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COURT, CHORA, AND CULTURE

IN LATE PTOLEMAIC EGYPT

Ian S. Moyer


Abstract. Indigenous Egyptian elites who held titles in the late Ptolemaic court
hierarchy offer a counterpoint to the typical model of Hellenistic court society
as a culturally and ethnically exclusive social space. Though underrepresented in
standard accounts, several Egyptians held the honorific title of “kinsman” of the
king (syngenes). Statues of these men wearing the mitra of the syngenes in the
forecourts of temples, together with Greek and Egyptian epigraphic evidence,
show that indigenous elites who circulated between Alexandria and Upper Egypt
contributed to the creation of a transcultural space that was critical for maintain-
ing the power of the Ptolemaic state in the Egyptian chora during the troubled
conditions of the second and first centuries b.c.e.

In the final century of Ptolemaic rule over Egypt, visitors

to the temples of Hathor at Denderah or Horus at Edfu would have seen
statues of priests and important officials placed in the temple forecourts
in continuance of a tradition that stretched deep into the pharaonic past.
Among these statues, the visitors might notice some cloaked and strid-
ing figures distinguished by a mitra worn around the head, a band not
unlike the diadem worn by the king himself. If they could read demotic
or hieroglyphic Egyptian, they might even notice an inscription that
identified the subjects of these statues as “kinsmen” or “brothers of the
king,” bearers of the title syngenes, the highest in the hierarchy of the
Ptolemaic court. These “kinsmen” from towns up-country, in the Egyptian
chora, proclaimed that they had entrée into the most privileged space in
the kingdom, the Graeco-Macedonian royal court at Alexandria.
In celebrating status and royal affiliation in text and image, these
statues of kinsmen illuminate one of the later chapters in the three-cen-
turies-long history of negotiations between the Hellenistic court and the
Egyptian elites of the chora, between the indigenous and the immigrant
cultures of Ptolemaic Egypt. The position of the Egyptian kinsmen was
ultimately the result of a transformation of the Ptolemaic court that had
begun early in the second century. In the reign of the young Ptolemy V

American Journal of Philology 132 (2011) 15–44 © 2011 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
16 ian s. moyer

Epiphanes (204–180)1, the social space of the court had expanded, and
an elaborate hierarchy of honorific court-titles extended the prestige of
royal affiliation beyond the king’s immediate circle of Friends to include
members of the Ptolemaic administration working far from Alexandria
at the regional and local levels. The statues of Egyptian kinsmen from
Edfu, Denderah, and elsewhere, along with other evidence of Egyptian
courtiers, show that this expansion eventually crossed the ethnic and
cultural boundaries that are usually taken to define the ruling stratum of
Hellenistic kingdoms. In the process, the court became—at least in one
critical region—a more flexible and transcultural space that extended into
those parts of the chora where the intervention of the Ptolemaic state
had been the most gradual and had met the most resistance.

1. THE SOCIAL SPACE OF THE HELLENISTIC COURT

This opening picture of Egyptian courtiers and the transcultural dimen-

sions of the late Ptolemaic court runs counter to most generalized
descriptions of the society that ruled the Hellenistic world. Since Chris-
tian Habicht’s seminal study of the Hellenistic herrschende Gesellschaft
(1958), a well-developed line of research has maintained that power in
the Hellenistic kingdoms, including those established in the Near East
and Egypt, was the exclusive preserve of a Graeco-Macedonian elite. The
core of this elite was the Hellenistic royal court constituted by the king
and his “friends”—men who were virtually all Greeks and Macedonians,
recruited and maintained through personal relations of philia. Though
Alexander himself had adopted Achaemenid ceremonial traditions and
had integrated prominent Persians into his court (Spawforth 2007b), the
model that his successors followed is usually traced back to the relatively
informal Macedonian institution of the king’s companions and defined by
a Hellenic ethnic and cultural exclusivity.2 The history of this Hellenistic
court follows a familiar periodization: the paradigmatic (even ideal)
form was an institution of the third century, but in the subsequent age
of decline the court was formalized into elaborate and “artificial” hier-
archies, and a few natives even found their way into the ranks of court

1
 All dates are b.c.e.
2
 Habicht 1958, 5–6. See also, for example, Mooren 1978; Weber 1997, 32–35; Savalli-
Lestrade 1998, 289–354. For the ethnic exclusivity of the Hellenistic courts, note Herman
1997, 207–8. Mooren 1985, 222, refers to the Ptolemaic court of the late third century as
Hellenic and hermetic. Ma 2003, 186–88, follows this model but uses Pierre Briant’s term,
“dominant ethno-class.”
 court, chora, and culture 17

society.3 The third-century model is derived primarily from Greek literary

sources, and especially the detailed accounts of events and individuals
at the Hellenistic courts in Polybius’ Histories. The major exception to
the preponderance of attention devoted to the third-century courts is in
the study Ptolemaic Egypt itself. Here the comparative wealth of docu-
mentary evidence facilitated Leon Mooren’s detailed prosopographical
study of the court hierarchy in the second and first centuries, to which I
shall return shortly.4
But it is Polybius’ Histories, and particularly his accounts of interac-
tions among courtiers and between kings and courtiers, that have attracted
the most attention in formulating the Hellenistic court as an object of
historical-sociological study. Drawing on Norbert Elias and a stream of
work reacting to his analysis of early modern European courts, scholars
of ancient history have recently paid renewed attention to the royal courts
of antiquity.5 Abstracted from the particular historical questions that he
pursued, Elias’ model has proved a useful comparandum for outlining
the features and functions of ancient courts. Especially important for the
Hellenistic period is Gabriel Herman’s analysis of the Hellenistic court
as a social milieu with several characteristics that it shares with other
courts.6 These include: specific norms; rules of conduct and ceremonial
practices—in particular those regulating access to the ruler; the idea of
the court as an abstraction based on a palace or household that was physi-
cal but also multifocal and mobile; and the emergence of courtiers, the
quintessential representatives of the court society. In Polybius’ Histories,
the sole source for Herman’s study, courtiers are called οἱ περὶ τὴν αὐλήν
(“those around the court”) or simply οἱ αὐλικοί.7 The Hellenistic court was
clearly an entity recognized in contemporary thought and language, and
the recent approaches inspired by Elias and other historical ­sociologists

3
 For the periodization, see Habicht 1958, 14–16. Weber 1997 largely follows him,
though he does note the later incorporation of Egyptians into the Ptolemaic hierarchy. On
the other hand, Boris Dreyer in this volume argues that the differentiation of the court
hierarchy began already in the third century in the Seleucid case.
4
 Mooren 1975b and 1977, along with several other shorter studies; see also Savalli-
Lestrade 1998.
5
 Elias 1983 (rev. 2006), with important critiques by Duindam 1994; 2004. Recent
collections on ancient courts include Winterling 1997 and Spawforth 2007a.
6
 Herman 1997. Also important is Weber 1997 and to some extent Mooren 1985
(based only on Polybius).
7
 Polyb. 5.26.13; 5.34.4; 5.41.3; 16.22.8; 22.13.5; 23.5.4. Further examples in Herman
1997, 213, n. 33. He also identified a number of peculiarities of Hellenistic court society in
the third century (1997, 223–24).
18 ian s. moyer

