Christelle Fischer-Bovet
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Christelle Fischer-Bovet is an Associate Professor of Classics, History, and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. She specializes in the social and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to the Romans (4th c. BC-1st c. AD). She has held a Solmsen fellowship, a Humboldt fellowship, and a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Award. Her research and teaching interests focus on state formation and imperialism, military history, ethnicity and integration in multicultural societies, institutions, papyrology and Greek epigraphy, and ancient historiography. Her book Army and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014; paperback 2019) combines documentary evidence (papyri, inscriptions) with social theory to examine the army in Hellenistic Egypt as a vehicle for land distribution, a provider of group solidarity, and a place of interaction between Greek and Egyptian cultures. She has also written several articles on Ptolemaic political and economic history, the role of ethnicity in the new Hellenistic states, and imperial discourse and infrastructure in the Eastern Mediterranean. She is the co-editor, with Sitta von Reden, of Comparing the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires Integration, Communication, and Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2021; paperback 2023) and is preparing a monograph called The Ptolemaic Empire for Oxford University Press. She is also one of the co-editors of The Oxford History of the Hellenistic World with Tim Howe and Kathryn Stevens.
In September 2025, Christelle Fischer-Bovet joins the Paris IAS for a ten-month research stay.
Research topics
Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern History; Empire Studies; Hellenistic History; Greek & Roman Egypt; Papyrology & Epigraphy; Ancient Historiography; State Formation; institutions; Ancient Economy and numismatics; Ancient Military history; Ethnicity & Colonization.
The Ptolemaic Empire (323-30 BC) at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, and comparative perspectives with Ancient China
This project offers a holistic approach to the Ptolemaic empire and explains its resilience over three centuries. Like Alexander and his Successors, Ptolemy I aimed at building a universal empire, triggering large-scale immigration and major societal challenges. The study analyzes the roles of the various actors participating in the construction of the Ptolemaic imperial infrastructure and ideology, from the court to local populations across the eastern Mediterranean. The project proposes a dynamic account of the alternation of state formation, internal decay, and stability to understand key factors of political stability. It examines how the Ptolemies shared their gains with elite groups of different ethnic backgrounds and relied on diverse local groups, and how they used ideology to make their authoritative rule appear as that of benevolent divine rulers.
But how unique was the Ptolemaic empire? This comparative project of state formation at the two ends of Eurasia during the same period fosters collaborative work between Hellenistic and Qin/Han Chin historians to explore fundamental questions: Is there a correlation between the stability of empires and the capacity for cooperation among old and new elites? How were political, military, economic, and legal institutions adapted? How were different population groups impacted, to their benefit or otherwise? What aspects of royal ideology strengthened the loyalty of many of their subjects?
Key publications
Christelle Fischer-Bovet. Army and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Christelle Fischer-Bovet. “Social unrest and ethnic coexistence in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire”. Past and Present (229), 3–45, 2015.
Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Sitta von Reden. Comparing the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. Integration, Communication, and Resistance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021.
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