Table Of ContentAlexandria
A Cultural and Religious
Melting Pot
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Aarhus Studies in
Mediterranean Antiquity
(ASMA)
IX
ASMA is a series which will be published approximately once a year by Th e Centre for
the Study of Antiquity, University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Th e Centre is a network of cooperating departments: Greek and Latin, C lassical Ar-
chaeology, History, and the Faculty of Th eology. Th e objective of the series is to advance
the interdisciplinary study of Antiquity by publishing articles, e.g., conference papers,
or independent monographs, which among other things refl ect the current activities
of the centre.
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Alexandria
A Cultural and
Religious Melting Pot
Edited by George Hinge and Jens A. Krasilnikoff
Aarhus University Press |
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Alexandria. A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot
© Aarhus University Press and the authors 2009
Cover by Jørgen Sparre
Illustration: Roman mosaic from Palestrina. Archaeological Museum
© 1990. Photo Scala, Florence – courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali
Typeset with Minion
eISBN 978 87 7934 745 8
ISSN 1399 2686
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The Danish Research Council for the Humanities
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PREFACE
Th e Centre for the Study of Mediterranean Antiquity at the University of Aarhus is
a research forum for the advancement of interdisciplinary studies of Antiquity. Th e
dominant activity of the Centre is to arrange seminars and conferences and to publish
the contributions from these events in monographs. Additionally, several individual
monographs have been published in the Centres series, Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean
Antiquity (ASMA). Th e Centres seminars and conferences are devoted to the study of
such signifi cant fi elds and topics that will benefi t from an interdisciplinary approach.
Th e publications of the Centre is therefore refl ections of the ongoing process, which
binds the various fi elds of activity together at the University of Aarhus, and between
our university and the international scholarly community.
In May 2004 the Centre hosted an international seminar on Alexandria. Several dis-
tinguished colleagues from diff erent countries contributed to this seminar, both as givers
of papers and as discussants. Some of these papers have been included in this volume,
while other contributions have been added later. First of all, our warmest thanks to the
contributors for their professional and scholarly approach and their patience regarding
the preparation of this volume. Th e distinguished Members of the Board of the Centre
for the Study of Mediterranean Antiquity, deserves our gratitude because of their never
failing enthusiasm and encouragement and Aarhus University Research Foundation for
making the necessary donations available in the fi rst place; and the Danish Research
Council for Culture and Communication for fi nancial support of the publication. Last
but not least we extend our gratitude to the research assistants and secretaries, without
whose help and support none of this would have happened.
Aarhus, December 2008
George Hinge and Jens A. Krasilnikoff
Preface 5
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contents
9 Introduction
George Hinge and Jens A. Krasilnikoff
part i. alexandria from Greece and eGypt
21 Chapter 1
Alexandria as Place: Tempo-Spatial Traits of Royal Ideology
in Early Ptolemaic Egypt
Jens A. Krasilnikoff
42 Chapter 2
Theatrical Fiction and Visual Bilingualism in the
Monumental Tombs of Ptolemaic Alexandria
Marjorie Susan Venit
66 Chapter 3
Language and Race: Theocritus and the Koine Identity of
Ptolemaic Egypt
George Hinge
80 Chapter 4
Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria
Minna Skafte Jensen
part ii. rome, Judaism and christianity
97 Chapter 5
Philo as a Polemist and a Political Apologist
An Investigation of his Two Historical Treatises Against
Flaccus and The Embassy to Gaius
Per Bilde
115 Chapter 6
Alexandrian Judaism: Rethinking a Problematic Cultural
Category
Anders Klostergaard Petersen
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144 Chapter 7
From School to Patriarchate: Aspects on the
Christianisation of Alexandria
Samuel Rubenson
158 Chapter 8
Religious Conflict in Late Antique Alexandria:
Christian Responses to “Pagan” Statues in the Fourth and
Fifth Centuries CE
Troels Myrup Kristensen
176 List of Contributors
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INTRODUCTION
George Hinge and Jens A. Krasilnikoff
Th e appreciation amongst the international host of scholars of ancient Alexandria as
a fi eld of research has been growing these recent years and one can even suggest that
it has been accelerating within the past three decades or more. Th e continued interest
is manifested in increased knowledge of the material culture of Ptolemaic and Roman
Alexandria, and the increase in the publication rate of papyri manuscripts and other
evidence from Egypt continues to fuel scholarly debate. Moreover, the growing inter-
est among scholars of the humanities worldwide in the mental aspects of past societies
invites to develop the tenets of cultural history, language and religion within the wider
frame of ancient Alexandria.
Th is project was conceived in 2002 as part of the continued discussion and charting
of the current and future activities of Centre for the Study of Mediterranean Antiquity.
