onnophris and measured it, and found that it projected by two cubits. She was then sent for, and forcible persuasion being applied with regard to the proper fine, it was fixed, on consideration of her having reclaimed it from the desert, at the rate of 10 talents for the aroura, making in all 1200 drachmas, to which she agreed.