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ROMAN EGYPT
 Classical World Series

Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd, Paul Cartledge

Art and the Romans, Anne Haward
Athens and Sparta, S. Todd
Athens under the Tyrants, J. Smith
Athletics in the Ancient World, Zahra Newby
Attic Orators, Michael Edwards
Augustan Rome, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic, Thomas Wiedemann
Cities of Roman Italy, Guy de la Bédoyère
Classical Archaeology in the Field, S.J. Hill, L. Bowkett and K. & D. Wardle
Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil, Richard Jenkyns
Democracy in Classical Athens, Christopher Carey
Early Greek Lawgivers, John Lewis
Environment and the Classical World, Patricia Jeskins
Greece and the Persians, John Sharwood Smith
Greek and Roman Historians, Timothy E. Duff
Greek and Roman Medicine, Helen King
Greek Architecture, R. Tomlinson
Greek Literature in the Roman Empire, Jason König
Greek Tragedy: An Introduction, Marion Baldock
Greek Vases, Elizabeth Moignard
Julio-Claudian Emperors, T. Wiedemann
Lucretius and the Didactic Epic, Monica Gale
Morals and Values in Ancient Greece, John Ferguson
Mycenaean World, K. & D. Wardle
Plato’s Republic and the Greek Enlightenment, Hugh Lawson-Tancred
Plays of Euripides, James Morwood
Plays of Sophocles, A.F. Garvie
Political Life in the City of Rome, J.R. Patterson
Religion and the Greeks, Robert Garland
Religion and the Romans, Ken Dowden
Roman Architecture, Martin Thorpe
Roman Britain, S.J. Hill and S. Ireland
Roman Egypt, Livia Capponi
Roman Frontiers in Britain, David Breeze
Roman Satirists and Their Masks, Susanna Braund
Slavery in Classical Greece, N. Fisher
Spectacle in the Roman World, Hazel Dodge
Women in Classical Athens, Sue Blundell
 Classical World Series

ROMAN EGYPT

Livia Capponi

Bristol Classical Press

 First published in 2011 by
Bristol Classical Press
an imprint of
Bloomsbury Academic
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square,
London W1D 3QY, UK
&
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010, USA

Copyright © 2011 by Livia Capponi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.

CIP records for this book are available from the

British Library and the Library of Congress

eBook ISBN 9781849668248

Paperback ISBN 9781853997266

www.bloomsburyacademic.com
Contents

List of Illustrations 6
Preface 7
Abbreviations 9

1. The Conquest 11
2. Forms of Roman Exploitation 18
3. Roman Emperors in Egypt 28
4. Byzantine Egypt and the End of Roman Rule 37
5. Cultural and Social Issues 42
6. Alexandria 52
7. Oxyrhynchus 63
8. The Papyri 70

Chronology 77
Suggestions for Further Reading 81
Index 87
List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Map of Roman Egypt. 10

Fig. 2. Coin of Octavian. 13
Fig. 3. Reconstructed plan of Roman Alexandria. 53
Fig. 4. View of ancient Alexandria. 53
Fig. 5. Reconstructed view of the island of Pharos, and the 54
lighthouse.
Fig. 6. Reconstruction of the Pharos lighthouse. 55
Fig. 7. The Serapeum. 57
Fig. 8. Bust of Serapis. 58
Fig. 9. Diocletian’s Column (also known as ‘Pompey’s Pillar’). 59
Fig. 10. Kom el-Dikka. Reconstruction of archaeological site. 62
Fig. 11. Oxyrhynchus (‘sharp-nosed’) fish. 64
Fig. 12. The Goddess Isis and her son Serapis. 69
Preface

Roman Egypt has been my guiding interest for around ten years, since I
began writing my dissertation on the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman
administration after the provincialisation of Egypt by Augustus in 30 BC.
This subject has proved particularly interesting and challenging as it
borders several different disciplines, such as papyrology, social and
economic history, and the classical languages, Latin and Greek. Mainly
for this reason, the study of Roman Egypt has often been confined to a
limited number of erudite scholars who could understand the citations and
references to papyrological literature and to the texts themselves as a
result of their training as classicists and papyrologists. This book aims to
present some major topics relating to Roman Egypt in a clear and plain
fashion accessible to all students, including those with no previous
knowledge of the classical languages and those who, before reading, did
not even know what a papyrus was.
My warmest thanks go to my family for supporting me in my work, in
particular to my father Mario, who is responsible for the illustrations.
Special thanks must go to Megan Trudell, who has checked the English.
This book is for my baby son Giovanni, who ‘forced’ me to write it up
before his arrival.
This page intentionally left blank
Abbreviations

For the abbreviations of papyri and ostraka I relied on J.D. Sosin, R.S.
Bagnall, J. Cowey, M. Depauw, T.G. Wilfong and K.A. Worp (eds),
Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Os-
traca and Tablets, available online at the following address:
scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html
(last updated 11 September 2008).
Fig. 1. Map of Roman Egypt.
Chapter 1
The Conquest

Julius Caesar’s presence in Ptolemaic Egypt symbolises the importance

of the Hellenistic kingdom in the eastern policy of Republican Rome. In
48 BC Caesar landed in Egypt to fight the last part of his war against
Pompey. The young son of king Ptolemy XII Auletes, Ptolemy XIII,
presented him with the head of the dead Pompey, believing that this would
convince Caesar to take his side in his dynastic war against his sister,
Cleopatra VII. Caesar, however, was displeased by this dishonourable act
and took the side of Cleopatra, with whom he began a love affair. Caesar
and the queen had a son named Ptolemy Caesar, unofficially known as
Caesarion (‘Little Caesar’), who later ruled alongside the queen. After
Caesarion’s birth, Caesar returned to Rome, leaving his freedman Ruphio
and three legions to maintain control of Egypt; we do not know whether
his relationship with Cleopatra was ‘serious’, but it is certainly docu-
mented that she visited him in Rome, probably in order to secure benefits
for her kingdom.
The death of Caesar on the Ides of March 44 BC was a dangerous blow
to Cleopatra and, after the formation of a second triumvirate, the queen
met the new Roman leader of the East, Mark Antony. The love story and
marriage between Antony and Cleopatra has been recounted hundreds of
times, from the age of Plutarch to that of Shakespeare. Following his
return from military campaigns in Armenia in 34 BC, Antony granted the
conquered territories to the queen at a sumptuous ceremony that explicitly
evoked Alexander’s empire and conquest of Persia. In the meantime in
Rome, Octavian began a war of images and propaganda against Antony,
accusing him of having betrayed Roman morals for Hellenistic ambitions
of monarchy and of abandoning his Roman wife – Octavian’s sister
Octavia – for an ‘Egyptian whore’. This propaganda helped Octavian to
legitimise his war against Antony and Cleopatra which, in reality, aimed
at conquering Egypt and securing its huge grain supply. The couple were
finally defeated in the naval battle of Actium in 31 BC, and by the time
Octavian entered Alexandria in 30 BC they had both committed suicide.
Many Roman soldiers and officials had already settled in Egypt before
the formal conquest of 30 BC during the reigns of Ptolemy Auletes and
12 Roman Egypt

Cleopatra, as proved by Octavian’s Latin edict when he was triumvir

(43-30 BC) regulating the settlement of some Roman veterans in the
Fayum region. Egypt was an extremely rich country and this attracted
Roman businessmen and traders. A certain Quintus Ovinius, for instance,
is documented as being the chief manager of Cleopatra’s textile industries,
while a recently published papyrus mentions one Publius Canidius (or
Quintus Cascellius, according to a different reading of the text) who was
awarded some fiscal privileges by the queen. The document carries a
signature which may (according to a recent hypothesis) have been that of
Cleopatra in her own hand. This increase in the Roman presence in Egypt
probably worried Octavian who revived a Ptolemaic regulation, which
stated that nobody should enter or leave Egypt without a passport,
possibly out of fear that powerful Romans in Egypt could hijack Rome’s
corn supply: his targets were, above all, rich Roman senators and promi-
nent knights.
Octavian entered Alexandria on 1 August 30 BC, and all Egypt imme-
diately understood that a new era had begun. On his arrival, Octavian
addressed the crowd in Alexandria’s hippodrome and demonstrated his
clemency by saying that he would spare the city because of its great
beauty, its founder Alexander – with whom Octavian evidently identified
–, and as a favour to his friend Areius, an Alexandrian philosopher who
had taught him in Rome and now accompanied him as a counsellor.
Octavian then instituted a cult of himself in the Kaisareion of Alexandria
– the temple built by Cleopatra and dedicated to Julius Caesar – which
was converted into a Sebasteion (from Sebastos, ‘Augustus’ in Greek).
All temples in Egypt, whether Greek or traditional Egyptian, were obliged
to offer daily sacrifices to the emperor. A new city, Nikopolis (‘Victory
City’) was founded near Alexandria on the site of Octavian’s military
camp, and Greek-style portraits of Augustus were dispatched to the region
of Meroe far to the south, so that even the most remote African tribes
would know who their new ruler was.
Two days before the formal conquest in 30 BC, Augustus is believed
to have ordered the assassination of the sixteen-year-old High Priest of
Memphis, a potentially dangerous religious authority, given his wide
influence over the Egyptian population, and thus the possible cause of
revolts against Rome. Not long after the conquest Augustus imposed a
new, invented, era ‘of the dominion of Caesar, the son of God’ – the god
being divus Julius, that is Julius Caesar, Octavian’s adoptive father. By
30/29 BC the temple lamplighters of Oxyrhynchus were already taking
oaths in the name of the new monarch, ‘Caesar, God son of God’ (POxy
12.1453). All Egypt’s temples had to worship Octavian along with the
 The Conquest 13

Fig. 2. Coin of Octavian with the legend ‘AEGYPTO CAPTA’ (‘on the
conquest of Egypt’).

