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About Me

Christelle Fischer-Bovet specializes in the social and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to the Romans (4th c. BC-1st c. AD), with a special interest in Greco-Roman Egypt. Her book Army and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014; paperback 2019) combines documentary evidence (papyri, inscriptions) with social theory to examine the army in Hellenistic Egypt as a vehicle for land distribution, a provider of group solidarity, and a place of interaction between Greek and Egyptian cultures. She has also written several articles on Ptolemaic political and economic history and articles on the role of ethnicity in the institutions of the new Hellenistic states. She is the co-editor, with Sitta von Reden, of Comparing the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires
Integration, Communication, and Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and is preparing a monograph called The Ptolemaic Empire for Oxford University Press. Her research and teaching interests focus on state formation and imperialism, military history, ethnicity and integration in multicultural societies, institutions, papyrology and Greek epigraphy, and ancient historiography.

Recent Publications

2021: Comparing the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires: Interaction, Communication and Resistance, co-edited with S. von Reden (Freiburg-im-Breisgau), Cambridge University Press

2021: “Greek papyri of the Classics Department at Stanford (P. Stan. Class.) – Part II”, with Willy Clarysse (Leuven, Belgium) – [10,000 words, submitted in August 2020]

2021: “The Ptolemies and Judea in the second century BC” in Andrea M. Berlin and Paul J. Kosmin (eds.), The Middle Maccabees Archaeology, History, and the Rise of the Hasmonean Kingdom. Atlanta, SBL Press, 293–310

2020: “Hellenistic Empires: The Dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids” in F. Bang, A. Bayly, W. Scheidel, (eds), The Oxford World History of Empire, Volume 2, The History of Empires, Oxford University Press, 167–197.

2020: “Soldiers in the Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt”, submitted to The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions Project, in Bowman, A. (ed.), Oxford University Press, 127–158.

2020: “Getting paid in Ptolemaic Egypt in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC”, with C. Lorber, in Faucher, T.(ed.) Money rules! The monetary economy of Egypt, from Persians until the beginning of Islam, Cairo: IFAO, 169–202.

2020: “Ptolemaic Officials and Officers in Search of Fame”, in Celebrity, Fame, and Infamy in the Hellenistic World, Faber, R. (ed.), Toronto University Press, 111–134.

2018: “Ethnicity and official identity: comparing Ptolemaic and Early Roman Egypt,” Journal of Egyptian History 11 (Ethnicity in ancient Egypt: an introduction to key issues), 208–242.

2016: “A challenge to the concept of decline for understanding Hellenistic Egypt. From Polybius to the twenty- first century,” in Topoi. Orient – Occident 20 (2015), 209–237.

2015: “Social unrest and ethnic coexistence in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire”, in Past and Present 229, 3–45.

2014: Army and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 447 p. [2019, paperback edition]

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Mediterranean, Middle East

Expertise by Chronology

Ancient

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Economic History, Migration & Immigration, Military, Politics, Race, Rebellion & Revolution