egyptian warriors: the machimoi of herodotus and the ptolemaic army

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EGYPTIANWARRIORS:THEMACHIMOIOFHERODOTUSANDTHEPTOLEMAICARMY

ChristelleFischerBovet

TheClassicalQuarterly/Volume63/Issue01/May2013,pp209236DOI:10.1017/S000983881200064X,Publishedonline:24April2013

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EGYPTIAN WARRIORS: THE MACHIMOI OF HERODOTUS ANDTHE PTOLEMAIC ARMY1

The role and status of theEgyptians in the armyofHellenistic Egypt (32330 B.C.) has been adebated question that goes back to the position within Late Period Egyptian society (664332 B.C.) of the Egyptianwarriors described byHerodotus asmachimoi. Until a few decadesago, Ptolemaicmilitary institutions were perceived as trulyGreco-Macedonian and the pres-ence of Egyptians in the army during the first century of Ptolemaic rule was contested. TheEgyptians were thought of as being unfit to be good soldiers. Egyptians would have beenhired only as late as 217 B.C. to fight against the Seleucid king Antiochus III in Raphia.2

The Ptolemaic victory (in fact rather a status quo) was made possible thanks to the additionof twenty thousand Egyptians to reinforce the Greek army. For a long time the subsequentrole of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army in the second and first centuries B.C. did not attractmuch attention. One usually assumed that they were second-rate soldiers calledmachimoi.In recent decades, the scholarship on Ptolemaic Egypt, notably Demotic studies, reassertedthe role of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army from the late fourth century onwards.

My particular interest in the Egyptian warriors stems from the confusion about themachimoi and whether this term has the same meaning in Hellenistic documents asin Herodotus narrative of the earliest years of Late Period Egypt.3 In fact, the

1 I would like to thank John Lee for his thoughtful comments regarding the Late Period army aswell as Willy Clarysse, Andrew Monson and Gnther Vittmann for reading earlier drafts. A shorterversion of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American PhilologicalAssociation in Anaheim in January 2010 when I was a fellow of the Swiss National ScienceFoundation at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, University of California, Berkeley.

2 This general assumption is based on Polyb. 5.65.9 and 5.107; the opinio communis is summarizedby D.J. Crawford, Kerkeosiris: An Egyptian Village in the Ptolemaic Period (Cambridge, 1971), 69.

3 Scholars generally perceive the Ptolemaic machimoi as the successors of the pharaonic machimoi:see for instance J. Lesquier, Les institutions militaires de lEgypte sous les Lagides (Paris, 1911), 510, 28, 434, 478 who thinks that the machimoi soldiers, who were granted land by the pharaohs inexchange for military service, survived as a class of Egyptian soldiers under the Ptolemies (as auxili-ary and special troops) but after Raphia they lost their privileges since any Egyptians could join thearmy and fight in the phalanx. J.K. Winnicki, Die gypter und das Ptolemerheer, Aegyptus 65(1985), 4155, at 47 also thinks that a large part of the Egyptian soldiers must have kept their pro-fession under the Ptolemies and he still perceives them as descendants of pharaonic machimoi.Similarly, for A.B. Lloyd, The Egyptian elite in the Early Ptolemaic period: some hieroglyphic evi-dence, in D. Ogden (ed.), The Hellenistic World New Perspectives (London, 2002), 11736, themachimoi soldiers survived as a class of Egyptian soldiers under the Ptolemies: they retainedtheir organization and command structure but were not used in the main field army until Raphia.However, he reacts against the minimization of the role of the Egyptians in the army in the third cen-tury B.C. See also E. Kiessling, Machimoi, RE 14.1 (1928), 1545; Oates (n. 79 below); R.K. Ritner,The end of the Libyan anarchy in Egypt: P. Rylands IX cols. 1112, Enchoria 17 (1998), 1018;K. Jansen-Winkeln, Kalasirieis, Kalasiris, Der Neue Pauly 6 (1999), 151; W. Huss Bamberg,Machimoi, Der Neue Pauly 7 (1999), 623; G. Vittmann, Kursivhieratische und frhdemotischeMiszellen, Enchoria 25 (1999), 11127; and J. Serrati, Warfare and the state, in P.A.G. Sabin

Classical Quarterly 63.1 209236 (2013) Printed in Great Britain 209doi:10.1017/S000983881200064X

papyrological and epigraphic material does not allow us directly to connect thePtolemaic machimoi to the so-called machimoi of the Late Period as is usually done.In this study, I propose a new interpretation of Herodotus passage concerning themachimoi and the organization of Egyptian society in seven classes (2.1647). Then Ipresent the evidence that suggests that there is no straightforward continuity but rathera loose connection between the Late Period Egypt military system described inaccur-ately by Herodotus and the Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army. Moreover, throughoutthe Ptolemaic period, the machimoi seem to have played an increasing role in thePtolemaic army and represented an ever-larger share of it. Finally, I argue that thePtolemaic machimoi were not at the bottom of the social ladder as is commonly thought.

THE MACHIMOI OF HERODOTUS

Herodotus was the first to use the Greek word machimoi () in order to qualifyEgyptian warriors but he also employed it for the troops coming from Asia during thePersian wars (Hdt. 7.185).4 Other Greek authors such as Plato used it simply for describingfighting men.5 In the middle of his narrative of the war between two kings of the 26thdynasty (662525 B.C.), king Apries and the king-to-be Amasis, Herodotus introduces ashort description of Egyptian society in seven categories. He gives some details about oneof them, the machimoi, usually translated as warriors. They are divided in two categories,the kalasiries () and the hermotybies ().6 These two groups are men-tioned again in his account of thePersian troops at the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C. (Hdt. 9.32).

Herodotus, Histories, 2.1646 (Text byLegrand, TLG)

Strassler and Purvis (n. 7)

(164) , , , , , , , . , . ,

164. In Egypt there are seven classesof people: there are the priests, the mencalled warriors, the cowherds, theswineherds, the shopkeepers, theinterpreters, and the helmsmen; eachone is named for its particular skill. Thewarriors called Kalasiries andHermotybies are drawn from separatenomes, as all Egypt is divided intonomes. 165. The Hermotybies come

Continued

and H. van Wees, et al. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Cambridge,2007), 46197.

4 Diod. Sic. uses it with the same meaning in 1.73 and 1.94.5 Pl. Leg. 8 (830c).6 See Hdt. 2.1658; 9.32; in fact the term kalasiris is not of Egyptian origin, see J.K. Winnicki,

Die Kalasirier der sptdynastischen und der ptolemischen Zeit. Zu einem Problem dergyptischen Heeresgeschichte, Historia 26 (1977), 25768; on its etymology, see J.K. Winnicki,Zur Bedeutung der Termini Kalasirier und Ermotybier, in W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, et al. (edd.),Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of JanQuaegebeur (Leuven, 1998), 15037.

CHRISTELLE FISCHER-BOVET210

According toHerodotus (2.1656), the hermotybieswere 160,000 at some point duringthe 26th dynasty and came from five and a half nomes of thewestern and central Delta. Thekalasirieswere 250,000 and came fromeleven nomes of the eastern and southernDelta andfrom the Thebaid.8 Both groups were forbidden to practise any craft, but engage only inmilitary pursuits, and their sons inherit this status directly from their fathers, 2.166).9Each machimos received twelve arourai of tax-exempt land (2.168).

Herodotus, Histories, 2.168 (text by Legrand,TLG)


(168) ,

168. Except for the priests, who hadtheir own special rights, only thewarriors in Egypt had privileges

Continued

. (165) , , ,, , , , , . , . (166) , ,, , ,, , ,, , , ( , ) , , , . , , .

from the following nomes: theBusirites, Saites, Chemmites,Papremites, the island called Prosopitis,and half of Natho. Their population, atits maximum, could number up to160,000. Of all these men, not one haslearned any manual occupation;instead, they are free to devote all theirattention to military service. 166. Thenomes of the Calasiries are theThebaios, Bubastites, Aphthites,Tanites, Mendesios, Sebennytes,Athribites, Pharbathites, Thmuites,Onouphites, Anytios,7 Myekphorites,situated on an island which liesopposite the city of Boubastis. Theirpopulation at its maximum couldnumber as many as 250,000. Thesemen are also forbidden to practise anycraft, but engage only in militarypursuits, and their sons inherit thisstatus directly from their fathers.

Continued

7 A.L. Purvis in R.B. Strassler and A.L. Purvis, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories(New York, 2007), 2.166.1k explains that the nome was located near Anytis, see also references inn. 8, probably an alternate form of Anysis; most editions of the text chose but the form is found in two manuscripts.

8 On the location of the different nomes, see A.B. Lloyd, Herodotus. Book II. Commentary 99182(Leiden, 1988), 18895; for what it could suggest concerning the origin of the people who immigratedto the Delta, see Winnicki (n. 6 [1998]), 15034. Sesosis (Sesostris or Sheshonq I?) supposedlyestablished the rules governing the machimoi (Diod. Sic. 1.94.4).

9 Tr. A.L. Purvis in Strassler and Purvis (n. 7).

EGYPTIAN WARRIORS 211

Continued

Herodotus, Histories, 2.168 (text by Legrand,TLG)


,

reserved for themselves alone. Eachsoldier received choice plots oftax-exempt land, equal to twelvearouras These plots of land werereserved for every one of them, andthey took turns reaping the fruits ofthe land, so that the plots weretended by different men each year

Herodotus statements are usually taken at face value but there are at least two majorproblems. First, Herodotus perceives the machimoi as a caste and reports that all warriorswere divided in only two categories that distinguished the provenance of the soldiers.Second, he provides very high numbers for the machimoi and the amount of land grantedto them.

(1) The absence of an Egyptian concept of caste or class of warriors sheds lighton the difficulty of using Herodotus machimoi for understanding the organization of theEgyptian army in the Late Period. Egyptian inscriptions indicate that military officerscould also be priests and there were overlaps between the members of the differentgroups forming the elite (priests, officers and royal officials).10 A system of sevencastes according to profession did not exist.11 Such a schematization of Egyptiansociety was plausibly influenced by Herodotus (and his successors) enthusiasm forsocial theorizing, by the fascination for the apparent stability of Egyptian society andby illusory similarities between Sparta and Egypt.12 In addition, the supposed homogen-eity of the class of warriors is problematic. It would be surprising if different ranks inthe army received plots of land of equal size.13 Moreover, there was no ethnic homogen-eity since many of the soldiers were the descendants of Libyan mercenaries settled in theDelta during the New Kingdom.14 There were also Nubian soldiers.15

10 P.-M. Chevereau, Prosopographie des cadres militaires gyptiens de la basse poque: carriresmilitaires et carrires sacerdotales en Egypte du XIe au IIe sicle avant J.-C. (Paris, 20012); A.B.Lloyd, The Late Period, 664323 BC, in B.G. Trigger (ed.), Ancient Egypt: A Social History(Cambridge, 1983), 279348, at 301. Lloyd (n. 8), 199 explains that Herodotus probably ignoredthe fact that government officials could receive land as payment for their service.

