JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT
Greek civilization was essentially urban. The city-state, or polis, was
its highest governmental achievement. When, therefore, under Alexander
and Ptolemy, Egypt was to be transferred wholly within the sphere of
Greek culture, it was by means of a polis that this was to be effected.
The same was still more largely true for the other parts of Alexander’s
empire. In Asia and Syria the “Successors” were busy founding, wherever
convenient, cities diversely named. However, in these regions they were
merely continuing, in a somewhat accelerated fashion, a practice begun
long before. In Egypt, on the contrary, it was plain that a modification
of that policy was necessary. There was, to be sure, an ancient Greek
city at one of the western mouths of the Nile, the city of Naucratis.
But that had been founded as an emporium, and due care was taken that it
should be essentially nothing more, that it should acquire no supporting
territory in Egypt. And however important and wealthy Naucratis became,
it remained confined to its foreign trade for its subsistence.[101]
Besides, it had considerably dwindled in 330 B.C.E., so that its claims
could never have been seriously considered by Alexander, in comparison
with his desire to found a new city and in comparison with the much
superior location of Alexandria.
It is not likely that Alexander himself completed the plans for the
organization of the city. That was left to Ptolemy, and it was
accomplished with a modification of the Greek system that illustrates
both the wariness and the foresight of this most astute of Alexander’s
officers.
The essential part of the polis was its organization as a commonwealth,
_i.e._ as a group of citizens, each of whom had a necessary function to
perform in the state. From time immemorial the administration of affairs
was assigned to a boulē, or senate, the actual executives being little
more than committees of the boulē; but at all times an essential element
of the constitution was the confirmation, real or constructive, of all
acts of the boulē by the dēmos, or mass of citizens. The manner in which
the boulē was selected, as well as the extent to which the check
exercised by the dēmos was real, determined the measure of democracy
each polis obtained. However, even in cities which, like Sparta, were in
theory permanent camps, the same view was held of the necessity of these
parts and of their respective functions, so that everywhere, in legal
contemplation, sovereignty resided in the dēmos.[102]
It must not be supposed that all men who lived within the walls of the
city were members of the dēmos. That is a conception of democracy wholly
alien to ancient ideas. The participation of the individual in the state
was a privilege, acquired in the first instance by birth. Side by side
with the citizens was the slave, who was wholly devoid of legal rights,
and the metic, or resident foreigner, who had, as a result of a direct
compact with the state, acquired the right of residence and personal
protection upon the payment of certain specified taxes.
The privilege of citizenship was a complex of rights, to which were
attached certain very definite and sharply emphasized obligations. What
those rights were depended upon the constitution of the given polis.
Where they were fullest, as at Athens, they included voting in the
public assembly, the holding of public office, service on the jury, and
a claim for certain personal privileges, such as admission to the
dramatic performances at the Dionysiac festivals. In other states they
were not quite so extensive, but the obligations were everywhere the
same, _i.e._ payment of taxes and military service. The state was in the
habit of remitting from time to time certain or all of these taxes and
other compulsory services, so that we may say that various grades of
citizens and metics generally existed.
Now Naucratis was just such a polis as this. So were the various
Apameas, Antiochias, Seleucias, Laodiceas, established in Asia and
Syria. It is true that the boulē and dēmos of these cities were the
merest shadows; and actually the despotism of the monarch was as
undoubted as it had been in Persian times. But the shadows were at least
a concession to the Hellenic spirit, and as such were immensely
treasured; nor can it be denied that as long as they remained the
remembrance of free institutions remained as well. At Pergamon, which
the Attalids created, no public act was done except as the deliberate
choice of senate and people.[103]
But when Ptolemy constituted Alexandria, he deliberately departed from
this plan. As has been said, Naucratis had boulē and dēmos and all the
other appurtenances of a well-regulated polis. So had Ptolemais somewhat
later; and many years later, when the emperor Hadrian founded an
Antinois in memory of his dead minion, he likewise made it a full and
complete Greek city. In Alexandria, on the other hand, there is no
trace, till late in Roman times, of a boulē; and of a dēmos as little.