traditional Egyptian gods, and a high priest of the imperial cult, super-
vising all the priests and temples of Egypt, was probably introduced in
the early years after the conquest.
Octavian’s victory at Actium was celebrated and advertised through-
out the empire as an epic event that opened the doors to a new golden era
characterised by peace – the famous concept of pax augusta. Paradoxi-
cally, however, Augustus’ policy in Egypt in the early years following the
conquest was a militaristic one. In the 20s BC Augustus faced local
rebellions against the new Roman taxes such as the revolts in the Thebaid,
the most turbulent southern region of Egypt, and those in Nubia (modern
Sudan); the latter were led by a legendary one-eyed woman, whom the
Romans called Candace, the Nubian word for ‘queen’. The first Prefect
of Egypt, the poet Cornelius Gallus, boasted in a famous inscription on
an obelisk now in Rome that he had subdued five cities in the Thebaid in
fifteen days. This act of immodesty was regarded to be an offence by
Augustus, and Gallus was forced to commit suicide; his name and image
were systematically erased from inscriptions and monuments. Yet, at the
Roman garrison of Primis (modern Qasr Ibrim) in Lower Nubia, excava-
tors found a papyrus roll of Gallus’ verses, perhaps belonging to a Roman
soldier garrisoned in the area. Nubia was never really conquered, how-
ever, and when the next two Prefects, Aelius Gallus and Publius Petronius,
tried to control the region by launching a campaign into Nabatean Arabia,
their attempts ended in an inglorious retreat (due, according to their
version, to the betrayal of their Arab guide). Naturally, however, we
remain ill-informed about these Roman misfortunes, as Octavian kept a
firm control over communication and history writing. All we know from
the official chronicle of Augustus’ achievements, the Res Gestae, is that
14 Roman Egypt

he ‘added Egypt to the imperium of the Roman people’ and then moved,
wisely, to a policy of peace.
The institutional, social, fiscal and legal structure imposed by Augus-
tus on Egypt is an exemplary case of how a Hellenistic kingdom could be
rapidly turned into a Roman province governed by Roman officials,
garrisoned by the Roman army and subject to Roman tributes and law.
The striking point is that Augustus’ structuring of Egyptian administration
and taxes remained more or less unchanged until the third century AD.
First, Augustus used Egyptian booty to pay his soldiers. For the same
purpose he confiscated all the land and possessions of Cleopatra and
Antony and those of their supporters, along with the land belonging to the
traditional Egyptian temples which had been the most powerful institu-
tions of the country since Pharaonic times. Former royal land was turned
either into ‘public land’ or into imperial estates – lands with high-revenue
crops (e.g. wine and olive oil) and industries (e.g. oil presses or textile
works) that Augustus distributed to his relatives, freedmen and friends,
so that they would automatically revert to him on the death of the
beneficiaries. To improve the production of grain, which was destined to
feed Rome, Augustus reorganised the irrigation system of Egypt, the web
of canals and dykes that allowed a rainless country to produce over twice
as much as a normal harvest by exploiting the annual flood of the Nile. It
seems also that the Roman conquest resulted in an increased portion of
privately owned land. In particular, the land of the former soldiers of the
Ptolemaic army, known as katoikoi in Greek, that is colonial settlers,
became officially transferable, although it does not seem that a ‘free
market’ existed. As was the case in the Ptolemaic period, most of the land
was leased by small-scale farmers who paid rents and taxes to the state.
These farmers, once called ‘royal farmers’, were renamed ‘public farm-
ers’ in the Augustan period, but their life did not change much for the
better. The Roman administration enhanced and developed a system of
compulsory services and corvées – called ‘liturgies’ in the Greek fashion
– that partially existed during the Ptolemaic period, so that the wealthiest
in the community would take up the most burdensome offices and
magistracies and pay for the related expenses out of their own pockets.
This process eventually culminated in AD 202 with the institution of
liturgical city councils in every town in Egypt. Compulsory services,
corvée labour and taxation were often too heavy a burden for the farmers,
who frequently abandoned their homes and disappeared into the desert in
order to avoid being registered on official lists and incurring fiscal
impositions. This form of strike, called anachôrêsis, took place in Egypt
from Pharaonic times and continued throughout the Roman period.
 The Conquest 15

Roman prefects of Egypt and their tax officials often exaggerated their
requests somewhat, as is vividly documented in a famous reproach from
Tiberius to his Prefect of Egypt Aemilius Rectus, probably during an
economic crisis caused by excessive taxation: ‘I want my sheep to be
shorn, not skinned alive!’ (Cassius Dio 57.10.5; Suetonius, Tiberius 32.2).
The Augustan conquest was greeted as a positive event by traders, who
could now access freely the ports of a pacified Mediterranean. Some
Alexandrian traders greeted Augustus on the docks of Puteoli, near
Naples, as one who allowed them ‘to live’, echoing, perhaps, an official
prayer to Augustus that was recited in the temple for his imperial cult at
Alexandria. It is proven that commerce and trade to and from Egypt
flourished and business relationships with India, opened by the Ptolemies,
increased. The historian and geographer Strabo of Amasia, who went to
Egypt around 26-23 BC and included a description of Egypt in his
Geography, tells us that ‘up to a hundred and twenty ships make their way
under sail from Myos Hormos for India, whereas previously, under the
reign of the Ptolemies, very few people dared to launch their ships and
trade in Indian goods’ (2.5.12 [118]). Naturally, this information
should be used with caution, as Strabo may have wanted to flatter the
emperor. Nonetheless there is evidence that Roman senators, bankers
and freedmen still invested a lot of money in the Eastern trade. An
interesting, yet enigmatic document, the so-called ‘Muziris papyrus’,
registers the entrance into a Red Sea port of a cargo of luxury goods
coming from the western coast of India and heading for Alexandria.
This ship carried silk, pearls, pepper and other commodities worth
almost seven million sesterces, several times more than the minimum
fortune of a Roman senator.
A fundamental change introduced by Augustus was the use of the
Greek class and Alexandrian citizens as the new governing body of the
country, while the Egyptians, as well as other foreign communities present
in Egypt, were not integrated into the administration of the empire, unlike
citizens of other provinces. Augustus excluded Egyptians from the Roman
Senate and even from the army, with the exception of its lowest division,
the fleet. Greeks were the only privileged class; they paid reduced taxes
and could hope to achieve Alexandrian citizenship, a status necessary in
order eventually to obtain Roman citizenship. Space was also reorganised
and power was centralised in the capitals (metropoleis) of Egypt’s re-
gional divisions, specifically in the gymnasia – the educational and
recreational centres of the Greek elite. However, the number of Greeks
and Alexandrians in Egypt was strictly monitored by the Roman authori-
ties, in an almost racist attempt to preserve the ‘purity’ of the race. In AD
16 Roman Egypt

4/5, Augustus promoted an epikrisis or ‘scrutiny of the individual status’

in the Oxyrhynchite Nome, prescribing that, in order to be one of ‘those
from the gymnasium’, both of an individual’s great-grandparents must be
from that class. Other documents show that the Greeks of the Arsinoite
Nome were also a closed number of 6,475 cavalrymen, their rights and
status periodically scrutinised. The Alexandrian citizens, the gymnasial
class and the Greek aristocracy were granted fiscal and legal privileges.
The most important was the partial or total exemption from the provincial
poll tax – called in Egypt laographia, ‘registration of people’, and in other
provinces tributum capitis, ‘tax per head’ – introduced soon after the
conquest and paid by all adult males aged 14 to 65. As was the case in
other provinces, liability for the poll tax (as well as for other taxes and
compulsory services) was assessed by a house-to-house census that, at
least in Egypt, took place every fourteen years under Tiberius, and
possibly every seven years under Augustus.
A Roman knight, the Prefect, took over the place and functions of the
old king, while Roman officials with equestrian status took the top posts
in the province based in Alexandria, leaving Ptolemaic-style officials to
the administration of the nomes (administrative districts) and lesser posts.
The epistratêgoi supervised groups of nomes while the stratêgoi governed
the nomes, assisted by local secretaries who were often competent both
in Greek and Egyptian. Temple archives and scriptoria were replaced by
the grapheion, the office of the stratêgos. In the administration of justice,
for example, the chief judge or archidikastês continued to supervise
tribunals and, although the old tribunal in the royal palace was suppressed,
a new tribunal was set up in the gymnasium at Alexandria. Augustus also
introduced the yearly conventus, an itinerant assize court in which the
Prefect and his consilium, supported by a newly introduced official, the
iuridicus or ‘dispenser of justice’, responded to petitions and adjudicated
cases. New archives were created in Alexandria to speed up and centralise
the collection and storage of public and private documents and a new legal
code was published, the Gnômon of the Idios Logos, some copies of which
have been preserved from the Antonine period. The extant fragments
(BGU 5.1210, POxy 41.3014) show that Augustan social and moral laws
were applied in Egypt, with rigid social and fiscal barriers introduced
between Egyptians, Greeks and the Alexandrian elite. Chapters 30 and 32
of the Gnômon apply the Augustan marriage laws, prescribing that ‘in-
heritances left to Roman women possessing 50,000 sesterces, if unmarried
and childless, are confiscated’, and that ‘Romans possessing more than
10,000 sestertii, if unmarried and childless, do not inherit, but those who
have less do inherit’.
 The Conquest 17

Although Augustus radically changed the institutions of Egypt, he

often chose to retain Ptolemaic titles and names, perhaps to avoid giving
the idea of the imposition of new, foreign rules on a country that tradi-
tionally hated foreign masters. For instance, Greek, rather than Latin, was
the official language of bureaucracy throughout the Roman period. The
consensus until the 1970s was that Egypt was an atypical or peculiar
province, set apart from the rest of the empire and governed directly by
the emperor. Since then, however, numerous studies have shown beyond
doubt that Egypt was not an atypical province (there were no ‘typical’
provinces) nor a personal possession of the emperor, but a Hellenistic
kingdom that was turned into a Roman province, governed by Roman
officials and subject to the Roman military, Roman taxation and Roman
law. The apparent peculiarity of Egypt rests largely on the peculiarity of
our main source of information about it, the papyri. This gigantic and
exceptionally detailed body of documents is not found in other provinces;
although similar documents exist elsewhere, for instance at Vindolanda
on Hadrian’s Wall, it is the sheer volume of the Egyptian papyri that is
extraordinary. It requires specific technical expertise to decipher and
interpret these texts, and this often prevents ancient historians from using
them as fully as they ought.
Chapter 2
Forms of Roman Exploitation