have undertaken to study it as a social configuration of various interde-

pendent relations among kings and courtiers.
The ancient terms for the court and its courtiers, like the more
recent ones, make it clear that the court was also a form of social space,
in the sense developed by Henri Lefebvre: it was a space produced
through human activity and through the reproduction of social rela-
tions. ­Lefebvre barely mentioned royal courts.8 Elias, however, began his
historical analysis of court society under Louis XIV by examining the
structure of aristocratic dwellings as spaces in which and through which
courtiers consumed conspicuously, but also asserted their rank and social
distance, and engaged in various spatial practices related to those of the
palace at Versailles (2006, 45–72). In a similar vein, one could say that the
Hellenistic royal courts were the overblown households at the economic,
political, and administrative cores of states derived from and produced
by Alexander’s massive, violent, primitive accumulation and domination
of space.9 In this wider context, the court was a space of appropriation,
redistribution, spectacular consumption, as well as its own production
in the form of palaces and their attendant spatial practices. The social
space of the Hellenistic court was also produced by, and reproduced,
a narrower set of relations between the king and his courtiers. In its
elaborated form (to which I shall turn shortly), the Ptolemaic court in
particular was a social space defined by graded relations of kinship, friend-
ship, and other forms of social or physical proximity to the person of the
king. The privilege of proximity to him was expressed and experienced
through titles, insignia, and the spatial practices embodied in the palace
or its itinerant equivalents. Social connections between king and court-
ier were maintained economically—by a kind of exchange, a reciprocity
that was actually a symbolic violence of dependency and obligation on
the part of the courtier, euphemized as an economy of material rewards

8
 Lefebvre 1991; for the central insight of his complex work in brief, see his own
convenient summary (348–49) with Smith 1998, 54, also quoted by Unwin 2000, 18. In
historical terms, his revised Marxian periodization was much more concerned with urban
development (1991, 31–33, 47–59); Smith 1998, 57, provides an overview.
9
 Lefebvre’s historical overview considers all of ancient Greek and Roman civilization
as part of his period of “absolute space”; but surely reassessments of ancient economies
and urbanism permit various spaces in antiquity to be reimagined as verging on the “his-
torical space” that he associated with urbanism, the separation between production and
reproduction, socio-economic differentiation, and accumulation (Smith 1998, 57; Lefebvre
1991, 48–49). For the domination of space and the state’s rationality of accumulation, see
(with similar qualifications) Lefebvre 1991, 280–81.
 court, chora, and culture 19

and honor (especially the prestige-fetishes of royal proximity) given in

return for service and loyalty.10 Remarking on the vagaries of court life,
Polybius summed up the Hellenistic court of his day with a wonderful
spatial and economic metaphor: he observed that courtiers “are like
pebbles on reckoning-boards . . . at the will of the reckoner they are now
worth a bronze coin and now worth a talent.”11 His view is thoroughly
steeped in a Greek anti-tyrannical discourse that emphasizes the servility
and dependence of courtiers, and one must take him with a grain of salt.
Whatever the insecurities of their position, those on the board were able
to compete for the power, status, and wealth that flowed from proximity
to the king in this privileged space.12
The question remains, however, as to whether non-Greeks and non-
Macedonians were kept off Polybius’ reckoning-board and excluded from
the space of the court. In the case of Ptolemaic Egypt, the usual picture
of the Hellenistic court as a space produced and occupied by a limited,
ethnically homogeneous Hellenic elite does not adequately account for
changes in the court over time. The best counterpoint to this model is
the group of Egyptians who held the title syngenes and who took part
in the spatial practices of the late Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, or at
the very least represented this space and its practices in the documents
they produced. Following Lefebvre’s analysis of the production of space,
these indigenous elites contributed to the (re)production, and even the
transformation, of the space of the court as they brought back their
representations of the court to the chora. The statues of these Egyptian
kinsmen wearing the mitra of their rank in the forecourts of temples, along
with Greek and Egyptian epigraphic evidence, show that the indigenous
elites who (at least discursively) circulated between Alexandria and Upper
Egypt created a transcultural space that was critical for maintaining the
power of the Ptolemaic state in the Egyptian chora during the troubled
conditions of the second and first centuries.

10
 On this type of domination, see Bourdieu 1977, 189–97, esp. 190–91.
11
 Polyb. 5.26.12–13. Walbank 1970–1979, 1.559–60, notes that the calculation-board
known as the “Salamis tablet” has a series of columns for monetary calculations that range
from a bronze coin to a talent.
12
 The king’s behavior was constrained to some extent by the rules of the game,
and courtiers could and did pursue their own goals: see Habicht 1958, 9–12; Herman 1997,
212–13, 220–22; Weber 1997, 42–43, 58–61. Cf. Duindam 1994 and 2004, who has argued
that Elias’ model exaggerates the power of the monarch and underestimates the level of
mutual negotiation between court and monarch.
20 ian s. moyer

2. THE EGYPTIAN KINSMEN OF THE KING

The title syngenes was part of a new, more elaborate articulation of the
space of the court that first emerged early in the second century during
the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204–180). In its initial form, the new
system included ranks that were familiar from earlier Macedonian and
Ptolemaic court societies: there were “friends,” “bodyguards,” “successors,”
and other gradations based on these concepts. In his fundamental work on
the Ptolemaic hierarchy, Mooren (1977, 19–73) argued that it was created
deliberately by Aristomenes, the regent and guardian of the young king,
or by his successor in that role, Polycrates. The creation took place at a
time when the Ptolemaic state was in a weak position and facing various
threats, including a major revolt in Upper Egypt which had resulted in
the secession of the Thebaid under the independent rule of the Egyptian
pharaohs Horwennefer and Anchwennefer (207–186).13
In Mooren’s view, the system was aimed primarily at the bureau-
cracy and was intended to strengthen the connections between the king
and his officials by extending the honor of court titles to them.14 On the
other hand, the new system was also a reform of the court itself, which
had just emerged from a period of intrigue and conflict centered on ten-
sions between an “inner” and an “outer” court; that is, between factions
and individual courtiers permanently at the palace and those friends of
the king who fulfilled administrative or military functions elsewhere and
were only intermittently in his presence. In the context of such tensions,
the new hierarchy of titles served to rationalize the system of honors and
privileges in an increasingly large and complex court, while also integrat-
ing more thoroughly those royal agents stationed at a distance from the
palace, thereby fostering the loyalty of Ptolemaic officials and extending
the space of the court beyond Alexandria.15 After the troubled reign of

13
 On the revolt, see Pestman 1995; McGing 1997, 285–89; Veïsse 2004, 11–26, 85–99.
14
 Mooren 1977, 54–58; 1981, 300.
15
 For this modification of Mooren’s thesis, see Savalli-Lestrade 1998, 371–73: she
notes that Agathocles sought to defeat his opponents at court by having them sent away
on various missions (Polyb. 15.25.20–21), and that the rivalry between Sosibius, Ptolemaios
and their supporters, and the regent Tlepolemos and his supporters, encapsulated a conflict
between an “aristocratie de ‘cour’” and an “aristocratie de ‘fonction.’” See also Herman
1997, 214, who points out that Polybius’ account of the reign of Ptolemy IV reveals divi-
sions between the courtiers proper, those who administered the country, and those who
conducted affairs outside Egypt (Polyb. 5.34; 5.40.2–3). A divide existed, too, between those
who built up their power within the court and those who had the support of the military
(5.36.4). Cf. Mooren 1985, who analyzed the factions at court in this period solely on the
 court, chora, and culture 21

