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The Ethics and Economics of Ptolemaic Religious Associations

The Ethics and Economics of Ptolemaic Religious Associations

Andrew Monson (Stanford University)

Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, November (2005)

Abstract

This paper considers the economic status of the members in Ptolemaic religious associations and offers a model to explain why they participated. Drawing on Charles Tilly’s comparative study of trust networks, I suggest that religious associations institutionalized informal ethical norms into formal rules that lowered the costs of transacting and facilitated cooperation among villagers. The rules related to legal disputes illustrate how associations exercised this power and even tried to prevent the Ptolemaic state from intruding in their network.



The value of Demotic Egyptian documents for Hellenistic social and economic history is often underestimated.1 This is especially true for the rules and accounts of religious associations. Most of our examples come from the Fayyum and date to the Ptolemaic period. A large number of these papyri were excavated at Tebtunis by Grenfell and Hunt on behalf of the University of California-Berkeley. These Demotic texts were left for the Cairo Museum, while the vast Greek collection came to Oxford and then to Berkeley. By analyzing these texts, my goal is to understand who joined Egyptian religious associations and why.

Click here to read this article from the Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics

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