Return to Egypt

Portier-Young notes that during the Ptolemaic domination of Palesting, “some families were taken captive and enslaved.” She cites Hengel, who claims that the slave trade flourished under the Ptolemies. Josephus claims that “soldiers sold slaves independently of imperial policy as a way to increase their profits from campaigning.” Another scholar notes that “The Ptolemies used their Syrian wars to make vast hauls of captives whom they then imprisoned to augment their military or working manpower,” and Portier-Young adds that the sale of slaves provided funding for the war itself.

The reputation of the Seleucids has been sealed by the depiction of Antiochus IV in Maccabees, but initially the Seleucides were liberators, freeing Israel from a return to Egyptian slavery. Despite Antiochus’ promise to liberate slaves and restore them to their lands (cf. a letter recorded in Josephus, Antiquities , 12), many Jews remained in slavery and without land: “No royal proclamation would guarantee the wholesale liberation and return of Judeans who had been exported in the slave trade.”