I examine in this Chapter the structure of the Ptolemaic state in order to place the land tenure regimes of the Thebaid and the Fayyum into the context of the institutional arrangements of control and taxation. The structure of land tenure in Ptolemaic Egypt was a political response to environmental constraints and to historic pathways of property rights and obligations determined long before the Ptolemies. In areas where these old rights on land existed, the regime did not disturb them, whereas in the newly intensified Fayyum, new modes of tenure and stricter state supervision were established. Three issues will concern me in this chapter: (1) the environmental and geographic setting of Egypt, (2) the precursors of the Ptolemaic state, and (3) the structure and the historical development of the Ptolemaic state itself.

THE FIXITY OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING

Egypt was one of the richest and most densely populated states in the Mediterranean for most of its ancient history.

K. 454 Theoretical argument … From this opening paragraph Galen clearly has in mind the epistemological debate about the nature of medical knowledge. On the one hand there was the view that it could be revealed by a theoretical approach, one which we might now call deductive but which at that time was termed Rational or Dogmatic (the Greek dogma meaning, among other things, doctrine). The holders of this view, a rather diverse group, stressed the importance of a knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and of understanding the obscure as well as the evident causation of disease. One the other hand there was another view that all therapeutic (and more generally, medical) knowledge was the outcome of experience alone, an approach which we might term inductive, but which then, as indeed now, was referred to as Empirical (from the Greek empeiria, meaning experience). And so there were those practitioners who were called Rationalists and those termed Empiricists. A third group of Methodists held quite different views. They did not deny that elements of both the Rationalist and Empiricist positions were of interest, but they did deny that treatment should be based upon them. Instead they postulated three body states, the constricted, the lax and the mixed, which determine the nature of therapy. They also held the view that all of medicine could be learnt in a few months, and required no prior education in philosophy, mathematics and the like.

The text of On the Properties of Foodstuffs upon which this translation is based is that edited by Georg Helmreich in 1923 for the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum series. As has now become conventional, the pagination of the much older edition of Karl (sometimes Carl) Gottlob Kühn is given in the margin. This has advantages both for greater precision in internal cross-referencing where this is needed, and for tying the commentary to the text. Items that receive mention in the commentary are identified by asterisks in the text.

The titles of all ancient sources are given in English. These, with the more traditional Latin titles, appear in a separate list of ancient sources. Throughout the translation and commentary, all Greek words and phrases are given in conventional transliteration. I have kept transliteration of terminology to a minimum but, given Galen's frequent discussion of alternative spellings (or names), some transliteration is necessary to make sense of his statements, as it is for the very few terms that resist satisfactory translation. In a few footnotes the Greek font is used where this seems likely to be helpful. All translated quotations from ancient sources are attributed to their translators, and where there is no such attribution the translation is my own.

Throughout the translation I have made use of both round and square brackets. The former enclose what I take to be in the nature of parenthetical remarks by Galen.

For one and one half millennia Galen of Pergamum influenced the practice of medicine in the Western world, and for rather longer in some parts outside it. That in the hands of his successors this influence became stultifying and inhibitory of progress was no fault of his, although critics, from Paracelsus in the sixteenth century to others in the present day, have tried to diminish his importance. Yet even fifty years ago, when antibiotic therapy was in its infancy and synthetic pharmaceuticals were far less common than now, any pharmacy in the Western world would have stocked a range of basic medicaments known as ‘galenicals’ – tinctures, syrups, extracts and the like – which were the building blocks for many of the prescribed medicines of the time. Nor was the term merely a memorial, for many of these galenicals stood in a direct line of succession from Galen's own medicaments. Indeed some were virtually identical, and used for much the same purposes that he had recommended. And to this day his views on foods from vegetable sources are referred to with obvious sincerity in some modern herbals.

I commence this introduction by discussing the man and his work in general terms. After this I deal with several matters that arise so frequently throughout the book that it seems better to discuss them now than to make repeated comment as the work proceeds.