Census and poll tax

In the Roman Republican period, various indirect and direct taxes, as-
sessed on different bases and according to different rates, were levied in
the provinces. Direct taxes were levied on the entire population while
indirect taxes applied only to some goods or services. Vectigalia was the
technical term for all fiscal revenues from a province, direct and indirect,
while stipendium was the sum of direct taxes from a province. During the
empire, a new categorisation developed: vectigalia now indicated only
the indirect taxes, while tributum denoted the direct taxes imposed on the
provinces. Tributum in turn could be capitis (capitation tax), collected in
cash, or soli (land tax), collected in kind. In the imperial period the
tributum capitis was an annual poll tax imposed on all adult males in a
province. Every province was supposed to yield a fixed annual sum
expressed in cash for the poll tax, however it seems that different prov-
inces, and even different regions within a province, could present different
rates. In Roman Asia, apparently, both men and women paid the poll tax
while in Egypt it seems that only adult males between the ages of 14 and 62,
including slaves, were liable for it. Roman citizens, Alexandrian citizens,
some public officials and some categories of priests were totally exempt,
along with their slaves, while people of Greek descent paid a reduced rate.
The Egyptian population paid the full rate of about 16 to 40 drachmas,
probably assessed on the basis of the agricultural productivity of their region.
Some of the money the Roman government extracted from the prov-
inces in the form of tribute was exported, while some remained in the
province to pay the Roman troops and the state officials. There were other
small direct taxes imposed on provincials, such as the tax for the funding
of public baths or taxes on trades, which were collected with the yearly
payment of the poll tax. There is documentation of the poll tax until some
time in the third century when it was abolished, probably as a consequence
of the Constitutio Antoniniana (also known as ‘Caracalla’s Edict’) of 212
that conferred Roman citizenship on all citizens of the provinces except
the dediticii (‘rebellious’ freedmen who were forever debarred from
Roman citizenship).
 Forms of Roman Exploitation 19

The introduction of the Roman provincial poll tax was often preceded
by a census of the population to assess the number of people liable for it,
hence the usage of the term kensos to denote the poll tax, e.g. in the
Gospels of Matthew (16:25; 17:19) and Mark (12:14). In the Egyptian
papyri the term laographia (‘registration of people’) that indicated the
census in the Ptolemaic period came to indicate the Roman poll tax from
the time of Augustus onwards. The precise beginning of the Roman
provincial census in Augustan Egypt is still unknown. Some census
declarations seem to show that there were registrations of some categories
of population (e.g. public farmers, or priests) as early as 11/10 BC, but it
is likely that Augustus took some forms of census soon after the conquest
since we know that he did so in other provinces such as Gaul, where he
held a general census in 27 BC. Some documents (e.g. POxy 4.711) point
to an early registration of people before the sixth year of Augustus, around
24 BC. Thereafter, the distribution of tax receipts and declarations suggests
that some forms of registration took place around 19/18 BC and 12-10 BC.
Other declarations, such as the census declaration of a priest and public
farmer from Theadelphia in the Fayum, Harthotes son of Marres, indicate
that AD 12 was a census year, while an early declaration of a priest from
Oxyrhynchus, Horion son of Petosiris, is probably dated at AD 19. All this
evidence has suggested that censuses were taken every seven years up to
AD 19; after this date, the census was regularly taken every 14 years – a
hypothesis which remains unchallenged. However, it is possible, in my
view, that under Augustus there was no such a thing as a provincial census.
In other words, Augustus may have taken smaller censuses or registrations
of specific categories of the Egyptian population, such as public farmers,
or in one region at a time, for instance in the Arsinoite Nome or Fayum
first and then in the Thebaid. All that can be stated at present is that during
the reign of Tiberius a regular census was taken every 14 years. It is
curious that there is also evidence, in the Ptolemaic period, of censuses
taken every 14 years. This, in my view, is one more reason to believe that
under Augustus different 14-year censuses were taken in different Egyp-
tian districts at different times.
The Roman administration introduced another form of scrutiny of
individual status in Egypt: the so-called epikrisis, an examination under-
gone by a limited section of the population who applied for specific fiscal
and social privileges such as Alexandrian citizenship or Greek status. In
fact, the population of Egypt was divided into clearly demarcated and
strictly monitored social classes. Roman citizens (mostly Roman soldiers,
veterans, immigrants and freedmen) were the most privileged class,
exempt from the poll tax and possessing full legal rights. Alexandrian
20 Roman Egypt

citizens were also exempt from the poll tax and could apply for Roman
citizenship. Then there was the category of ‘Greeks’, the Hellenised
Egyptians that took different names according to their different districts:
sometimes they are called ‘those from the gymnasium’ to indicate their
right of entrance into Greek institutions, otherwise they are called the
katoikoi hippeis (the ‘colonial cavalrymen’ that used to fight in the
Ptolemaic army) or even the metropolitai, that is the inhabitants of the
district capitals, the metropoleis. These ‘Greeks’ paid a lower rate of poll
tax, around twelve drachmas, although there are differences from region
to region. Finally, the Egyptians were the lowest in the social hierarchy.
They paid the poll tax at the full rate and had no social and legal privileges;
they could not enter the Roman army and were excluded from all the
institutions of the Greek city, such as the gymnasium.
The case of the Jewish population is more complicated. Many Jews
settled in Alexandria in the early Ptolemaic period and attended the
gymnasium, so they regarded themselves as Hellenised as Alexandrian
citizens exactly like the Greeks. It seems Augustus introduced a more rigid
barrier that limited the number of Alexandrians and excluded Jews. This
provoked a strong reaction among Alexandrian Jews, who always con-
tested Augustus’ measures by arguing that they had been treated exactly
like the Alexandrian Greeks in the Ptolemaic period. Echoes of the ancient
debate about Alexandria’s ‘Jewish question’ have come down to us
through the works of Jews like Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, and it
is thus difficult to distinguish the true elements of the story from the
apologetic (that is, self-defensive) motifs. There are, in any case, many
studies of these problems, most of which reach the conclusion that Jews
never enjoyed ‘equal citizenship’ with the Alexandrians, but were settled
in the city as an ‘autonomous ethnic community’ – the politeuma – with
independent institutions, cultural centres and magistrates separate from
the gymnasium and other Greek institutions in the city.
Augustus may have taken specific registrations for privileged catego-
ries (including Egyptian priests) at varying intervals of time, while, as was
noted before, the Egyptian population underwent a regular census every
14 years. To what extent the Roman census in Egypt was similar to that
which we find in other Roman provinces is hard to say, since every
province had its own regional and institutional characteristics. In general,
we know little about the ways that censuses were taken in different areas
of the empire, and the lack of early Roman or even Ptolemaic census
declarations from Egypt does not help. It is possible that much of the
registration process was conducted orally through an annual house-to-
house inspection (hence the Roman name for the census declarations we
 Forms of Roman Exploitation 21

find in Egyptian papyri, kat’ oikian apographê or ‘house-to-house decla-

ration’). Also, the lists of public farmers that were drawn up every year
for the state loan of seed may have been used to create the first census
registers. One must also note that all of the earliest census declarations
come from traditional Egyptian temples: a sign, perhaps, that temples
remained for part of the Augustan period the main centres of literacy and
archival practice, and played a role in the organisation of the early census.
The Roman census often marked the formal annexation of a region as
a Roman province and for this reason was resented (along with the poll
tax) as a symbol of subjugation to Rome and the loss of national inde-
pendence. Neither the census nor the epikrisis was ever popular in Egypt,
where the population reacted by petitioning the prefect, sending delega-
tions to the emperor or openly revolting against Rome. Some fragmentary
documents indicate that an Alexandrian embassy reached Augustus in
Gaul in 10/9 BC and another embassy from the city petitioned the emperor
in AD 12, possibly a census year. A typically Egyptian phenomenon,
documented from the times of the Pharaohs though also present in the
Roman period, is the anachôrêsis, or ‘flight’ from taxes. Often the poorest
villagers simply left their homes, villages and fields and withdrew into
the desert in order to escape census registration and to avoid taxes and
corvées. When tax officials called to conduct the annual house-to-house
inspection, they were informed by the women of the family that the head
of the household had disappeared and left them aporoi, ‘without sub-
stance’. It cannot be a coincidence that the earliest declarations of ‘disap-
pearance’ belong to AD 19, the earliest confirmed census year under
Tiberius. Jews always fought the imposition of the census (as in AD 6 after
the annexation of Judaea) and animatedly debated whether they should
pay the tribute ‘to Caesar’ rather than to their real Lord and the Temple
of Jerusalem. A famous echo of this dilemma may be found in the Gospels’
dialogue in which Jesus tells his disciples to ‘render unto Caesar that
which is Caesar’s’ (in this case, Tiberius) and distinguish what they owe
to ‘God’ (that is, to the Temple of Jerusalem).

Exploitation of the land

At the time of the Roman conquest of Egypt Rome was not yet dependent
on the Egyptian grain supply, but it was clear to Augustus that it was
fundamental to expand the cultivation of soil and improve agricultural
techniques in order to produce more grain for export to Italy. Soon after
the conquest, Augustus had his soldiers dig canals to improve the irriga-
tion system; he confiscated all land belonging to Antony and Cleopatra
and their supporters and created the new category of ‘public land’. As in
22 Roman Egypt

the Ptolemaic period, most of the land in Egypt belonged to the state and
was cultivated by public farmers (called in the Ptolemaic and, in some
occasions even in the Augustan period, ‘royal farmers’) in exchange for
both rents and taxes. These farmers received a loan of seed from the state
every year, and owed the state a fixed amount of grain calculated on the
basis of the productivity and fertility of the land they farmed and the levels
of the Nile flood in any particular year. Augustus also introduced the
so-called ‘imperial estates’ – huge properties including land, animals and
slaves, that were assigned to members of the imperial familia, a broad
concept that also included the emperor’s friends and slaves. These estates,
known as ousiai (‘substances’), covered the most fertile and productive
lands and accordingly provided substantial revenues to the imperial
patrimony. On the death of their beneficiary the lands reverted to the
emperor, who could reassign them to another friend or relative – for
example, the estate of Maecenas reverted to Augustus on the death of the
beneficiary. After flourishing during the Julio-Claudian period, the ousiai
were all confiscated under Vespasian for a specially created branch of the
imperial patrimony called the ousiakos logos. The Roman emperor and his
household retained power over all land and the private account of the emperor
or fiscus gradually became more important and much richer than the public
treasury or aerarium, which de facto was also controlled by the emperor.
Another major change that Rome brought to Egypt’s land system was
the official recognition of katoikic soldiers’ land as private land, and the
expansion of all land in private hands. Often the Roman state sold off dry
or unproductive land to private citizens who then put the land back into
cultivation by investing their own private capital. This strategy had
existed in Ptolemaic times, but was probably enhanced in the Roman
period. Traditional Egyptian temples also lost much of their land, which
was confiscated and became public, although they often leased it back
from the Roman state and continued to cultivate it in exchange for rent.
Tax rates on the land remained pretty stable throughout the first two
centuries of Roman rule: while the land of the katoikoi generated a low
tax of one artaba (the measure of grain) per aroura (the measure of land)
– approximately one tenth of the annual grain produce – the estates and
private land were liable for higher taxes that amounted to as much as five
or six artabas per aroura, that is one quarter or one third of total produce.