Ptolemy IV and his murder, and the under-age succession of Ptolemy V,

the multiplication of ranks in the hierarchy may also have served to mag-
nify Ptolemaic kingship as an institutionalized social position. Oriented
by proximity to the king as the source of all prestige, the hierarchy not
only elevated courtiers, but it also increased the social distance between
the king and those on the periphery or completely outside the court’s
topography of value.16
Although the hierarchy was undoubtedly the intentional creation of
a particular moment, Mooren’s careful prosopographical study reveals it
to have been subject later to piecemeal and ad hoc processes of develop-
ment. The new system began with at least five titles but was expanded over
time; by the first century it included eight ranks. The title syngenes, the
pinnacle of the hierarchy and an entirely novel court title, is not attested
until the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (180–145). Royal kinship had
obviously existed before, and there were literal kinsmen of the king who
had been important at court, but up to that point the title syngenes had
not been conferred as a fictive status in the Ptolemaic kingdom.17 Over
time, the court-title held by a Ptolemaic official also began to correlate
with his importance and power in the administration of Egypt, and after
about 145 this connection was relatively consistent.18 From 135, to choose
one apposite example, the strategoi of the Thebaid all bore the title of
syngenes.
Not long afterwards, indigenous Egyptian syngeneis begin to appear
in the evidence. Their numbers and significance, however, have generally
been underestimated, and Egyptians are a negligible presence in most
discussions of the Ptolemaic court.19 In particular, while Mooren’s pro­
sopographical work on the court hierarchy is fundamental (as mentioned
above), his survey omitted a number of Egyptians who held the rank

basis of familial relations. On divisions between “inner” and “outer” courts more generally,
see Weber 1997, 37–38, 53; Spawforth 2007, 8, 18, 23, 84–85.
16
 Cf. the discussions of ceremonial and social distance in Elias 2006, 110–13; Duin-
dam 1994, 133–34.
17
 Mooren 1977, 39–41. Despite the absence of earlier evidence either within Egypt or
outside, Mooren (21) suggested that syngenes was part of the original hierarchy; but it does
seem to have undergone further development in the reign of Ptolemy VI and afterwards
(21–24), so the later addition of syngenes cannot be excluded.
18
 Although Mooren 1977 argued that a direct connection between court rank and
official position was in place from the start, it probably developed in a more ad hoc way
through accumulated precedents, rather than as a set of fixed rules (see Thomas 1983).
19
 Mooren 1975b; 1977 (see discussion below); 1978; 1981, 299–301; 1985, 222. For a
more balanced view of Ptolemaic elite society, see Rowlandson 2007.
22 ian s. moyer

of syngenes. The main reason is that he did not accept the equivalence
between the Greek syngenes and the Egyptian version of the title, sn ny-
sw.t (“brother of the king”), an equivalence now confirmed and generally
accepted.20 By counting up all the figures that Mooren studied, together
with individuals from demotic and hieroglyphic texts excluded by him or
unknown to him, I have so far gathered twenty-six Egyptian individuals
who held the title syngenes, almost all of them connected to the Theban
region.21 This total is a figure that represents about 20 percent of all the
syngeneis attested in Ptolemaic Egypt.
My criteria for identifying Egyptian ethnicity are crude but defen-
sible in this case. The individuals I have identified all have Egyptian
names, and most are attested in demotic or hieroglyphic Egyptian texts.
Determining ethnicity on the basis of names is, of course, an uncertain
business, especially in later Ptolemaic Egypt, but many of these twenty-
six Egyptian syngeneis are attested in Egyptian-language commemora-
tive inscriptions or show other signs of affiliation with Egyptian culture.
As to those only appearing as Egyptian names in Greek sources, it is
important to recall Willy Clarysse’s argument (1985) that Egyptian or
bicultural individuals often adopted Greek names and used them when
working in the Greek linguistic and cultural context of the Ptolemaic
administration; in consequence, Egyptians are likely to be underrepre-
sented in official Greek sources. Given this likelihood, 20 percent is a
significant proportion, and it poses a challenge to the idea of the ethnic

20
 See Mooren 1975b, 33–34; 1975a, 236–37. For the arguments in favor of the equiva-
lence, see Yoyotte 1969, 135; 1989, 83–84 (drawing on Meulenaere 1963, 91); Guermeur
2000, 74; Gorre 2009, 461–62.
21
 By comparison, in Mooren’s catalog (1975b) there are thirteen syngeneis with
Egyptian names: nos. 058, 0120, 0123, 0124, 0127, 0128, 0129, 0132, 0138, 0148, 0341, 0342,
0343; Mooren 1981, 301, n. 73, acknowledges seven of these as Egyptians. Many of the other
Egyptian syngeneis are included in the prosopography compiled by Gorre 2009, i.e., his nos.
4, 5/6, 8, 11, 29, 30, 32, 38, 76. The remaining five Egyptian syngeneis are mentioned by Gorre
(17, 20, 45, 47, 52, 141) but are not included in his prosopography. I list them by reference
number in the Prosopographia Ptolemaica (PP) where possible: Psais (PP VIII 301c; III/
IX 5708); Kalasiris, son of Monkores (PP I/VIII 266, II 2118, III 5627); Monkores II, son
of Pamonthes-Plenis (Farid 1995, 297; O. Strass. dem. 631; O. Theb. dem. 22); Ptolemaios,
son of Ptolemaios/Pa-sher-pa-khy (Farid 1992, 105–14); swdЗ=f-pЗ-ϲЗ, son of Ptolemaios/
Pa-sher-pa-khy (Farid 1992, 105–14). I exclude from this count four syngeneis who appear
to have been ethnically Greek, but adopted Egyptian language or cultural practices, or
both: Eraton, Plato the Younger, Dorion, and Aristonikos (Gorre 2009, nos. 2, 24, 54, 75).
Another possible example is the syngenes Asclepiades, who also bears the Egyptian title
λεµυσα (= mr mš ϲ, “general”), and is perhaps to be identified with Mooren 1975b, no. 0264
(see Quaegebeur 1989, 167).
 court, chora, and culture 23

exclusivity of the court hierarchy. But what can these numbers really tell
us about the actual presence and participation of Egyptians in the social
space of the court?
There is one glaring peculiarity in the evidence that suggests cau-
tion is required in attempting to answer this question: by far the larg-
est number of Egyptians with court-titles hold the title syngenes, the
highest in the hierarchy. All the known Egyptians (defined by the same
rough criteria above) who held lower titles amount to less than a third
the number of the syngeneis.22 It seems implausible that this imbalance
reflects the actual distribution. Perhaps the lower ranks are underrepre-
sented because they or their families lacked the resources to produce the
durable, monumental commemorations that document so many of the
Egyptian syngeneis. This is a reasonable conjecture, but another answer
may lie in the title of syngenes itself, and its successful translation into
the Egyptian language and its representational contexts. Among all the
titles in the court hierarchy of the second and first centuries, it is the only
one for which a new Egyptian counterpart was created.23
Egyptian versions of the title show a range of linguistic approaches
to incorporating it into the Egyptian language. At times, syngenes was
transliterated phonetically into either the demotic or hieroglyphic script
and marked by a determinative as a foreign word (e.g., συγγενής >
­snynys).24 There are also, as already mentioned, translations of the term
into equivalent phrases such as sn ny-sw.t (“brother of the king”) in

