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A second category of document important for the study of this period consists of papyri, mainly from middle Egypt and especially the Fayum, where the dry soil and climate have preserved through the centuries scraps of paper consigned to rubbish tips or reused, for example in stuffing the mummy-cases of sacred ibises, cats or crocodiles. The information contained in these papyri is in many ways different from that furnished by inscriptions. The latter have survived because they were intended to be preserved, the former because they were discarded. Papyri, too, furnish information which is usually more local in its relevance. If we ignore the fragments containing extracts from literary works, which range from the discovery nearly a century ago of Aristotle’s lost Constitution of Athens to that, more recently, of long sections of lost plays by Menander, we are dealing in the main with the waste-paper baskets of minor civil servants – correspondence, petitions and drafts of replies, summonses, depositions, records of judgements, administrative details concerning the billeting of troops, the passing on of edicts and orders, the auctioning of leases, the making of contracts and submission of tenders, the uneasy relations with the temples and public announcements like that offering a reward for information on the whereabouts of a runaway slave. The papyri already discovered include several major finds, such as the archive of Zenon of Caunus, the agent of Apollonius, the dioiketes or head of the civil administration under Ptolemy II, which gives a detailed picture of the working of a great estate, a gift from the king, on which much took place that was not perhaps typical of life generally among the Greeks in Egypt (on this see further p. 106), or the so-called Revenue Laws of Ptolemy II (cf. Select Papyri, 203) introduced by Apollonius, which contain regulations for the control of the royal oil monopoly. We have also several royal ordinances and indulgences (concessions to the populace in the form of amnesties, tax remissions and the like). An example is that of 118, in which

King Ptolemy (Euergetes II) and Queen Cleopatra (II) the sister and Queen Cleopatra (III) the wife proclaim an amnesty to all their subjects for errors, crimes, accusations, condemnations and offences of all kinds up to the 9 Pharmouthi of year 52 except to persons guilty of wilful murder or sacrilege (Select Papyri, 210).

These concessions are then elaborated for another 260 lines. Another papyrus from Tebtunis (P. Tebt., 703) contains instructions sent by the dioiketes to a newly appointed subordinate in the Egyptian countryside (see pp. 106‘7).

The papyri thus throw light on everyday life as well as on official policy and activity. But they have to be used with circumspection. Since there are some 30, 000 Greek papyri available compared with only 2000 demotic, it is clear that the conclusions they lead to are likely to be heavily weighted towards the Greek minority, a situation which can be rectified only as more work is done on the still unpublished documents in Egyptian. Furthermore, the papyrological evidence concerns administration at the local end rather than the centre of government in Alexandria, where soil conditions have prevented the survival of papyri. What we have can only be used safely for the place and time to which it belongs, since we have reason to believe that conditions changed considerably from place to place and from decade to decade. Nevertheless, here, as on the stones, there is a growing mass of evidence invaluable for the study of Ptolemaic Egypt. Elsewhere this sort of material is not usually available, though in the Dead Sea scrolls and other similar documents the caves of the Jordan valley have supplemented the written authorities, usually for a period rather later than that with which we are concerned.

Coins also provide valuable evidence for the historian. In the classical world coins were more often minted to satisfy the needs of government than to facilitate trade (though of course they incidentally did this too). Hoards of coins hidden in a crisis and never recovered afford useful means of dating, and, where dates can be attached to particular issues, it is sometimes possible to correlate minting with general policy. The location of coin finds furnishes information on currents of trade, and the relative absence of Ptolemaic coins abroad illustrates the strict monopoly enforced by the Ptolemies upon those trading with Egypt (see p. 105). The coin-types minted also throw light on policy and attitudes. Thus Alexander’s decision to strike Persian-type darics after Darius’ death clearly indicates his claim to the Persian throne whereas the opening of mints at Sicyon and Corinth had the more practical aim of financing the recruitment of mercenaries. For some time after Alexander’s death his successors issued coins on the same standard in the name of the kings, that is Philip Arrhidaeus and later Alexander IV. But towards the end of the third century they began one by one to issue coins with their own heads on the obverse, thereby signifying their rejection of a united empire and claim to independent kingship. Thus coins provide evidence for political pretensions, military ambitions and of course economic policy but they require a certain expertise on the part of the historian to master the technical problems surrounding dies and mints, weight standards and, especially, dating.

Of less importance, but by no means negligible, are the documents that have turned up in other materials or tongues. As examples I will mention two. In 1954 A. J. Sachs and D. J. Wiseman published a cuneiform tablet from Babylon containing a list of kings reigning in the Seleucid dominions from Alexander the Great to the accession of Arsacid (Parthian) rule in Mesopotamia and providing new or confirming old dates for Seleucid reigns down to about 179 (Iraq (1954), pp. 202–12). Secondly, in 1976 J. D. Ray published an archive of documents on potsherds (ostraca) consisting of drafts of letters written by a certain Hor, an Egyptian from Sebennytus, who in support of his claims in a feud quoted his own prophecy that Antiochus IV, who was invading Egypt, would leave that country by sea before ‘Year 2, Payni, final day’ (30 July 168) and, on a separate ostracon, asserted that Antiochus had fulfilled his prophecy by leaving before that date. Thus from an obscure document in a curious context we obtain a firm date for an important event not only in Seleucid and Ptolemaic relations but in Mediterranean history generally.

The use of this non-literary evidence, which is essential to our growing knowledge of the period, depends upon its availability to the historian. Some of the main publications in which inscriptions, coins and papyri are assembled can be found listed in the bibliography but these quickly become out of date and have to be supplemented from articles in journals and such annual surveys of recent publications as the learned and comprehensive Bulletin épigraphique published annually by J. and L. Robert in the French quarterly Revue des Etudes Grecques.

Evidence of this kind supplements, but does not replace, the work of the ancient writers, even when these are mediocre, for only they can give us a narrative of events and they are usually essential for a chronological framework. But inscriptions and papyri provide a new perspective and often information which prompts the historian to ask a new type of question. They give a glimpse into the working of governments and sometimes enable us to attach names to the bureaucrats themselves. Occasionally they allow families to be traced from generation to generation; they provide evidence for social mobility in a particular community and by their help we can sometimes discover details of land tenure, social hierarchies, and the economic conditions of different groups and classes. Provided we exercise caution and remain aware of the vast gaps in our knowledge, it is still possible to attempt an answer, with far more nuances than in the past, to such questions as where, in this or the other monarchy, power really lay. But, as has already been indicated, answers to these questions are valid only for the time and place to which the evidence refers. The hellenistic world was a dynamic society, one which in some ways never achieved stability but carried on in a state of tension created on the one hand by the fact that the existing balance of power was only accepted faute de mieux and not as a recognized way of organizing international relations, and on the other by a shifting and uneasy relationship between the Greco-Macedonian ruling class and the native populations. Starting from the original impact of Alexander’s career the hellenistic world gradually ran down until eventually, shorn of everything east of the Euphrates, it was incorporated into the Roman empire. When in the fourth century AD the Roman empire itself split into two halves, the hellenistic world still enjoyed a ghostly existence in Byzantium.