Alexander the Great and the Emergence of Hellenistic Egypt: Some Considerations in Administrative History

The proposed title of the paper may be misleading. Given the topic of this conference, the point is obviously not to consider Alexander the Great a priori as a formative figure in the emergence of what classicists call “Hellenistic Egypt.” Rather, the issue is whether Alexander the Great and his conquest of Egypt represented a watershed for that country in every respect – which is what the term “Hellenistic Egypt” might mean in dogmatic terms. The aim of this paper is to determine, from the perspective of administrative history, whether non-Graeco-Macedonian ruling principles, institutions, offices or officials played a decisive role at the beginning of “Hellenistic Egypt” and to what extent any inherited structures can be traced back to the former xenocracy of the Achaemenid Empire. Is administration, then, an area to which the attribute “Hellenistic” necessarily applies with or immediately after Alexander the Great, and do we need to pay attention to the Achaemenian prelude in this context? The paper can only deal with this question in an exemplary way but will try to find some answers.

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