Th e Centre board agreed to the simple observation that most of the partakers of the
Centre were all somehow researching aspects of Egypt’s culture, history, or religions of
the Graeco-Roman period. Further pondering suggested that this rather board scope
should be narrowed down to just “Alexandria,” in particular those aspects of the Alex-
andrine past, which encompassed the aforementioned aspects of cultural history, history
and religion. Th us, although previous research projects have successfully navigated the
diffi cult waters of interdisciplinary research much reward was to be expected from the
insistence upon the combination of a wide thematic scope examined within the confi nes
of the wide chronological spectrum. Consequently, as several contributions demonstrate
and observe, the Alexandrine past is notoriously marked by meeting of cultures and
frequent and rapid development, which is quite diffi cult to grasp in its totality if the
longer perspective is ignored. Additionally, the long-held insistence of the “fact” that
Alexandria represented a world totally diff erent from the parallel cultural and political
construct of traditional Egyptian culture is also being challenged. And so are diff erent
aspects of the religious and philosophical milieus, which developed almost from the
foundation of the city to Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
As the title of this volume suggests, throughout the entire span of Graeco-Roman
antiquity Alexandria represented a meeting place for many ethnic cultures and the city
itself was subject to a wide range of local developments, which created and formatted
a distinct Alexandrine “culture” as well as several distinct “cultures”. Ancient Greek,
Roman and Jewish observers communicated or held claim to that particular message.
Hence, Arrian, Th eocritus, Strabo, and Athenaeus reported their fascination of the
Alexandrine melting pot to the wider world and so did Philo, Josephus and Clement.
Introduction 9
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As some of the reviewers observed one is in serious danger of being trounced by the
sheer amount of information, life, abundance, ingenuity and vigour, which for some
time became “Alexandria” by the accomplishment of Fraser’s monolithic Ptolemaic
Alexandria from 1972. Fraser’s “antiquarian” (if this word has a positive connotation)
reconstruction and “compilation” of Alexandria until the coming of Rome continue
to leave us in the state of Strabo, slightly bewildered and overwhelmed. We shall,
nonetheless, insist that the Alexandrine melting pot made up a distinct order, one of
diff erent not always corresponding, abiding and enduring elements of cultural amal-
gamations.
Recently, the German professor Christian Meier argued for the existence of “Europe’s
special path,” in order to explain the relative success of Europe in dominating the remain-
der of the world in the courses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Meier anchors
the beginning of Europe in Greece, more accurately in Athens of the fi fth century BCE,
where he focuses on the democratic institutions, citizenship, freedom to debate and
a fi rm belief in the positive eff ect of “the debate” for a positive future development.
Multiple objections and corrections can be made against Meier’s hypothesis. One is the
fact that Europe would not have been what it became without an Alexandria to take
in and further develop what it inherited from the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.
Time, acceleration and volume are features that dominated the development of
Alexandrine history, but also paucity, contemplation and stability. Th e mildly stressed
Strabo would have acknowledged both the ambiguities and the “beat” of Alexandria.
Here, in the largest city known to mankind – later only surpassed by Rome – the multi-
ethnic and internationalised community insisted upon setting the standards in and of
a globalised world. Alexandria thus became the centre for communication of scientifi c
and scholarly achievements as well as religious novelties, digression and development.
Alexandrine “culture” came to signify novelty and speed, but also degeneration and the
target of the special versions of early “Orientalism’.
In various fashions, the four papers of Part I of the monograph, Alexandria from
Greece and Egypt, deals with the relationship between Ptolemaic Alexandria and its
Greek past. However, the Egyptian origin and heritage also plays important roles for the
arguments. In the fi rst contribution of the volume, Jens A. Krasilnikoff discusses and
explores the potentials of humanistic geography as a theoretical tools and approach for
the study of the earliest Alexandrine history. Th us, with examples of how Alexandria
was created as place, Krasilnikoff argues that the city of Alexander diff ered fundamen-
tally form the majority of classical and Hellenistic cities. Th e evidence suggests that the
rulers of Alexandria were soon to create their own standards of urbanism, conspicuous
consumption and cultural amalgamation in close resonance with a profound exclusive-
ness of its royal ideology. Undoubtedly, the heirs of Alexander exercised great impact
upon the religions and cultural amalgams of the city. Concurrently, however, they also
subscribed to the institutions and traditions of the classical Greek polis, a dominant
feature in the ancient literary tradition on and about Alexandria. Paradoxically, the acute
need of the fi rst Ptolemaic rulers to create Alexandria into a distinct, unique and self-
preserving urban entity in its own right demanded that the city of Alexander was made
10 Alexandria
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