11 Lloyd (n. 8), 183 reminds us that there is no evidence at any period in Egyptian history of a dejure social stratification of the kind described by Herodotus. See also Yoyottes preface in Chevereau(n. 10) and Chevereau himself (3634): strangely, he does not completely deny the existence of casteand suggests that the lower rank soldiers could come from the class of the Kalasiries andHermotubies; see T. Haziza, Le kaldoscope hrodoten (Paris, 2009), 15963.

12 Sparta is mentioned in Hdt. 2.167.13 Lloyd (n. 10), at 310; id. (n. 8), 200; id., Egypt, in E.J. Bakker, H. Van Wees, et al. (edd.),

Brills Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002), 41535, at 428 suggests that the distribution ofequal plots is probably one of the Spartan features attributed to the machimoi; Haziza (n. 11), 17582.

14 Lloyd (n. 10), at 309; id. (n. 8), 184. There was never anything such as a national military forcein Pharaonic Egypt; see A.R. Schulman, Military organization in Pharaonic Egypt, in J.M. Sasson(ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York, 1995), 289301, at 289.

15 Winnicki (n. 6 [1977]), 258.


However, Egyptologists trying to match Herodotus terminology with some Egyptianterms have identified phonetic equivalents of hermotybies and kalasiries in DemoticEgyptian, respectively rmt-d m.w and gl-r.w (or gr-r.w). Many conjectural etymologieshave been debated for the hermotybies16 but a consensus has now been reached amongdemotists thanks to Thissen and Vittmanns work.17 In P.Rylands 9, the long petitionwritten by Peteesi, a priest of Herakleopolis in the late sixth century B.C., a rmt-d maccompanied Peteesi in order to bring a letter to the general (mr-mo) ofHerakleopolis.18 In a letter between two high officials dated to c. 521 B.C., three hermo-tybies were allotted 30 arourai of land (at) 44 (sacks of) emmer (for) one person (each)in the Herakleopolite nome (P.Ashmolean 1984.87). As Vittmann explains in there-edition of the text, 44 sacks correspond to a tax rate of four or five artabas per aroura,which challenges Herodotus statement about tax-free land given to soldiers (2.168).19Moreover the tax rate was higher than that on cleruchic land in the Ptolemaic period (seebelow). Finally, some rmt-d m.w appear in the dossier of the gooseherds of Hou, datingto the early fifth century. They were involved in donkey and cattle sales and could bemilitary men involved in foraging.20 The first papyrus implies that they could be soldiersand/or policemen while the other documents suggest that the hermotybies receivedgrants of land. In view of the rare usage of the word rmt-dm, it was probably a titleheld by a group of soldiers but not by half of the army, as Herodotus assumed.

Our knowledge concerning the kalasiries is more extensive. The term gl-r seemsoriginally to have meant young soldier or brave man and then soldier, warrior.21The Egyptian word is already attested in the 20th dynasty.22 They had military andpolice functions from the 26th dynasty until the Roman period. The level of their

16 For instance rmt -d b# men of the spear or rmt-d wf men of the papyrus(-land), see Lloyd (n. 8),187; the only attestations in Greek literature are in Herodotus, Book 2 and his catalogue of the Persiantroops before the battle of Plataea (Hdt. 9.32).

17 For the etymology and the occurrences in the papyri, see H.J. Thissen, Varia onomastica, GM141 (1994), 8995, at 8991; for other earlier attestations in the papyri, see G. Vittmann, Der demo-tische Papyrus Rylands 9 (Wiesbaden, 1998), 554.

18 Vittmann (n. 17), at 183 (col. XIX 13) and 554; F.L. Griffith, Catalogue of the Demotic Papyriin the John Rylands Library Manchester: With Facsimiles and Complete Translations (Hildesheim,19722), 3.104 did not read rmt-d m and simply translated young man.

19 I thank G. Vittmann for sharing with me his forthcoming re-edition of the text, previously pub-lished by E. Cruz-Uribe, Early Demotic texts from Heracleopolis, in F. Hoffmann and H.J. Thissen(edd.), Res severa verum gaudium. Festschrift fr Karl-Theodor Zauzich zum 65. Geburtstag am8. Juni 2004. Studia Demotica 6 (2004), 5966; a hermotybis is attested in another (unpublished)text of the same period, see D. Devauchelle, Les archives Michel Malinine conserves au Cabinetdgyptologie du Collge de France (Paris), in K. Ryholt (ed.), Acts of the Seventh InternationalConference of Demotic Studies, Copenhagen, 2327 August 1999. CNIP 27 (Copenhagen, 2002),1317, at 135 (2).

20 S.P. Vleeming, The Gooseherds of Hou (Pap. Hou): A Dossier relating to Various AgriculturalAffairs from Provincial Egypt of the Early Fifth Century B.C. (Leuven, 1991), docs. 6 and 9; in 78,n. 17, he explains that in P.Cairo 50098 + 102 (390 B.C.) two rmt-dm.w disposed of land that wasmeant as revenue of a rmt-dm(?) (l. 2), most probably their own land.

21 Lloyd (n. 8), 187; see also J.H. Johnson, The Demotic Dictionary Project (Chicago, 1990 ), G612 and 36 for gr-r; the Coptic word kept the meaning strong man.

22 See in particular the studies by Winnicki (n. 6 [1977]); id. (n. 3); id., Zwei Studien ber dieKalasirier, OLP 17 (1986), 1732; id., Die Kalasirier in griechischen Papyri, JJurP 22 (1992),635; id. (n. 6 [1998]); see also Vittmann (n. 3), at 1203, where he suggests a new reading of thetitle in P.Louvre 7833 and 7844, from the time of king Amasis, as sh gr-r, that is either (a) scribeand kalasiris or (b) scribe of the kalasiries, like the later . For him,the kalasiries had both military and police functions, and the kalasiries of the Late Period were prob-ably involved in fiscal matters, as the phylakites of the Ptolemaic period, see E. Kiessling,Phylakites, RE 20.1 (1941), 9878. In P.Lille.Dem. 1.26, line 5, pl. XIII (26e) (394381 B.C.), he


rank and socio-economic status is, however, difficult to establish. For Lloyd theEgyptian sources attest the rather high status of the kalasiries as officers in charge oftroops or as police officers, which contradicts Herodotus description of a numerousclass.23 Winnicki assumes that they were not always of the highest rank. In P.Rylands 9, for example, the Chief of the Ma (chief of the police) summons thegr-r.w n T#-qhj, that is, the kalasiries of a village called T#-qhj, with their shieldsand spears.24 The 2,200 gl-r.w mentioned in a fourth-century B.C. papyrus as registeredfor food in the nome also shows that they were not holding the highest functions in thearmy and the police.25 However, it suggests they were organized by nome, as Herodotustold us (2.1656). The rest of our sources attest nome kalasiries (gr-r.w (n p#) t) andkalasiries of the temple (of Amun) (gr-r.w n pr-(Imn)) involved in business trans-actions concerning cattle, such as P.Loeb 41 (485 B.C.) where two nome kalasiriesare co-owners of a red cow.26 This at least indicates that they belong to socio-economicgroups who owned cattle and probably houses and tombs.27 Winnicki has argued on thebasis of documents from the Thebaid that the function of kalasiris lost its importanceover time but the evidence is too vague for such an interpretation.28

To sum up, the two sub-categories of machimoi described by Herodotus reflect someEgyptian realities but only imperfectly. These Egyptian terms were not used to designateall the categories of soldiers in the Late Period army. However, there was a literary wordin Demotic Egyptian, rmt-qnqn, that meant fighting man, warrior and was employed inEgyptian narratives of the Late Period.29 It was used once in the petition of the priest

reads gr-r htr, kalasiris cavalryman, which was so far unattested, but that he relates to the later of the Ptolemaic period.

23 Lloyd (n. 8), 187; Herodotus and later Diodorus also suggest their high status, a contradictionthat makes their narratives questionable; for a plausible example of a police officer, see P.Teos 11(r) (306 B.C.?) and commentary by M. Depauw, The Archive of Teos and Thabis from EarlyPtolemaic Thebes: P. Brux. Dem. Inv. E. 82528256 (Brussels, 2000).

24 Vittmann (n. 17), at 151 (col. XI 12), 4712 explains that T#-qhj is the name of a village nearHibeh and does not mean here district as previously thought; Ritner (n. 3), at 107, relying on theprevious interpretation of the term, considers the gl-r.w of the district gathered by the Chief ofthe Ma (col. XI 12) as the hereditary military caste of Libyans who replaced the native army inthe Third Intermediate Period and remained as the indigenous army until the Ptolemaic period(as the Machimoi).

25 Vleeming (n. 20); Winnicki (n. 22 [1986]), 9.26 Vleeming (n. 20), docs. 7 and esp. 115 suggests that the kalasiries of the district (khy) were the

subalterns of the kalasiries of the nome (t) but Vittmanns new understanding of P.Rylands 9, col. XI12 (see n. 24 above), suppresses the only attestation of kalasiris of the district.

27 That is, to the middle class, see Vleeming (n. 20), 10, 115 and nn. 1819; for their status, seealso D. Agut-Labordre, La vache et les policiers: pratique de linvestissement dans lgypte tard-ive, in B. Legras (ed.), Transferts culturels et droits dans le monde grec et hellnistique, Reims, 1417 mai 2008 (Paris, forthcoming).

28 Winnicki (n. 6 [1977]), 2602 explains that the male members of the same family had the title ofKalasiris of the nome in Demotic papyri from 525492 B.C., while one century later (392 B.C.), themale descendant is the Kalasiris of the temple of Amun. Winnicki conjectures that the second titleapplies to a restricted area and should have belonged to the temple police and not to the army.However, nothing indicates that the temple kalasiris was a lower function and that nome kalasiris dis-appeared over time to become kalasiris of the temple of Amun (the only temple kalasiris attested sofar). P.Loeb 41, which was Winnickis oldest evidence, has now been connected to the dossier of theGooseherds of Hou and dated to 485 B.C., see Vleeming (n. 20), 115. This reduces the family of kala-siries studied by Winnicki to three generations.

