The third volume in the `Studies in Hellenistic Civilization' series contains eight essays arising from the second international conference organized by the Danish research project on the Hellenistic period in 1990. Contributors include: U Ostergard (What is national and ethnic identity?); D J Thompson (Language and literacy in early Hellenistic Egypt); J Blomquist (Alexandrian science: the case of Eratosthenes); K Goudriaan (Ethnical strategies in Graeco-Roman Egypt); A Kasher (The civic status of the Jews in Prolemaic Egypt); P Borgen (Philo and the Jews in Alexandria); C R Holladay (Jewish responses to Hellenistic culture); J P Sorensen (Native reactions to foreign rule and culture in religious literature).

In Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt, Stewart Moore investigates the foundations of common assumptions about ethnicity. To maintain one’s identity in a strange land, was it always necessary to band tightly together with one’s coethnics? Sociologists and anthropologists who study ethnicity have given us a much wider view of the possible strategies of ethnic maintenance and interaction. The most important facet of Jewish ethnicity in Egypt which emerges from this study is the interaction over the Jewish-Egyptian boundary. Previous scholarship has assumed that this border was a Siegfried Line marked by mutual contempt. Yet Jews, Egyptians and also Greeks interacted in complicated ways in Ptolemaic Egypt, with positive relationships being at least as numerous as negative ones.

Goudriaan, K. Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt. 1988 This study takes as its starting point a complaint made by the late Claire Préaux with regard to Ptolemaic Egypt, that one does not know how to tell Greeks and Egyptians asunder. The author tries to find an answer to this question by making use of the concept of ethnicity developed in modern anthropology. He also deals with the problem whether or not the Ptolemaic administration took ethnicity into account. DMAHA 5 (1988), 185 p. - 32.00 EURO, ISBN: 9050630227

In Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt , Stewart Moore investigates the foundations of common assumptions about ethnicity. To maintain one's identity in a strange land, was it always necessary to band tightly together with one's coethnics? Sociologists and anthropologists who study ethnicity have given us a much wider view of the possible strategies of ethnic maintenance and interaction. The most important facet of Jewish ethnicity in Egypt which emerges from this study is the interaction over the Jewish-Egyptian boundary. Previous scholarship has assumed that this border was a Siegfried Line marked by mutual contempt. Yet Jews, Egyptians and also Greeks interacted in complicated ways in Ptolemaic Egypt, with positive relationships being at least as numerous as negative ones.

Hundreds of different ethnic terms occur in well over a thousand papyri, ostraca and inscriptions in Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphic Middle Egyptian in reference to around 3000 specific individuals. The precise meaning of ethnic terms is however often problematic. Ethnic terminology thus presents papyrologists, epigraphers, ancient historians and legal historians with some of the most puzzling problems of interpretation. In addition, ethnic terms are fundamental to a better understanding of a wide range of problems of social and cultural history, including immigration, ethnicity and social and cultural integration. The first ever comprehensive collection of ethnic terminology was published by the present author in his book Foreign Ethnics in Hellenistic Egypt in 2002. This volume represents an update of his original work, offering a critical collection of the sources that appeared since its publication, with an introductory study of ethnic terminology in the multilingual documentary evidence from Hellenistic and early Roman Egypt.0.

Ethnic Identities in the Land of the Pharaohs deals with ancient Egyptian concept of collective identity, various groups which inhabited the Egyptian Nile Valley and different approaches to ethnic identity in the last two hundred years of Egyptology. The aim is to present the dynamic processes of ethnogenesis of the inhabitants of the land of the pharaohs, and to place various approaches to ethnic identity in their broader scholarly and historical context. The dominant approach to ethnic identity in ancient Egypt is still based on culture historical method. This and other theoretically better framed approaches (e.g. instrumentalist approach, habitus, postcolonial approach, ethnogenesis, intersectionality) are discussed using numerous case studies from the 3rd millennium to the 1st century BC. Finally, this Element deals with recent impact of third science revolution on archaeological research on ethnic identity in ancient Egypt.

This study raises that difficult and complicated question on a broad front, taking into account the expressions and attitudes of a wide variety of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and early Christian sources, including Herodotus, Polybius, Cicero, Philo, and Paul. It approaches the topic of ethnicity through the lenses of the ancients themselves rather than through the imposition of modern categories, labels, and frameworks. A central issue guides the course of the work: did ancient writers reflect upon collective identity as determined by common origins and lineage or by shared traditions and culture?

This book examines how the army developed as an engine of socio-economic and cultural integration in Egypt under Greco-Macedonian rule.