Owen Powell is the latest in a long line of scholarly doctors who have interpreted the works of Galen for later practitioners and readers. Oribasius in the fourth century and Kühn in the nineteenth are two of the most famous, but behind these two lie many others who commented upon, translated or commissioned treatises or excerpts that still, in some cases, survive as manuscripts and printed books. All these doctors continue the work that Galen himself set in place as he tried to make the texts of the Hippocratic and Hellenistic doctors work for his own time. Powell in his introduction and commentary describes clearly the physiology of Galen's digestive system, and how that system compares with human digestion as now understood by medical science. Galen does not explain his system in full in this treatise, but refers to it in the introductory chapter and at various later points. It is a feature of the work to define its terms of reference and direct the reader elsewhere if an item falls outside those guidelines. I return below to navigational aids provided by Galen in his text. The purpose of this foreword is to complement Powell's introduction by exploring some points that he makes only in passing. The two major areas I aim to address concern the social and cultural world in which Galen was writing and the methods he used in attempting to collect and classify foods in the treatise.

Translation of ancient Greek ‘scientific’ texts presents a number of problems and reliance upon the standard dictionaries is risky. These depend upon the accuracy of sources of information that may have been dubious to start with or, more likely, may have been superseded by advances in knowledge or changes in terminology or taxonomy.

In On the Properties of Foodstuffs the problems relate both to the medical and to the non-medical content. For my part, however, the medical content has been the more difficult to interpret, and this despite my professional life having been spent in medicine. Or perhaps because of it!

Questions of interpretation aside, there is the prior problem of translating terminology, and here there are some difficulties that apply specifically to the translation of ancient medical texts. A good deal has been written on this subject by philologists such as Chantraine as well as by a number of other classicists, of whom Lloyd has made the most valuable contribution in English, dealing especially with anatomy. The translator of Galen's On the Use of the Parts has also given an account of the problems she faced. Among the identified causes perhaps the most important is the Greek lack of an agreed, consistent, stable and unambiguous scientific language. In our own time we have been able to use Greek or Latin (sometimes Arabic) to provide names, or elements for word-building, but the Greeks had nothing (or did not think to useing anything) of the sort.

Book I

Many of the finest physicians have written about the properties of K. VI foods, taking the subject very seriously since it is about the most valuable 453 of any in medicine. For while we do not invariably make use of other resources, life without food is impossible, be we well or ill. So it is understandable that most of the best physicians have been concerned to 454 examine its properties in some detail, some alleging that they had come to know them from experience alone, others wanting to employ theoretical argument as well, while still others considered this latter to be the most important.

Now, if in their writings about food they were in agreement about everything (as is the case with people who write about geometry and arithmetic), there would now be no need for me to take the trouble to write again about the same things in addition to so many such men. But since by holding differing views they have raised suspicions about one another (for they cannot all be speaking the truth!) we must become impartial judges and put what they have said to the test. For without demonstration it is wrong to put one's confidence in one more than the others.

In surveying the history of previous scholarship in chapter 1, I showed that the Aramaic dimension of Q has never been properly treated, and is conventionally omitted. This is a remarkable fact. Most people have noticed that language is a significant part of culture, but the study of Q, like the study of Jesus in general, has proceeded as if this were not the case. I also showed in chapter 1 that the whole notion that Q was a single document written in Greek has never been satisfactorily demonstrated. The omission of the Aramaic dimension is one significant aspect of this, since it has prevented a proper critical assessment of those passages in which the material was transmitted in Aramaic, of which Matthew and Luke used or made different translations. It is not, however, the only significant defect in scholarship. The predication of a Q community, and attempts to portray Jesus as a Cynic philosopher are among other major problems. All these problems are related at a profound level. The omission of Aramaic is one aspect of a general failure to see the Q material within the culture in which it was produced. This general failure is behind most of the other serious problems.

In Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel, I proposed a methodology for reconstructing Aramaic sources of both sayings and narratives in the synoptic Gospels, where sources have been translated so literally that this is possible. I applied this methodology to four passages of Mark's Gospel, from which I sought to recover events and sayings from Jesus' historic ministry, and to establish their original interpretation. The purpose of this chapter is to restate, clarify and carry forward the main points of the proposed methodology, with particular reference to the Q material. I shall presuppose rather than repeat the rest of my previous work, and clarify points which have caused trouble in subsequent discussions.

Latin, Greek and Hebrew

I begin with the languages which were in use in Israel at the time of Jesus, and the question of which ones he is likely to have used. Latin was the language of the Roman imperial power. Jesus had no reason to learn or use Latin in general, and the Gospels do not imply any general use of Latin. Jesus will merely have used the occasional Latin loanword for a Roman object. So we find him asking for a δηνάριον at Mark 12.15//Matt. 22.19//Luke 20.24. This is the ubiquitous denarius, and the story does not make sense unless it was a real denarius, which could hardly be called anything else.

Greek was much more widely used, throughout Israel.