The Eagle and the Owl: Athenian Legacies in Early Ptolemaic Alexandria

The reception of the Athenian model and its impact throughout the Hellenistic world and beyond have increasingly become the focus of recent scholarship. My project proposes to carry out a thorough reconsideration of the history of Ptolemaic Egypt through a close examination of political and ideological reuses of the Athenian past, as they emerge clearly from a number of sources and media. In particular, by exploring issues related to institutional, religious and cultural history, it tackles the question of how the Ptolemies shaped and reacted to Classical Athens’ democratic traditions soon after the establishment of their kingdom in 305 BC, when Ptolemy I assumed the title of pharaoh. The significance of this research, which entails a diverse range of evidence (from papyrus fragments of documents and ancient writers to epigraphic evidence; from archaeological material to modern historiography of the ancient world), consists, therefore, in its contribution to the understanding of the historical complexity of post-Classical civilization while casting new light on the processes through which the Hellenistic Greeks dynamically engaged with their Athenian forerunners, as well as on the ways in which Greek political discourse and identity developed in the post-Alexander world.