Arthur Verhoogt

This project, based on detailed analysis of papyrus documents, describes the various strategies that local elites used to hold on to power in the changing social circumstances of the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman rule in Egypt. It shows how the two parts that made up the village elites in the Ptolemaic period (one "Egyptian," the other "Greek") responded in various ways to the new, legally defined, and precisely termed way in which the Romans measured class and status, which was completely different from how these had been measured under Ptolemaic rule.