22
 Courtiers with Egyptian names or other possible Egyptian ethnic indicia: Santo-
bithys, ἀρχισωµατοφύλαξ (PP I 326); Chomenis, λαάρχης (leader of native troops) and also τῶν
πρώτων φίλων (Mooren 1975b, no. 0213); Isidotos, λαάρχης and τῶν πρώτων φίλων ­(Mooren
1975b, no. 0214); Inaros, τῶν πρώτων φίλων (Mooren 1975b, no. 0226); Herodes (priest of
Egyptian temples at Elephantine, Abaton, Philae), τῶν διαδοχῶν and ἀρχισωµατοφύλαξ
(Gorre 2009, no. 1); Apollonios Euergetes (member of an Egyptian family), τῶν φίλων
(Gorre 2009, no. 5; see also Mooren 1975b, 161); Dioscourides (Egyptian mother; buried
in Egyptian sarcophagus), ἀρχισωµατοφύλαξ (Gorre 2009, no. 50). Others to be considered
include Ptolemaios (bearer of the Egyptian title φριτ(ο)β / pЗ h.ry-ỉdb), τῶν φίλων (Quaegebeur
1989, 161, 167), and Pelaias (bearer of the title ỉmy-ỉb tpy n ny-sw.t bỉty, perhaps translating
τῶν πρώτων φίλων (Gorre 2009, no. 82; see next note).
23
 The title ἀρχισωµατοφύλαξ, for example, is transliterated into demotic (Clarysse
1987, 21) and hieroglyphic (Collombert 2000, 48). The title τῶν πρώτων φίλων is translated
directly into hieroglyphic Egyptian as nty ỉmy.w ỉmy-ỉb.w tp n H.m.f (“who is among the first
friends of the king,” Philae II, line 4; Sethe 1904, 2.217, line 6); cf. the title of Pelaias in
the previous note. The fragmentary demotic version of the Philae text appears to read nty
hn[w] nЗ ϲn[.w] (“who is among those who are good” [or “esteemed”?]).
24
 Demotic variants listed in Clarysse 1987, 29–30; see also Farid 1989, 159–60, for
demotic and hieroglyphic attestations.
24 ian s. moyer

hieroglyphic texts, and sn n Pr-ϲЗ (“brother of the pharaoh”) in demotic

texts.25 An indication of the degree to which the title became integrated
into the Egyptian language is the etymological word-play used in some
transliterations. In transliterating Greek into demotic Egyptian, only
monoliteral signs were normally used, but in several transliterations of
syngenes (snynys) the word begins with the biliteral demotic sign sn, which
happens to be the same sign used to spell the word sn (“brother”). The
transliteration is all the more striking, since this is the only word for which
biliteral signs are used in a demotic phonetic transcription of a Greek
word.26 The same pattern of transliteration, using the hieroglyphic sn-sign,
is also found in some hieroglyphic texts.27 Judging by the transliterations,
the hieroglyphic translation sn ny-sw.t probably also sounded similar to
the Greek word syngenes.
All these factors suggest that the title of “kinsman” was an unusu-
ally successful linguistic transfer because of partial congruences between
Greek and Egyptian phonetic and semantic units. So, is the relative over-
representation of Egyptian syngeneis a chance artifact of interlinguistic
homophony and graphic word-play? Would other Egyptian courtiers be
more visible in the record if their titles were more readily adaptable to
the Egyptian language and its graphic conventions? Egyptian biographi-
cal texts in hieroglyphics often did revive ancient court-titles and even
formulaic strings of titles, but so far no study has been able to discern
a clear correspondence between these and the titles of the Greek court
hierarchy. On the other hand, these old titles may at times be understood
as generalized expressions—in a formal indigenous idiom—of affiliation
with the king or perhaps even the royal court.28 This uneven texture of
the Egyptian evidence is a salutary reminder that the “prosopographical
data” we possess are often generated by discursive practices that were
not intended to answer the questions we pose. My next sections try to
overcome these problems to some extent by casting a wider evidentiary
net and examining what the discursive and visual self-representations
of the indigenous elite reveal about their position in the social space of
the court.

25
 For the hieroglyphic writings of sn ny-sw.t, see, e.g., Cairo CG 22050 and JE 46059
(further examples in Farid 1989, 159). Note also sn n mhw n ny-sw.t (“brother of the family
of the king,” Cairo JE 85743; Guermeur 2000, 73–74).
26
 Clarysse 1987, 15. See Berlin 22468; Cairo CG 31083, 31092, 50044, 50045; JE
46375. Farid 1989, 160.
27
 Cairo JE 46320; CG 50047. Gorre 2009, no. 10.
28
 See, for example, the traditional sequence rp ϲt h.Зty-(p) ϲ(t), smr w ϲty (“hereditary
noble, prince, unique friend”) and variants; Gorre 2009, 461–62.
 court, chora, and culture 25

Before taking up that task, however, let me anticipate an objection

that could be made to my attempt to locate Egyptian elites in the social
space of the Ptolemaic court: namely, that these individuals only appear
relatively late in Ptolemaic history, when the nature of the court had
changed and titles had become “honorific”—in other words, when they
no longer necessarily signified the “effective” or “real” relations between
the king and his friends that had constituted the third-century court and
still continued to shape the inner court at Alexandria.29 This argument
posits that, despite the restructuring of the court hierarchy, there was a
continuing divide between those courtiers in the administration and those
associated with the royal household in Alexandria. In fact, actual proxim-
ity to the king probably did still count for something, but the distinction
between honorific title-holders and real “friends” is not so clear-cut. The
king’s “friends” in the older sense could acquire a formal title in the new
hierarchy either while at the court itself or by virtue of appointment to
some administrative or military position that sent them away from it.30
In any case, literary sources do in fact mention three examples of Egyp-
tians directly connected to the monarch. Around 165, the Egyptian rebel
Dionysius Petoserapis, described as one of the “friends” of the king and
wielding considerable influence at court, began his attempt to gain power
in Egypt through court intrigues at Alexandria, before withdrawing to the
south to incite armed rebellion there. In 142, an Egyptian by the name
of Ptolemy Sympetesis was given the extraordinary command of all of
Cyrene (probably as strategos) by Ptolemy VIII himself. Although no
specific title is mentioned, this is around the time when the court hierarchy
became linked with positions in the administration, so he would presum-
ably have acquired some sort of court-title in his new position. Near the

29
 For these distinctions, see Mooren 1977, 38–41, 46–48; he is followed by Weber
1997, 53–57; Samuel 1993, 185–87.
30
 Savalli-Lestrade 1998, 368–73, argues that the new system of titles applied to the
court as well as the administration. Mooren 1977, 48, addressed the exceptions that blur
his distinction by arguing that those “real” friends who held honorific titles did so only by
virtue of their office; but that begs the question, from whom did they receive their com-
missions? As Thomas 1983 points out, a number of cases suggest that ad hoc decisions
could be made in the case of particular appointments to office and court rank, perhaps by
the king. There is also a problem of evidence: “honorific” title-holders tend to appear in
Ptolemaic administrative documents, but “real” friends only in literary sources that give
sufficient details of interaction with the king—and these sources are less plentiful for the
second and first centuries. This said, the one substantial contemporary literary description
of the later Ptolemaic court, the Letter of Aristeas (discussed further below), mentions
two figures who are in direct contact with the king and bear the “honorific” title archiso-
matophylax (12, 40).
26 ian s. moyer

end of the Ptolemaic period, an Egyptian named Achillas appears as one

of the chief advisors to Ptolemy XIII.31
Finally in this connection, there is also evidence that a few Egyptians
had positions (formal or not) at the third-century court. Individuals like
Senu, the governor of Coptos, a close advisor to Ptolemy II Philadelphus
who also held the position (real or honorific) of overseer of the royal
household (mr-pr ỉp.t-ny-sw.t) of Arsinoe,32 suggest that Manetho of Seben-
nytos, the priest, historian, and Ptolemaic advisor, was not as exceptional
as once thought. These are all suggestive examples, but in much of the
evidence to be discussed below, the formal, even formulaic, nature of the
texts makes it difficult to determine the “real” extent to which Egyptian
syngeneis were integrated into the social space of the Ptolemaic court.
Nevertheless, it was part of their discourse of self-representation. To use
Lefebvre’s terms of analysis, their representations of space, their evocation
of the “representational” space of the court in defining their social status,
and their concrete spatial practices, all contributed to the production of
the court’s social space.33

