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Soldiers in the Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt

Soldiers are heavily represented within the corpus of Greek inscriptions from Egypt, sometimes acting individually—especially officers—and sometimes as a group. The most common types of documents are dedications, along with signatures and proskynemata (acts of adoration)—generally simply graffiti. Smaller in number are the funerary inscriptions (mostly from Alexandria), and finally a few honorific decrees and petitions involving soldiers. The aim of this chapter is more generally to explain why there were so many inscriptions concerning soldiers and why their number increased over time, through the analysis of their content, form, and functions. Dedicatory inscriptions offer the clearest evidence for investigating this increase and therefore are the focus of the chapter, though some of the new habits are also reflected in other types of inscriptions. A number of inscriptions set up by members of the military were also preserved in hieroglyphs and Demotic Egyptian on statues and stelai and sometimes concern individuals who are also known from the Greek documentation.