29 W. Erichsen, Demotisches Glossar (Copenhagen, 1954), 543, Johnson, R 46; the ThesarusLinguae Aegyptiae online collects 45 attestations, mainly in the Inaros Petubastis Cycle andEgyptians and Amazons and one attestation in the Demotic Chronicle (Bibl. Nat. 215, III, 9); theword is found in only two documents from the Late Period, both with a literary overtone,


Peteesi, a text with a literary overtone, as a synonym of gr-r.w.30 Herodotus informersplausibly told him about some of these stories and he translated this concept by theGreek word machimos. He amalgamated this word with technical Egyptian terms thathe heard from oral sources, as in the petition of Peteesi, and he transliterated them ashermotybies and kalasiries. Like them, rmt -qnqn could apply to armed men withguard duties, as the absence of such men to guard the grain is the object of the complaintof an Egyptian official to the Persian commander of Syene in the early fifth century B.C.(P.Loeb 1.).31 Even if this may explain the confusion about the different terms, the inac-curacies in Herodotus account warn us against the tendency to take his description ofthe Egyptian warriors at face value.

(2) Herodotus made other problematic statements concerning the number of soldiersand the huge amount of land that they cultivated, which are still taken for granted.32

According to him (2.1656), the machimoi reached the highest number of 410,000during the Saite period, that is six per cent of the population (or seventeen per centof the adult male population) if one believes the evaluation given by Diodorus ofSicily for the total population in Pharaonic Egypt (seven million, see 1.31.6). A similarfigure is later used by Josephus (7.5 million without Alexandria) for the Egyptian popu-lation in the first century A.D. (BJ 2.385). Such a percentage of soldiers within a popu-lation is rather high, as I explain below. However, the population size suggested byancient authors has been challenged by modern historians such as Rathbone andButzer, who have supported far lower numbers.33 For this reason I have evaluated thepopulation of Egypt in the first millenium B.C. at three million. In this case

P.Rylands 9, col. XII, l. 9 (see commentary ad loc. and n. 18 above) and P.Loeb 1 (486 B.C.), a com-plaint to the Persian commander of Syene (English tr. in B. Porten, The Elephantine Papyri inEnglish: Three Millennia of Cross-cultural Continuity and Change [Leiden, 1996], C4). I thankAndrew Monson for bringing this word to my attention.

30 The Chief of Ma went with 50 rmt n qnqn to T#jw-d j; see P.Rylands 9, nn. 18 and 29 above.31 See n. 29.32 Lloyd (n. 10), 300 gives a long explanation, which he refined in his later work, for why we

should in fact trust these numbers. Serrati (n. 3), 474 also accepts the number of machimoi. Incontrast, Walter Scheidel pointed out to me that the figures given by Herodotus for the two categoriesof machimoi are clearly schematic, i.e. 400 400 = 160,000 and 500 500 = 250,000; for the use ofconventional figures by ancient historians, see W. Scheidel, Finances, figures, and fiction, CQ(1996), 2228.

33 D. Rathbone, Villages, land and population in Graeco-Roman Egypt, PCPhS 216 = NS 36(1990), 10342, esp. 1027, demonstrates how implausible the figures given by Diodorus andJosephus for the population of Egypt are, notably by pointing (1) at the topos of populousness ofEgypt in Greek and Latin literature, (2) at anti-Persian propaganda that presents pre-Persian Egyptas more prosperous and (3) at an erroneous correction of into made toDiodorus text whereas all the manuscripts but one have . According to Diodorus(1.31.68, text and tr. in Rathbone, p. 104 and n. 2) in density of population Egypt in the past farsurpassed all the other known areas of the world, while even in our time [i. e. around 60 B.C. whenhe visited Alexandria] it is apparently not second to any other. Then Diodorus gives the numberof villages and cities in the old days and under Ptolemy I and concludes that the total populationin the past is said to have been about seven million, while even in our time it is no less than threemillion (, sc. ). In my opinion, Diodorus claims are better understood asguesses based on symbolic numbers. Independently, K.W. Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilization inEgypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology (Chicago, 1976), table 4 has proposed a hypothetical demographicdevelopment of the population in Egypt according to plausible areas of cultivable land and populationdensities, i.e. 2.9 million Egyptians around 1,250 B.C. and 4.9 million around 150 B.C. A population ofthree million is thus more likely when compared with estimations of the population of Greco-RomanEgypt. See also C. Fischer-Bovet, Counting the Greeks in Egypt: immigration in the first century ofPtolemaic rule, in C. Holleran and A. Pudsey (edd.), Demography and the Graeco-Roman World:New Insights and Appraoches (Cambridge, 2011), 13554, at 1378.


Herodotus number of soldiers becomes even more difficult to interpret, as soldierswould have represented 17% of the Egyptian population (or 41% of the adult malepopulation). In addition, if each machimos received twelve arourai,34 the total amountof land in the hands of the soldiers would have been 13,530 km2,35 while the maximumof cultivable land can hardly have reached 20,000 km2 at that time.36

Such a population structure and land distribution are highly implausible.37 No empireever employed more than one third of the total male population as professional soldiers.Even under Augustus, approximately 6% of the adult male population in Italy belonged tothe army a rather high proportion.38 Herodotus highly exaggerated numbers might havetheir raison dtre in the historians account of the fight between the future king Amasisand king Apries. Indeed, by interrupting his narrative in order to describe the machimoi heemphasizes how Amasis Egyptian soldiers outnumbered the 30,000 Greek mercenariessupporting Apries. Herodotus might have been trying to justify in this way why the latterwere defeated. Nevertheless, two contradictions arise from Herodotus account. First thehigh number of machimoi goes against the idea that they were part of a very privilegedgroup. Second, the large amount of land in soldiers hands is not easily reconcilablewith their exclusive devotion to military service.

Egyptian evidence allows us to suggest that Herodotus merged two types of soldiers.On the one hand, officers whose military career was their main occupation althoughthey could also accumulate priestly and administrative functions39 and who leased outtheir plots. On the other hand, a larger group of farmer-soldiers with smaller plots mobi-lized in turn or when needed to form a militia.40 The stela of year nine of Psamtek I, thefounder of the 26th dynasty, shows that Egyptian towns mobilized a militia for their pro-tection and had to provide men to the pharaoh when needed, in this case because of a

34 Hdt 2.168; the was used for measuring farmland. Its surface was of 100 100 =c. 2756 m2 (which is about half a soccer field). A person could live on the net produce of two arourai,see P.W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden, 19942), 49. Lloyd (n. 8), 200 accepts thisnumber and stresses the enviable economic position of the machimoi of the Late Period, especiallysince five arourae seems to have been adequate for the maintenance of a family; see n. 96 below.

35 12 2,756 m2 = 0.033 km2 and then 410,000 machimoi 0.033 km2 = 13,530 km2.36 Butzer (n. 33), table 4. The cultivable area did not go over 20,000 km2 even in the Ptolemaic and

Roman periods; see W. Clarysse and D.J. Thompson, Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt(Cambridge, 2006) and W. Scheidel, Death on the Nile: Disease and the Demography of RomanEgypt (Leiden, 2001). The nine million arourai (24,800 km2) inscribed on the Edfu temple, forwhich see B. Porter and R.L.B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient EgyptianHieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings (Oxford, 19602), 6.164, must rather be considered as asymbolic number (three times 3 million).

37 Even if they were not professional soldiers as Herodotus claims (2.165), the proportion of youngmen belonging to the army is implausibly high.

38 c. 125,000 legionaries out of 6 million inhabitants in Italy, that is out of c. 2 million adult males;even by adding the 300,000 veterans from the Civil War that Augustus removed because they were nolonger needed in peacetime (300,000 + 125,000 = 425,000 soldiers), they would make 7% of the totalpopulation of Italy.

39 See S.L.D. Katary, Land-tenure in the New Kingdom: the role of women smallholders and themilitary, in A.K. Bowman and E.L. Rogan (edd.), Agriculture in Egypt: From Pharaonic to ModernTimes (Oxford, 1999), 6182, at 79; Chevereau (n. 10), esp. 24457; and C. Fischer-Bovet, Army andSociety in Ptolemaic Egypt (Cambridge, in press), ch. 8.

40 Lloyd (n. 10), 310 accepts that how the warriors organized the working of their land is a matterof speculation. Lloyd (n. 8), 187 also suggests that they functioned as a militia and not as a standingarmy and that they could lease their land on a share-cropping basis: Herodotus II 168 makes clear thatunder normal circumstances most of the kalasiries lived civilian lives on their land-allotments andonly a small proportion at any one time would have discharged military or paramilitary functions.However, Herodotus contradicts himself in 2.168.


Libyan threat.41 Similarly, in P.Rylands 9, the chief of the police summoned kalasiriesfor a specific task. In terms of land grants, not all soldiers and officers would receive thesame amount of land. Egyptian texts from the New Kingdom recording land ownershipshow that many soldiers were granted plots of three or five arourai (one could live onthe net produce of two arourai) in contrast to the twelve arourai claimed byHerodotus.42 On the other hand, the three hermotybies mentioned above received thirtyarourai each at the beginning of the Persian period (P.Ashmolean 1984.87) and mem-bers of the military elite could receive plots larger than one hundred arourai.43

A reconstruction of the structure of the Egyptian army is proposed below in order torefine Herodotus statements. Diodorus narrative of the military events in the fourthcentury B.C. offers a more plausible upper limit of 80,000 for the total number ofEgyptian soldiers, who were reinforced by foreign mercenaries.44 This representseight men out of one hundred Egyptian adult males, which is obviously high butgives space to include descendants of soldiers who inherited their land but no longerserved in the army as well as different categories of policemen and guards. This numbercan be roughly divided into two groups:45

a) The professional core was composed of high commanders belonging to the higheststrata of the society and of lower officers in the infantry, cavalry and navy. I estimate thepercentage of high officers at around one per cent on the basis of the hierarchy attestedin the New Kingdom.46 However, the army became gradually top-heavy47 and thatmight have occurred again in the Late Period in light of the many titles recorded inChevereaus prosopography.48 One can add the cavalry who represented perhaps 5%

41 H. Goedicke, Psammetik I. und die Libyer, MDAIK 18 (1962), 2649, esp. 356, lines 911and 389 translates the hieroglyph of line 9 as machimoi, while he explains that it is probably anabbreviation for mw, the soldiers of Libyan origin; see Ritner (n. 3) for a discussion of this term.Chevereau (n. 10), 310 with n. (c) follows Goedickes ambiguous translation; see also K.A.Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100650 B.C.) (Warminster, 1973), 405 n. 955.

