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J.G. Manning

The William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor
Yale University
Department of Classics | Department of History


Professor, Yale School of the Environment
Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School

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FULL CV

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Contact Information
Email: joseph.manning@yale.edu
Phone: (203) 432-0989 (office)
ORCID

Google Scholar

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Department of History
320 York Street
New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Education

Ph.D. The University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Egyptology), 1992
A.M. The University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Egyptology), 1985
B.A. The Ohio State University, Department of Art History, History (Honors Program, Medieval Architectural History), 1981

Positions

Yale University

  • The William Kelly and Marilyn Milton Simpson Professor of Classics and History, 2009–Present

  • Professor of Classics & Ancient History, Departments of Classics and History, 2008–Present

  • Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School, 2008–Present

  • Professor in the School of the Environment, by Courtesy

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Stanford University

  • Assistant to Associate Professor, Department of Classics, 1996–2008

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Princeton University

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, 1993–1996

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The University of Chicago

  • Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and The Social Sciences Collegiate Division, 1992–1993

Major Honors & Fellowships

Guggenheim Fellowship (2019–2020)
Getty Scholarship (Spring 2020)
National Science Foundation Grant ($1,301,722), Principal Investigator, Award 1824770: “CNH-L: Volcanism, Hydrology and Social Conflict: Lessons from Hellenistic and Roman-Era Egypt and Mesopotamia” (2018–2023)
Whitney Humanities Center, Fellow, Yale University (2012–2014)
Visiting Professor and FIRST Scholar, University of Colorado-Boulder (2012)
William C. Bark National Fellowship, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University (2000–2001)
Stanford University Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (1999)

Publications

Monographs

  1. The Hauswaldt Papyri: A Family Archive from Edfu in the Ptolemaic Period. Demotische Studien, Vol. 12. Würzburg, 1997. 335 pp.

  2. Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Structure of Land Tenure 332-30 BCE. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 360 pp.

  3. The Last Pharaohs: Egypt under the Ptolemies, 305-30 BC. Princeton University Press, 2010. Pbk 2012.

  4. The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome. Princeton University Press, 2018. Arabic, Turkish, Chinese translations.

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Edited Monographs

  1. The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models. Edited with Ian Morris. Stanford University Press, 2005.

  2. Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest. Edited with J.G. Keenan & Uri Yiftach-Firanko. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

  3. Writing History in Time of War: Michael Rostovtzeff, Elias Bickermann and the ‘Hellenization’ of Asia. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.

  4. Revolt and Resistance in the Classical World and the Ancient Near East: In the Crucible of Empire. Co-edited with John J. Collins. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2016.

  5. Climate and Society in Ancient Worlds: Diversity in Collapse and Resilience. Co-edited by Paul Erdkamp, J.G. Manning and Koen Verboven. Palgrave Economics, 2021.

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Selected Recent Articles

  1. “Volcanic Suppression of Nile Summer Flooding Triggers Revolts and Constrains Interstate Conflict in Ancient Egypt” Nature Communications 8 (2017). Lead Author. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00957-y

  2. “Extreme Climate After Massive Eruption of Alaska’s Okmok Volcano in 43 BCE and Effects on the Late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (2020): 15443-15449. Multi-author.

  3. “Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers a Single Dimension of Complexity that Structures Global Variation in Human Social Organization” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). Multi-author.​​

Teaching & Service

Teaching Interests

History of the Hellenistic World, Climate and Environmental History of the Mediterranean world, Economic and Legal History, Ancient History, Egyptology, Demotic Legal Papyri, Greek Documentary Papyrology

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Major Service Roles

  • Co-Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Egyptian History (E.J. Brill, Leiden)

  • Series Editor, Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies (2018–Present)

  • Regional Editor for Egypt, Seshat Global History Databank Project (2013–2017)

  • Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Classics, Yale University (2009–2012)

  • Board Member, The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, The Ohio State University (2025-)

  • Steering Group Member, Volcanic Impacts on Climate and Society (VICS), Past Global Changes, Bern (2025-). Link.

  • Scientific Committee, Aegyptus. Rivista italiana di Egittologia e di Papirologia (Scuola di Papirologia dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano).

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Conference Organization

  • Climate of the past and societal responses to environmental changes (2024, University of Bern)

  • Climate and Society in Ancient Worlds (2019, Vrije Universiteit Brussel/University of Ghent)

  • The Yale Nile Initiative (2018–Present)

  • Quantifying Problems in Ancient History (2016, Yale University)

  • In the Crucible of Empire: Revolts and Revolution in the Ancient World (2014, Yale University)

Research Focus and Impact

I am an economic historian of the ancient Mediterranean who also works at the intersection of human history inthe Holocene and climate science.

My early work set out the institutional foundations of the Ptolemaic state. Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt(Cambridge, 2003) and The Last Pharaohs (Princeton, 2012) were the first sustained applications of New Institutional Economics to Egypt after Alexander, replacing an older picture of a centrally planned command economy with one of bargaining, local intermediaries, and negotiated authority.

The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome (Princeton, 2018) extended that agenda across the basin. Rather than rejoining the long argument over whether the ancient economy was primitive or modern, it treats the Mediterranean as a single connected system and asks how institutions, information, and the sea itself structured economic life — bringing Egypt and the Near East into a story usually told from Greece and Rome alone.

With colleagues in paleoclimatology, I have since shown that explosive volcanic eruptions suppressed the summer flood of the Nile, and that flood failure is followed, in the documentary record of Ptolemaic Egypt, by revolt, by the cessation of interstate war, and by distress sales of land. That work appeared in Nature Communications (2017) and has been extended in PNAS (2020) and Climate of the Past (2023). I am Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Yale Nile Initiative.

What joins the two bodies of work is institutional. Climate has always shaped human history and has never determined it; what separates societies that absorb an environmental shock from those it overwhelms is less the magnitude of the shock than the capacity of their institutions to respond. My first book for general readers, The Hidden Hand: Climate and Human History, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton

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