Between Athens and Jerusalem: Research Report for CHS Summer Fellowship

Over the four weeks I spent in residence at the CHS, I worked on my current book project, tentatively titled Between Athens and Jerusalem: Identity and Institutions in the Achaemenid Mediterranean. This project investigates the development and (re)negotiation of both Athenian and Judean identity during the 6th-4th centuries BCE, seeing these phenomena as responding to issues of growing interconnection and cultural contact during this period. The methodological framework for the project is to look at the evidence using methodologies and insights from the study of globalization. In particular, I have largely been focused on using studies on backlashes to globalization and cultural contact as my jumping off point for looking at the ancient evidence. Not surprisingly, given political developments in Western countries during the last ten years or so, there has been a proliferation of such work in the study of globalization. A recurring throughline of these studies is that communities that feel overwhelming by intensive globalization frequently lash out at the these forces by attempting to delimit an in-group at the expense of various perceived outgroups (e.g., migrants).

Work has already been done establishing the xenophobic nature of many of the classic developments of Athenian institutions and identity (e.g., the Periclean Citizenship Law). I argue that the cause of these changes was because of the ever greater integration of Athens into the wider Mediterranean due to both Athens’ own as well as the Achaemenid Empire’s imperial expansion and ambitions. Athens saw more immigrants/metics in the city, but also because of its entanglement in affairs all around the eastern Mediterranean, events that would have been only of local importance in the past began to drive consequences in Athens and elsewhere. For example, the mid-5th-century Egyptian revolt under Inaros pulled in Cimon from Cyprus. This action led to intense diplomatic activity going back and forth between Athens, Sparta, and the Persian heartland. These events brought in Achaemenid forces from elsewhere in the empire and led to the rebuilding of Judah to protect Achaemenid supply lines into Egypt. Eventually, large numbers of Athenian troops and ships were lost as a consequence. In other words, a local revolt connected together disparate parts of the eastern Mediterranean, binding them together in reacting to the event.

Access to the library at the CHS and Harvard’s digital holdings greatly sped up my work. First, several books and articles have appeared on the topic of Greek-Near Eastern interconnections in the past year. My home library at Florida State University does not yet have access to these books, so the fact that the CHS holds them helped me to stay abreast with the cutting-edge research in my subfield.

Although the CHS of course does not hold such resources on-site, Harvard’s digital holdings in various social scientific fields far exceeds FSU’s. While most of my research in the past has primarily used sociological approaches to globalization, much of this project is dealing more with economic approaches. In particular, I have been looking at globalization as a driver of wealth/income inequality, so I have needed to become acquainted with the foundational economic literature on this subject. Several important events in Athenian and Judean history seem to have been driven by increases in wealth inequality. One of my chapters in particular argues that Solon’s banning of Athenian debt-slavery occurred contemporaneously with Judean reforms of debt-slavery and that both phenomena were driven by growing “global” wealth in equality around the eastern Mediterranean. My access to Harvard’s resources helped me develop this chapter further.

I similarly made great progress on another chapter that investigates the Long Walls of Athens in Athenian ideology. Prior research has focused on the construction of the walls and the Periclean War Strategy. Using Wendy Brown’s Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, I argue that the construction of the Long Walls contemporaneously with the Periclean Citizenship Law also filled a psychological need to bound the community against perceived encroachments with the outside world: in other words, that the walls served as a “border wall” of sorts. Contemporaneously, we see this exact fear motivating the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in Judah under the governor Nehemiah. What this suggests is that around the eastern Mediterranean, different people were responding negatively to the greater integration of the world and felt a need to protect a local identity against those encroachments.

In short, my time at the CHS allowed me to accomplish a great deal on this book project. The access to greater library resources and no other responsibilities gave a jump start to my work.