In the great mass of Greek papyri that have come from Egypt there is
nowhere any indication that a senate ever met, or a people ever
assembled, to parody the deliberations of the Athenian ecclesia. In
other words Alexandria was much less a polis than it was a royal
residence, _i.e._ the site of the king’s palace amidst a more densely
gathered group of his subjects.[104]
In externals Alexandria was every inch a city. It had the high walls,
which, as Alcaeus tells us, do _not_ constitute a state. It had the
tribe and deme, or district division, and it had its various grades of
citizens, determined by the duties and imposts to which they were
subjected.
Of its tribe and district division we know some details. There were
probably five tribes, each of which consisted of twelve demes, or
districts, which in turn had twelve phratries, or wards. The tribes were
known by the first five letters of the Greek alphabet. In the absence of
even formal political rights, this division can have been made simply in
the interests of the census and the police. The obligations to pay taxes
and perform military service were very real ones, and their proper
enforcement necessitated some such organization of the city.[105]
Different classes of citizenship were at once created by the
establishment of special taxes and special exemptions. The peculiar
Greek fiscal arrangement known as the liturgy, which made the
performance of certain services to the state a means of compounding for
taxes, was also in vogue. We have records of certain of these classes of
citizens, or inhabitants, and it is at least probable that there were
other classes of which we know nothing.
First of all, there were the Macedones, or Macedonians. These form a
specially privileged group, whose residence was probably by no means
confined to Alexandria. Just what their privileges were we do not know,
but that they lay chiefly in fiscal exemptions of one sort or another,
is almost certain.
Then there were the Alexandreis, or Alexandrians. We know that there
were at least two groups—those that were enrolled in a given tribe, or
deme, and those not so enrolled. We can only conjecture the purpose of
this division, and one conjecture will be mentioned later.
Besides these, there were other men whose legal right to residence was
unquestioned. They were variously designated. We find Persians, Jews,
and other nationalities, qualified with the phrase τῆς
ἐπιγονῆς, which means literally “of the descent,” but the exact
force of which is unknown. This classification procured for those so
termed certain very much valued exemptions. Native Egyptians also were
present, paying a special poll-tax, and no doubt a very large number of
metics and transient foreigners. Greek publicists regarded the presence
of a large number of metics and foreign merchants as a sign of great
prosperity.[106] We may be sure that no burdensome restrictions made the
settling of these classes difficult at Alexandria.
Were the Jews in Alexandria citizens? A great many heated controversies
have been fought on this subject, some of which would surely not have
been entered into if a clearer analysis had been available of what
constituted Alexandrian “citizenship.” As we have seen, the question can
only be framed thus: Did the Jews of that city appear on the census
books as “Alexandreis,” with or without the deme and tribe adjective
after them, or were they classified as Jews, and did they form a
distinct fiscal class by themselves?
The denial of their citizenship is principally based upon distrust of
Josephus, who asserts it. But distrust of Josephus may be carried to an
extravagant degree. Modern writers with pronounced bias may, of course,
be disregarded, but saner investigators have equally allowed themselves
to be guided by disinclination to credit Josephus, and have come to the
conclusion that the Jews were not citizens of Alexandria.
There were of course very many Jews in Alexandria who were not legally
Alexandrians. Josephus’ assertion did not and could not mean that every
Jew in the city was, by the very fact of his residence, an Alexandrian.
Nowhere in the ancient world could citizenship be acquired except by
birth or by special decree. Jews who emigrated from Palestine to
Alexandria, and were permitted to remain there, were metics, and became
Alexandrians only if they were specially awarded that designation. But
that was just as true for a foreign Greek or a foreign Macedonian, since
at Alexandria “Macedonian” was a class of citizenship, not an ethnic
term. Those who assisted in the founding of the city were undoubtedly
classified either as “Macedones” or “Alexandreis,” and the tradition
that Jews were among them is based upon other authority than Josephus.
It is not enough, therefore, if one desires to refute Josephus, to show
that there were Jews in Egypt who were not “Alexandreis.” Undoubtedly
there were thousands of them. But if, in the papyri, we do find Jews
among the “Macedones” and others among the “Alexandreis,” the statements
of Josephus on the subject are strikingly confirmed, for he says no more
than that there were Jews in both these categories.[107]
Of the two classes of Alexandrians, those enrolled in demes and those
not so enrolled, it is likely that the Jewish “Alexandreis” belonged to
the latter class. The former either paid a special district tax, or,
more likely, were charged with the performance of certain district
duties, either religious in their nature, such as the burying of the
pauper dead, or of police character. When Alexandrians were constituted,
not registered in demes, the purpose can only have been to secure
exemption from these local duties, and the example quoted would of
itself indicate why the Jews may have been so exempted.
