Ethnic Designations in Hellenistic and Early Roman Egypt

My research project aims to examine the ethnic terminology used in multilingual documentary evidence papyri, ostraca and inscriptions from Hellenistic (33230 BC) and early Roman Egypt (30 BC AD 14). In the sources from this period so far published well over three hundred different ethnic terms are found in close to two thousand documents in reference to nearly three thousand specific individuals. The objective of my project is to investigate and elucidate the meaning of ethnic terms and why and how they were employed by the state bureaucracy and private individuals in official and legal contexts. My project will therefore focus chiefly on sources in Greek and Demotic Egyptian, the two most widely used official languages of this period, but it will also consider evidence in other languages and scripts such as Aramaic, Latin and Middle Egyptian in the hieroglyphic script. Ethnic terminology has been one of the most complex and puzzling problems of the study of Graeco-Roman Egypt and this is not just because of the wide range of different languages and scripts in which the evidence survives. During this period some ethnic terms appear to have lost any real ethnic meaning and to have developed into fictitious ethnic designations, for example, occupational (e.g. military) and status (for instance, tax-status). However, it is often uncertain what precise meanings they assumed and why, when and how this change in their semantics occurred. Another major problem is posed by the literally ethnic designations Perses tes epigones, Persian of the descent, and Persine, Persian woman, the semantic evolution of which takes a different course: by the early Roman period these had become a legal fiction assumed by those intending to facilitate loans and leases by which they voluntarily put themselves into a disadvantageous legal position in terms of execution in case of delay or non-compliance with their contractual obligations. Finally, the precise meaning and semantic development of the tes epigones (literally of the descent) ms n Kmy (literally born in Egypt) expression, which was attached to numerous different ethnic designations in Greek and Demotic, are largely unclear. My project will examine the precise meaning and semantic evolution of ethnic designations, how and why they were used by the government and private individuals in official and legal documents, and what they can tell us about such central problems of the social, legal and cultural history of Hellenistic and early Roman Egypt as governmental approaches to and policies about the multi-ethnic population of the country, whether any ethnic groups received positive or negative discrimination from the government, immigration, ethnicity, ethnic and cultural assimilation, integration and social mobility of different ethnic groups and the structure and nature of society from an ethnic perspective.

The multilingual (mainly Greek and Demotic Egyptian but also hieroglyphic Middle Egyptian, Aramaic, Carian, Minaean etc.) textual sources from Hellenistic (332 - 30 BC) and early Roman Egypt (30 BC - AD 14) contain a wide variety of ethnic terms in all major types of written evidence (documentary, literary and religious). Of these different types of source material, the documentary evidence is the richest in ethnic terminology. The precise meaning and usage of many such terms have long puzzled papyrologists, ancient historians and experts on ancient law. In the documentary evidence (papyri, ostraca and inscriptions) well over three hundred different ethnic terms occur, attested over three thousand times in more than two thousand different documents in reference to c. three thousand specific individuals. The research project 'Ethnic Designations in Hellenistic and Early Roman Egypt (332 BC - AD 14)' has focused on ethnic terms in reference to specific individuals, usually identified by personal names, in official documents, its objective being to investigate and elucidate the meaning of these ethnic designation and the questions of why and how they were used by the state administration and the population of Egypt in official and legal contexts. A particularly difficult problem is posed by those literally ethnic designations that over time changed their meaning and were used in the documents with other, such as fiscal status, legal status, family status or occupational, meanings. The project has studied both real and fictitious ethnic designations, analysing their different morphological and semantic types, the changes in their attestations over time and the reasons for these, shedding light on the meaning of those specific real ethnic designations that have been disputed by previous research and tracing the semantic changes in the underlying usage of fictitious ethnic terms. The project has produced numerous results that are highly important not just for the study of ethnic terminology but also more widely for the history of Graeco-Roman Egypt, the Hellenistic world, papyrology and the history of ancient law. These results help us better understand central questions of the social, legal and cultural history of Hellenistic and early Roman Egypt such as the key problems of immigration, governmental policies about the multi-ethnic population of the country, whether any ethnic groups received positive or negative discrimination from the government, ethnicity, ethnic and cultural assimilation, intermarriage, the integration, social mobility and stratification of different ethnic groups, and ultimately the structure and nature of society from an ethnic perspective.