The Thebaid in Times of Crisis: Revolt and Response in Ptolemaic Egypt: 13 (Chronoi, 13) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3111607844 ISBN 13: 9783111607849

Publisher: De Gruyter, 2025

Synopsis

This collective volume explores societal crises in Hellenistic Egypt, focussing regionally on the Thebaid, from small-scale insurgencies to full-fledged secession. As a result of an international conference held at the Freie Universität Berlin (May 2-4, 2019), the presented case studies ask how actors – and modern scholars – of Ptolemaic Egypt shape and frame times of crisis and what traces remain thereof in the record.

As decisive moments in time, crises reveal fundamental features of societies and structure the flow of events into historically meaningful, yet potentially teleological, trajectories. In Ptolemaic historiography, from Polybius till today, the Great Theban Revolt (206–186 BCE) served as such a turning point, demarcating rise and decline. By confronting the historiographic record with independent – and yet partially unexploited – sources, such as temple epigraphy, Demotic (literary) texts, archaeological, numismatic and private documentation, the reunited studies aim at diversifying the perspectives on and in societal conflicts in Ptolemaic Egypt, in order to gain a fuller and more nuanced picture of how various actors, kings, queens, officials, and priests coped with times of crisis.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Birk, Einstein Center Chronoi, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Laurent Coulon, Collège de France / École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France.

Edition details

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3111607844
• ISBN 13: 9783111607849
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 380
• Editor: Birk Ralph, Coulon Laurent