It was not, however, merely in Alexandria that the Jews settled,
precisely as it was not merely in Greek cities that Greeks were to be
found. That part of Egypt which lay outside the definite civic
communities as they were founded from time to time, was organized in
nomes, in large agricultural districts containing many villages or even
cities. In every instance, however, the administrative unit was the
nome.
These nomes had themselves a history of immemorial antiquity. Some of
them were surely in boundary coincident with the petty nationalities
that antedated the first dynasties. The mass of the population in them
had practically always been peasant-serfs, and continued to be so.
Beside them, in the villages and towns, there lived in Greek times
motley groups of men, whose legal status was determined in a number of
ways. Some were citizens of Alexandria, Ptolemais, etc., and merely
resident in the nome. Others enjoyed certain military and fiscal
privileges, which involved the right of residence. But in all
circumstances, in the elaborate financial organization of Egypt every
resident had certain precise dues to pay, and was marked by a certain
designation.
The military and other settlers whom the Greeks found in Egypt, whether
they were Persians, Jews, Syrians, or Babylonians, retained their
status, _i.e._ they paid taxes and performed services differing from
those of the native Egyptians in part, although no doubt certain taxes
were levied upon all. The foreigners whom Ptolemy invited or brought
into Egypt must have been settled either in the cities or the nomes, and
were given a definite fiscal status. And besides all these various
grades, there were metics—a term which may have included emancipated
slaves, and of course slaves as well—in huge numbers. There can be
little doubt that Jews were to be found in all classes, from the highly
privileged nobility of “Macedones” to the slaves.[108]
In most large Greek cities metics of foreign birth or ancestry existed.
There were Phoenicians and Egyptians in Athens in very early times. But
they were all, together with non-Athenian Greeks, gathered into the
general group of metics, and no one group ever became numerically so
preponderant that a special class had to be legally constituted of them.
In Egypt, however, the general term metic was rarely used. For the nome
organization of the country it seemed scarcely applicable. Instead,
those foreigners who had acquired legal residence and other rights were
known by their national name. So there was a group of Egyptian residents
known as Ἰουδαῖοι, as “Jews,” which was in their case a
legal designation, whereas, when the “Macedones,” “Alexandreis,” etc.,
of the same nationality were referred to as Ἰουδαῖοι, the
term was merely descriptive.
We do not know whether the Ἰουδαîοι that had no other
classification were more numerous or less numerous than those who had.
But it was shortly found advisable to organize the Jewish metics to the
extent of superadding upon their own cult-organizations certain royal
officers responsible to the king. Of these the chief was the ethnarch,
and it is evident that the ethnarch would assume an importance in
proportion to the number under his jurisdiction. The right to have an
ethnarch seems to have been a prized privilege and was not confined to
the Jews. What the relation of the later alabarch[109] was to the
ethnarch is not clear. The two terms may perhaps designate the same
office.
But a complete understanding of the condition of the Jews in Egypt and
Alexandria necessitates some account of the synagogue organization.
There is no reason to question the Jewish tradition that the synagogue
was Exilic or pre-Exilic in origin. In fact, it is not easily
conceivable that it could have been otherwise. Worship was a social act
in the ancient world, and properly to be performed in concert. It was
inevitable therefore that just as soon as the Jews were removed from
those places where the ancestral and traditional ritual was performed
without any conscious organization for that purpose, they would combine
themselves in groups in order to satisfy the strongly marked religious
emotion that characterized them.
Corporate organization, based upon the performance in common of some
religious act, characterized the whole ancient world. The state was
itself a large corporation of this kind, and the local divisions rapidly
assumed, or always possessed, the same form. Obviously members of the
same nationality residing in a foreign city would be specially prone to
organize themselves into such corporations, and as a rule make the
religious bond, which seems to have been a formal requisite, the common
worship of one of their own gods. The merchants of Citium at Athens
formed a guild for the worship of the Cyprian Aphrodite. It was in this
way that Egyptian merchants and artisans made Isis known to the Roman
world.[110]
It has been said that the state itself was such a corporation, of which
the formal basis was the common performance of a certain ritual act.
