Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt - Cambridge Classical Studies

This book consists of two closely related parts. Volume I publishes fifty-four Greek and Egyptian demotic papyri which derive from census and tax activities in Egypt of the third and second centuries BC. Volume II is an historical study, using these texts to analyse fundamental aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt. The salt-tax registers of P. Count. make possible an assessment of the fiscal policy of the new Macedonian pharaohs and an analysis of the population make-up in both ethnic and occupational terms. A demographic analysis of this material exploits the best information for family and household structure for the Western world before the fifteenth century. A constant theme throughout is the impact of the Greeks on the native population of Egypt. This is traced, for example, in cultural policies, in administrative geography, in the realm of stock-rearing and in the changing religious affiliations traceable through the names that parents gave their children.