Egypt

Introduced in Egypt by Ptolemy I, the agoranomoi functioned as public notaries and, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Greek world, as regulators of the marketplace until the fourth century CE. These officials in Egypt are mostly known to us from their presence on contracts and studies of the office and its officials have tended to focus on the duties of the official as a consequence (Rahyab 2019, Rodriguez 2009, Vandorpe 2004, Pestman 1985, Raschke 1974).

This paper reveals that the famed manuscript conservator and antiquities dealer, Anton Fackelmann, made demonstrably false claims about the provenance of papyri he sold. My discoveries in the Duke University archive suggest that Dr. Fackelmann, leveraging his status as a well-known conservator (cf. Fackelmann, 2015; Nongbri), disguised commonplace Roman-era papyri as much earlier and more valuable pieces of Ptolemaic mummy cartonnage.

This paper sets the Egyptian Book of Nut, a 2nd-millennium BC astronomical treatise, beside the philosophical output of Anaximander of Miletus. I establish the possible influence of this text on Milesian philosophy, then explore the nature and limitations of this influence through sociological analysis of intellectual life in 6th century BC Ionia and Egypt.

After the death of Arsinoe II, queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, ca. 268 BCE, her brother-husband Ptolemy II had her deified and minted a new set of coins in her honor. These coins depict the now divine Arsinoe, with youthful, idealized features and various divine symbols, including the stephanē crown and lily scepter of Hera. Perhaps most interestingly, a ram’s horn curls around her ear. I argue that this horn has been misunderstood in terms of its nature and of its cultural implications.

An Anecdote About Ptolemy III: Reconsidering Euphantus FHG III 19 in light of the Odyssey and Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis

I here propose a comprehensive reedition of the Hibeh papyri that accounts for the connection between the early Ptolemaic texts from Middle Egypt published in P. Hibeh I and II with smaller groups published in BGU VI, X, and XIV, P. Bad. IV, P. Fuad Crawford, P. Grad., P. Hamb. I-IV, P. Ross. Georg. II, and P. Strasb. II and VI-VIII, which have not previously been studied as a single group (despite identification in Falivene 1998, 14-15).