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J. G. Manning, The Last Pharaohs: Egypt under the Ptolemies, 305-30 BC. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 264, incl. 18 black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 978-0-691-14262-3. GBP27.95.
Manning, with numerous previous publications in the field of Ptolemaic studies to his credit, here plunges straight into the issues that he proposes to address and dispenses with the customary historical survey of the Ptolemaic period. His brief historical introduction, entitled 'Egypt in the First Millennium BC' (pp. 19-28), picks up the story from the end of the New Kingdom and gives more space to Persian rule than to the period of Alexander and Ptolemy. This is appropriate since he identifies with the trend in scholarship over the last three decades of laying greater stress on Egyptian culture in the Ptolemaic era and on Persian administrative practices (p. 2).
Manning takes issue with those who have assessed the Ptolemaic system from the viewpoint of modern European states. In chapter 2, 'The Historical Understanding of the Ptolemaic State' (pp. 29-54), he illustrates the continuing attraction for some historians of the inappropriate model of colonialism as represented by the British Raj. Then in chapter 3, 'Moving Beyond Despotism, Economic Planning, and State Banditry: Ptolemaic Egypt as a Premodern State' (pp. 55-72), he argues that neither the despotic nor the dirigiste model does justice to the portrayal of the Ptolemaic economy. He contests the idea that Ptolemaic Egypt was a failed state (pp. 64-66) and rejects the older application of 'stark dichotomies' between Asiatic and antique modes of production or between modernising Greek and passive Asian institutions. He likewise dismisses a fashion of the 1990s to apply the term 'apartheid' to Ptolemaic Egypt, albeit in the limited sense of 'cultural genocide' or de facto separation, for he notes the absence of 'ideological racism' and the presence of evidence that makes nonsense of the idea of cultural genocide (p. 64; cf. p. 178 on the legal system).
Still, it is difficult to make any generalisations about that system without using terminology that the modern reader would consider value free. Manning sees the key to understanding how the Ptolemies established their authority and...