Other taxes
Among the direct taxes, the most important apart from the poll tax was
the chômatikon, or ‘dyke tax’ at an annual rate of 6 drachmas and 4 obols.
From the reign of Augustus onwards, this tax was levied on all Egyptian
 Forms of Roman Exploitation 23

males including priests and contributed to the organisation of the web of

canals and dykes that formed the only irrigation system possible in such
a dry country. Irrigation had a direct impact on grain revenue, thus the
cleaning and digging of canals and the construction of dykes to direct the
Nile flood constituted a crucial issue for Egypt’s economy. The chôma-
tikon was often collected together with the poll tax and other direct taxes
and, for those who could not pay, either Augustus or one of his successors
introduced a new corvée called penthêmeros, ‘five days’ – named for the
number of days of forced labour on the canals it entailed. Augustus also
introduced a new levy called ‘impost on behalf of the poor’, a surtax of 4
to 7 drachmas per year imposed on the whole population that was intended
to compensate for taxes not paid by those with no income. While both the
dyke tax and the tax on behalf of the poor seem to have been introduced
by Augustus, the tax called arithmêtikon katoikôn, that is ‘for the enu-
meration of the katoikic soldiers’ was probably inherited from the Ptole-
maic period. This tax (the rate of which seems to have varied from 16 to
28 drachmas per year, perhaps according to the size of the holding) was
collected from every owner of katoikic land, that is the land of the military
settlers. It may have served as a tax on the ownership of this privileged
category of land, or as a way of keeping an accurate record of all the
katoikoi who were settled on the land. A precedent for this tax called the
‘capitation tax of the katoikoi’ is documented in the Ptolemaic period. In
general, a comparison with the taxation system of Persian Egypt shows
that the taxes, as well as the weights and measures, adopted in Roman
Egypt had Persian precedents.
The Roman state took over the proto-industries and monopolies estab-
lished by the Ptolemaic kings, such as access to the public baths and the
production of beer and oils and papyrus: the respective taxes were thus
directed to the imperial patrimony, the fiscus. Public baths were estab-
lished during the Ptolemaic period for the use of the Greek élite, and were
often located near gymnasia. In the Roman period this system was
maintained and two types of taxes were levied: one tax of approximately
7 drachmas 5 obols was imposed on some (though probably not all) people
around a specific bath as a contribution to its maintenance, while a
separate rent or an entrance fee could be paid to lease the bath or simply
to access it, exactly as our taxes fund public swimming pools today, yet
we still pay a small fee to use them. Another former monopoly of the
Ptolemies was the beer industry. Breweries belonged to the king but could
be leased by private companies, and were often located in traditional
Egyptian temples which paid a licence fee to the state. In the Roman
period, beer brewers seem to have paid a state tax called zytêra or ‘beer
24 Roman Egypt

tax’ that was imposed at individual rates on each beer producer and
probably varied according to the amount of beer consumed in the brewery.
The Roman administration also took over the most important of Ptolemaic
monopolies, the production and commerce of oils, especially sesame and
other seed oils, that were used both as nutrients and for lighting. In Roman
Egypt an ‘oil tax’ or elaikê was levied in the Augustan period too, although
the evidence for it is scanty. It is likely that taxes and rents were exacted
from those who leased state-owned oil presses. During the Roman period
these facilities were often on imperial estate land, owned directly by the
imperial family: the oil press on the estate of the freedman Narcissus, for
instance, paid a fee of 200 drachmas (probably per month) – a sign that it
was an important industrial complex. Finally, from the Ptolemaic period
onwards, a tax called chartêra was raised on papyrus. It was probably a
licence to sell or manufacture papyrus, or else a fee on the revenues of the
papyrus industry. In the Roman period it seems that, once again, papyrus
marshes were often part of the imperial patrimonium so that all these taxes
were seized directly for the private patrimony of the emperor and his
family. In one lease of a papyrus marsh from 14/13 BC (BGU 4.1180) the
lessees acknowledge the receipt of a loan of 200 drachmas which they
promise to return in instalments along with portions of the harvest over
six months. These 200 drachmas were probably equal to the rent for one
(or more) months which the lessees were not able to pay. Augustus also
continued to impose trade taxes or cheironaxia, such as the tax on weavers
or gerdiakon at the rate of approximately 28 drachmas per year, which
were often collected together in one payment with the poll tax; the
weaving industry itself came under the control of Roman managers.
Among the indirect taxes, the most important was the sales tax or
enkyklion, a contribution of varying amounts paid as a percentage (that is,
ad valorem) of around 5 to 10 percent on market sales, donations,
mortgages and the manumission of slaves. The collection of this tax was
delegated to publicans or tax farmers, who worked in the city or village
market together with the agoranomos or supervisor of markets. Many
documents also mention taxes on animals, for instance a tax on the grazing
rights of sheep and goats (called ennomion, ‘pasture tax’, which was
levied on the basis of the annual declaration of ownership of these animals
submitted at the beginning of the year throughout Egypt. This tax served,
like its Roman equivalent the scriptura, to keep control of the number of
privately owned animals pastured on state land. There was also a tax of 5
drachmas on the ownership of donkeys, the most important means of
transport in Egypt, and a tax on pigs, another property tax assessed on the
basis of declarations of pig ownership. The taxes on temples and priests
 Forms of Roman Exploitation 25

were continued without significant change from the Ptolemaic period. Tax
rates were also quite stable throughout the Roman period until the end of
the second century AD.

Tax collection
A large and continually increasing number of tax receipts and tax registers
preserved on Egyptian papyri and ostraca provide a fresh and reliable
body of evidence that enlightens us about the criteria and dynamics of
Roman fiscal practice in Egypt. It is likely that Augustus took much of
the essential structure of his taxation system from Ptolemaic Egypt,
although the comparison is hindered by the lack of Ptolemaic evidence
and by the irregular distribution (in both time and space) of the extant tax
receipts. What we can say is that taxes were assessed every year through
a sophisticated system of records and accounting that probably inherited
and extended the main lines of the Ptolemaic system. District officials,
for example the stratêgos, submitted an annual estimate of the revenue
available and, on this basis, the prefect in Alexandria established the entire
amount of taxes that should be extracted from the province, probably by
issuing a gnômon or ‘tax schedule’. The main novelty under Roman rule
was that the emperor controlled all the empire’s revenue and dictated the
amount of taxes to be extracted from every province. The prefects had
thus to answer directly to the emperor and could be punished for extracting
too little or even too much from their provinces.
It is often difficult, if not impossible, to judge whether taxation was
uniform throughout the province, but it is likely that taxes were imposed
at different levels according to each region’s agricultural productivity.
Scholars have argued that the Roman conquest brought about a substantial
change in the method of collection of taxes: while in the Ptolemaic period
the collection of taxes was carried out by partnerships of telônai (the
equivalent of the Latin publicani) who bought the right to levy the royal
dues for a percentage of the revenues, that is they were contracted to pay
a lump sum, during the Roman period, possibly from the time of Augustus,
taxes were levied by state officials whose work was a compulsory service,
while publicani were used to levy indirect taxes only. In other words, in
Roman Egypt as well as in other Roman provinces direct taxes (e.g. the
poll tax) were collected by state-appointed officials called praktores,
while telônai or tax farmers, selected from the wealthiest of the villages
or the metrôpoleis, were confined to the levy of indirect taxes (e.g. the
sales tax). For Rostovtzeff, the office of tax collector might have been
‘liturgical’ (a compulsory service imposed on the richest members of the
community) from the late Ptolemaic period, as people tended to avoid the
26 Roman Egypt

office since they could not hope to make enough profit from it and would
often have to pay with their own money for any deficit or tax evasion on
the part of any member of their community. There might have been a
Hellenistic precedent for the Roman system of compulsory services in
Egypt, although this cannot be definitely proven. It is also likely that
Roman companies of publicani which we see in other provinces never set
foot in Egypt; this was probably for linguistic reasons, since a knowledge
of both Greek and Egyptian was required in order to collect taxes from
the local communities. Therefore, Roman officials, including the freed-
men and slaves of the emperor, probably limited themselves to controlling
the revenue presented to the state treasuries in Alexandria.
There was a clear change following the Roman conquest regarding the
collection of grain revenue, the most important element of both the
Egyptian and the Roman economies. During the Ptolemaic period the
chief officials in the collection of the grain tax were the sitologoi – state
officials who worked at the state granaries in every village and in the nome
capitals, and issued the annual distribution of seed grain to the royal
farmers; the village officials, such as the kômogrammateus (‘village
secretary’) and the topogrammateus, participated in the operation by
confirming that the farmers who received the seed were actually farming
the said amount of land. In the Augustan period, the former royal granaries
were made public and the role of sitologoi possibly became a compulsory
service. In addition, officials called phorologoi supervised the collection
of the grain tax and the distribution of seed from the sitologoi to the public
farmers. These supervising officials are documented in the Augustan
period only, and were often freedmen or slaves of the emperor from Italy
with their own staff of subordinate slaves called vicarii, actores or vilici.
These imperial figures resided in Alexandria but supervised the local,
Egyptian-speaking, tax collectors throughout Egypt. This system is a clear
indication of the strict and direct control that the imperial family exercised
over the revenues of the province. Under Tiberius or Claudius, imperial
freedmen and slaves were probably gradually replaced by imperial procu-
rators of equestrian rank.
In Roman Egypt tax collectors underwrote with their own private
fortune potential deficits in the amount of revenues collected. The village
community, too, was often held responsible for any of its members’
financial shortfall and had to supply payment on behalf of those who could
not pay (according to the principle, present from the Ptolemaic period, of
the ‘collective responsibility for deficits’ that derived from Greek law).
Some passages in Philo vividly describe the tortures and abuses that tax
collectors underwent in the Roman period. Tortures such as the rack were
 Forms of Roman Exploitation 27

commonly inflicted on either taxpayers or, more often, tax collectors who
failed to submit the agreed lump sums, and the praktoreion or public
prison was mainly used to detain tax evaders and debtors. Another passage
in Philo informs us that in cases of tax default, Egyptians were whipped
while Alexandrian citizens could be beaten with flat (and therefore less
painful) implements, as a special privilege. Philo’s description of the
abuses that accompanied tax collection in the Julio-Claudian period has
been confirmed by recently published documents; his accounts must
therefore be less exaggerated than modern scholarship has often assumed.

