FOR 5415 - Subproject 1: Xenocracy and cultural entanglement in Hellenistic Greece and Egypt

Basic data for this project

Description

The project explores the deep administrative structures of xenocracy in antiquity, pursuing the following avenues of comparative examination: a) the tracing of xenocratic rule as well as its actors in different arenas of social practice; and b) the perception of foreignness within different groups of actors and persons and the de-/stabilizing consequences for the exercise of power. Two areas of investigation are under examination, Hellenistic Greece and Ptolemaic Egypt, which, at different moments in time, experienced a seamless transition from one foreign rule to another; both realms went from the fold of the Hellenistic monarchies into that of Rome: Greece in the second century BCE, Egypt in the first. Along with these transitions, both the perception and meaning of foreignness underwent deep alterations. Subproject A gauges the change of xenocratic rule in the cities of Hellenistic Greece, while subproject B traces the role and importance of the office of strategos in the administration of Graeco-Roman Egypt by means of a diachronic, sociohistorical investigation. Both subprojects are designed to examine, in close conversation with one another, xenocratic trajectories both perceptually and praxeologically, i.e., they address xenocratic structures not only from the perspective of a mere exercise of power; rather, they revolve around the perspectives of perception and attribution of foreignness. In this vein, they also explore the notion of foreignness in the context of de-/stabilizing xenocratic rule.