42 Katary (n. 39), at 6970, 75, 7980 counts 12% of soldiers among the small landowners inP.Wilbour; other texts from the New Kingdom, such as the coronation inscription of Horemheb (c.13321305 B.C.), support the pre-eminence of soldiers and veterans in landholding, often connectedwith priests. On P.Wilbour see also B. Menu, Le rgime juridique des terres et du personnelattach la terre dans le Papyrus Wilbour (Lille, 1970), 10710, 234, A.J. Spalinger, War inAncient Egypt: The New Kingdom (Oxford, 2005), 26475 and Haziza (n. 11), 179. Menu showsthat officers received several plots of five arourai.

43 For large plots (e.g. 150 arourai) received by charioteers in the New Kingdom, see Katary (n.39), at 778.

44 Diod. Sic. 15.92.2: 80,000; 15.93.2: 100,000; 16.47.56: 60,000; of course their numbers fluc-tuated over time. In comparison, Ptolemy IV had 70,000 men in Raphia in 217 B.C. (Polyb. 5.79.2) andRamses II had 25,000 men in Kadesh; see Spalinger (n. 42), 14950; R. Marrinan, The Ptolemaicarmy: its organisation, development and settlement (Diss., London, 1998), 503 suggests a similarorder of magnitude for the Late Period army (83,000127,000 men).

45 These two groups are better known for the Egyptian army of the New Kingdom, see B.McDermott, Warfare in Ancient Egypt (Stroud, 2004), 114. A standing army is attested since theNew Kingdom army with professional officers, e.g. J. Baines and J. Mlek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt(New York, 1980), 203.

46 McDermott (n. 45), 119: divisions of 5,000 men divided into divisions of 250 men, with twentyofficers and twenty scribes.

47 A.M. Gnirs, Ancient Egypt, in K.A. Raaflaub and N.S. Rosenstein (edd.), War and Society inthe Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (Cambridge,MA, 1999), 71104, at 8791.

48 For the titles recorded in the Egyptian inscriptions of the Late Period, see Chevereau (n. 10),26073, 3246. Chevereau suggests that there were still units of charioteers in the 26th dynastybecause a few inscriptions preserve the titles of commanders of the charioteers. However, by theend of the eighth century B.C., the chariots had been supplanted by the cavalry (see Schulman


of the army.49 They certainly were granted larger plots than those attested in P.Wilbouror than the twelve arourai mentioned by Herodotus. They leased them out to share-cropping tenants.

I suggest that this first group constituted about 10% of the army:

800 high officers with 200 arourai = 800 0.56 km2 = 448 km2

8,000 individuals with military ranks and cavalrymen with 100 arourai= 8,000 0.28 km2 = 2,240 km2

b) The second group was the militia composed of farmers whose family receivedsmall plots to cultivate in exchange for military service or policing by the male mem-ber(s). Some probably served part-time and others only when needed, if at all.

70,000 soldiers with five arourai = 70,000 0.014 km2 = 965 km2

Among them were certainly the Egyptian soldiers who fought on the Persian side atPlataea (479 B.C.) and whom Herodotus calls hermotubies and kalasiries (9.32).50 He por-trays them as sabre-bearers () belonging to the infantry on ships ()who had disembarked earlier at Phaleron. The historian (7.89) describes in more detail theequipment of Egyptians he does not use any specific term present on 200 ships onXerxess side: on their heads they wore knitted helmets; they carried hollow shields withbroad rims, naval spears and large battle-axes. The majority of them wore breastplates andcarried huge knives ().51 They might have composed the Egyptian phalanx.52

These approximations suggest a maximum of 3,653 km2 for the total amount of landowned by soldiers, which could represent up to 18% of the 20,000 km2 of cultivatedland.53 If such an amount of land was also in the hands of the temples and the king,it would make c. 10,000 km2 in total.54 In this case half of the land would be ownedby perhaps 1020% of the population, which is not unlikely. This only shows thatwe are dealing with a plausible order of magnitude but does not take into account

[n. 14], 297), and consequently the holders of these titles might not actually have served in the armybut rather have received court titles; for the scarce evidence on Egyptian chariots in the first millen-nium B.C., see M.A. Littauer, An Egyptian wheel in Brooklyn, JEA 65 (1979), 10720.

49 For comparison, the ratio of chariot to infantry of 1:100 is found in the New Kingdom, whileeach chariot needed at least two horses; see Schulman (n. 14), 296. On the other hand it cannothave exceeded the ratio of cavalry to infantry of 1:10 that is common in the Hellenistic armies; seee.g. G.G. Aperghis, The Seleukid Royal Economy: The Finances and Financial Administration ofthe Seleukid Empire (Cambridge, 2004), 194.

50 These must be the troops that Chevereau (n. 10), 322 considers as light infantry.51 Hdt 7.89: , ,

, . , ; tr. Strassler and Purvis (n. 7).

52 For the description of Egyptian phalanx in the New Kingdom, see Schulman (n. 14), at 2934.53 The same calculation for an army of 60,000 men, that is six men out of 100 adult males gives

2,716 km2, that is 14% of the cultivated land. The order of magnitude remains the same, c. 3,000 km2.54 However, this tripartition of the land given by ancient sources is probably not based on safe evi-

dence but simply on symbolic numbering. C.H. Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes(Cambridge, MA, 1960), 2501 n. 2 proposes a similar interpretation in his edition of Diodorus:The Harris Papyrus of the 12th c. B.C. gives the only definite figures of the vast holdings of the tem-ples. They represent at that time about 2% of the population and owned some 15% of the land, not tomention property of other nature, and their power materially increased in the succeeding centuries.For the edition of P.Harris 1, see W. Erichsen, Papyrus Harris I: hieroglyphische Transkription(Brussels, 1933) and for comments and excerpted translation, see D. Warburton, State andEconomy in Ancient Egypt: Fiscal Vocabulary of the New Kingdom (Fribourg, 1997), 194216.


such important questions as the existence of private property in Egypt and the extent ofthe land in the hands of the king and of the temples.55

Nevertheless, beside Herodotus description of the Egyptian equipment during thePersian period, some elements can be saved from his account when we compare it tothe Egyptian sources. Indeed, the kalasiries-gl-r.w and the hermotubies-rmt-dm.whad military or police functions and could have belonged to socio-economic strataabove the average farmers by receiving land in exchange for their service. But thesetwo categories represent a tiny part of the coercive institutions of the Late Period.There was a whole hierarchy and regimented structure for the different forces thatHerodotus does not mention and that remains little known.56

THE PTOLEMAIC MACHIMOI

One century after Herodotus travelled throughout Egypt, Alexander the Great conquered thePersian empire, which included Egypt at that time. After his death, one of his Macedoniangenerals, Ptolemy, secured Egypt for himself and organized his army. Greek papyri fromthe third century onward recordmachimoi.Most scholars tend to applyHerodotus inaccuratedescription to these Ptolemaicmachimoi and consider themas native Egyptianwarriors. Theyassume that the Ptolemaicmachimoi are the direct successors of themachimoi of Herodotus,although the term is used in a different historical context and in a different type of source(documentary rather than literary).57 This view implies that Egyptian soldiers granted landbefore Alexanders conquest were registered as machimoi in the early Ptolemaic adminis-tration.58 Such an assumption is problematic for three reasons:

1 First, though Greek literary sources attest that Egyptians were already employed inthe Ptolemaic army in the late fourth and third centuries, they do not refer to thesesoldiers as machimoi.59

2 Second, the Ptolemaic machimoi were not exclusively Egyptian.60 For instance, twomen with Greek names and patronymics are recorded in a list of machimoi pentar-ouroi (i.e. with five arourai) from the third century B.C. (DOC 13, see the table inthe Appendix listing the documents attesting the Ptolemaic machimoi).

3 Third, the first evidence of a Ptolemaic machimos granted land appears only in thesecond half of the third century (DOCS 8, 9 and 13).61

55 It is hard to saywhether farmers owned the rest of the land. The numbers are conjectural. Egyptologistsusually assumed that private property did not exist before thePtolemaicor theRomanperiods.However, J.G.Manning, Land And Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Structure of Land Tenure (Cambridge, 2003) showedthat private holding developed even before the Ptolemaic period, at least in certain areas.

56 See Chevereau (n. 10), XVIXIX and 26073 for the Egyptian titles used for officers andcommanders.

57 See the references in n. 3. K. Goudriaan, Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt (Amsterdam, 1988), 121already questioned the continuity of the machimoi from pharaonic into Hellenistic times in order tosupport his argument that the machimoi were not always Egyptian.

58 This view was defended by Lesquier, and was followed with slight variations; see n. 3.59 E. Van t Dack, Larme de terre Lagide: reflet dun monde multiculturel?, in J.H. Johnson

(ed.), Life in a Multi-cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (Chicago,1992), 32741, at 328.

60 Goudriaan (n. 57), 1215.61 DOC 8 (229228 B.C.) for pentarouros (without the term machimos); two other papyri from the third

century B.C. Fayyum (no exact dates) attest machimoi with five, seven and ten arourai, see DOC 9 andDOC 13.


(1) The Ptolemies were never reluctant to hire Egyptians for fear that they would notbe loyal or motivated enough.62 For instance, according to the hieroglyphic Mendesstela, Ptolemy II chose some of his guards from among the sons of Egyptian militarymen.63 Above all, the mention of Egyptian troops in the Ptolemaic army by theGreek authors certainly reflects the reality since by default they tended to omit to men-tion troops other than Greek ones, especially in case of victories like those at Gaza in312 or Raphia in 217 B.C.64

Diodorus makes clear that certain groups of Egyptians were fighting on Ptolemys sideat the battle of Gaza in 312 B.C. and were not simply carrying the baggage: but a greatnumber were Egyptian, of whom some carried the missiles and the other baggage butsome were armed and serviceable for battle ( ).65 Modern historiansoften interpret this expression as an allusion to the machimoi but Diodorus only uses theliterary term machimoi in his narrative of the Late Period.66 In fact, none of the ancientauthors uses the word machimoi for the Egyptians fighting in the Ptolemaic army.

(2) Second, the term machimoi was not coined by the Ptolemies to designate exclu-sively soldiers of Egyptian origin.67 We mentioned above that already in the third century

62 A good parallel for the integration of existing troops into a new system is that of the Ptolemaicsoldiers incorporated into the Roman imperial army in the late first century, see L. Capponi, AugustanEgypt: The Creation of a Roman Province (London, 2005), 1723. However, early scholarship gen-erally minimized the role of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army: e.g. M.I. Rostovtzeff, The Social &Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941), 708 suggests that the native militiawere only auxiliary troops; M. Launey, Recherches sur les armes hellnistiques (Paris, 1949), 58with n. 6.

