The most certain information about Thracians who participated in various military campaigns and settled permanently in Egypt comes from the Hellenistic period (the time of Alexander III the Great – king of Macedonia from 336 to 323 BC – and his successors until 30 BC). The great Macedonian, without doubt, appreciated very quickly the military qualities of the Thracians and attracted large groups of infantrymen (peltasts) and horsemen into his army. One of his most reliable biographers, Arrian, tells in the Anabasis of Alexander of various Thracian ethnic groups, including Agrians, Peonians and Odrysians, who fought side by side with the Macedonians during the war with the Persian ruler Darius III (336-330 BC). The same author also informs us of Sitalces, a Thracian officer (with an Odrysian royal name) in Alexander’s army, who was at the head of the Thracian infantry (Arr. II. 5,1).

         After the death of the Macedonian emperor, the tendency to recruit Thracian soldiers intensified, reaching its peak in the 3rd century BC. Most probably already after the events in Babylon in the summer of 323 BC Alexander’s viceroy in Egypt, Ptolemy Lagus, acquired part of his army, which already had Thracian contingents. Subsequently their fate was different – some returned to Thrace, others remained loyal to their army and settled permanently in Egypt. As a rule, these people were settled in the Nile valley, in military colonies or in some cities, remaining there for life. They intermarried and gradually became part of the mixed local Hellenistic population.

         The predominant evidence for Thracians permanently settled in Egypt is found in Egyptian papyri, but also in some inscriptions on stelae or graffiti. The documents that have come down to us are extremely heterogeneous in type and include correspondence as well as land registers, tax lists, legal documents, dedicatory monuments, etc. The most material we know of comes from four Egyptian nomes (administrative areas) in Middle Egypt – Arsinoite, Herakleopolite, Hermopolite and Oxyrhynchus.

         The documents clearly show that numerous Thracians lived in Egypt as farmers or warriors during the Hellenistic period. Their social status probably did not differ from or was close to that of the Greeks themselves. Some documents from this period even attest to Thracians occupying important positions in Egyptian society. One such monument is the basalt stele (SEG XXVII 1114), which speaks of Amadocus (an Odrysian royal name), one of the organizers of the local competitive games at Herakleopolis in Middle Egypt.

         The important social position of the Thracians in Egypt apparently persisted even later. In the hymn from Medinet Madi (the district of Fayoum), written by the priest Isidore and dated to the 1st century B.C., in honour of the goddess Isis, we read the following arrangement of the world: All the people who live on the earth – Thracians, Hellenes and all barbarians – repeat in their language, each in his own homeland, your good name … (SEG 8, 548). It is immediately noticeable that the Thracians are not among the barbarians, but are listed alongside the Hellenes themselves.

         Despite enjoying similar privileges to the Greeks and participating in cultural and religious life, the Thracians in Egypt managed to retain their ethnicity (at least until the 1st century BC). In texts of the Hellenistic era we find definitions such as the “Thracian quarter” or “Thracian settlement”. The ethnonym “Thracian” itself is very often added to the mentioned proper or patronymic names (such as the “Thracian Amadocus” or “Amadocus son of the Thracian Ptolemaios”). This means that they preserved their ethnicity over time, and with it probably their cultural and religious practices.

         The 15,000 or so ostracas (inscriptions on pottery shards) found in recent years, written in Greek and Latin and for the most part still unpublished, represent a new source for the history of Egypt’s military colonies. They have been discovered during excavations of various military camps, large or small, located in the Eastern Desert, along the trade or military routes that connected the Nile Valley with the Red Sea, and also in the areas of Egyptian quarries (Mons Claudianus, Mons Porphyrites, etc.). So far, we only know that these documents contain a large amount of Thracian onomastics (personal names and/or ethnonyms), which will probably help us to better understand the Thracian diaspora in Egypt