Chapter 8 - Legitimizing the Foreign King in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires

Summary

This paper takes as a starting point that the same sort of negotiation occurred between kings and priests in Egypt and in Babylonia, because in both places their temples fulfilled similar economic, social, and religious roles. While the Ptolemies were integrated into the religious rituals from the time of Ptolemy I on, this also implied that they were responsible for maintaining stability. Pfeiffer assesses how the king negotiated situations where his legitimacy was at risk, such as Nile failures or unrest. Focusing on the trilingual decrees, he shows how Ptolemy in Egyptian documents acts perfectly according to Egyptian royal ideology. Only the priests had sufficient knowledge of it to conceive such a narrative. Yet this was not the doing of a homogenous priestly group, but mainly of the Memphite priests. Turning to Seleucid Babylonia, Klinkott examines moments of interaction between kings and priests, such as temple rituals performed by Alexander and the Seleucid temple-rebuilding program. He sheds light on the process of negotiations between the Seleucid kings and the priests, who possibly gathered in a synod, and on the adoption of older Babylonian traditions by the Seleucids.