When new states were founded or new men admitted into old states, a
great deal was made of the act. It follows therefore that when Jews were
admitted into the newly founded civic communities of Asia, as we know
they were, some relation would have to be entered upon between
themselves and the religious basis of the state. In most cases, special
exemption from participation in these religious acts seems to have been
sought and obtained.
In Egypt the conflict between the exclusive worship of Jehovah and the
less intolerant worship of the Nile-gods had been in existence for
centuries before the Greeks. The pre-Greek Jewish immigrants were
perhaps not of the sort that sought to accentuate the conflict, though
friction was unavoidable. At the Greek conquest, it must be remembered,
no great disposition was shown by the first Ptolemies to accept the
native institutions or the native gods. The new god of Alexandria, the
mighty Sarapis, was not, as has been generally supposed, a composite of
Osiris and Apis, but an out and out Greek god, imported from his obscure
shrine in direct opposition to the indigenous gods.[111] Membership in
the civic communities, or residence in the country districts, can have
involved no obligation to share the ritual localized there. Every group
of foreigners might freely disregard it, and maintain unimpaired their
own ancestral forms.
We accordingly find Jewish synagogues—in the sense of
cult-organizations, each having its own meeting-house, schola, or
proseucha, and organized with magistrates and council, like miniature
states—not only in Alexandria but in insignificant little towns of Upper
and Lower Egypt.[112] Nor was the legal basis of such organization
wanting, _i.e._ the corporate personality, since we find these
synagogues enjoying the rights of property and subject to the imposts
levied upon it.[113] The extent of each synagogue was limited by the
physical capacity of the schola. There must have been in Alexandria very
many of them.
Who were members of them? The various classes of Jews in the city and
country were divided by social and legal lines. In the synagogue social
distinctions cannot have disappeared, but there can be no doubt that in
many, if not in all, there would be found Jews representing every class
of the community. In other parts of the Greek world it was no strange
thing to see citizens, metics, foreigners, slaves, claiming membership
in the same cult-organization, and jointly worshiping a native or
foreign god. The synagogue likewise contained among its members nobles
and slaves. The tendency for the wealthier classes to become completely
Hellenized, and so completely to abandon the synagogue, did not show
itself prominently for some time.
We may readily suppose that the native Egyptians regarded all the
foreign invaders with scarcely discriminating hatred. In most cases,
when Greeks and Jews dwelt in the nomes, they were both exempt from
local dues, and both paid the same special tax. What the attitude of the
Egyptians was to their Greek and Macedonian masters, we have no need to
conjecture.[114] As under Persian rule, they rose in bloody riots; and
after a century of Greek domination, they were so far successful that a
complete change in the policy of the Ptolemies was effected. The house
had very rapidly degenerated—a process perhaps hastened by the Egyptian
custom of brother and sister marriage, which they adopted. From the
weaker kings of the close of the third century B.C.E., the Egyptian
priests received a complete surrender. Continuity with the Pharaohs was
consciously sought. The ancient titles in a modified form were adopted
in Greek as well as Egyptian for the rulers. The hieroglyphics
represented Ptolemy as the living god, sprung from Ra, just as they had
done for Amen-hem-et thousands of years before.[115]
But a Hellenizing process had gone on as well as an Egyptizing process.
The irresistible attractions of Greek culture had converted even the
fiercest nationalists into Greeks outwardly, and in the horde of Greek
names that the papyri exhibit we have sometimes far to seek, if we wish
to discover unmistakably Greek stock. Intermarriage and concubinage must
have given Egypt a large mixed-blood population, which no doubt called
itself Greek. Evidences of Greek aloofness on the subject of marriage
have been sought in the denial of connubium by the city of Ptolemais to
foreigners.[116] But that applied to foreign Greeks as well, and was a
common regulation in most Greek cities.
The Hellenizing process affected the Jews even more. In Alexandria the
Jewish community had begun to show signs of the most active intellectual
growth, and the results of that growth, naturally enough, wore a Greek
dress. But that process had been active in Palestine as well, where the
consequences were somewhat more important. It is there that we shall
turn for a study of the first conflicts between Judaism and Hellenism.
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