Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt: Volume 1, Population Registers (P. Count)

by Willy Clarysse, Dorothy J. Thompson

Overview

How did a new Egyptian dynasty cope with the problems of establishing rule in a country with a long history of developed administration? This volume publishes fifty-four Ptolemaic papyri from the Fayum and Middle Egypt, with English translations and extensive commentaries. Dating from c. 250-150 BC and written in either Greek or Egyptian demotic, the texts record lists of adults, arranged by village, occupation and social group, and by household, together with the taxes paid on their persons, their livestock and trades. Volume I provides the documentary basis for the historical studies of Volume II, enabling it to reveal much about Hellenistic Egypt's taxation system, the occupational and demographic breakdown of the population, and relations between Greeks and Egyptians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521838382
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/27/2006
Series:	Cambridge Classical Studies
Pages:	720
Product dimensions:	7.17(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.89(d)

About the Author

Willy Clarysse is a Fellow of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium and teaches in the Departments of Classics and the Ancient Near East at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He is the author of Prosopographia Ptolemaica IX, Addenda et corrigenda au volume III (1981), The Petrie Papyri (second edition), I. The Wills (1991) and of the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (htpp://ldab.arts.kuleuven.ac.be).

Dorothy J. Thompson, a Fellow of the British Academy, teaches ancient history in the University of Cambridge where she is Isaac Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and a Fellow of Girton College. She is the author of Memphis under the Ptolemies (1988).

Table of Contents

List of plates; List of figures; Preface; List of abbreviations; List of conventions; Greek records including: salt-tax records, household records, tax-district records, tax-collectors records, list of occupations, list of ethnics and occupations, tax-exemptions records, taxpayers records, tax-registers; Bibliography; Indices.

Editorial Reviews

"These Volumes are a must-read for anybody interested in Ptolemaic Egypt, or the Hellenistic world at large."
Arthur Verhoogt, Sehepunkte

From the Publisher