63 I.Cairo 22181, lines 1415, see K. Sethe, Hieroglyphische Urkunden der griechisch-rmischen Zeit(Leipzig, 1904), no. 13, 2854; Winnicki (n. 3), at 49 n. 41 and id., Das ptolemische und das hellenis-tische Heerwesen, in L. Criscuolo and G. Geraci (edd.), Egitto e storia antica dallellenismo alletaraba: bilancio di un confronto: atti del colloquio internazionale, Bologna, 31 agosto2 settembre1987 (Bologna, 1989), 21330, at 228 n. 48. The translation has been debated but a recent analysis ofthe passage makes clear that these guards were Egyptians; see D. Klotz, The statue of the dioiktsHarchebi/Archibios. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 47112, BIFAO 109 (2009), 281310, at 302.

64 The Egyptians are mentioned in each of the only three passages providing details on the com-position of the Ptolemaic troops, which is remarkable regarding the probable lack of interest ofGreek authors in the role played by Egyptians: the battle of Gaza in 312 B.C. (see Diod. Sic.19.8085; Plut. Demetr. 5; Justin 15.1), a naval battle during the Chremonidian war in 266 B.C.(see Paus. 3.6.5) and the battle of Raphia in 217 B.C. (see Polyb. 5.65; Diod. Sic. 19.8084). N.G.L. Hammond, Alexanders non-European troops and Ptolemy Is use of such troops, BASP 33(1996), 99109, relying on literary sources, assumes that the Egyptians played an important role inthe army those who were supposedly trained in a Macedonian way since Alexanders conquest and avoids the endless debate about the machimoi because he does not use papyrological orEgyptian sources. E. Van t Dack and H. Hauben, Lapport gyptien larme navale lagide, inH. Maehler and V.M. Strocka (edd.), Das Ptolemische gypten (Mainz am Rhein, 1978), 5993,at 8789, esp. 89, conclude about the Ptolemaic navy in 266 B.C: un demi-sicle donc avantRaphia, au moment o la flotte lagide est sans doute dj lgrement en dclin mais constitue encorela plus grande force navale en Mditerrane orientale, cette arme est pour une large part laisse auxmains dEgyptiens; Winnicki (n. 3), 48 and (n. 63), 230 discusses the same sources but concludes thatuntil Raphia the Egyptians belonged to a second category of soldiers, either as auxiliaries or hiredduring unfavourable circumstances.

65 Diod. Sic. 19.80.4, Geers translation in C.H. Oldfather, C.L. Sherman, et al., Diodorus of Sicilyin Twelve Volumes (Cambridge, MA, 1989): , , .

66 Diod. Sic. 1.28; 55; 73; 94; 16.47; modern historians follow Lesquier (n. 3) except Goudriaan(n. 57), 121.

67 Only Goudriaan (n. 57), 1213 insists that the machimoi were not exclusively Egyptian; papyr-ologists and historians generally think that the machimoi were the native Egyptian military caste sincein their view they descended from the pharaonic machimoi; see n. 3.


Greeks could belong to the machimoi (DOC 13). Another machimos with a Greek name,Dionysios, is found in a grain account of the late third century (DOC 15) though such aname was commonly adopted by Egyptians in the following centuries. In any case, mostof the machimoi carried Egyptian names and in one third-century document the machimosParis is explicitly described as an Egyptian (DOC 5). In the second century the onomasticcriterion is no longer reliable unless it is combined with other types of information. Themachimos Dionysios son of Akousilaos (DOC 28), a machimos hired for an agriculturalsurvey in Kerkeosiris, was probably of Greco-Egyptian or Egyptian origin as were theother machimoi in the village. Similarily, we could go beyond the inconclusive debateabout the ethnicity of the second-century machimoi stationed outside Egypt by acceptingthey could be a mix of soldiers of Greek, Greco-Egyptian and Egyptian origin.68 InKerkeosiris in the first century B.C., the cleruchic administration distinguished betweenGreek, Egyptian and other machimoi in at least two accounts dated to the first century(DOC 3031). It supports the hypothesis that the term machimos was not automaticallya marker of ethnicity. Rather, it was a category related to the type of land allotment orperhaps to the military function of the soldiers.

(3) The grants of land to machimoi might indicate when the machimoi were incor-porated into the army, since it was a typical way for the Ptolemies to pay soldiers butnot to pay guards, at least in the third century. The first evidence of a pentarouros,the technical term for a machimos granted five arourai, also found as machimos pentar-ouros in the papyri, is dated to 229/8 B.C., under Ptolemy III (DOC 8).69 Consequently,there is no evidence for the continuity of a category of machimoi between the LatePeriod and the last decades of the third century. What mattered above all to the cleruchicadministration was the number of arourai rather than the term machimos, as machimoicould receive five, seven or ten arourai and more rarely twenty when they were cavalry-men. For instance, in a land survey from the Edfu nome dated to 119/118 B.C., the sol-diers who were allotted ten arourai were called dekarouroi andres (ten-arouramen) andwere presumably the equivalent of dekarouroi machimoi found elsewhere.70 The best-known group of machimoi belonged to the laarchy of Chomenis and were allotted landby Ptolemy VIII in Kerkeosiris in the Fayyum (DOC 25).71 As the infantrymen receivedseven arourai and the cavalrymen received twenty arourai, the former were more oftencalled heptarouroi (seven-aroura men) and the latter machimoi hippeis (cavalrymen) in

68 The only documents where machimoi were assumed to be Greek, DOC 1920, concern Ptolemaictroops in Thera, Crete and Arsinoe in the Peloponnesus under Ptolemy VI. This might be explained by theprejudice that Egyptian soldiers were not as good as Greek soldiers and would not be sent abroad; onlyLauney (n. 62), 9578 (about the first document) and G.T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the HellenisticWorld (Cambridge, 1935) (about the second document) believe they were Egyptian; however, Egyptiansoldiers were found outside Egypt according to one inscription that is too fragmentary to reveal whetherthey were called machimoi, see I.Cret. IV 195, P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), 2.169n. 346 and R.S. Bagnall, Three notes on Ptolemaic inscriptions, ZPE 11 (1973), 1217, at 1247.

69 In addition, the village in the Fayyum, attested for the first and onlytime in 231 B.C. in CPR XIII 3 and 5, might confirm that machimoi received five-aroura plots fromaround that time, see B. Kramer, Griechische Texte XIII: das Vertragsregister von Theogenis(P. Vindob. G 40618) (Vienna, 1991), 1036.

70 T. Christensen, The Edfu nome surveyed: P. Haun. inv. 407 (119118 BC) (Diss., Cambridge,2002), 16772 and id., P. Haun. Inv. 407 and cleruchs in the Edfu nome, in K. Vandorpe and W.Clarysse (edd.), Edfu, an Egyptian Provincial Capital in the Ptolemaic Period: Brussels, 3 September2001 (Brussels, 2003), 1116, at 1214; the term andres (men) is found in the Herakleopolite nome,this time with pentarouroi, see DOC 35.

71 The cultivation of their allotments is described in the land surveys, see Crawford (n. 2), 701 andTable IV; for the laarchy, see below and n. 77.


the land surveys.72 The 63 machimoi represented two-thirds of the cleruchs inKerkeosiris.73

Such a percentage reveals the extensive reliance on machimoi from the second part ofthe second century B.C. As we know nothing about their equipment or fighting tech-nique, there is no reason to believe that they could not fight in a phalanx as theEgyptians did in Raphia (Polyb. 5.69.9). In fact, it seems that the machimoi, ofEgyptian and Greco-Egyptian origin, began to constitute a large part of the infantryfrom the time of Ptolemy V on, because there is little evidence of other cleruchs belong-ing to the infantry.74 They were mobilized to reinforce infantry troops drawn from pro-fessional soldiers mainly recruited in Egypt at that time and also of Egyptian andGreco-Egyptian origin. These were called misthophoroi in Greek and rmt iw = f phbs (man receiving pay) in Egyptian, which meant that they did not receive grantsof land, as for instance the soldiers garrisoned in Pathyris and Akris.75

***

While the three points presented above stress a rupture with the previous period, thefact that many machimoi in the third century B.C. had guard duties rather than clear armyduties can be interpreted either as rupture or continuity. Herodotus insists on the statusof machimoi as warriors in Late Period Egypt but the inclusion of machimoi in thePtolemaic system of land grants to soldiers (the cleruchic system) can only be datedto Ptolemy III. The scarcity of papyrological sources for the first decades ofPtolemaic rule prevents us from knowing how, when and for what purpose thePtolemies created the category of machimoi. The first use of the word machimoi inthe Ptolemaic documentation refers to guards serving officials in the Oxyrhynchitenome under Ptolemy II (DOC 1, 261 B.C) and their army functions become well attestedfrom the reign of Ptolemy V on (204180 B.C.).76 For the first time the machimoi appearto be organized in military units called laarchies (): two officers, the brothersHoros and Tearos, describe themselves as laarchai and hgemnes of the elite troopsof machimoi at the court in Alexandria ( () , DOC17).77 Previously, only the general term officer (hgemn) was associated with

72 Crawford (n. 2), 968 explains that in practice the heptarouroi in Kerkeosiris received 6arourai and the cavalrymen 19 arourai, the rest beeing dedicated to the local god Soknebutnis.Similar dedications were made by the dekarouroi andres in Edfu; see n. 70 above.

73 Crawford (n. 2), 71 and slightly different numbers at 83 with n. 3.74 It is assumed that the other cleruchs belonging to the infantry received 30 or 25 arourai. Out of

the 35 30-aroura men in the Pros. Ptol. online, 27 are dated to the third century B.C. and only eightto the second century. The dozen 25-aroura men in the Pros. Ptol. online are dated to the third cen-tury; the other group of cleruchs was that of the katoikoi, all cavalrymen, except perhaps one uncertaincase of [ ], see Pros. Ptol. II 2978 in P.Fay. 11, line 3 =MChr. 14, after 116 B.C.,Theadelphia and Fischer-Bovet (n. 39), 1435.