3. EGYPTIANS AT COURT:
REPRESENTATIONS OF SPATIAL PRACTICE

In Polybius, as mentioned above, the members of the Ptolemaic court

are denominated οἱ αὐλικοί (“the courtiers”) or οἱ περὶ τὴν αὐλήν (“those
around the court”). Their name and their social existence are derived
from the αὐλή (“the court”)—or indeed the palace, since the word αὐλή
was used to describe the entire royal residence at Alexandria. This was
perhaps more than a simple synecdoche. The palace and its proper
denizens were so closely entwined that calling the palace the court could
also function as a metonymy: the palace was the particular space of the
courtiers. But how was this social space produced, and how did it func-
tion to reproduce the social relations that it embodied? The physical

31
 Dionysius Petoserapis: Diod. Sic. 31.15a (see McGing 1997, 289–95; Veïsse 2004,
27–44, 99–112); Ptolemy Sympetesis: Polyb. 31.18.6 (see Walbank 1970–1979, 3.486); Achillas:
Plut. Pomp. 77. On Dionysius Petoserapis and Achillas, see Rowlandson 2007, 41.
32
 Cairo CG 700331; London BM EA 1668. Derchain 2000, 16, 22–31, 44–53; Lloyd
2002, 123–27; Rowlandson 2007, 44. There is some disagreement as to how to read the
name. Though Derchain 2000, 22, reads the signs as Snw-Šrỉ, Lloyd 2002, 123, and n. 24,
prefers Snn-šps(w). I follow Guermeur 2003, 336: Snw.w. The argument of Gorre 2009, 118,
that the title mr-pr ỉp.t-ny-sw.t refers to a cult position in Coptos is not convincing; see
Lloyd 2002, 124–27.
33
 See esp. Lefebvre 1991, 36–46.
 court, chora, and culture 27

details of the palace are difficult to reconstruct. Despite the intriguing

finds of the underwater survey led by Franck Goddio, the remains of
the palace quarter at Alexandria have revealed little of its Ptolemaic
layout.34 Nevertheless, the archaeological evidence does give a sense
of the density and scale of the construction in the area, to some extent
confirming Strabo’s description of the monumentality of the palaces at
Alexandria a few years after Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra
(17.1.8, adapted from Loeb):

The city contains the finest public precincts and also the royal palaces,
which constitute one-fourth or even one-third of the whole circuit of the
city; for just as each of the kings, from love of splendor, was in the habit
of somehow beautifying the public monuments further, so also he would
invest himself at his own expense with a residence, in addition to those
already built, so that now, to quote the words of the poet, “there is build-
ing upon building.”

The palace quarter that Strabo saw was the end result of three centuries
of the production and reproduction of the particular space of the Ptole-
maic monarchy and the society through which and over which this system
ruled, including, of course, the court. Other literary sources provide some
further glimpses of its space and spatial practices, especially the social
distances measured out by the ceremonies of entrée and audience that
unfolded in the massive complex of the palace.
Polybius’ account of the events leading to the death of Agathocles
at the hands of the Alexandrian mob in 203 reveals that the palace of
that era had at least three gates leading to its interior, as well as a special
entrance for official audiences, known as the chrematistikos pylon or “busi-
ness gate” (15.31). As in other court societies, the king’s residence and
household were the mediating space through which he ruled his subjects
and administered the kingdom.35 The chrematistikos pylon of the palace
at Alexandria was likely a monumental portal similar to the colonnaded
propylaion of Ptolemy IV’s massive, palatial Nile barge (the Thalame-
gus), or to the façades of better preserved Hellenistic governors’ palaces,
although undoubtedly on an even more impressive scale.36 Polybius also
describes a monumental courtyard that was used for audiences with

34
 Goddio 1998, esp. 43–50; also Yoyotte, Charvet, and Gompertz 1997, 84–85.
35
 Elias 2006, 45–47.
36
 See Nielsen 1994, 19–20, 133, on the governors’ palaces at Tyrus and Ptolemais.
Note also Callixenus’ description of the Thalamegus (Ath. 5.204d–206d), and the palace
of Aeëtes in Colchis (Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.215–34).
28 ian s. moyer

large numbers of people: “the largest peristyle in the palace,” where the
self-appointed regents Agathocles and Sosibius announced the deaths of
Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III to the household troops and soldiers stationed
in Alexandria.37 The space of the palace and its official functions also had
to be mobile. When on campaign, Ptolemy IV had a “conspicuous and
official tent” (epiphanes kai chrematistike skene) in which he dined and
conducted his business, perhaps in the manner that Alexander had done
a few generations before.38
The chrematistikos pylon and the chrematistike skene were not
merely points of access; they were portals through which access was
controlled, and in which the relations of power between the king and
those who approached him were enacted. The pseudonymous Letter of
Aristeas provides some rare insights into the ceremonial constraints on
access to the later Ptolemaic court. Although this text purports to be
a contemporary account of the translation of the Torah into Greek by
seventy-two Jewish scholars at the court of Ptolemy II (282–46), it was
composed in the second half of the second century by an author who
was likely a Jewish resident of Alexandria;39 several details show that
he was very familiar with the Ptolemaic court and administration in the
period roughly contemporary with the earliest of the Egyptian syngeneis.
When recounting the scholars’ reception at the palace, the narrator of
the letter describes how the king, in his enthusiasm to meet them, waived
the usual protocol:

When we reached Alexandria, news of our arrival was given to the king.
Andreas and I were introduced to the court, we paid our warm respects to
the king, and we presented the letters from Eleazar. The king was anxious
to meet the members of the deputation, so he gave orders to dismiss all the
other officials, and to summon these delegates. The unprecedented nature of
this step was very clear to all, because it was custom that those who arrived
regarding business (chrematismos) should come into the presence of the
king on the fifth day after their arrival, while representatives of kings or
important cities were rarely admitted to the court within thirty days.40

37
 Polyb. 15.25.3: τῷ µεγίστῳ περιστύλῳ τῆς αὐλῆς. Nielsen 1994, 20, 130, suggests that
this occurred in front of the chrematistikos pylon.
38
 Polyb. 5.81.5. See Spawforth 2007, 94–97, for particular attention to the ceremonial
tents in which Alexander conducted business and sat in judgment.
39
 This is the most favored date, but the issue continues to be debated; see, in brief,
Fraser 1972, 1.696–700, 2.970–72, n. 121; Collins 2000, 98–99. Particularly relevant here are
the references to archisomatophylax (n. 30 above), suggesting that the author has in mind
the court hierarchy of the second and first centuries.
40
 173–75; trans. adapted from R. J. Shutt in Charlesworth 1985.
 court, chora, and culture 29

The act of entering the court and coming before the king was constrained
by ceremonial delays of at least two different durations depending on the
nature of the visitor. Traversing the distance between the ordinary, out-
side world and the king in his court became a ritualized spatio-temporal
journey. All this, of course, heightened the prestige of those who were
regularly in the presence of the king or could claim entrée to the court.
To use Elias’ terminology, such distinctions of access and presence became
“prestige fetishes” indicating the social position of an individual by means
of the spatio-temporal coordinates of the court.41
A few surviving biographical inscriptions of Egyptian syngeneis
show that this prestige-fetish of entrée was also a mark of distinction
in the formal commemorative discourses through which Egyptian elites
asserted their social identity. A statue of the Egyptian syngenes (sn ny-sw.t)
Pachom, discovered in the course of excavations at the temple of Hathor at
Denderah (see Plate 1), depicts a high official in the striding draped-male
style of late Ptolemaic Egyptian sculpture.42 The statue has been dated
to the late second or early first century. Although found at Denderah,
the lacunose inscription indicates that this Pachom was strategos at Edfu,
serving as the chief administrative official of that nome.43 In describing
various honors granted to him, the hieroglyphic inscription on the back
pillar of the statue proclaims that “(when) he proceeds to and goes forth
from the palace, he is not hindered—standing and sitting in the presence
of His Majesty.”44 Another inscribed statue of an Egyptian syngenes from
Denderah makes a briefer claim to the same privilege. Panas, the son of
Psenobastis, who was strategos there at the end of the Ptolemaic period,
is described as “great of praise in the palace, he who enters the house of
the king.”45 The statues of two other first-century syngeneis from Upper

