Race Before "Whiteness": Studying Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Race Before “Whiteness”: Studying Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt DENISE EILEEN MCCOSKEY (Departmentof Classics, Miami University, Ohio) ABSTRACT This paperexamines the modelsclassical historians and papyrologistsuse tostudy Greek andEgyptian identity during the periodof Greek occupationof Egypt (332-30B.C.E.). Employingthe concept ofethnicity, some scholars have recently emphasized the uiditywith which identityseems tooperate in colonialdocuments fromthe Ptolemaicperiod. In particular, scholars arguethat these documents attest tothe increasing abilityof certain “native Egyptians”to act as “Greek”in variousadministrative and legal contexts. While ndingthis recent use ofethnicity productivein grapplingwith the complexity ofidentity as aformof social practice in Ptolemaic Egypt,I nonetheless cautionagainst over-emphasizing the roleof context andindividual agency within this colonial framework.In contrast, Iarguethat the concept ofrace shouldbe added to current modelsto allow historians ofthis periodto situate certain performances within alargercolonial structure that continuedto treat the categoriesof “ Greek”and “Egyptian”as conceptually distinct andindeed representative ofinverse positionsof social power. Ye gods,what acrowd!How and when will we ever Get throughthis mob?Ants withoutnumber or measure! You’ve donemany commendablethings, Ptolemy, Since yourfather has been amongthe immortals.No villain Creepsup upon one in the street, Egyptian-wise, benton mischief, As in the past– atrick that pack ofrogues used to play, One as badas the other,all ofthem scoundrels. (Theocritus, Idyll 15.lines 44-50,trans. Thelma Sargent) Critical Sociology, Volume 28,issue 1-2 Ó 2002Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 14 McCoskey ² Beginning withAlexander the Great’s conquestin 332 B.C.E. (i.e., B.C.),Egypt was ruled for three oftenchaotic centuries by a Greek foreigndynasty, the Ptolemies– aname taken fromthe general who wasAlexander’ s initialsuccessor in Egypt. From their royal residence in the newcapital of Alexandria, the Ptolemiesgoverned Egypt until they wereforced to relinquish it to the rapidlyexpanding Roman Empire followingthe deathof Cleopatra VII, the last ofthe Ptolemies,in 30 B.C.E.While these factsmay befamiliar to many, Ipointedlybegin with them becausethey markan essential contextfor what follows. Stripped ofother details, this brief chronology calls attentionto a dynamicthat wasoften obscured by the Greeks intheir contemporary representations ofthemselves –namely the inextricablelink between“ Greek”identity and the politicalprocess of colonization, both in Egypt and throughout the ancientMediterranean, following Alexander the Great’s campaigns. 1 Greek literarysources, long accorded a privilegedposition in the disciplineof classics, do not help uswitness this startling historical shift; indeed,we might say Greek literatureof this period often functions preciselyto conceal its progressively colonial context through its pointed nostalgiafor, and response to, earlier Greek literarytraditions. 2 Yet the Greek poetTheocritus, in the passagequoted above, gives usa rareand provocativeliterary allusion to the waysin whichEgypt and its new capital, Alexandria,remained infused with a hostile,perpetually unsettled colonial contest.In thispoem, dated to the early third-centuryB.C.E., Theocritus depictsthe experiences oftwo pompous and, as they emphaticallyassert, Greek women,Gorgo and Praxinoa, who are planning to attendthe festival ofAdonis in Alexandria’ s royaldistrict. 3 Asthe womenwalk tothe festival alongthe crowdedstreets of Alexandria, Praxinoa momentarily 1 The periodbetween Alexander’ s deathand the riseof Roman control in the east(i.e., 323-1stcentury B.C.E.)has traditionally been called the Hellenistic Period.During this time,Alexander’ s former empirewas divided between three independentGreek dynasties: that ofthe Ptolemies(who received Egypt), the Antigonids(Macedonia), and the Seleucids (Asia).The combinedterritory ofthese three empires“ extendedfrom mainlandGreece to modern-day Afghanistanand northwest India,north tosouth it reached from Macedonia andThrace toEgypt and the Gulf ofArabia”(Alcock 1994:171). Alcock andGreen 1993 discussthe evolutionand current stateof Hellenistic historiography. 2 Andrew Erskine discussesthe strikinginvisibility of Egyptand Egyptians in mostGreek literature ofthe Hellenistic Period,insisting that the “omission : : : masksa fundamental insecurity”(1995: 43). 