75 For the equivalence between and rmt iw = f p hbs, see S.P. Vleeming, The readingof the title man receiving pay, in P.W. Pestman (ed.), Textes et tudes de papyrologie grecque,dmotique et copte (Leiden, 1985), 2047. For Pathyris, see K. Vandorpe, Persian soldiers andPersians of the Epigone. Social mobility of soldiers-herdsmen in Upper Egypt, APF 54 (2008),87108, at 938; and K. Vandorpe and S. Waebens, Reconstructing Pathyris archives. A multicul-tural Community in Hellenistic Egypt (Brussels, 2010). For Akoris, see E. Boswinkel and P.W.Pestman, Les archives prives de Dionysios, fils de Kephalas. Textes grecs et dmotiques (Leiden,1982).

76 For the attestations of machimoi in a military context, see DOC 14, DOC 17, DOC 1821, DOC25, DOC 27, DOC 33, DOC 35.


them. Even if the number of machimoi is unknown, this terminology suggests a turningpoint in the organization of the Ptolemaic army in the second century B.C. where the roleof soldiers of Egyptian or mixed origin became pre-eminent. The term hgemn contin-ued to be used in units of machimoi as we find an officer of the machimoi petitioning thestratgos in the first century Delta (DOC 34). The last evidence of a dispatch of Ptolemaictroops before the coming of the Roman armies concerns pentarouroi, thus presumablymachimoi (DOC 35), while nothing is known about the military service of other typesof cleruchs.78 From the point of view of land redistribution and military duties there isa rupture between Egyptian soldiers granted land before Alexander and soldiers givensmall allotments several decades later within the Ptolemaic army structure.

From another angle, the ambiguous role as both guards and soldiers of the gl-r.w(Herodotus kalasiries) and the rmt-dm.w (Herodotus hermotubies), as they appear inthe Egyptian documents of the Late Period, is found again in that of the machimoi inthe third century. For instance, in 254 B.C. the toparch Harimouthes, at the head of a districtin the Herakleopolite nome, was ordered to send some machimoi under the officer(hgemn) Bithelminis, as well as reapers (DOC 3). It was not clear whether they wereguards perhaps in charge of controlling the harvest or soldiers, since they were attachedto an officer but they exercised coercive power. The ambiguity between guards and soldiersalso appears in the Fayyum, in the Zenon archive (DOC 4, a + e), where in a letter to Zenon,the estates agent of the first minister (dioikts) Apollonios, a machimos was sent togetherwith a policeman (phylakits); in a petition to the king, though, the petitioner seems to havebeen locked up by the three machimoi of the sitologos, which rather suggests guard duties.However, Oatess hypothesis that machimoi were Egyptians conscripted for labour of arather menial sort, without any connection with the army and the police, conflicts withthe evidence.79 Some machimoi were still employed as guards serving officials in thelate second and early first century B.C. in the Fayyum, notably for the survey of agriculturalproduction (DOC 24; 28; 32). Their duties as guards for the agricultural survey also echoesthat of the rmt-qnqn, the armed men who should have been hired to protect the grain col-lected for the Persian commander of Syene (P.Loeb 1, 486 B.C.). But this is the only docu-mentary papyrus from the Late Period attesting this Egyptian literary word for warrior, asthe petition of Peteesi cannot really be considered as a documentary text. The connectionbetween rmt-qnqn and machimoi appears later in one single document of the Ptolemaicperiod, the sacerdotal decree of Memphis inscribed on the famous Rosetta stone (DOC

77 Only seven officers called laarchai are attested in W. Peremans and E. Van t Dack,Prosopographia Ptolemaica (Leuven, 19501981), Pros. Ptol. II/VIII 204450; for a survey of thesources attesting a laarchs, see E. Bernand, Laarque, REG 84 (1971), 3429.

78 B. Anagnostou-Canas, Rapports de dpendance coloniale dans lgypte ptolmaque. I. Lappareilmilitaire., BIDR 3a ser., 312 = 923 (1989), 151236, at 194.

79 J.F. Oates, Axapes, a basilikos grammateus and the machimoi, in A. Blow-Jacobsen (ed.),Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists (Copenhagen, 1994), 58892, at592 (quote) on the basis of DOC 5 (246/5 B.C.), and already previously, id. (n. 3), in his introductionto DOC 3 (Herakleopolites, 253 B.C.), esp. relying on DOC 4.a (Philadelphia, 254 B.C.) and DOC 14(Tebtunis, 210 B.C.); in his article Oates argues that the Egyptian Paris tries to avoid being enrolled inthe machimoi because it supposedly implies a sort of forced labour of low prestige. According toOates, the machimoi belonged to the civilian side of society since they were connected to the basilikosgrammateus. But in my view, the machimoi and the basilikos grammateus appeared in the same con-text simply because the latter hired the former as guards. In addition, the two incomplete fragmentscould be interpreted in a different way: Paris tried to obtain confirmation of his enrolment amongthe machimoi because this position would bring him extra wages. That he may be the same personas the halnophylax found in P.Col.Zen. 74 (248 B.C.) may confirm that machimoi participated inthe Ptolemaic coercive system and that Paris wanted to be enrolled in it.


18, 196 B.C.). It records that Ptolemy V offered an amnesty to the fighting men (rmt-qnqn)and the rest of the people who had gone astray80 by having their possessions restored tothem. The priests, who probably composed both the Demotic and the Greek versions ofthe text,81 chose rmt-qnqn and machimoi as equivalent to express the general concept ofwarrior,82 perhaps as Herodotus had done before them. Both words certainly better fittedthe literary style of the decree where generic terms for the army were used rather thanthe technical terms found in the Ptolemaic papyri.83 Two ostraca of the Ptolemaic periodwhere the word rmt-qnqn is used, a school exercise by a rather advanced student and therecord of a dream by an Egyptian priest, also confirm its literary overtones.84

Finally, there is only one connection between the technical terms found in the LatePeriod and Ptolemaic documents but this concerns the gl-r.w rather than the machimoi.The gl-r.w had military or police functions in the Late Period and were still found in thePtolemaic period.85 The equivalence between gl-r and the Greek word for policeman,phylakits, is found in a bilingual surety bond dated to the second part of the third cen-tury B.C., where the gl-r was called phylakits on the back of the document.86 In thethird century, phylakitai were recorded in the Greek census lists and gl-r.w werefound in the Demotic lists, the latter all carrying Egyptian names.87 Because thesame individuals never appear in Greek and Demotic lists, we cannot be sure thattheir functions were always similar. However, the surety bond reveals that they wereat least sometimes equivalent. The Ptolemies incorporated the Egyptian gl-r.w intheir police system but the senior officers were usually Greek in the third century.88

80 Demotic version (line 11) and English translation by R.S. Simpson, Demotic Grammar in thePtolemaic Sacerdotal Decrees (Oxford, 1996), 2623; Greek version with machimoi in A.Bernand, La Prose sur pierre dans lEgypte hellnistique et romaine (Paris, 1992), no. 16, line 19transcribed as machimoi in the English translation by R.S. Bagnall and P. Derow, The HellenisticPeriod: Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 20042), 2712.

81 See W. Clarysse, Ptolmes et temples, in D. Valbelle and J. Leclant (edd.), Le dcret deMemphis. Colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac loccasion de la clbration du bicentenairede la dcouverte de la Pierre de Rosette (Paris, 2000), 4165, at 59 and 62.

82 A.-E. Vsse, Les rvoltes gyptiennes: recherches sur les troubles intrieurs en Egypte durgne de Ptolme III Evergte la conqute romaine (Leuven, 2004), 123.

83 e.g. line 20, (cavalry and infantry forces, and ships,tr. Bagnall and Derow [n. 80], 2712).

84 ODK-LS no 2, l. x + 5 in D. Devauchelle, Remarques sur les mthodes denseignement dudmotique. ( propos dostraca du Centre Franco-Egyptien dEtude des Temples de Karnak), inH.J. Thissen and K.-T. Zauzich (edd.), Grammata Demotica. Festschrift fr Erich Lddeckens zum15 Juni 1983 (Wrzburg, 1984), 4759, at 48, 556 and O.Hor 12A, line 4 in J.D. Ray, TheArchive of Hor (London, 1976), 55.

85 Winnicki (n. 6 [1977]), at 2638, esp. 268 sees an agreement between the papyri and Herodotusinterpretation because in his view the kalasiries might, at some point, have been recruited in thePtolemaic army; for Winnicki (n. 22 [1986]), at 1926, esp. 201, the gl-r.w (policemen) foundin the papyri of the Ptolemaic period had the same status as the machimoi. They were all the descen-dants of populations who settled in Egypt and were granted royal and temple land during the NewKingdom and the Third Intermediate. He compares P.Lille 112 (in Demotic) concerning groups of58 and 25 gl-r.w to the machimoi of DOC 3; for the gl-r.w in the papyri of the Ptolemaic period,see also Winnicki (n. 22 [1992]).

86 P.Lille.Dem. inv. 3619 (227/6 B.C.), see Winnicki (n. 22 [1986]), at 22 and Winnicki (n. 22[1992)], at 65.

87 For gl-r, see P.Count. 2 and 4, for phylakits, see P.Count. 3, 12, 13, 22, 23, 38, 302, 35, 37.88 In the third century, at least, the regular serving police of Ptolemaic Egypt clearly belong to the

Egyptian side of things: see Clarysse and Thompson (n. 36), 2.16577, at 171 for the quotation and P.Count. 4 (= P.Lille.Dem. 101, 254231 B.C., Arsinoite, Krokodilon polis [?]); Goudriaan (n. 57), 124.For recent studies on the police, see D. Hennig, Sicherheitskrfte zur berwachung derWstengrenzen und Karawanenwege im ptolemaschen gypte, Chiron 33 (2003), 14574; D.


Later, in the first century B.C., gl-r was translated once by the Greek word for soldier,stratits.89 This can be interpreted as a generalization of the meaning of gl-r as some-one belonging to the state coercive system. But it is noticeable that gl-r was never trans-lated by the Greek word machimos in the Ptolemaic papyri, which challenges once againthe direct connection between the kalasiries of Herodotus and the Ptolemaic machimoi.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE PTOLEMAIC MACHIMOI

The belief, held for a long time, that ethnicity was the main criterion for belonging to themachimoi reinforced the consensus about their very low socio-economic status. Cases ofdesertions also strengthened the idea of their poor economic situation. However, onlytwo mentions of desertions of machimoi survived and they occurred in a period of unrestat the turn of the second century B.C. (DOC 14 and 18). Moreover, the machimoi werenot the only group that deserted and that was offered an amnesty by the king after aperiod of crisis, as we learn from the Rosetta stone (DOC 18).90 The most valid argu-ment advanced for their poverty was the small number of arourai granted to them incomparison with the 70 or 100 arourai given to the Greek cavalry cleruchs.However, a new examination of the main evidence, the machimois complaints in a peti-tion sent from Alexandria to the first minister (dioikts, DOC 21) and a group of textsfrom the village of Kerkeosiris (DOC 25), suggests that their socio-economic status wasprobably better than usually thought. It was higher than that of the average farmer evenif they received less land than the cavalry cleruchs. In fact, the machimoi represented thelower strata of the military, not of the whole population.

