The Ptolemaic Rule

The priests, responding to the threat to traditional kitchen-gardening, expressed nationalism in the design of these new tabernacles: "Egyptian temple architecture recalled a lost and largely mythical ult of primitive simplicity."

Egyptian positions of power in the government and armed forces were usurped under Ptolemaic rule. Egyptians were ousted from the upper levels of the central bureaucracy and the domestic nomarchs at the local level were likewise displaced: "Egyptian officials were in all likelihood to be found, certainly in any numbers, only at the lowest level of the administration, in the villages." In the military, the Ptolemies recruited travel soldiers and mercenaries from Greece and Macedonia. The career soldiers were awarded allotments of land in exchange for their military service. The Egyptian soldiers that remained in military service were relegated to transport and police functions and were prohibited from agreeable in actual combat.

Alexandria, a thoroughly Greek city, replaced Memphis as the capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt. The composition of Alexandria reflects the province of Egypt as a whole. A nonable feature of the city was its contribution into ethnic enclaves. Due to the abundance of trade and commerce in the new city, Alexandria became a magnet for immigrants and its population of approximately half a million residents by the middle of the first coulomb BC was multicultural. Of the five "quarters" into which the city was di

The influence of Greek on the Egyptian culture is most evident in the area of language. Early in the Ptolemaic period, several languages were in use. The Egyptian subjective pisss include: hieroglyphic, hieratic (a shorthand form of hieroglyphic), and Demotic (a cursive form of hieratic). Also in use were Coptic (basically Egyptian create verbally in the Greek alphabet) and Latin. Greek became the predominant language, particularly in its written form. Egyptians generally adapted to the use of Greek, as attest by numerous Ptolemaic contracts, written in demotic or hybrids of Greek and demotic. Hieroglyphic and hieratic were reserved for Egyptian religious and ceremonial contexts. Business documents were written in demotic, Coptic, and Greek.

formalized and military documents were generally written in Latin. Throughout the Ptolemaic period, Egyptians retained their native writing language: "The arrival of the Greeks did not eradicate the existing patterns of demotic literacy and culture."

vided, two were devoted to an definitive Jewish population, native Egyptians resided in the western quarter, and the remaining residential areas were the domain of Greeks or the hellenized population. Only about 300,000 of Alexandria's population were considered " bump residents," who enjoyed certain privileges reserved for Greeks and other hellenized people. Thus the Greeks were unsuccessful in establishing a unified city-state. Grant refers to the royal capital as a "variegated kingdom."

The resistance of Egypt to Greek influence is testify by

Throughout the Ptolemaic period, the Egyptians persisted in their efforts to preserve their native culture. Egyptian folktales and romances survived in both demotic and Greek versions. more than of the native tradition of Egypt attracted Greek interest. Manetho, the Egyptian priest, compiled three volumes on Egyptian history and religion, written in Greek. This work was accredited by Ptolemy I: "It may indeed be tell
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