Coinage and monetary circulation

Coinage acquired a special power under Augustus when it began to reach
all social classes from the urban Hellenised elites down to the Egyptian
village farmers. Excavations show that the coinage in use in Roman
Alexandria, the tetradrachm, was by far the largest provincial silver
currency. Augustus introduce a wide number of smaller denominations
and designs that are unparalleled both in the Ptolemaic period and under
subsequent Roman emperors.
Roman Egypt was vital to the rest of the empire not only for its grain,
but also for its outflow of money in the form of taxation. However, Egypt
had a closed currency system, which meant that Egyptian coinage could
not be exported outside the province. As recent studies have shown, the
majority of financial transactions took place through credit and letters of
exchange. Often imperial freedmen and slaves or the imperial procurators
with their huge bank accounts served as guarantors for the export of cash
from Alexandria to Italy. Traders also played an important role in making
markets more dynamic. It is likely, however, that most transactions
between the imperial government and the provinces (not only Egypt) were
made in the form of bills of exchange in banks. Egyptian evidence thus
shows that Roman finance was more sophisticated than has often been
assumed.
Chapter 3
Roman Emperors in Egypt

The view of Rome from Alexandria

Alexandria and Egypt were at the centre of Mediterranean politics in the
Roman period. The most important symbol and tourist attraction at
Alexandria was the mummy of Alexander the Great which was buried in
a transparent coffin allegedly made of glass (more probably of alabaster)
and preserved in the Mausoleum, probably close to the tombs of the
Ptolemaic kings. Throughout the Roman imperial period the body of
Alexander symbolised the idea of absolute monarchy and universal em-
pire and, for this reason, was an object of admiration and attraction for all
Roman leaders who wished to present themselves as world conquerors
like Alexander. Julius Caesar was the first to visit the tomb of Alexander,
and Augustus and other emperors after him did the same. After Augustus
not many emperors bothered to go and visit Egypt, but most of those who
made the journey did so for strategic reasons: throughout the Roman
period to arrive at Alexandria as a victorious general and to conquer the
rebellious, independent-minded Alexandrian crowd – above all, to control
the granaries which supplied Rome with corn – meant to have the world
in your hands.
Germanicus, a nephew of Augustus, went to Egypt in AD 19 to see the
antiquities of the region, according to Tacitus. In reality, the young prince
was sent by the emperor Tiberius as an imperial representative in the Near
East to make alliances and hold diplomatic meetings with the kings and
dynasts of Armenia and Parthia. However, economic crisis and famine in
Egypt made Germanicus’ presence necessary. The prince became popular
in Alexandria because he opened some state granaries and lowered the
price of corn. He also passed some edicts regulating prices and requisi-
tions in order to help the suffering Alexandrian population. His predilec-
tion for Greek habits and clothes (which Roman authors found
disgraceful) endeared him to Alexandria’s Greek nobility. A document
on papyrus (POxy 25.2435 recto) describes in vivid detail one of his
appearances at the hippodrome where an excited crowd applauded him
and enthusiastically proclaimed him a god. Another document shows that
Germanicus passed a specific edict that refused divine honours in order
 Roman Emperors in Egypt 29

not to offend Tiberius (SB 1.3924, SelPap 2.211). According to Tacitus,

Tiberius, jealous of Germanicus’ popularity and fearing that he could lay
claim to the imperial throne from Alexandria, ordered him to leave the
country and possibly later ordered his death by poisoning. Tiberius also
reduced the number of legions garrisoning Egypt from three to two,
probably to prevent insurrections: he was already aware of ‘a secret of the
empire’ (the arcanum imperii mentioned by Tacitus, Histories 1.4) that
would be realised only a few decades later – i.e. that the Roman emperor
could be elected outside Rome – and Alexandria seemed to be the ideal
place for such ‘alternative’ imperial elections.
Caligula visited Alexandria and, according to ancient gossip, removed
the cuirass from Alexander the Great’s mummy and wore it himself in
megalomaniacal fashion. Neither Claudius nor Nero bothered to visit
Egypt, although in AD 61 Claudius sponsored an exploration of southern
Egypt and Ethiopia. Nero, by contrast, had planned a trip to Alexandria
and had ordered his friend Caecina Tuscus, the prefect of Egypt, to build
a new residence and expensive baths for his future visit. Unfortunately,
the prefect dared to use the baths that had been built for the expected visit
and was banished. Nero’s Philhellenism probably extended to the popu-
lation of Alexandria, and to Egypt’s Greek cities. A papyrus letter of
Nero’s addresses a delegation from the capital of the Fayum, Ptolemais
Euergetis, that in turn may have been connected with an official selection
of the Greek élites in Egypt. It is likely that Nero’s policies, like those of
Augustus, created rigid legal and fiscal barriers between the class of
Alexandrians and some privileged Greeks (especially the descendents of
Greek soldiers, or the gymnasial class) and the rest of the Graeco-Egyptian
population. Throughout the Roman period the Alexandrians and some
closed groups of Greek soldiers were the only real élite in Egypt, while
the Egyptian population lived in very poor conditions, under a heavy fiscal
burden. For the first two centuries of Roman rule no Egyptian could enter
the Roman senate, and Augustus had decreed that no Egyptian could enter
the Roman army, so that they would not be eligible for the Roman
citizenship that was granted on discharge from service.
In AD 69, the so-called ‘year of the four emperors’, a prophecy
circulated throughout the Near East that ‘a man from Palestine would
become the ruler of the world’. The prophecy came true when the general
Vespasian, who was fighting against the Jews in Judaea, was proclaimed
emperor by his troops on 1 July 69 in Alexandria – with a little help from
the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander. An extract from an
official chronicle on papyrus (PFouad 8; CPJ 2.418a) reports that, in an
overcrowded hippodrome, the Alexandrians greeted their new emperor as
30 Roman Egypt

‘saviour and benefactor’ – the same titles that characterised the Ptolemaic
kings – and also as ‘Son of Ammon’ and ‘Rising Sun’, the titles of the
Egyptian pharaohs. Some Roman literary sources (Cassius Dio 65.8;
Suetonius, Vespasian 19.2), however, claim that the Alexandrians in-
sulted and ridiculed him. Apparently, Vespasian had blockaded the grain
supply from Egypt to Rome in order to blackmail the senate and obtain
ratification of his election to the imperial throne; it is thus possible that
some Roman sources were initially hostile to him. Vespasian’s son Titus
entered Alexandria after the conquest of Jerusalem (Suetonius, Titus 5,
Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 7.116); a private letter (POxy 34.2725) offers
a precise date for the occasion: ‘the lord Caesar entered the city on 25
April 71 at seven in the morning’. After the fall of the last rebellious
fortress of Masada by the Dead Sea in 73 the numerous Jewish community
of Cyrene joined the Jewish rebellion against Rome. Vespasian rushed to
North Africa and ordered that the Jewish temple of Leontopolis near
Heliopolis in Egypt be closed and razed to the ground, for fear that it could
became the focus of the revolution.
In the period between 116 and 117 Egypt was again at the centre of
Roman imperial politics. The local Jewish communities revolted against
both the Alexandrian Greeks and Rome, and the region of Cyrenaica was
also at the centre of the revolt. The Jews elected leaders and marched
eastwards to ‘liberate’ the Eastern world from the Roman occupation;
recent studies show that the so-called Diaspora revolt of 116-117 seriously
challenged the stability of the Roman empire, and both Trajan and the
future emperor Hadrian were involved in repressing the uprising.
Literary sources such as the historian Appian of Alexandria, an Egyp-
tian contemporary (Appian, Arabicus Liber fr. 19; Bella Civilia 2.90), tell
us the story of the revolt from the point of view of the winners, describing
Jews as bloodthirsty barbarians who represented a threat to the civilised
West. The documentary papyri are particularly interesting testimonies to
the consequences of the war that eventually brought about the virtual
obliteration of all Jewish communities in Egypt. These were also written
by Greeks or Roman soldiers and are profoundly anti-Jewish. In a series
of documents from the office of Apollonios, the stratêgos of the Apol-
lonopolite Nome, we find interesting references to the disasters of the war.
Eudaimonis, the mother of the stratêgos, talks about damage to the fields
and villages, the consequences for trade and the lack of food supplies that
made her life difficult, and she threatens the gods that she will pay no
attention to religion ‘until I get my son back safe’ (CPJ 2.438 and 442).
When the revolt was repressed, Egypt’s Greeks instituted a festival to
commemorate the event, which continued to be celebrated annually for
 Roman Emperors in Egypt 31

more than 80 years (CPJ 2.450). The archive of papyrus letters from the
soldier Claudius Terentianus, enrolled in the Roman army in Egypt, to his
friend and patron Claudius Tiberianus, a Roman veteran settled in Karanis
(Fayum), discuss the Diaspora revolt in terms of civil strife in Alexandria.
Terentianus was actually wounded in the war and Tiberianus, although he
had resigned active military service (or was about to do so) around 116,
continued his career as an agent of the provincial governor’s intelligence
service.