3 Forthe text ofthe originalGreek poemand accompanying commentary, seeDover 1971.Delia 1996 discusses the signicance ofthe women’s insistenceon their Syracusan identity,“ which byextensionmakes them Corinthians”(41), i.e., from aGreek city-state,an important “statusbadge” among members ofthe foreignGreek populationin Alexandria (47). Studying Identity in PtolemaicEgypt 15 ² raisesthe specterof the otherwiseinvisible native Egyptianpopulation. In the scornfuldiatribe quoted above, she categoricallycasts the natives as dangerousthieves andpick-pockets, a persistentpublic threat that King Ptolemyhas only recently quelled. Taken asevidence ofthe interactionbetween colonizers and colonized inPtolemaic Alexandria, this outburst is depressingly brief and one-sided. The attitudesof the Egyptianpopulation toward the arrogantGreek upper-classwomen, not to mention their reactions to the lavish displays ofthe Greek monarchy,are simply unimagined by Theocritus. 4 Indeed, justas the alleged criminalthreat of the Egyptianshas been contained byPtolemy’ s recentmeasures, so, too, all Egyptiansare expelled from the restof poem. Instead, the womenreturn to what seems apurely (in every sense ofthe word)Greek environment.Precisely becauseof its placementwithin a poemcentered around the elaboratestaging of a Greek festival,however, Praxinoa’ s derogatorycomment about the Egyptiansis signicant. Juxtaposing Greek culturaldisplay with a suppressedEgyptian threat,this brief passage illustrates the colonialfantasies and paranoias uponwhich Greek identityin Egypt was founded, that is, it suggeststhat a Greek colonialidentity, one expressed ingreatpart through cultural forms, reliedupon the uncomfortableand always disconcertingly incomplete expulsionof all Egyptian“ elements”to the margins. AlthoughI willfocus in the remainderof this essay onthe useof historicalrather than literaryevidence inthe studyof identity in Ptolemaic Egypt,I have dwelton this scene fromancient literature at the outset becauseit functions as a potentsymbol for the waysin which Ptolemaic Egypthas traditionallybeen treatedby classicalhistorians. For Praxinoa’ s dismissiveattitude toward the Egyptianpopulation of Alexandria all too oftenseems toparallel historians’ tendencies eitherto treat the colonized Egyptianpopulation as fundamentallyinconsequential, as the non-speaking extras infrontof whom the Greeks conduct“ worldhistory,” or to idealize the Greek methodsfor assimilating native Egyptiansinto the newcolonial structure. 5 In contrast,I wouldlike toinsist that the colonialcontext 4 The Ptolemiacstrategies for bolsteringtheir positionof authority seemed to involve publicdisplay of their powerand resources. Thompson discusses the evidencefor an elaborateprocession in 279/8B.C.E.(1997: 242; see also Erskine 1995:43-44), just a few yearsbefore the eventsof Theocritus’ poem, which isdatedby Doverwithin ayear or two of274B.C.E. (1971: 197). 5 Ritner arguesthat the Ptolemaicperiod is neglected by historians of Egypt precisely becausethey considerit aperiodof decline,interpreting the“(l)oss of political independence : : : asa lossof cultural independenceand vitality” (1992: 284). Meanwhile, to those in classicalstudies, too often “ (t)he presumptionis, of course, that Ptolemaichistory is Greek history”(285). 16 McCoskey ² remaincentral, that any understandingof the Greek presencein Egypt isultimately only partial(and therefore insuf cient) unless itis situated explicitly withina mutuallydependent, structurally violent colonialsystem, onereliant upon ideologies that constructed Egyptian identity as inferior (orat the very least, silent) asa wayof providing a foilfor a superior (or,we might say, clamorous)Greek identity.This approach demands thatquestions of power, both individual and especially institutional,be constantlyraised. So, too, in accordance with the overall aimof this collectionof essays, Ibelieve iturges a returnto the conceptof race asaprimaryanalytic tool. Beforeengaging the questionof race, including what race might even connoteduring this period, I wouldlike tobegin by describing more fully someof the modelsand methods scholars have traditionallyused toreconstruct Egypt under Ptolemiac control. Tomany audiencesan exoticized,asp-bitten Cleopatra VII providesthe mostdominant image of Egypt during the Greek andthen Romanperiods ofoccupation; yet the studyof Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt has occupied amorecomplicated and indeed mostly marginalized position within classi- calstudies. Although the periodis attested in traditionalforms of evidence, suchas literary texts, art,and archaeological remains, 6 fromthe 1880’s onwards,the studyof Ptolemaic Egypt was transformed by increasingat- tentionto a newform of evidence: Greek papyri(Turner 1982). 7 Having survivedto an unprecedenteddegree in Egyptbecause of a variety offac- tors,including the dryEgyptian environment (Thompson 1994: 71), hoards ofdocuments preserved on papyri have been discoveredin sites through- outEgypt. Although the papyrithemselves survive primarilyin fragments, these fragments,both individually and in relation to one another, allow