41
 Elias 2006, 91–95. Note the exclusion of Apelles from the royal quarters of Philip
V, with immediate and devastating consequences for his social prestige (Polyb. 5.26.9–11;
Herman 1997, 216).
42
 Cairo JE 46059. See Bianchi 1976; 1978; Kaiser 1999 (dating the emergence of
this type to ca. 125).
43
 Daressy 1917, 91–93; Meulenaere 1959, 3, 10–11, 24 (dating); Känel 1984, 142–45,
no. 64; Abdalla 1994, 8–11, fig. 3, pl. V; Gorre 2009, no. 8.
44
 Cairo JE 46059, col. 2: wdЗ pr(·f) pr-ny-sw.t n ỉtn·n·tw·f ϲh.ϲ h.ms m-bЗh. h.m·f.
45
 Cairo CG 690. Gorre 2009, 133, transliterates the phrase wr h.sw m stp-sЗ, h.Зt m
pr-nsw and translates as “grand favori du palais, admis dans la demeure royale,” following
Daressy 1893, 159–60. Borchardt’s entry in the Catalogue Général differs; following it, I
transliterate wr h.sw m stp-sЗ, ϲk. m pr-nsw (for the writing, see Wilson 1997, 180). See also the
statue of Pelaias from Tanis (Cairo CG 687; see Gorre 2009, no. 82), where the inscription
refers to him as ỉmy-ỉb tpy n ny-sw.t bỉty, perhaps a translation of the title protos philos (“first
30 ian s. moyer

Plate 1. The temple of Hathor at Denderah. Photograph by author.

Egypt, Korax and Plato, express the privilege of free movement at court
with a particularly vivid turn of phrase: they are described as “wide of
stride” (wsḫ -nmt.t) in the palace or in the king’s audience hall.46 The phrase
evokes, in a very corporeal way, the image of the courtier walking quickly
and confidently through the space of the court.
Suggestive though the phrase may be, it does not necessarily lead us
to the courtier’s distinctive bodily habitus at court, let alone his experi-
ence of movement in this space. The formula wsḫ -nmt.t was not new to
the Ptolemaic period, but is attested at least as early as the 30th Dynasty

friend”). He is described as ϲk. h.m.f m dr.t, trans. by Zivie-Coche 2004, 191, as “qui pénètre
jusqu’à Sa Majesté dans ses appartements” (preferable to the reading in Gorre 2009, 419).
See Wilson 1997, 1241–42; Erman and Grapow 1926–1963, 5.600.
46
 The inscriptions on two statues of Korax (Cairo JE 45390; Philadelphia 40-19-3)
include the phrase wsḫ -nmt.t m stp-sЗ (“wide of stride in the palace,” Daressy 1916, 269;
Ranke 1945, 241). Gorre 2009, 125, reads the phrase as wsḫ m stp-sЗ (“important au palais”),
but wsḫ -nmt.t makes better sense of the walking-legs sign in both inscriptions. For the ex-
pression, see Wilson 1997, 259, and the references below. The statue of Plato the Younger
(Cairo JE 48033, back pillar col. 1) calls him wr h.sw m pr-nsw, wsḫ -nmt.t m šnϲ (or rw.t?)
(“great of praise in the palace, wide of stride in the audience chamber”); see Coulon 2001
88–89, 91; Gorre 2009, no. 24.
 court, chora, and culture 31

(380–43).47 It, and other expressions of free movement and access to the
palace, were continuations of longstanding Egyptian discourses developed
in the context of pharaonic courts. In these earlier courts, as in so many
others, access and entrée were privileges of court rank.48 This does not
mean, however, that formulaic expressions like “wide of stride in the
palace” were meaningless archaic survivals of a bygone day—far from it.
While it is impossible to tell from the evidence available whether these
particular syngeneis did actually stride through the gates of the palace, the
fact that they situated themselves in the space of the royal court in public
self-representations shows that these statements still had a pragmatic
utility in discourses of identity and social standing. Although archaizing
in many respects, late Egyptian modes of elite self-presentation were not
manifestations of an ossified and uncomprehending formalism, but living
traditions capable of transformation and adaptation; the translation of
the title syngenes confirms the point, as does the display of visual signs
of court rank discussed below.

4. THE COURT IN THE CHORA

We should bear in mind that these biographical inscriptions proclaiming

the privileges of entrée enjoyed by Egyptian syngeneis were composed
for a very limited audience. Since they were in hieroglyphs, only those
trained to read and write this ancient script could understand the titles
and honors described. This written discourse, therefore, was effectively
limited to the elite priestly milieu from which the Egyptian syngeneis
came. There were, however, other audiences and other ways for Egyptian
courtiers to communicate their status. The head of a prominent second-
century family from Edfu commissioned a poet named Herodes to com-
pose epitaphs in Greek elegaic couplets for members of his family, which
were then inscribed on stelae set up in the necropolis of Edfu at Nag
el-Hassaia. The name of this patriarch was Ptolemaios, but he also had
the Egyptian name Pamenches. Jean Yoyotte has perceptively shown that,
in addition to their Greek grave stelae, these Edfu notables had stelae
inscribed in hieroglyphs in a traditional Egyptian manner, in which they

47
 Meulenaere 1955, 229–30. For the early attestation, see Bayonne, Museé Bonnat
no. 498 (Meulenaere 1962, 33–34).
48
 See, for example, Spence 2007, esp. 290–91, on the New Kingdom court, and Coulon
2002, 11–12, on the Middle Kingdom. For the space of the palace (esp. the throne room)
described as sacred (dsr) in the New Kingdom, see Hoffmeier 1985, 177–83.
32 ian s. moyer

went by their Egyptian names and titles.49 This was a family that lived
in two worlds, occupying important positions in the Ptolemaic court and
administration, but also in the Egyptian temples at Edfu, Denderah, and
elsewhere. Their dual funerary monuments addressed (at least formally)
both worlds. In the Greek epitaph of Apollonios, the son of Ptolemaios,
the voice of the departed defines his identity and achievements in rela-
tion to those of his father:

I am Apollonios, son of famous Ptolemaios, whom the Benefactors hon-

ored with the mitra, the sacred perquisite of the kinsman’s dignity. Loyalty
took him even into the inner parts of the country and up to the ocean.
Therefore, gazing on the fine fame of my father, I felt the urge to reach
the same excellence . . .50

