Emmanuel Walz
PhD project: “Chronopolitics in the Ptolemaic Empire”
The PhD-project under the working title „Chronopolitics in the Ptolemaic Empire“ is concerned with the allocation and construction of time as a means and object of imperial politics. The Ptolemaic Empire is comprised of the Alexandrian center and the Egyptian and Mediterranean peripheries between 323 BCE and 30 CE. The key-term ‘chronopolitics’ refers to three strands of enquiry:1
The first is ‘politics of time’: As time is finite, it can be viewed as a resource that has to be structured, distributed and allocated. In the Ptolemaic Empire we can find a multitude of practices of different actors and social systems to do so. Who used which of the different existing calendars and in which contexts? Which festivals were celebrated and when? Can we observe synchronisation between the different groups or contexts and their practices?
Secondly, I research ‘time of politics’: Politics takes place in its own temporal patterns and temporalities. Such can include temporal restriction of access to the ruler, (ir)regular contact and exchange, or effectiveness of government. Further, it has to be asked, whether Ptolemaic time of politics did exert influence over the Mediterranean.
Lastly, my project is concerned with ‘politicised time’. Politics, power and legitimacy are always connected to constructed time: imagined pasts and promised futures. Here I am especially concerned with practices of amalgamation, adaptation or overwriting of local temporalities as well as contestation of imperial temporalities by local elites.
In order to analyse these three topics I draw from a wide range of sources from the Ptolemaic sphere of influence.
- Esposito, Fernando, und Tobias Becker. 2023. „The Time of Politics, the Politics of Time, and Politicized Time: An Introduction to Chronopolitics“. History and Theory 62 (4): 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12324 ↩︎