Identity and ethnic friction in Greek papyrus letters from Egypt Ivo Volt, Tartur It is well known that Greek papyrus letters originating from Egypt are an extremely interesting and valuable source of information not only on economic and financial affairs of the Ptolemaic (and later) Egypt, but also on social relations and private lives of people who engage in letter writing. One of the things that make papyrus letters so appealing for a social historian is the specifically personal level of real letters available in relatively large amount for a relatively confined territory and time. It is this same personal touch and first-hand experience that has attracted and continues to attract modern readers. My presentation, limited as it is, will focus on letters that include cases of discrimination or abuse on ethnic or linguistic basis, with the aim of highlighting some points in the history of tendencies thal can be seen beyond that time and location. In modern research on Hellenistic Egypt, one of the fundamental problems is connected with the cultural contact of the Greeks and the native Egyptians. Ever since Johann Gustav Droysen published the first volume of his Geschichte des Hel- lenismus in 1836, the Hellenistic period of about 300 years was regarded as a time when the descendants of the Greeks who settled in the lands of the Near East ceased to be Greeks and became instead Graeco-Syrians, Graeco-Egyptians, etc. This idea of fusion, or mixture, of cultures and peoples was widely accepted until the end of World War II and even later. In 1960s and 1970s, however, several studies showed that the fusion hypothesis is actually a fallacy, and that in Hellenistic Egypt such mutual influences were minimal.2 The orthodox approach today is that ofjuxtaposi- tion of the ethnic groups. Thus, an Egyptian Greek may write to his fellows: "Per- haps you think I'm a barbarian or an inhuman Egyptian?" (P.Oxy. XIV 1681), or another one may end his request by saying: "You know how the Egyptians are!" (P.Oxy. XLII 3061). Although these are examples from later periods (3rd and lst century CE respectively), they seem to provide an adequate enough background. The subject is not, to be sure, a straightforward one and complex debates have taken place in scholarly literature, pointing out several exceptions and specific develop- ments. In general, however, this juxtaposition between ethnic groups can be seen at various levels of social intercourse and in various periods of time. In the following, I touch upon some manifestations of it.3 1 A preliminary version of this paper was read on 2 June 2008 at ICAEM 2008, 10th Intemational Congress for Ancient East-Mediterranean Studies in Tartu titled "Identities and Societies in the Ancient East-Mediterranean: Comparative Approaches". I am grate- ful to Bruno Rochette and Maryline Parca for kindly sending offprints of their articles. For papyrological abbreviations, see Oates et al. 2008. 2 For relevant references, see, e.g., Lewis 1986: 34; Bagnall 1993: 230-1; Bingen 2007: 229. 3 For a synopsis of confrontation and interaction of different ethnic groups on the basis of papyrological material, see especially Lewis 1986.