Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture.

• Author: Verhoogt, Arthur
• Position: Book review

Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture. BY JEAN BINGEN. Edited and translated by Roger S. Bagnall. Hellenistic Culture and Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2007. Pp. xx + 303, illus. $24.95 (paper).

This volume brings together, translated into English, nineteen papers written by the preeminent historian of Hellenistic Egypt, Jean Bingen, emeritus professor of Greek at the Free University of Brussels. The papers have been "lightly reworked and edited" (p. 4) by Roger Bagnall, who also sets the scholarly work of Bingen in its historical background in an introduction (pp. 1-12). The result is a very readable work that can easily be used as a textbook on both the undergraduate and graduate level. The addition of a glossary and supplementary bibliography are certainly helpful in this respect. Knowing the difficulties one faces in translating French academic prose into readable English, it is clear that Bagnall has done a magnificent job, helped, of course, by the lucidity of thinking and presentation in Bingen's original papers.

The papers are grouped thematically under four headings: The Monarchy, The Greeks, The Royal Economy, and Greeks and Egyptians, although, as Bagnall reminds us in his introduction, many of Bingen's papers deal with more than one of these themes and could equally have been listed under one of the other categories.

The first five papers deal with various aspects of the Ptolemaic monarchy. Two (chapters 1, "Ptolemy I and the Quest for Legitimacy"; and 2, "Ptolemy III and Philae: Snapshot of a Reign, a Temple and a Cult") address the question of how the Ptolemies established the monarchy on the basis of its Macedonian political and Greek cultural background (Ptolemy I Soter), and with the further development of the monarchy towards the end of the third century B.C.E. (Ptolemy III). The remaining three papers (chapters 3, "Cleopatra, the Diadem and the Image"; 4, "Cleopatra VII Philopatris"; and 5. "The Dynastic Politics of Cleopatra VII") deal with the last representative of the Ptolemaic monarchy, Cleopatra VII.

In the second part, "The Greeks," Bingen addresses various aspects of the Greek presence in Ptolemaic Egypt. These papers map the various elements of what he later calls in his conclusion "the Greek space." In this "space" we find, among others, Thracians (chapter 6. "The Thracians in Ptolemaic Egypt") and Achaeans (chapter 7, "Ptolemaic Papyri and the Achaean...