Did the Ptolemies bankrupt Egypt or did Philadelphos create a great administration?

[0N3]

As usual i can't make a great OP (i know little of this) so i hope that you already have the knowlegde needed. It seems there are these two opinions that are argued?!

Did the Ptolemies squeeze as much as they could from Egypt, so much as to bankrupt it

or did they use a great system who maximised their income, recources etc.

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

The Ptolemies certainly made Egypt into a power again, and made the economy much more efficent (to the state where rome depended on the Nile's crop). I don't think you can really accuse the Ptolemies of 'bankrupting' Egypt, as it continued to be an important part of the Eastern Med up until the late 19thC.

[conon394]

As usual i can't make a great OP (i know little of this) so i hope that you already have the knowlegde needed. It seems there are these two opinions that are argued?!

Did the Ptolemies squeeze as much as they could from Egypt, so much as to bankrupt it

They certainly did not bankrupt the state.

or did they use a great system who maximised their income, recources etc.

This seems to imply they just sat on what they found. Given that water mills and a number of related technological developments (and opening the blue water route to India) are clearly the result of Ptolemaic initiatives they deserve a lot of credit for making Egypt considerably more wealthy than what they found.

They failed significantly in one area that they always remained a tiny ruling caste of Macedonians and Greeks over at best a resigned population. Thus for all their wealth they had no unitary state with a committed population like democratic Athens or Republican Rome that could sustain military disasters and still come back for more...

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Oh, come on, are we actually discussing the possibility they bankrupted Egypt?

They turned Alexandreia into the world's commercial center, they founded a multitude trade posts along the eastern coast of Africa (also served as bases for elephant hunt), Philadelphos himself linked the Mediterranean with the Read Sea and the Indian Ocean by restoring the Canal of Necho that had been out of use since the days of Darius, he extended the old caravan route from Koptos in Upper Egypt to Berenice, they rejuvenated the trade with Sudan and Arabia, they established trade with Indian merchants at Aden and Socotra island, they occupied Cyprus which contained the only recourses Egypt lacked - timber and copper- and they exported large amounts of wheat, fabrics, glass, papyri all around the Mediterranean.
As a matter of fact, John Gustav Droysen has gone as far as to draw a parallel between the economic policy of the Ptolemies and the mercantilism of the nation-states of Europe in the 17th century; the difference being mainly that Egypt was no nation-state and everything basically applied to the royal treasury.


Now, as far as the state apparatus is concerned, Mommsen has compared it with the way Friedrich the Great governed his domain. At the top of the hierarchy in every sector -economy, law, army, religion- was the king, who was aided in his rule by a multitude of administrative officials -paid in either coin or goods and coin- and issued his compelling decisions with prostagmata or diagrammata. The administrative servants submitted reports and various papers with demands and pleas of the natives and the king would present the detailed process of his work in the daily royal diaries, of Ephimeridae, in the tradition of Alexander the Great. Of course, such a system demanded meticulous and relentless preoccupation with the domestic, and in general, the state's affairs on behalf of the king and thus it depended largely on the level of his commitment to his duties and his abilities, hence it declined along with the dynasty's decadence.

According to Wilken, the capital of the state, Alexandreia, was differentiated from the rest of Egypt, because there was this notion that Egypt was the land that belonged to Alexandreia. And the territories of Egypt were divided in two large administrative entities, Upper and Lower Egypt, each of them being further subdivided into various prefectures, each governed by a central settlement that from a legal perspective belonged to Alexandreia.

But as Conon said, the Ptolemies remained a foreign dynasty basing their authority upon a thin stratum of military settlers and colonists (Greek/Macedonians and Galatians later), hence the adoption of many traditional Egyptian ethics, customs and titles in an attempt to appease the native sentiment. Still, this facade was unable not only to instill some sense of cultural unity and military and political cohesion, but also to prevent the outbreak of national movements against Ptolemaic authority. If memory serves a particularly large rebellion that broke out in 180BC severely weakened the dynasty and was never really quelled until the Roman conquest.


