What do we mean when we are talking about "elite"? The ruling class or an academic elite? Elite is a nonsense word which we meet every day: Elite soldiers, meaning to an old soldier a person who knows in which direction he shall shoot if ordered to shoot. In academics it is a fluid concept. It was before modern times a rather shallow concept: Just a few, and often mostly kept to entertain the ruling class, the king and his people, or local dukes, barons, and their entourage. The Ptolemies may have kept some dozens of such scholars at the museum in Alexandria, and may have been really interested in what they found out. THis is called entertainment. In Babylonia the purpose was probably religious: You need astronomers to have astrologues. Precise observations. You needed to have law people, and therefore codices, to teach students about the principles of law. It was still so in the Middle Age: Take Copenhagen founded in 1429, still medieval in Denmark: Two first faculties: Theology and law, and then medicine. The task of the university was to produce people to enter public service. The luxury, humanities, came later.
So the basic claim if you wanted to belong to this specialised group was the ability to write and read. How many fulfilled this obligation in ancienr times? In Palestine in the Iron Age: Maybe two or three in an ordinary "village" -- in reality with a few exceptions nooks and corners, and a few more in the major centres. When we in the Late Bronze Age had reports from several settlements to the Pharaoh in Amarna Accadian -- a mixmax of West-Semitic and Akkadian, it has been suggested that these scribes were the only people placed here by Pharaoh so that Pharaoh's officials could get in touch with his provinces.
You have to understand that a small scale society like Palestine in the Iron Age could not afford to have a great many of scribes, mostly non-productive, meaning that you had to deed them; they contributed nothing to the the basic survival of their society.
So what was an elitarian group in such societies? How many did this society need? And what was their task?
Before you have answered such questions, you have really little to tell us about how the "elite" functioned in ancient societies.
And then comes the Hellenistic Age... and it you are in doubt that it resulted in a totally different society: Go down there and compare one of the small tells down there with the hellenistic cities. Take Beth Shan, when you a beautiful tell (pun intended) on a artificial hill top, and the the Hellenistic city below stretching for some kilometers (and vastly extended in Byzantine time). Or go to the coast and compare Caesarea to Strabo's Tower. And if you go to Jordan, Syria, North Africa, and Turkey etc, the difference becomes even clearer.
What do we mean when we are talking about "elite"? The ruling class or an academic elite? Elite is a nonsense word which we meet every day: Elite soldiers, meaning to an old soldier a person who knows in which direction he shall shoot if ordered to shoot. In academics it is a fluid concept. It was before modern times a rather shallow concept: Just a few, and often mostly kept to entertain the ruling class, the king and his people, or local dukes, barons, and their entourage. The Ptolemies may have kept some dozens of such scholars at the museum in Alexandria, and may have been really interested in what they found out. THis is called entertainment. In Babylonia the purpose was probably religious: You need astronomers to have astrologues. Precise observations. You needed to have law people, and therefore codices, to teach students about the principles of law. It was still so in the Middle Age: Take Copenhagen founded in 1429, still medieval in Denmark: Two first faculties: Theology and law, and then medicine. The task of the university was to produce people to enter public service. The luxury, humanities, came later.
So the basic claim if you wanted to belong to this specialised group was the ability to write and read. How many fulfilled this obligation in ancienr times? In Palestine in the Iron Age: Maybe two or three in an ordinary "village" -- in reality with a few exceptions nooks and corners, and a few more in the major centres. When we in the Late Bronze Age had reports from several settlements to the Pharaoh in Amarna Accadian -- a mixmax of West-Semitic and Akkadian, it has been suggested that these scribes were the only people placed here by Pharaoh so that Pharaoh's officials could get in touch with his provinces.
You have to understand that a small scale society like Palestine in the Iron Age could not afford to have a great many of scribes, mostly non-productive, meaning that you had to deed them; they contributed nothing to the the basic survival of their society.
So what was an elitarian group in such societies? How many did this society need? And what was their task?
Before you have answered such questions, you have really little to tell us about how the "elite" functioned in ancient societies.
And then comes the Hellenistic Age... and it you are in doubt that it resulted in a totally different society: Go down there and compare one of the small tells down there with the hellenistic cities. Take Beth Shan, when you a beautiful tell (pun intended) on a artificial hill top, and the the Hellenistic city below stretching for some kilometers (and vastly extended in Byzantine time). Or go to the coast and compare Caesarea to Strabo's Tower. And if you go to Jordan, Syria, North Africa, and Turkey etc, the difference becomes even clearer.