Hadrian and the Antonines

When Trajan died on 8 August 117 Hadrian was in Antioch, and was soon
proclaimed emperor. On 25 August the new prefect of Egypt, Rammius
Martialis, sent out a circular letter, preserved on papyrus (POxy 55.3781),
officially informing the Egyptian stratêgoi of Hadrian’s accession and
instructing them to declare festivities in their districts: ‘therefore we shall
pray to the gods that his continuance may be preserved to us for ever and
shall wear garlands for ten days’, while a temple account from Soknopaiou
Nesos (StudPal 22.183) lists provisions and expenses for the celebration
of a festival to Hadrian called ‘Hadrian’s days’. In PGissLit 4.4, a
fragment of a dramatic performance specially composed and performed
at Apollonopolis Heptacomia (Kom Isfaht) in the Thebaid to mark
Hadrian’s accession, the god Apollo declares: ‘Having just mounted aloft
with Trajan in my chariot of white horses, I come to you people } to
proclaim the new ruler Hadrian, whom all things serve on account of his
virtue and the genius of his divine father’. The people: ‘Let us make merry,
let us kindle our hearts in sacrifice, let us surrender our souls to laughter’.
Both the literary sources and the documents suggest that, in August or
early September 117, Hadrian went to Judaea and made the region a
provincia consularis, appointing a new governor, Lucius Cossonius, and
ordering that Jerusalem be renamed Aelia in his name (Aelius Hadrianus).
Thereafter, in September or October 117, the new emperor probably
visited Alexandria. Documents referring to Hadrian’s edicts and benefac-
tions in favour of the Egyptian farmers and other categories of the local
population can be explained only by hypothesising that Hadrian was present
in Egypt in 117. Egypt’s agricultural produce was of great importance to
Rome and, in addition, control over this crucial province was essential to
ensure the survival of the new emperor since his position was not secure and
his sudden change of policy from that of his predecessor placed him in danger.
By visiting Alexandria, a city that had always represented the potential
alternative capital of the Roman empire and a place where any charismatic
general could hope to become emperor, perhaps Hadrian aimed to legiti-
32 Roman Egypt

mise his accession to the imperial throne. Vespasian, as has been said
above, had entered Alexandria after subduing the Jewish revolt in 70, and
was proclaimed emperor there. In Alexandria, Hadrian played the role of
world benefactor and bringer of peace and religious freedom. He restored
temples and buildings destroyed in the Jewish revolt, built temples in the
traditional Egyptian style – as had Augustus and other emperors before
him – and opened new temples that worshipped Greek and Roman gods
together with the imperial gods of Victory and Fortune. Back in Rome in
118, Hadrian started building his magnificent villa at Tibur (Tivoli),
where Egyptian images and motifs play a major role. He even recon-
structed some historical Alexandrian monuments, such as the Canopus or
gymnasium, on a smaller scale in his garden.
In 129-130 Hadrian visited Egypt again. He witnessed the installation
of the Apis bull in Memphis, hunted lions in the desert and visited the
main cities during a Nile cruise. The chronicles of Hadrian’s voyage on
the Nile, including Marguerite Yourcenar’s famous Memoirs of Hadrian,
are all overshadowed by one main event: the death of beautiful Antinous,
the emperor’s lover, who drowned in the river on 22 October 130 under
mysterious circumstances. It was rumoured that his death had been a
voluntary, ‘religious’, sacrifice aimed at saving the reputation of the
emperor. Next to the site of the incident, Hadrian founded a Greek city
called Antinoupolis, a Roman colonia with privileged fiscal and legal
status that was modelled on the Athenian system of tribes and assemblies.
According to Egyptian tradition, anyone who drowned in the sacred river
had special divine blessing and Hadrian soon instituted a cult of Antinous,
which rapidly spread throughout the Greek-speaking part of the empire.
Hadrian probably favoured this cult in order to cement the loyalty of
subject communities to Rome. Hadrian also initiated the building of a Red
Sea coastal road known as Via Hadriana.
In 153, under Hadrian’s son Antoninus, new riots broke out in Alex-
andria in which Prefect Lucius Munatius Felix was killed, and an epidemic
known as the ‘Antonine plague’ – probably smallpox – caused a major
decline in population in the period from 167 through the 170s. Under
Marcus Aurelius in 172 there was a major insurrection, the so-called revolt
of the boukoloi (literally ‘herdsmen’), led by the Egyptian priest Isidoros.
The boukoloi were political groups of lower-class desperadoes who
fought against the Roman forces and Roman religion in defence of
Egyptian political and religious independence. Western sources depict
these people as fanatics and even transvestites and cannibals. Apparently
the boukoloi, disguised in female clothing, approached a centurion pre-
tending to offer gifts and, after killing him, sacrificed the body, pledged
 Roman Emperors in Egypt 33

an oath on his entrails and then ate them as part of a strange demonic
communion. Isidoros defeated the Romans in battle and had almost
conquered Alexandria when Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria and the
son of a Prefect of Egypt, strategically divided the rebels and managed to
defeat them after several battles. (Dio [Xifilinus] 71.4; Historia Augusta:
M. Ant. 21.2; Avid. Cass. 6.7). However, the story has a surprise ending:
in 175, Avidius Cassius travelled from Syria to Alexandria and obliged
his troops to declare him emperor. A fragmentary document (SB
10.10295), possibly a report made by the president of the council of
Antinoupolis on his return from Alexandria on the accession of Avidius
Cassius, preserves part of a letter in which Cassius states it is his right to
be elected emperor because he was born in Alexandria when his father
was Prefect of Egypt. Two centuries after the suicide of Antony and
Cleopatra, in AD 175, the revolt of Avidius Cassius disclosed another
‘secret’: that the empire could be divided into Eastern and Western
sub-empires, with Alexandria as the potential capital of the East.
Marcus Aurelius spent the winter of 176 in Alexandria and eventually
quelled the sedition, punishing and confiscating the property of all who
had allegedly helped Avidius Cassius during his three-month rule. Among
the victims of such confiscations and persecutions were many Christians,
who were accused of political sedition against Rome. When, a few years
later, Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus travelled in the East, they
were addressed in numerous speeches, orations and works by Christian
bishops and writers – the so-called apologists – who strenuously defended
Christianity from the accusation and struggled to prove that Christians
throughout the empire were utterly loyal to the emperor and even contrib-
uted to the growth and defence of the Roman empire. Some examples
include Apollinaris, who recalled episodes in which Christian soldiers
remained loyal to Marcus Aurelius on the Danube in 175, and Melito,
bishop of Sardis, who protested against Roman decrees that ordered the
expropriation of Christian property and the persecution of Christians and
asserted the loyalty of Christians to the empire. In 177, Athenagoras said
that no slave would accuse the Christians, even falsely, of murder or
cannibalism and, in 180 or 181, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch (To
Autolycus 1.11) stressed Christian loyalty to the emperor. Two decades
later, Tertullian still spoke of the loyalty of Christian soldiers to Marcus
Aurelius and reiterated that no Christians had supported Cassius. All of
these apologetic works may well have reflected laws passed in 176-180
that punished Christians and confiscated their property as retribution for
their supposed participation in the revolt of Avidius Cassius. We do not
know to what extent these speeches mirrored reality.
34 Roman Egypt

The Severans
Following some problems with the imperial succession and a series of
short-lived emperors, Septimius Severus became emperor in 193. Origi-
nally from North Africa, Severus was the first emperor to allow Egyptians
to enter the Roman Senate, a revolutionary move that finally removed the
stigma of inferiority and barbarity that Augustus had imposed on the
Egyptians. Severus visited Alexandria around 200-202 and the policies
he introduced there represent an important turning point in the admini-
stration of the country. Severus’ reforms are preserved on a large papyrus
roll containing 31 brief apokrimata, or ‘imperial rescripts’. The most
important change was that which modern scholars call ‘municipalisation’
– the introduction of city councils or boulai, the Greek equivalent of
Roman municipal senates, both in Alexandria and in the capitals of the
Egyptian districts that became equivalent to Roman municipia. Under
municipalisation, the cities were governed by an assembly of magistrates
selected on the basis of their wealth who paid an entrance fee and wore
crowns of office. The councillors were also responsible for the collection
of taxes. These measures were aimed at tackling the country’s serious
economic crisis and, apparently, attempted to favour Egyptian farmers. In
fact, one document (PCattaoui 2; SB 1.4284) shows some Egyptian
farmers recalling the visit of Severus and his son Caracalla in admiring
terms: ‘When the most sacred emperors } arose like the sun in Egypt’.
Severus was less open-minded with regard to religion. Fearing, perhaps,
the increasing power of Christians in Egypt, he suppressed the influential
Christian School of Alexandria and outlawed conversion (Clement, Stro-
mateis 2.20; Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.26; 6.1). A large number
of Christians preferred to die rather than forsake their religion. The
ideology of martyrdom, which the Christians had inherited from Judaism,
characterised the relationship between Rome and Christianity throughout
the third century.
Severus’ son Caracalla is remembered above all for his Constitutio
Antoniniana of 212, an edict that extended Roman citizenship to the
empire’s entire male adult population, excluding peregrini dediticii,
rebellious freedmen forever debarred from Roman citizenship. This pro-
vision, part of which is preserved on papyrus (PGiss 40), may have been
issued in order to extend the inheritance tax and other taxes imposed on
Roman citizens to all of the empire’s inhabitants in order to alleviate the
economic crisis, and probably appeared less important to contemporaries
that it does to us. The mass bestowal of Roman citizenship on the
inhabitants of Egypt is signalled clearly in the papyri by the sudden and
 Roman Emperors in Egypt 35

ubiquitous insertion of the name Aurelius (Caracalla’s own name) before

the proper name (Greek or Egyptian) of any inhabitant. Documents show
that in 215 Caracalla visited Alexandria, but the event was disastrous for
the city since the emperor quelled a demonstration, expelled Egyptian
natives from the city, closed the theatres and suppressed the so-called
syssitia, the dining rights of scholars at the Museum, in a counter-refor-
mation that marked the beginning of the cultural and political decline of
Alexandria. The last emperor of the Severan dynasty, Severus Alexander
(222-235), visited Egypt – or at least planned to do so, a papyrus document
informs us – in order to halt the country’s excessive fiscal and liturgical
impositions on Rome.