This text proclaims that the “Benefactors,” Ptolemy VIII Euergetes

and his two wives, granted Ptolemaios the title of kinsman and also the
emblem of that rank: the mitra. Though the Greek epigram is not explicit
about his military and administrative positions, Apollonios’ hieroglyphic
stela refers to him as “great chief of the army” (mr mš ϲ wr), “chief of
the cavalry” (mr smsm), and “first lieutenant of his majesty in the south”
(ỉdnw tpy n h.m=f ỉr sḫ rw m-ϲ rsy), so he appears to have held the position
of strategos of the Thebaid (Cairo CG 22050), one of the most important
posts in the Ptolemaic administration. He also held the court title of
“brother of the king” (sn ny-sw.t)51 and therefore would have worn the
same mitra as Ptolemaios.
Father and son communicated their status with a visual symbol that
could be understood by all, even those unable to read either Egyptian
or Greek. Unfortunately, there is hardly any evidence that can provide
information on the contexts in which the Ptolemaic syngeneis would have
displayed the mitra while alive. Perhaps a rite of investiture lay behind
the brief reference to the “Benefactors” honoring Ptolemaios with the
mitra, a ceremony that is also suggested by the biographical inscription
on the statue of the syngenes Pachom mentioned above:

49
 Yoyotte 1969; see also Clarysse 1985, 62–64.
50
 Cairo CG 9205, lines 3–8: Εἰµὶ γὰρ εὐκλειοῦς Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Πτολεµαίου | κοῦρος, ὃν
Εὐέρκται µίτρᾳ ἐπηγλάισαν, | συγγενικῆς δόξης ἱερὸν γέρας · εὔνοια γάρ µιν | βαῖνε καὶ εἴσω γᾶς
ἄχρι καὶ ὠκεανόν. | Τοὔνεκα κἀµὲ πατρὸς καλὸν κλέος εἰσορόωντα | τῆς αὐτῆς ψαύειν θυµὸς
ἔθηγ᾿ ἀρετῆς . . . (for the full text, see Bernand 1969, no. 5).
51
 According to Mooren 1977, 85, the strategoi of the Thebaid bore the title syngenes
after about 135.
 court, chora, and culture 33

twn.n.f sdd·f m tr n ḫ rp·f (m) hkr.w ny-sw.t ỉwty sn.nw rdỉ·n·f mh. n sЗwy r
h. Зt·f . . .52
He [the king] rewarded his speech in the time of his administration (with)
royal ornaments without peer. He placed a fillet of gold on his brow . . .

Otherwise, however, the best evidence for the mitra as an emblem of rank
is found in statues that were placed in the forecourts of Egyptian temples
in Upper Egypt.53 No statues are known for Apollonios or Ptolemaios,
and the head of the statue of Pachom is missing, but four other statues
of syngeneis, all from the Thebaid, depict their subjects wearing a mitra.
In two cases, the head of the statue is still connected to the body, so the
mitra is plain to see. The statues are all of the “striding draped male”
type mentioned earlier. This statue-type was a new style of visual self-
presentation that emerged around 125 (Kaiser 1999)—in other words, at
the same time that Egyptians began to appear in the highest ranks of the
court hierarchy. In this style, the subject is shown standing with one foot
forward in the pose of a well-established Egyptian sculptural tradition,
but one hand is held at the front of the torso, usually clasping part of a
new tripartite costume that is draped over the body: a fringed outer shawl
combined with a short-sleeved tunic and a long wrap-around skirt.
A rough, partly finished statue in this style that is now in the collec-
tion of the Detroit Institute of Arts (51.83; see Plate 2) shows a strategos
and syngenes who is named Pachom in Egyptian and Hierax in Greek.54
The statue, which was probably set up in the forecourt of the temple of
Hathor at Denderah in the middle of the first century, bears a mitra.55
Pachom steps forward with his left foot, while his left hand clasps part of a
fringed outer garment at the front of his body; the right hand is clenched

52
 Cairo JE 46059, col. 2 (see n. 43 above for bibliography).
53
 There is one possible exception: a fragmentary letter written in demotic (P. Claude
2, 95 b.c.e.) that describes the gift of “a chiton of the Pharaoh and a crown of gold” (wϲ.t
gtn.t (n) Pr-ϲЗ h.nϲ wϲ glm (n) nwb) from the strategos Ptolion to a certain Horos of the
Ptolemaic garrison at Pathyris. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the “kinsman” rank;
see Chauveau 2002, 49–57.
54
 His names are known from: the hieroglyphs on the statue; a statue base from Edfu
inscribed in Greek (SB I 1560); the demotic inscription on the base of his son’s statue
(Cairo CG 50047; see further below); and a lintel from Denderah inscribed in hieroglyphs
(Cauville 1991, 79, pl. 32). The name Pakhom (PЗ ϲhm) refers to Horus in falcon form (see
Wilson 1997, 178, for references), thus the Greek Ἱέραξ is equivalent.
55
 Statue first published by Meulenaere 1959, 12–17; see also Stricker 1959, pl. IV, no.
6; 1960, 28; Bothmer 1969, 178–79, pls. 128–29, figs. 340–41, 343; Bianchi 1978, 98–100, figs.
59–60; 1988, 126–27; Walker 2001, 180–82. Prosopography: PP I.265, 990; III.5711; VIII.301;
Mooren 1975b, no. 0127; Gorre 2009, no. 9; see also Farid 1990.
34 ian s. moyer

Plate 2. Statue of Pachom, ca. 50–30 b.c.e. Grey granite. Detroit Institute
of Arts 51.83. Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. The
Bridgeman Art Library.
 court, chora, and culture 35

at his side. Another statue discovered in excavations at Denderah and

now in Cairo depicts the son of Hierax/Pachom, the high official and
priest Pamenches, who wears a mitra decorated with rosettes.56 This statue,
which probably dates to the very end of the Ptolemaic period (ca. 30),
is also of the “striding draped male” type. Like his father, Pamenches
was a syngenes, and also a strategos (mr mš ϲ wr) with authority over a
considerable area of Upper Egypt.57
The two other statues of syngeneis wearing mitrai are damaged,
but carved on the back pillars of each statue are the loose ends of the
mitra which would have hung down from a knot tied at the back of the
missing head. One of these statues, that of the syngenes Pachompsais,
is also from Denderah, and depicts him in the same tripartite costume
as the other statues.58 There is, however, a variation in the statue of the
syngenes Pamonthes-Plenis,59 who was a member of a prominent family
from Hermonthis (modern Armant), a short distance to the south of
Thebes. On top of the usual garments, he wears a panther skin that was
the traditional mark of a sem-priest (a specialist in funerary rituals) and
also associated with the priesthood of Amun at Thebes.60
This hybrid image of the Theban priest wearing the mitra of a
high-ranking courtier once again raises the question of the culture and
ethnicity of the Ptolemaic court. What role, if any, did such distinctions
play in relations between the Ptolemaic court and the indigenous elite,
especially in the case of the priestly courtiers, the Egyptian kinsmen of
the Macedonian king? The assertion of court status can hardly be taken
as a sign of “Hellenization” in individuals who retained such overt indicia
of their Egyptian affiliations as their language, their names, their religious
practices, and so forth. Rather, the overlap and interaction between the

56
 Cairo JE 46320 / CG 50047, most recently published by Abdalla 1994, 5–8, pls. IV,
VIIc, fig. 2, but with minor errors in the text (see next note). Earlier discussions: Daressy
1919, 186–88; Spiegelberg 1922, 88–90; 1932, 19–20, pl. XI; Rowe 1940, 17–18, fig. 2; Meu-
lenaere 1959, 3–6; Bothmer 1969, 157; Dack, 1989, 87. Prosopography: Mooren 1975b, no.
0128; PP III.5688; VIII.292b; Gorre 2009, no. 10.
57
 According to col. 1 of the inscription, he had control over Edfu, Denderah, Nubia
(i.e., the Dodekaschoinos), Philae, El Kab (Eleithyiaspolis), and Hierakonpolis (Kom el
Ahmar). In Abdalla 1994, 5, his title of syngenes (snyns) has been mistranslated as Esna.
For the correct rendering, see Spiegelberg 1922, 89; 1917, 128–29.
58
 Cairo 6/6/22/5 (Farid 1989); see also Gorre 2009, no. 32. On the costume, see
Bianchi 1978; 1988, 66–67.
59
 Louvre E 20361. Daressy 1893, 162; Farid 1995, 296–97; Gorre 2009, no. 12.
60
 The leopard skin is also worn with the tripartite costume on the statue of the
syngenes Plato (Cairo JE 38033); see Coulon 2001, esp. 87, n. 15.
36 ian s. moyer

