Verhoogt (a.) Regaling Offcials In Ptolemaic Egypt. A Dramatic

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paper, in which he argues for a distinctive and in·uential Alexandrian art that combines realism and eclecticism. The route to the μnal three papers on late antique Alexandria runs through Heinrich von Staden’s exploration of Galen’s Alexandria; Galen may have been disappointed that Alexandrian medicine of his day did not live up to its former greatness under the Ptolemies, but as an acute observer he tells us much about the second-century city, having spent some μve years as a resident there. In a challenging paper Christopher Haas explores the role of Hellenism in the self-identity of Alexandrian pagans and argues that popular religious sentiment was more likely to look to the old gods of Egypt than their more malleable Greek counterparts. Intellectual paganism may have been rather di¶erent; Giovanni Ru¸ni imaginatively applies social network analysis, developed in sociology and anthropology, to the pagan intellectual circles of μfth-century Greece, Alexandria and Upper Egypt, an approach that sees the Alexandrian intellectuals as socially closer to those in Athens than those in Upper Egypt. The onset of Christianity seems to have done little to halt the practice of magic in Egypt, and Mona Haggag studies some intriguing wax μgurines found in 1978, which appear to date somewhere between the fourth and sixth centuries a.d.; they show two bound μgures, a male with an erection and a female with a cavity in her abdomen, each being attacked by a jackal, and are best interpreted as some form of aggressive magic. This is a stimulating collection of essays, some taking on bigger themes than others but all worth reading. It is a re·ection of the vitality of current Alexandrian research, as new approaches are applied to familiar themes and fresh discoveries lead to a reassessment of the past orthodoxies. University of Edinburgh

ANDREW ERSKINE [email protected]

SOME TEBTUNIS PAPYRI V e r h o o g t ( A . ) Regaling O¸cials in Ptolemaic Egypt. A Dramatic Reading of O¸cial Accounts from the Menches Papers. Pp. xiv + 237, pls. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Cased, €110, US$149. ISBN: 90-04-14226-6. doi:10.1017/S0009840X06002411

The Tebtunis papyri, excavated by Grenfell and Hunt in 1899–1900 and owned by the University of California at Berkeley, have previously appeared in four volumes (the third in two parts) in the Egypt Exploration Society’s series of Graeco-Roman Memoirs. This is the μrst published outside that series. The μve accounts presented here were either partly edited or merely described in The Tebtunis Papyri Volume I under numbers 112, 185, 213, 113 and 212. They appear here with new Tebtunis numbers, 1151–5, and with identiμcations in the Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava series. The accounts, from crocodile mummies, belong to the ‘Menches archive’ of the late second century b.c.e., but they di¶er from the land surveys that occupy the lion’s share of P.Tebt. I and IV. Four of the μve documents are accounts of ‘inpayments’ and ‘outpayments’ made while outside o¸cials were present at the village of Kerkeosiris to assist in the annual ‘survey according to crops’. 1, whose introduction, text with translation and commentary μll up a large part of the volume (pp. 71–150), is The Classical Review vol. 56 no. 2 © The Classical Association 2006; all rights reserved