The third-century crisis

In spite of the Severan reforms and the establishment of the new council-
based system in Egypt, the third century was characterised by a profound
economic crisis which was aggravated by the imperial government’s
financial crisis. Since the time of Augustus, Egypt and its grain produce
had been used to save the empire from financial problems, but now the
country did not have the resources to satisfy both internal and external
demands. New taxation was resisted, the liturgical system vacillated and
the population declined. The conflict between tax collectors and the
population was violent, and failure to collect and deliver all due taxes
could lead to trial, fines and the confiscation of one’s property by the
treasury – hence the widespread social discontent which caused revolt in
the villages.
The crisis also affected the middle class and the once privileged
categories: in a document from Oxyrhynchus from AD 260 (PCollYoutie
60), a teacher complains that his salary, when he is fortunate enough to
get it, is paid in sour wine and grain that has been eaten by worms, and he
asks for a small plot of land in order to be able to continue in his job.
Paradoxically, however, archaeological excavations seem to point to a
third-century boom in Roman-style civic buildings such as porticoes,
processional areas, gymnasia, baths and theatres. One explanation for this
apparent contradiction is that public works were an area in which the
councils were autonomous and civic pride may also have played a role.
An attempt at reform was made by Philip the Arab (244-9): in a papyrus
document his procurators claimed to be ‘lightening the burden of all
Egyptians, worn down as they are by the limitless liturgies’ (POxy
33.2664). However, Philip’s reforms were double-edged and, it seems,
actually planned to increase imperial revenues. For this reason, therefore,
they did not solve the problem. One bad sign for the administration of
36 Roman Egypt

Egypt is that the census returns cease after 257/8 and no censuses were
taken after the third century. After the failure of Philip’s reforms, the
emperors Aurelian (270-275) and Probus (276-282) made new efforts.
Aurelian hoped to revive agriculture throughout the empire by reorganis-
ing Nile transport and Probus worked on the system of dykes and canals,
but the crisis persisted (Historia Augusta: Aurelian 47). In 270-272
Aurelian fought the caravan city of Palmyra and its formidable queen
Zenobia who had occupied Egypt, and in 273 Aurelian had the Museum
razed to the ground to punish the Alexandrians for a revolt; scholars either
fled the country or sought refuge in the smaller library of the temple of
Serapis or Serapeum. Once again, the cultural and political aspirations of
Alexandria had been frustrated. The military prevailed and the decline of
Egypt as a key area of the Mediterranean put an end to Alexandria’s
dreams of finding glory as the ‘capital of the East’.
Chapter 4
Byzantine Egypt and the End of Roman Rule

In 284 the emperor Diocletian (284-305) instituted a comprehensive

reform. He divided the empire into eastern and western halves and Egypt
itself into smaller provinces in order to increase administrative efficiency.
Egypt was also forced to give up its closed currency system and its unique
calendar; it was integrated into the systems in use across the rest of the
empire and Latin was imposed as the obligatory bureaucratic language.
All these measures were probably attempts to coalesce a fragmented East
and give it a uniform administration. Diocletian’s reforms profoundly
affected the structure of the Egyptian bureaucracy and brought about the
gradual disappearance of most civic office in the first half of the fourth
century, while new authorities were created. The municipal council or
boulê, for instance, was replaced by a new figure, the logistês or curator
civitatis, the chief executive of the city and governor of the district. All
the magistrates connected with the gymnasium, the gymnasiarchs and
eventually also the councillors or bouleutai, disappeared. It was the end
of the organisational structure that Augustus had imposed on Egypt after
the conquest in 30 BC.
Egypt continued to be the focus of anti-imperial revolts and its capital
Alexandria remained the theatre of the election of new Roman emperors.
In 297, a certain L. Domitius Domitianus led a revolt inspired by fiscal
and social oppression; he was declared emperor and controlled the country
for approximately a year, until Diocletian personally quelled the revolt.
According to a legendary tradition, Diocletian vowed to slaughter the
Alexandrian population until the rivers of blood reached the knees of his
horse, but the horse stumbled as Diocletian entered the city, and the
Alexandrians dedicated a statue of the animal to thank it for saving them.
Some proceedings of the city council of Oxyrhynchus that mention the
visit of an emperor, accompanied by the prefect, after May 298, probably
refer to Diocletian, who was sailing up the Nile after his victory over
Domitianus. At about this time, further documents show that complex
preparations and expensive arrangements were made for an imperial visit
to the city of Panopolis and the southern frontier, where the emperor
fought the nomadic tribe of the Nobades. This battle, however, resulted
38 Roman Egypt

in defeat for Rome, and the frontier was withdrawn up to the island of
Philae at the First Cataract.
A papyrus document (PCairIsid 1) preserves an edict of 16 March 297
in which the prefect Aristius Optatus clarified the duties of the Egyptian
populations towards the empire: ‘For it is fitting that each person dis-
charge with the utmost enthusiasm everything that is due to their loyalty,
and, if anyone should be seen doing otherwise after such concessions, he
will risk punishment } The collectors of every kind of tax are also
reminded to be on their guard, with all their strength, for, if anyone should
be seen transgressing, he will risk his head.’ Tax collectors no longer
simply risked a fine, as in previous centuries, but could be sentenced to
death for failing in their duties. Diocletian probably wanted to establish a
firmer grip on the finances of the country, however his measures did not
resolve the crisis.
In the meantime another transformation was taking place in Egypt: that
from Paganism to Christianity. According to tradition, it was St Mark the
evangelist who brought Christianity to Alexandria in the reign of Nero.
However, papyri of the New Testament suggest that Christian communi-
ties flourished in the second century AD, although it is only in the fourth
century that Christianity became a mass phenomenon. Some scholars read
the fourth-century decline of Greek-style institutions like the gymnasium
as a development that coincided with the appearance of Christian churches
and a new ideology of education and entertainment that was radically
different from the classical Graeco-Roman one. Christian bishops gradu-
ally superseded pagan high priests as the administrative and spiritual
leaders of local communities, and Alexandria nourished a great number
of Christian scholars, mystics, heretics, and saints, as Eusebius of Cae-
sarea tells us in his Ecclesiastical History. Origen, an Egyptian who wrote
commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, had a large school at
Alexandria which included many women students (he even castrated
himself in order to avoid temptation), until he was tortured and killed in
the persecution launched by Decius in 250-251. Another illustrious Egyp-
tian Christian was St Antony, who left his home around 270 and withdrew
into the Western Desert as a hermit – his Life, written by Athanasius of
Alexandria, was a major Christian bestseller and launched monasticism
throughout the Mediterranean. However, Diocletian and the other Tet-
rarchs initiated the most violent persecution against the Christians: a
decree of Diocletian’s in 303 ordered the systematic destruction of
churches and sacred books and the general enslavement of Christians, and
the period between 303 and 311 is known today as the ‘Great Persecution’
or ‘the age of the Martyrs’.
 Byzantine Egypt and the End of Roman Rule 39

As Christianity gradually supplanted Paganism as the most popular

religion in the empire, the emperor Constantine and his colleague Licinius
strategically issued an edict of toleration in 313 (the ‘edict of Milan’) that
legalised the Christian religion. In 324 Constantine defeated Licinius and
thereafter founded Constantinople (modern Istanbul) as the capital of his
reunified empire. From this point onwards, for more than three centuries,
Egypt was part of the Byzantine empire. In 324, the ecumenical Council
of Nicaea also established the patriarchate of Alexandria as second only
to that of Rome, with powers over both Egypt and Libya. A papyrus from
Oxyrhynchus (POxy 3759) dated 25 October 325 is the earliest known
attestation to the adoption of Sunday (the Lord’s Day) as a sacred day;
only a few years earlier the local city council suspended work on Thurs-
days, Jupiter’s Day. However, Christianisation in Egypt was a slow and
heterogeneous process, and traditional Egyptian religion coexisted with
Christianity until at least the fifth century. Early in the fifth century
Rufinus visited Oxyrhynchus and he records, perhaps exaggerating a
little, that there were 12 churches, 10,000 monks and 20,000 nuns there;
by the sixth century the city had at least 30 churches.
Alexandria was the home of alternative Christianities, schisms and
heresies against the dogmas promoted by Constantinople. Among others
there were the Gnostics (literally ‘Those who Know’) who saw the
universe in a Neo-Platonic way, the presbyter Areios (died 336) who
founded the Arian heresy that minimised the divinity of Christ, and the
bishop Athanasius (bishop 328, died 373) who waged doctrinal war by
arguing that both the Father and the Son were of the same substance – a
view that has prevailed to the present day as Orthodox doctrine. The
Egyptian desert played host to the legendary lives of the Desert Fathers,
and the rise of monasticism and monasteries in Egypt deeply affected and
stimulated the rest of the empire. Nevertheless, despite the triumph of
Christianity, some Greek aristocrats in Egypt looked back nostalgically
at Greek culture and magic continued to flourish, almost as an alternative
church.
Egypt also saw some pagan martyrs, victims of Christian intolerance.
In 391, when the emperor Theodosius decreed the closure of pagan
temples and the prohibition of pagan cults, the Alexandrian mob, encour-
aged by the patriarch Theophilus, destroyed the Serapeum and possibly
the library contained there. In addition, in 415 the pagan mathematician
Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon and the first female lecturer
in Alexandria, was stoned to death in the church of the Caesareum: ‘They
threw her out of her carriage, dragged her to the church known as the
Kaisarion and, after stripping off her clothes, killed her by (throwing)
40 Roman Egypt