Both pieces of evidence for the so-called misery of the machimoi stem from periodsof crises that affected the entire population, first the years following Antiochus IVsinvasion of Egypt (170168 B.C.) and the revolt of Dionysios Petosarapis (c. 168/7B.C.), and second the dynastic war between Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra II (132118B.C.).91 A generalization of this situation to the entire Ptolemaic period is thus inaccur-ate. In the petition to the dioikts written by the machimoi in 164 B.C., they complainedthat their families, who remained in their villages, could not undertake the additionalcultivation required by a new royal decree while they themselves were stationed inAlexandria (DOC 21). They introduced themselves as the picked troops (epilektoi)among the machimoi, the seven- and five-aroura men (heptarouroi and pentarouroimachimoi), and machimoi serving in the navy (nauklromachimoi) on guard ships ingarrison in Alexandria.92 By petitioning as a group, they aimed at securing the

Hennig, Nyktophylakes, Nyktostrategen und die , Chiron 32 (2002), 28195; J. Bauschatz, Policing the chora: law enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt (Diss., Duke University,2005) and id., The strong arm of the law? Police corruption in Ptolemaic Egypt, CJ 103 (2007), 1339; in contrast, senior officers like archiphylakitai and hyparchiphylakitai had Greek names, cf. Pros.Ptol. II 4545609.

89 P.Louvre 3268, 74/3 B.C.90 The term machimoi should rather be understood here with its generic meaning fighting men

rather than referring to a specific category of cleruchs; see n. 80 about its Demotic equivalent.91 For the revolts in Egypt, see Vsse (n. 82), 2832, 5363.92 DOC 21, l. 2023 [][] []

() () []; the same categories of machimoi appear again together with almost the samewording in the amnesty decree of 118 B.C., DOC 27 where the kings confirmed the ownership ofthe land granted to them: [ ][] () [[]] ()


privileges they obtained for themselves through their position in the army, in this casethe exemption from additional land to cultivate, as other groups of soldiers did duringthe same troubled period.93 In other cases they obtained the confirmation of the owner-ship of the land granted to them by the king.94 In response to the machimois petition of164 B.C., the dioikts explained to his subordinates that the decree did not apply to taxfarmers handling the royal monopolies, or to poor villagers, mercenaries and machimoi.His mention of the unreliability of the machimoi to pay back seed loans (DOC 21, lines94115) in order to gain the sympathy of his subordinates contrasts with a later sectionwhere he associated the machimoi with groups who had rather a good living standard(such as the professional soldiers, the stratgoi, the high officials) and were all at thattime the victims of cattle requisition (DOC 21, lines 1728). The inflated style of thedioikts sounds like a rhetorical tool to support the machimoi in order to avoid deser-tions or riots on their part when they were badly needed in Alexandria.

In terms of land granted in exchange for military service, the difference in plot sizesbetween those of machimoi and those of cavalry cleruchs decreased in the second andfirst centuries B.C. as the cavalry cleruchs tended to receive only 40 or 50 arourai. In aseries of land surveys from Kerkeosiris (120115 B.C.) the machimoi had to lease outtheir plots when mobilized for long period of time, which could be damaging to theirincome if they had only a few arourai (DOC 25).95 But if five arourai were sufficientfor a family to live on, then with seven arourai the machimois families could probablyafford to hire a wage labourer when the head of the household was away.96 Moreover,the machimoi received better land than the other cleruchs, benefited from low flat-ratetaxes (three-quarters of an artaba of grain per aroura), and often had other (royal) landadjacent to the cleruchic allotments that they cultivated in addition.97

() [ ][] [][] [ ]() [ ] []() [.] () [ () ] . These are the two docu-ments attesting the naulromachimoi while it has been restituted in SB XX 14106, l. 6 (9594B.C.?) on the basis of DOC 27.

93 For instance the soldiers of the army camp (hypaithron) of Ptolemais stationed inDiospolis Parva com-plained about their wage, see P.Grenf. I 42 =WChr. 447 (169/8 B.C.); the cavalry cleruchs (katoikoi hippeis)were also acting as a group to defend their interests through petitions, see esp. P.Lips II 124.

94 See the Rosetta stone (DOC 18) where machimoi refer to fighting men in general (cf. n. 90). See alsothe amnesty decree of 118 B.C. (DOC 27) where the text gives the specific types of cleruchs (cf. n. 92).

95 For the interpretation of the land surveys, see Crawford (n. 2), 845, later confirmed by P.Tebt.IV 1114 and 1115.

96 For the size of an aroura, see n. 34; with a yield of 10 artabas per aroura, taxes at 25% of the rev-enues, and a sowing rate of one artaba ofwheat per aroura, a plot of 20 arourai ideally provided its ownerwith 130 artabas ([20 10 (200 )] 20). If one adult male consumes about 10 artabas of wheat peryear (see Pestman, n. 34, 49), i.e. c. 400 litres, at least thirteen persons could live from the revenues of thisplot, while a household of at least six persons could live on 10 arourai; Crawford (n. 2), 112 estimatedthat a family could live on five arourai, which seems to match some papyrological evidence such as P.Tebt. I 56 (Kerkeosiris, late second century B.C.). Even if the yield was lower, e.g. 8.8 artabas on averagein P.Tebt. I 49 (Kerkeosiris, 113 B.C.), the nutritive need of women and children was certainly lower than400 litres per year and e.g. R.A. Billows, Kings and Colonists: Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism(Leiden, 1995), 1635 estimates 300 kg of grain as the minimum per person per year; I do not followE. Van t Dack, Sur lvolution des institutions militaires lagides, in Armes et fiscalit dans lemonde antique. Actes du colloque national, Paris, 1416 octobre 1976 (Paris, 1977), 77105, at 87who proposes far more pessimistic evaluations, as he admits himself: for him, a cleruch with a smallfamily could live on 20 arourai if the taxes were not above 25% of their revenues.

97 See P.Tebt. I 60, lines 268 (DOC 25, Kerkeosiris, 118 B.C.) and J.C. Shelton, Crown tenants atKerkeosiris, in A.E. Hanson et al. (edd.), Collectanea Papyrologica: Texts Published in Honor of H.C. Youtie (Bonn, 1976), 11152, at 114 n. 10, where he stresses that the poverty of smaller


Like the other cleruchs, they also received wheat rations during campaigns or when gar-risoned. Often the information concerning the machimois wages is too fragmentary to cal-culate their daily or monthly wages.98 The scarce evidence suggests improvement overtime. In the third century, they were paid for guard duties one (silver) obol a day, awage similar to that of labourers or local policemen (phylakitai), or two obols perday.99 They were probably only paid for days when they worked as guards and hadother incomes from the cultivation of land rented from the king. Their wages as soldiersseem very decent. Two documents from the 60s B.C. record the monthly payment to 408machimoi pentarouroi (DOC 35): two artabas of wheat and 3,000 copper drachmas permonth at a time when one artaba cost around 1,000 copper drachmas and was enoughto feed a man.100 If converted into copper drachmas per day (5,000 divided by 30), itmade a daily wage of 160, which was double the daily wage of a dyke worker in thelate second century.101 In addition, they had land and with such a wage, they could com-fortably hire a man to work on their land when they were away. To sum up, even if themachimoi belonged to the category of cleruchs with the smaller plots, access to this statuswas some way up the social ladder and was more within reach than holding a scribal office,a function that remained within the same Egyptian or Greco-Egyptian local families. On thewhole, their socio-economic situation improved throughout the second century B.C.

CONCLUSION

Our examination of the sources has tried to deconstruct the misconceptions commonly heldabout the machimoi and to illuminate their complex role and status in Ptolemaic Egypt.First, even if Herodotus narrative is informative, it cannot be taken at face value, especiallyfor the number of warriors and the structure of the army in Late Period Egypt. Comparisonswith Egyptian papyri of that period and contextualization of Herodotus claims allowed usto refine our knowledge of the Egyptian warriors and to reconstruct how the Greek histor-ian might have amalgamated literary and technical terms under the heading machimoi.

Second, the Ptolemaic machimoi were not directly related to the so-called machimoiof the Late Period, as the connections are more complex than usually assumed. Three

clerouchs is no doubt exaggerated by C. Praux, Lconomie royale des Lagides (New York,19792), 473, who heavily draws on the exceptional DOC 21, l. 105ff and assumes more frequentuse of sub-tenants than was the case; Crawford (n. 2), 745 and those marked * in Table VI,1638. For the low flat rate, see DOC 29; J.G. Keenan and J.C. Shelton, The Tebtunis Papyri(London, 1976), 1112; and Capponi (n. 62), 1001 n. 27.

98 For instance, the account in DOC 28 does not specify for how many days the machimoi workedon the agricultural survey and the fragment of an official letter in DOC 33 does not state how manysoldiers received six copper talents or for what period of time.

99 DOC 6 (assuming the wage concern three machimoi), as well as DOC 1112; standard wages aredifficult to establish: for the third century B.C. see K. Vandorpe and W. Clarysse, Viticulture and wineconsumption in the Arsinoite nome (P. Kln V 221), AncSoc 28 (1997), 6773, at 723 (one obol perday); Clarysse and Thompson (n. 36), 2.172 (two obols per day).

100 The price of one artaba of grain could vary and reach up to 1,680 copper drachmas (e.g. P.Tebt.I 117, 99 B.C.) but 1,000 copper drachmas provide an order of magnitude for the late second and earlyfirst century B.C.; see e.g. the introduction of P.Berl.Salmen. 1 and W. Clarysse and E. Lanciers,Currency and the dating of Demotic and Greek papyri from the Ptolemaic period, AncSoc 20(1989), 11732, at 117; K. Maresh, Bronze und Silber. Papyrologische Beitrge zur Geschichteder Whrung im ptolemischen und rmischen gypten bis zum 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Opladen,1996), 1812.