Ptolemaic court and indigenous elites generated new forms of distinction

that crossed such boundaries.
The mitra itself was just such a new form, even if its comprehen-
sibility derived from antecedents in both the Hellenic and Egyptian
traditions. One obvious referent was the royal diadem worn by the
Ptolemies themselves, and hence the mitra could be an extension of the
royal symbolism of the diadem to include the “kinsmen” of the ruler.61
On the other hand, there were also Egyptian parallels and antecedents
with which an imagined ancient viewer could associate the mitra. Ptole-
maic reliefs and inscriptions at the temple of Horus at Edfu depict the
“crown of justification” (mh. n mЗϲ-ḫ rw), a fillet or headband in a variety
of forms that was presented to Horus in a symbolic rite of investiture
that celebrated the god’s victory over his enemies and assumption of
his father’s kingship over Egypt.62 If the mitra was made of gold, the
grant of this emblem could be understood in terms of other pharaonic
gifts of gold, such as the “gold of valor” (nbw k.nw) or “gold of praise”
(nbw h.sy), which were traditionally bestowed by pharaohs as favors and
tokens of distinction.63 Each of these reference points could well have
been available to one viewer or another. Without precluding any of these
interpretative possibilities, there are advantages to recognizing that the
mitra was at some point stipulated as the mark of the syngenes in the
Ptolemaic hierarchy and that it developed its own significance as it was
granted, worn, and represented in various contexts. It was as new as the
title itself, so its emergence and development should be interpreted as
much through its contemporary contexts as by reference to antecedents
Hellenic or Egyptian.
The fact that the evidence for the mitra can be drawn from such
different sources—from a Greek poetical epitaph, a golden fillet in a
hieroglyphic Egyptian biographical text, and visual representations on
late Ptolemaic statues—is itself part of my argument that the emblem of

61
 The diadem would have been familiar from coins, if not from Hellenistic portrait
sculpture; see Kyrieleis 1975. Brandenburg 1966, 156–57, connects the mitra of Apollonios
with the royal diadem. In Bianchi 1988, 127, the headband of Hierax/Pachom (Detroit 51.83)
is interpreted as a “blatant appropriation of the royal Alexandrian wide diadem.”
62
 For the rite, see Derchain 1955, who compares one version of the crown to that
of the statue of Pamenches, discussed above.
63
 Suggested by Bianchi 1976, 102–3. On royal gifts of gold, see Feucht 1977. Evidence
for this idea in the Ptolemaic period is the mention of a reward of gold for soldiers who
fought at Raphia (Greek: Bernand 1992, no. 14, ll. A.20–22; Gauthier 1925, 38, l. 29; Simpson
1996, 252–53). The gift of a crown of gold mentioned in P. Claude 2 (see n. 53 above) could
well be of this type (Chauveau 2002, 55).
 court, chora, and culture 37

the kinsman was a transcultural sign, not one limited to a single culture’s
frame of reference. Like those who wore it, the mitra could move freely
within and between at least two privileged spaces of social practice and
representation. The Egyptian syngeneis described here not only had
access to the space of the court, but they were also priests of the divini-
ties at Edfu, Armant, Thebes, Denderah, and elsewhere, and as such had
the privilege of passing through the gates of the temples (near to which
their stone likenesses stood) and on into sacred space. The statues of the
syngeneis were placed in the forecourts of the temples, a liminal space
that played multiple roles for the inhabitants of the Egyptian chora.
In addition to serving as the site of various rites which they may have
attended, and at which the syngeneis may have officiated as priests, it was
the same monumental space where the “kinsmen” of the king, in their
role as strategoi, would at times have carried out their own chrematismos
of receiving petitioners and exercising judicial functions.64 Here, in this
space that mediated between the profane world and the more sacred and
secluded parts of the temple proper—an area, moreover, accessible on at
least some occasions to the wider population—the mitra was a perfectly
intelligible claim to the prestige and power that emanated from access
to the king’s court. Through the “brothers of the king” who wore it, the
inhabitants of the chora experienced a mediated and distant connection
to the king himself.

CONCLUSION

As mentioned earlier, “kinsmen” first appear in texts dated to the reign

of Ptolemy VI Philometor as part of a system of court-titles originally
created under Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The elaboration of this new hier-
archy of honorific titles was part of an internal political reform under-
taken in response to the crises that the Ptolemaic kingdom faced at the
time: instability within the court, external threats from the Seleucid and
Antigonid kingdoms, and, of course, revolt in Upper Egypt. The new
titles both extended the reach of the court into the chora and added to
the prestige and authority of the officeholders who were carrying out
the king’s business there. This symbolic effort was especially important
in the Thebaid—alongside, indeed, the more substantive changes in its

64
 Quaegebeur 1993. See also Allam 1991, 111, n. 7, 117, 119–20; Sauneron 1954;
Clarysse 2000, 54. Coulon 2001, 107, has suggested that Plato the Younger (Gorre 2009, no. 24)
received oracles from Amun while conducting judicial business in the temple forecourt.
38 ian s. moyer

administration that followed the restoration of Ptolemaic control there

in 186: the creation of an epistrategos based in Ptolemaïs with authority
over the chora, and the administration of the Thebaid as a single unit by
a strategos superior to the strategoi governing its various nomes.65 Starting
during the reign of Ptolemy VIII, local indigenous elites regularly held
this high position as the governor of the Thebaid or served as strategoi
of multiple nomes, and they therefore played crucial roles in the exten-
sion and maintenance of Ptolemaic power in the south. They did so as
“kinsmen” or even “brothers” of the king (if the Egyptian translations
are taken literally), the most exalted members of the court hierarchy.
Fictive kinship with the king extended the social space of the
Ptolemaic court to the critical and sometimes turbulent Theban region
and to the Egyptians who increasingly exercised the state’s power there.
The surviving statues of some syngeneis show that this expansion of the
court was made visible in the chora by a new transcultural practice: the
grant of a mitra as a sign of their kinship with the king and their integra-
tion into the imagined social space of his court. The Egyptian identities
of the “kinsmen” show that the ethnic and cultural boundaries of the
herrschende Gesellschaft were quite porous in the Ptolemaic state during
this period. At the same time, the display of the mitra on statues set up in
the forecourt of Egyptian temples or near their propylaia, together with
the integration of the title into the Egyptian language and its graphic
traditions, reveals that membership in the court did not necessarily involve
Hellenization or assimilation. The alliance between indigenous elites and
the Ptolemaic court could be forged in an imagined transcultural space
at the intersection of two privileged spaces—that of the temple and that
of the court—a space that stretched from the palace in Alexandria to
temple forecourts far in the south.66

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

e-mail: ianmoyer@umich.edu

65
 See Veïsse 2004, 181–83. Later in the Ptolemaic period, the offices of epistrategos
and strategos of the Thebaid may have been combined, or (if separate) commonly held by
a single person. See Huss 2001, 525–26.
66
 Research for this article was supported in the first instance by a generous grant from
the Mellon Foundation and membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. I
also thank Ann Russman and her staff for their assistance while consulting the Corpus of
Late Egyptian Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum.
 court, chora, and culture 39

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