I have also read one theory that the reason behind the rapid decline from the late 3rd century onwards of the Ptolemaic dynasty was the genetic decay of its rulers, which was caused by continuous practicing of incest among the royal house.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

True, Alexandria became the commercial center of the Mediterranean and remained as such even until the fall of the Ptolemies.. Egypt possessed a huge navy as well as a huge number of trade ships.. The Ptolemies controlled or had under their influence places of great commercial importance such as Cilicia, Rhodes, Phoenike etc..
Egypt was also the main producer of grain and supplied all of Mediterranean and this continued even in the time of the Byzantine Empire..
I think Egypt of the Ptolemies was the wealthiest of the Hellenistic nations..

[The Noble Lord]

When in summer of 1798, Napoleon and his army of the Orient invaded and occupied Egypt, they were stunned to find a country that once build the great Pyramids in such a backwardness and mental and financial ignorance. As a matter of fact one of the leading French savants or scientists (Berthollet) who accompanied Napoleon proclaimed that Ptolemaic dynasty did much for Egypt, but it was the backward and primitive rule of the Mamelukes that made it the to be "in unimaginable state that it is now"!
He gives as a proof the still usable and visible remains of the ancient Ptolemaic canal that goes from Bitter Lakes to Gulf of Suez and then towards the Nile delta. It was the first recorded attempt in history to bridge the gap between Red Sea and Mediterranean and it was constructed by the Ptolemaic dynasty!
Then again, the Berthollet, Monge and other French scientists could've been talking from the Occidental point of view and against the Orientalists.

[bleach]

He gives as a proof the still usable and visible remains of the ancient Ptolemaic canal that goes from Bitter Lakes to Gulf of Suez and then towards the Nile delta. It was the first recorded attempt in history to bridge the gap between Red Sea and Mediterranean and it was constructed by the Ptolemaic dynasty!

Certainly _not_ the first recorded attempt--Darius I's re-opening of the canal was at least the third time in history and Ptolemy's would have been only the second by a foreign ruler.

What changes exactly did Ptolemy II make to Egyptian administration that were supposedly so dramatic? From what I have read coinage remained a highly regulated affair in Egypt for upper(Greek/Macedonian) classes... which means the state outside of Alexandria was still on a barter and not moneyed economy--so Ptolemy's reforms amounted to what--exchange of one set of obtuse rules and corrupt middlemen for another?

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

Certainly _not_ the first recorded attempt--Darius I's re-opening of the canal was at least the third time in history and Ptolemy's would have been only the second by a foreign ruler.

What changes exactly did Ptolemy II make to Egyptian administration that were supposedly so dramatic? From what I have read coinage remained a highly regulated affair in Egypt for upper(Greek/Macedonian) classes... which means the state outside of Alexandria was still on a barter and not moneyed economy--so Ptolemy's reforms amounted to what--exchange of one set of obtuse rules and corrupt middlemen for another?

You need to do more reading then.

[The Noble Lord]

Certainly _not_ the first recorded attempt--Darius I's re-opening of the canal was at least the third time in history and Ptolemy's would have been only the second by a foreign ruler.

O yeah, did Darius the I really attempted to build the "Suez Canal"?? And who were the rulers that tried to do it before him, does anybody know??

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

As usual i can't make a great OP (i know little of this) so i hope that you already have the knowlegde needed. It seems there are these two opinions that are argued?!

Did the Ptolemies squeeze as much as they could from Egypt, so much as to bankrupt it

or did they use a great system who maximised their income, recources etc.

The Ptolemies re-energized Egypt after just over a hundred years of Persian rule and previous Achaemenid dallying in the region. Alexandria was the center of the Hellenistic world and one of the largest and richest cities on earth.

I assume the arguement aganist the Ptolemies comes from the later period, when the Ptolemies had gradually lost most of their territory to the Seleucids. The Ptolemies were also deeply in debt to the Roman Republic during their waning years of existance. This played a strong role in why the Romans would interfere in Ptolemaic politics before finally taking over Egypt proper. By the first century B.C.E., Egypt was a shadow of its former self on the world stage but was still an important cultural center.

The genetic arguement for the decline of the Ptolemies holds a lot of weight. Ptolemy V may have been the first Pharoah to be born of inbreeding and the Kingdom declined sharply during his reign. However, the fact that he took the throne as a toddler when the Seleucids were ruled by Antiochus III The Great was very important as well.

[Trax]

And who were the rulers that tried to do it before him, does anybody know??

Necho II