| Summary: | This dissertation focuses on Ptolemaic power outside of Egypt as a case-study in Ptolemaic state formation. Drawing on the model of interrelated networks of social power advocated by Mann (1986), its aim is to re-evaluate the character of Ptolemaic rule in Cyprus to provide a test case for the interaction of political, ideological, military, and economic power. The study seeks to make two primary sustained arguments. First, I argue that Cyprus was a fully integrated territory in a Ptolemaic state extending beyond Egypt. While this process must be regarded diachronically and Egypt remained the core of the Ptolemaic state, the dissertation seeks to emphasize the structural integration of the island into the overarching political and economic system of the Ptolemaic state rather than as a "outside possession" governed separately from the Egyptian core. Second, I argue for the selective integration and deployment of Cypriot political and cultural structures by the Ptolemaic administration of the island demonstrating both the flexibility and responsiveness of Ptolemaic imperial power.
The dissertation seeks to make three primary contributions. First, by treating Cyprus as part of a greater Ptolemaic state, I engage with Ptolemaic history specifically by expanding our understanding of the Ptolemaic state beyond the well-documented confines of Egypt. In so doing, I seek to create a model of such interactions to be read alongside Manning's model of the Ptolemaic state in Egypt (2010) and Capdetrey's recent study (2007) of the Seleucid empire in order to better understand the nature of imperial and local power dynamics in the Hellenistic Near-East as a whole. Second, I engage with Cypriot history by expanding our understanding of the period to stress local dynamics of integration and interaction with imperial power structures rather than the image of imperial domination that has characterized scholarship to date. More broadly, the dissertation seeks to contribute to wider debates on imperial state formation and the interaction between economy, culture, and power in the ancient world.
The dissertation is arranged thematically based on Mann's IEMP model. Chapter One addresses the Ptolemaic military-administration of the island in terms of its organizational capacity and argues for three chronological phases of Ptolemaic control of the island defined by the frontier status of Cyprus within the Ptolemaic empire as a whole. Chapters Two and Three examine coinage and money as a means of understanding both ideological and economic power. The chapters argue that Cyprus was fully incorporated into the general patterns of monetization in the Ptolemaic empire as a means of maintaining the money supply through an examination the circulation of Ptolemaic coins minted in Cyprus outside the island as well as circulation patterns in Cyprus itself. Chapter Four examines the deployment of ideological power and the question of religious integration through a study of the Ptolemaic presence in Cypriot sanctuaries and argues that such practices strongly suggest a concentration on the cult of Aphrodite in Palaipaphos which I claim was employed as a type of federal sanctuary for the administration of the island as a whole. The final chapter addresses civic life and identity as the island transitioned from rule by kings to forms of Hellenistic cities and argues for a shift in the understanding of the period towards an examination of the ways in which Cypriot political structures and civic elites adapt their behavior and means of epigraphic representation in the new political world created by the systems of Ptolemaic control. The supplementary excel file presents a summary of bronze coin finds in Cypriot excavations.
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