2021-2025
Coordinators of the Project
Panos CHRISTODOULOU – European University Cyprus
Anne-Emmanuelle VEÏSSE – Université Gustave Eiffel
Stéphanie WACKENIER–Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Damien AGUT-LABORDERE – CNRS-ArScAn, Nanterre
This research project seeks to refine our understanding of the construction of royal ideology and the exercise of power in the various territories of the Ptolemaic kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean—Egypt, Cyprus, Cyrenaica and southern Syria. Through a series of in-depth case studies, it critically reassesses the notion of “external possessions,” commonly used to designate territories administered by the Ptolemies outside Egypt, a category that does not adequately account for the specific nature of the relationships between each of these regions and Alexandria. Particular attention is paid to institutional, social and cultural transformations within the regions under consideration.
The project is structured in three phases. A first workshop, entitled External possessions or affairs of the King? The case of Cyprus and Cyrenaica, took place in 2022 (European University Cyprus, Nicosia, 20–22 May), bringing together specialists of Cyprus, Cyrenaica and Egypt. Its objective was to rethink and re-evaluate the position of these two regions within the Ptolemaic kingdom and in the wider Mediterranean context. A second workshop was held in Cyprus in 2023 (Nicosia, 19–21 October), and a third in Athens in 2024 (École française d’Athènes). The project concluded with an international conference in Paris in 2025 (16–17 October, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). The contributions of the project participants will be published in the volume Les espaces lagides en Méditerranée orientale, scheduled to appear in 2027.