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noteworthy for its length (315 lines), completeness and coverage of thirty-one consecutive days, Mecheir 6 (February 22) to Phamenoth 6 (March 24) of the year 5 (112 b.c.e.). It is the speciμc object of the dramatic reading (pp. 72–3) of the book’s subtitle. The status of the inpayments recorded in the accounts, whether from individuals, ‘from the jar’, or ‘from the pouch’, remains obscure, but the reasons for the disbursements are not. They mostly served to provide for the o¸cial visitors’ comfort and entertainment, occasionally to advance their work (the payments for papyrus rolls, ink, wax). An extensive Introduction (pp. 1–68) includes discussion (pp. 41–68) of the disbursements, listing the main items alphabetically in English by type under the rubrics of food, miscellaneous items and services. The commonest expenditure was for ‘oil’ (elaion), considered (p. 50) to be destined for cooking. Curiously, however, payments for oil often (1.13, 16, 47, 75, 106, 142, 172, 251; 3.103) directly precede payments ‘to the bath manager’, balaneî. This cannot be coincidental; and once this match is made it is hard to resist the idea that payments for ‘reeds’ (throia = thrua) and ‘μre-wood’ (xylon) were earmarked, respectively, for kindling and the principal fuel for the calidarium. See further 1.250–1 where ‘reeds’, ‘water’, ‘oil’ and ‘bath manager’ appear in suggestive sequence; cf. the references to jars at 1.5 and 12 and the apparent entry for a ‘scraper’ (spathê) at 1.309 (with note ad loc., p. 148). The village bath accordingly gains greater prominence than the Introduction and Commentary – e.g. pp. 104, 106, where oil, μre-wood and water are classed as food-related items – generally allow. Of course, such items could have served both ends, but the twenty references to the bath manager in 1–3 may suggest otherwise. There are other examples of bath-related items entered in pairs or close clusters. Associations like these are obscured by the alphabetical presentation of data, which necessarily separates items that may belong together. It may then be worth re-examining the sequences in which all the items were entered into the accounts both to enhance our mental image of what went on and (perhaps) to resolve a few doubtful readings. Here there is room only for some unrelated comments. 1.92: the correct resolution for the abbreviated word is not ( ) but ( ), ‘breakfast’. For an exact parallel, with the word written in full, see line 155. 1.244: for the damaged word at the right it is worth trying, based on printed traces and context (cf. 1.138, 184), σ0ξ[ , an interest-free loan. 3.59 (and note ad loc., p. 184): treating the second preposition of the double compound as derived from λ produces an oxymoronic result. It is better to treat the gamma as a nasal substitution for nu (removing the prepositional con·ict) and the root verb as derived from , not (for better sense). 5.3: it is not entirely clear why (p. 198) [ is not mentioned as a possible restoration. The volume’s format is large, the cost correspondingly high. It is heartening to know that publishers like Brill are willing to take on such projects, but surely the presentation of material in this volume could have been condensed. For example, though 1 deserves full attention, the justiμcation (p. 189) for completely republishing 4 seems shaky; 5 is a type of account di¶erent from the others: it does not contribute enough to the book’s main theme. The Introduction is buttressed by numerous notes with references that reproduce, in translation and in Greek, illustrative excerpts from the accounts. Thus, p. 59 n. 320 reproduces the twenty references ‘to the bath manager’ with English translation in every instance preceding the Greek. It is hard to see the gain from this seemingly needless redundancy. The Commentary contains occasional remarks that are unnecessary and repetitive (e.g. ‘The total is correct’, passim), or gratuitous (e.g. p. 186 on the Greek name Theochrestos in 3.76, essentially

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repeated from the document’s introduction, p. 166; cf. the later comment on the name Mikion from 5.3 on p. 198). The column by column presentation, with English translations on pages facing the Greek texts, though very helpful, sometimes requires great amounts of blank space. It is true that papyrologists today are experimenting with new forms of presentation to beneμt a wider readership, and innovators thereby lay themselves open to criticism by crusty reviewers; but the movement away from the concise format pioneered by Grenfell and Hunt, or even charier formats, can go unnecessarily to the other extreme. I am not the μrst to wonder whether the results justify the costs. Loyola University Chicago

JAMES G. KEENAN [email protected]

THRACIAN INSCRIPTIONS Lo u ko p o u lo u ( L . - D. ) , P a r i s s a k i ( M . - G. ) , P soma ( S. ) , Zo u r nat z i ( A . ) . Inscriptiones antiquae partis Thraciae quae ad ora maris Aegaei sita est (Praefecturae Xanthes, Rhodopes et Hebri). Ediderunt et commentariis sermone graeco conscriptis instruxerunt. Pp. 688, μgs, pls. Athens: Research Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2005. Cased, €120. ISBN: 960-7905-21-0. doi:10.1017/S0009840X06002428

A Hellenic counterpart to Mihailov’s exemplary edition of the inscriptions of Bulgarian Thrace (IGBulg) has long been a major desideratum. Gratitude is therefore in order for this lavish new corpus of the epigraphy of Aegean Thrace (IThrakAig), produced under the aegis of the productive Research Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity in Athens. The Editors have assembled 501 inscriptions, the majority from the old Greek colonies of Abdera and Maroneia, but with a signiμcant quantity of material from Topeiros, Zone, Trajanopolis, Plotinopolis and the small Classical site at Cape Molivoti. Valuable short introductions are furnished to the history and archaeology of each site. Photographic illustration, of excellent quality, approaches comprehensiveness. More than 200 texts are published here for the μrst time. The epigraphic record for Maroneia, in particular, is transformed. Perhaps the single most important new text is a Hadrianic rescript (E185) intended to protect the Maroneians and Abderans from transport requisition and billeting on the uia Egnatia and, more interestingly, for the sea-crossing to Samothrace. The famous aretalogy of Isis (E205) is now joined by a lengthy contemporary list of worshippers of Isis and Serapis (E212). It is a shame that the Editors have made no e¶ort to decipher the large new Hellenistic decree E181 ; one hopes that a full edition will be forthcoming. A major contribution of the volume is μnally to have presented as a whole the impressive wealth of funerary inscriptions and dedications of the μfth and fourth centuries b.c. from Abdera, Zone and the Classical site at Cape Molivoti. The Editors are cautious about the traditional identiμcation of this last site as the Thasian emporion of Stryme. However, the newly assembled inscriptions from the site at Cape Molivoti furnish powerful new arguments in favour of the identiμcation: as pointed The Classical Review vol. 56 no. 2 © The Classical Association 2006; all rights reserved

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