broken tiles. When they had torn her limb from limb, they brought the
limbs together at a place called Kinaron and destroyed them by burning’
(Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.10).
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 was a turning point which marked
the beginning of the Monophysite schism (the belief that Christ had but
one nature), and severed the Catholics from the Egyptian church, also
known as ‘Coptic’ from the Egyptian language written in Greek letters
that was becoming predominant. The schism has lasted for centuries and
continues to the present day as a form of national religion. At the time it
certainly contributed to Egypt’s marginalisation from the rest of the
empire. Although the Alexandrian patriarchs were important in the Chris-
tological disputes, Alexandria was eventually overtaken by Constanti-
nople and also lost ground to Antioch as a regional political centre.
Fifth- and sixth-century documentary papyri mostly come from the
archives of great landowning families. Worthy of mention among them is
the archive of the Apions, a powerful Oxyrhynchite family with large
landholdings in the Oxyrhynchite Nome and in the Fayum. The Apions
were influential and had political careers both in Egypt and in Constanti-
nople where they may even have married into the imperial family. Their
estate’s archive has been preserved with a huge number of documents,
providing details on the management of the land and insights into every-
day life. Numerous accounts record payments and charitable donations
from the Apions to churches, monasteries and hospitals, and enlighten us
on the links between the ecclesiastical administration and the aristocracy.
The Apions also supported circus factions, in particular the faction of the
Blues, illustrating the important role played by the hippodrome in sixth-
century civic life (POxy 27.2480).
There seems to have been no general, religiously motivated opposition
to the legislation of Justinian (527-565), in fact Egypt adopted Justinian’s
legal reforms to no lesser extent than any other province in the empire,
but the country was, nevertheless, in constant turmoil. During Justinian’s
rule, Egypt was devastated by a terrible plague which spread throughout
the eastern empire, and an earthquake also wrought havoc; the religious
persecution of the Christian Copts and the growing burden of taxation
further fuelled the Egyptians’ conflicts with and hatred of the Byzantine
court. Frequent riots afflicted Alexandria, while the southern frontier of
Egypt was raided by brigands. Traditional Egyptian temples had not
received state income since the third century AD and were progressively
marginalised by Roman emperors; their decline reached its nadir in this
period. Around 537, Justinian ordered the closure of all Egyptian temples,
and the glorious temple of Isis at Elephantine (near modern-day Aswan)
 Byzantine Egypt and the End of Roman Rule 41

was shut at approximately this time. Egyptian priests became magicians

and sorcerers or assimilated into the new Christian environment – the
evidence of rituals and festivals show that there was no formal break
between traditional Egyptian religion and Christianity. In 539 Justinian
once more restructured Egypt’s provinces.
The relative peace that Egypt enjoyed under the Byzantine empire was
interrupted by the province’s role in the coup d’état launched by Her-
aclius, the Prefect of Africa. Heraclius, who was master of Egypt, along
with his general Nicetas, governor of Alexandria, planned to occupy that
city and cut off the corn supplies from Constantinople during the reign of
Phocas (602-10). For our understanding of the 30 years between Her-
aclius’ accession and the Arab conquest we depend on ecclesiastical
sources with a strong religious bias. In the time of the Coptic Patriarch
Anastasius (died 616) and the emperor Maurice, the Sasanian Persians
under king Chosroes and his general Shahrbaraz invaded Egypt and
temporarily ended Byzantine rule. In 618 the keys to Alexandria were sent
to Chosroes along with the spoils of war. The country was devastated by
battles and famines and Alexandria was swollen with refugees who had
come to Egypt after the Persian invasion of Syria. While the Persians had
been relatively tolerant of the Copts, the restoration of Roman domination
in Egypt in 629 was followed by ten years of persecution which, in effect,
opened the way to the conquering armies of Islam. In 639, seven years
after the death of Mohammed, ‘Amr bin al-‘As, a general of the Caliph
Omar, invaded Egypt, besieged the fortress of Babylon in the Delta and
subsequently conquered Alexandria. A treaty, signed by the patriarch
Cyrus and ‘Amr on 8 November 641, sealed the Arab conquest and the
Byzantines abandoned Alexandria.
Chapter 5
Cultural and Social Issues

Fear of Egypt, and consanguineous marriage

Egypt’s wealth, the abundance of its grain produce and its leading role in
supplying corn to Rome and Italy made the region an indispensable and
crucial area of the Roman empire. In fact, Roman emperors were well
aware that anyone who controlled Egypt and its grain could easily become
the new leader of the empire by cutting off provisions and starving
Rome into submission. For these reasons, the whole province of Egypt
was feared politically as an area that could easily turn to revolution.
From Ptolemaic times, the city of Alexandria had a reputation for being
unstable, which was the reason Alexandrian citizens were not allowed
to have their own city council, as other Greek cities did. Fear of Egypt
was a major motif in the propaganda of Augustus and served to justify
and legitimise Roman aggression in Egypt and the subsequent con-
quest in 30 BC.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Egypt and the Egyptians had a bad
reputation in imperial Rome. Tacitus (Histories 1.11) despised Egypt for
being ‘a province which is difficult to access, productive of great harvests,
but given to civil strife and sudden disturbances because of the fanaticism
and superstition of its inhabitants, ignorant as they are of laws and
unacquainted with civil magistrates’ – an accusation which is untrue, as
Ptolemaic Egypt had one of the most sophisticated of all Mediterranean
administrative systems, and Augustus learnt much from it. Livy
(38.17.11) also displays a good dose of racism when he says that in his
day the Macedonian (that is, the Greek) population in Egypt had ‘degen-
erated’ into Egyptians. From the religious point of view also, the Egyp-
tians were regarded as barbarians for their traditional worship of animal
gods – this view, obviously, did not take into consideration the fact that
many Greek gods also took the form of animals. Augustus publicly
despised the cult of the Apis bull and even refused to visit the tombs of
the Ptolemaic kings after viewing the Mausoleum of Alexander the Great
in Alexandria saying, ‘I wanted to see a king, not corpses!’ Finally, a
chronicle of imperial history written in the fourth century, the Historia
Augusta (Quadriga tyrannorum, 7-8), calls the Egyptians ‘fickle, irasci-
 Cultural and Social Issues 43

ble, vain, offensive’, and even insinuates that they had sexual intercourse
with chickens.
From an anthropological point of view, there were some peculiarities
which rendered the Egyptian population different and somewhat under-
developed in the eyes of the Romans. The major and most discussed of
these peculiarities was consanguineous marriage, that is incestuous sexual
intercourse between brothers and sisters – a practice that was taboo for
most of the empire’s peoples and yet is well attested in Egyptian docu-
ments throughout the Roman period. This topic has raised much debate
among modern scholars, who have questioned how the Egyptian popula-
tion could survive despite this incestuous practice, contrary to the laws of
nature and of mankind. According to recent studies, it is possible that the
documents mentioning marriage ‘between brother and sister’ do not refer
to biological siblings, but rather to adoptive brothers – a family strategy
widely documented in the Greek East. In other words, poor Egyptian
families may have adopted a son (often from among their relatives) as a
husband for their daughter in order to preserve the family line and to keep
the familial patrimony undivided. It is also possible that in the official
documents concerning inheritances and properties, Egyptian people lied
about their family relationships, tidying them up for their own conven-
ience by, for instance, declaring that their children were full siblings even
if they were not.
However, when Greek and Roman writers stated that Egyptians were
the only peoples in the Roman empire to practise consanguineous mar-
riage, it cannot have been a complete invention. It is likely, therefore, that
in some cases biological siblings did marry each other. The Ptolemaic
kings are a blatant example of this practice. Ptolemy II Philadelphus, for
instance, married his sister Arsinoe II and the royal couple was deified in
death with the title of ‘Divine Brothers’, a designation which evoked the
mythical wedding between the Egyptian gods (and brothers) Isis and
Osiris. Subsequent Ptolemies appear to have married their full sisters or
their relatives and even Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic queen, married
her younger brother when she was seventeen, and they became joint
rulers. Thus it seems that a large proportion of the Egyptian population
regarded as morally acceptable a practice that was taboo in all other
Mediterranean societies. Why the Roman governors of Egypt not only
closed their eyes to, but even encouraged, a practice so contrary to their
own laws and morals, and why the practice actually spread in the Roman
period, is still debated. A specific law permitting brother-sister marriage
might have been issued by Ptolemy II himself, in order to justify his own
behaviour. During the Roman period, in addition, access to the Greek class
44 Roman Egypt

and its privileges was more strictly controlled, which encouraged endo-
gamy – marriage within the family – in order to preserve the family’s
fiscal and social privileges. Some scholars even hypothesise that incestu-
ous marriage was an important part of Egyptian identity and tradition.
There is also a postcolonial explanation: a foreign, occupying force, which
Rome was in Egypt, did not have any interest in improving the morals of
its subjects by changing this particular custom – a country weakened by
continuous incestuous marriage is easier to control.

A multicultural society?
Egypt had been a multicultural and multilingual country since the time of
the Pharaohs. From the early Ptolemaic period, perhaps from after the
Syrian campaigns of king Ptolemy I, foreign communities of soldiers,
slaves and prisoners of war (politeumata in Greek) were transported to
Egypt as soldiers of the Ptolemaic army and were given some land and
money with which to settle. These communities included Jewish, Syrian,
Idumean, Arab and other foreign soldiers and their families. They were
endowed with a semi-autonomous administration, with magistrates or
archontes, an assembly of elders or gerousia, a local head of the politeuma
called a politarchês, and a general chief of the ‘nation’ or ethnos, called
an ethnarchês. Each community had a temple for its national religion and
was free to practise its national customs. The most populous foreign
community in Egypt was the Jewish community which numbered over a
million people, according to the Jewish-Alexandrian philosopher Philo
(In Flaccum 43). Although these communities were military in origin, the
documents show that foreigners performed all kind of jobs in Egypt,
although they could not actively participate in the administration of the
country or in politics since these areas were reserved for the Greeks.
When Julius Caesar went to Egypt in 48/47 BC to fight the last phase
of his war against Pompey, the Jewish communities of Egypt supported
him and indeed fought for him. To reward them he granted Jews the right
to continue their ancestral religion and (most resented by the Greeks) to
collect money to send to Jerusalem every year for the Jewish tax. Caesar
issued a series of edicts that safeguarded these ‘privileges’ and served to
protect Jews from the attacks of the Greeks and other neighbours in
Alexandria and the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean – where Jewish
communities were most populous. After the official conquest of Egypt in
30 BC, Augustus confirmed Jewish rights, but made Jews subject to the
provincial poll-tax along with the Egyptians, and instituted a more rigid
fiscal and legal barrier between Jews and the privileged class of Alexan-
drians and Greeks. In an Augustan petition (CPJ 2.150) a Jew called
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