101 See DOC 28, introduction.


reasons were presented: (1) the term machimoi is only found in Greek literary textsdescribing Egypt in the Late Period but is never used in Greek literary texts describingthe Ptolemaic army. It suggests that Greek historians did not use the technical termsadopted by the Ptolemies. They do not provide evidence for an (institutional) continuitybetween the Egyptian soldiers in Late Period Egypt and those hired by the Ptolemies; (2)the non-exclusive ethnic character of the machimoi; (3) the late land grant to machimoiconnected with military service. However, the ambiguous functions of the machimoi asguards and soldiers in the third-century B.C. papyri are similar to those of the gl-r.w(Herodotus kalasiries) and the rmt-dm.w (Herodotus hermotubies) of the LatePeriod papyri and can be perceived either as rupture or continuity.

Over time the increasing reliance on machimoi, who were most often of Egyptianorigin, as infantrymen and to a smaller extent as cavalrymen (machimoi hippeis)sheds light on the integration of Egyptians into the Ptolemaic army. They were notsecond-rate soldiers but, as foot soldiers mobilized when needed, were low in the mili-tary hierarchy, presumably with distinctions according to the size of their plots. Themachimoi were not exclusively Egyptian but the reverse is also true: Egyptian andGreco-Egyptian soldiers were not exclusively enrolled as machimoi. They were alsohired in the second century as professional soldiers (misthophoroi). Finally, the machi-moi did not belong to the lowest strata of the population and their socio-economic pos-ition even improved throughout the Ptolemaic period.

University of Southern California CHRISTELLE [email protected]

APPENDIXDOCUMENTS ATTESTING MACHIMOI IN THE PTOLEMAIC PERIOD

Mainly based on Kiessling (n. 3), Winnicki (n. 22 [1986]) and Goudriaan (n. 57). Forfurther documents, see the footnotes.102

Editions of papyri according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demoticand Coptic Papyri, Ostraka and Tablets (web edition 2011: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/clist_papyri.html).

102 I list below by century nineteen attestations of machimoi on papyri not discussed in the scholar-ship because in most cases no further information on the term is found. All dates are B.C., provenanceand type of document are indicated as well as names when available: III c.: SB XVI 12448 (250201,unknown) petition, mention of Anchopis the archimachimos; SB XII 10869 (243201, Magdola) frag-ment of an hypomnema; UPZ II 158 (III c., Thebes) list of payments; P.Kln VIII 346 (2nd half of IIIc., Arsinoites) account, Pesbutis the machimos; P.Heid. VI 365 (2nd half of III c., unknown) fragmen-tary official letter; P.Tebt. III.2 884 (210, Arsinoites) account of expenditure, machimoi of Ptolemaios;II c.: SB XVI 12375 (180, Arsinoites): list of names; P.Iand. VIII 146 (c. 180, Arsinoites), account,mention of Herakles the machimos; P.Kln X 412 (178128, Arsinoites) royal decree; P.Tebt. III.2887 (173, Tebtunis) account of an oil merchant; P.Mil. II 32 = P.Med. I 32 (160159, Lykopolis): frag-ment of petition; P.Heid. VIII 418 (155144, Herakleopolis) letter of the Basilikos grammateus to thetopogrammateus; P.Tebt. III.2 912 (II c., Tebtunis) official correspondence, Achilleus the machimos;P.Tebt. I 81 (Late II c., Magdola) land survey; PSI XIII 1314 (II c., Arsinoites) report of episkepsis; P.Tebt. III.2 894 (114, Tebtunis) accounts of a club; BGU VI 1216 (110, Memphis or Aphroditopolis)official correspondence; I c.: BGU XIV 2440 (III c., Herakleopolites) land survey; SB XX 14106(9594?, unknown) compilation of prostagmata, [nauklromachimoi].


Sources Date B.C. Place Ref. Content

1 P.Hib. I 41 c. 261 Oxyrhynchites Kiessling (n. 3) Machimoi employed as guards; anofficial sends a controller underguard with his machimoi to anotherofficial.

2 P.Sorb.inv. 2431103 255246 Arsinoites Sartre, P.-L.,(forthcoming)

Phabis, a machimos, receives a seedloan from the royal granary forcultivating the land belonging topresbyteroi away from home.

3 P.Hib. I 44 = P.Yale I 33 253 Herakleopolites(Ankyron)

Kiessling (n. 3) Machimoi of the district; letter betweentwo officials (one is a toparch) aboutmachimoi to be sent up under theofficer (hgemn) Bithelminis(probably an Aramean name) andabout the dispatch of some farmlabourers for harvesting purposes.

4 a) PSI IV 353, l. 1415 b) P.Ryl. IV 563 = SB V 7646c) P.Cair.Zen. IV 59627 d)P.Zen.Pestm. 49 e) SBXXII 15237

254242 Arsinoites(Philadelphia)

Kiessling (n. 3) Zenon archive: a) Letter to Zenon aboutsending a phylakites and amachimos. b) Letter to Zenon aboutpreventing the machimos Sokeus sonof Nechauis from complaining to thedioikts Apollonios c) Fragment ofa petition by Inaros the machimos. d)Letter to the dioikts Apollonios,mention of the machimoi of

Continued103 I thank Pierre-Loup Sartre, who is preparing the edition of DOC 2, for showing it to me.

EGYPTIA

NWARRIO

RS

229

Continued


Lykophron. e) Petition to the king:the three machimoi of the sitologoshad locked the petitioner up.

5 P.Cair.Zen. 59590 + P.Mich.Zen. I 82

246/5 Unknown Goudriaan (n. 57), 124,doc. 105; Oates (n. 79),592

Letter to Zenon and draft of Zenon tothe basilikogrammateus about Paris,an Egyptian who was enrolled in themachimoi; scholars interpret Paris asa deserter from the Oxyrhynchiteswho wanted to escape his enrolmentor as an unattached Egyptian(because he left his nome) who wasforced to join the machimoi. Incontrast I suggest that Paris wantedto join the machimoi of theArsinoites, his new place ofresidence.

6 P.Col. IV 77 verso 245/239 Arsinoites(Philadelphia?)

P.Yale I 33, p. 86 List of expenditure for seven days:payment of three drachmas to themachimoi.

7 P.Grenf. II 14 (a) 232 Arsinoites Preisigke III 215 Harimouthis, hired machimos.8 SB III 6285 229/8 Herakleopolites Goudriaan (n. 57), 124;

Uebel, no. 1143Pentarouros called Tothos.

9 SB I 4369 (b) III c. Arsinoites Kiessling (n. 3) Sowing regulation for several villagesof the nome; mention of amachimos.

CHRIS

TELLE

FIS

CHER-B

OVET

230

10 P.Count. 14, l. 18 = P.Petr. III59 (a), II 8

III c. Arsinoites (?) Kiessling (n. 3); Clarysseand Thompson (n. 36),2.173

List of occupations, among them somemachimoi.

11 P.Lille I 25, l. 4546 III c. Arsinoites Polemonmeris (Ghoran)

Clarysse and Thompson(n. 36), 2.173

Account of transport by water:machimos of the Herakleides is paid2 obols a day.

12 P.Lille I 58, l. 3, 12 and 18. III c. Arsinoites Polemonmeris (Ghoran)


Machimos is paid 1 obol a day.

13 P.Petr. III 100 (b2), l. 929 III c. Arsinoites Polemonmeris (Ghoran)

Goudriaan (n. 57), 1245;Oates (n. 3), 87

Report on cultivation listing machimoipentarouroi, among whom two haveGreek names and patronymics:Baton, son of Demetrios andAsklepiades, son of Demetrios.

14 P.Tebt. III.1 703, l. 215222 c. 210 Arsinoites (Tebtunis) Goudriaan (n. 57), 124;Oates (n. 79), 590

Instruction of a dioikts to asubordinate: desertion of machimoiand sailors, probably in the aftermathof a rebellion.

15 P.Princ. II 18, l. 10 Late III c. Unknown Grain accounts listing names andquantities of wheat: Theophilos,Demetrios, Dorion, Philokrates,Philemon the water-carrier, DeiosSyriakos, Dionysios the machimos(amount of wheat is lost), Timaios,Petimines, Nikasippos, Kasepos,Petesouchos, the baker; the ethnicityof Dionysios is difficult to establishin such a context and in the late thirdB.C.

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16 P.Count. 15, l. 9 Late III c. orearly II c.

Arsinoites,Herakleides meris,(Bubastos ?)


List of ethnics and occupations,probably privileged groups: themachimoi come after the Persiansand the Arabs and precede thebearers of the god Souchos.

17 OGIS II 731 = SB V 8925 205193 Alexandria Kiessling (n. 3); Pros.Ptol. II/VIII 2048 and2050; Bernand (n. 77)

Dedication by two brothers, Horos andTearos (Egyptian names) who arelaarchai and hgemones of thepicked troops of machimoi at thecourt ( () ).

18 OGIS I 90, l. 1920 = SB8299

196 Delta (Rosetta stone) Goudriaan (n. 57), 1215. The fighting men (Dem., line 11rmt-qnqn/Greek, line 19 machimoi)who deserted in a period of troublebut came back, as others who did thesame, can keep their ownpossessions.

19 OGIS I 102 Ptol. VI (?) Alexandria concerningCrete, Thera,Arsinoe in thePeloponnesus

Kiessling (n. 3);Goudriaan (n. 57), 123

Dedication of an altar by anAlexandrian, grammateus of thestratitai and machimoi in Crete,Thera and Arsinoe in thePeloponnesus.

20 SB V 8209 163159 Thera Launey (n. 62), 2.9578 Dedication to Thracian Dionysos byAttalos, ,and Onesimos, [ ]

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[]; the verb suggeststhat they were active in a religiousassociation of soldiers specificallyof machimoi according to Launey.For him Attalos and Onesimos are ofThracian origin and have associatedEgyptian soldiers (the machimoi)with their cultural practice.

21 UPZ I 110 = P.Paris 63(preface of P.Petr. III)

164 Memphis (?) Wilcken, UPZ I, p. 492;Winnicki (n. 63[1989]), 229;Anagnostou-Canas (n.78), 191

lines 2034: the machimoi stationed inAlexandria, including the pickedtroops, the five- and seven-arouramen and the machimoi of the navy,complain to the dioikts about theirfamilies left back home who have tocultivate extra plots of land; lines10315: the dioikts instructs hissubordinates that the decree does notapply to the machimoi; lines 17192:the dioikts orders that the cattlebelonging to those in the army,including the machimoi and to thestratgoi, the high officials and thosecultivating land , betemporarily used for the royaldomain; lines 193200: Thedioikts summons his subordinatesin the Saite nome because he did not

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follow his instructions and themachimoi complained again.

22 P.Tebt. III 903 II c. Arsinoites P.Count. 2. 173 n. 286 Beginning of the lett

egyptian warriors: the machimoi of herodotus and the ptolemaic army

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