Much of the older scholarship on the topic either brushes off the “Roman-ness” of the province of Egypt and quarantines from the discussion of bureaucratic administration elsewhere in the Empire and that completely disregards the radical changes Egypt underwent in the Roman period. To break down to its simplest, the old methods of bureaucracy (extensive record-keeping, census taking, comprehensive methods of assessing taxation etc) were retained as the most readily workable method of governing such an unwieldy possession but they now inhabited and had to function within an entirely different legal, political, social and indeed, cultural framework which would not be possible without equally sweeping changes. And, an equally important aspect of Egypt’s organisation as a province is the precedents it set for other “Imperial provinces” and the Emperor’s rights over his private accounts and public lands, Dominic Rathbone’s assessment
Far from being an exceptional case, Egypt was the laboratory in which Octavian developed and tested the novel elements of the fiscal system which as Augustus he made, with some modifications, standard throughout the empire.
Beyond this, administration in the Roman Empire itself underwent many changes which of course impacted Egypt so for the sake of saving time and providing as concise and specific an answer as possible I am (mostly) focusing on direct legal and social changes implemented by mid 2nd century AD but in some areas it might be necessary to provide greater context by mentioning developments in the late 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
Taxation, Agriculture & Property Law
Taxation is probably one of the most well documented areas of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt’s administration and is often central to discussing bureaucratic administration as well as tying in to other topics which I will touch on later.
The change in economic and administrations is often treated as a direct result of Imperial reforms, marking the swift and decisive departure from Egyptian tradition in favour of increased privatization of property and the shift of administration away from regional officials as Egypt was brought into the Roman Empire. The problem with this approach is that assumes too much control over the local level fiscal institutions by the early Roman Emperors and relies on the false assertion that personal control over arable land holdings were unknown in Ptolemaic Egypt due to the control of the crown and temple officials over their estates and a relative lack of agency on the part of tenants.
One well attested practice from the Ptolemaic period would be the taking of censuses, some annual but others were taken at seemingly odd intervals, which recorded a variable amount of information on the individuals within a certain domicile and may have included name, age, ethnicity, birthplace, occupation or any combination thereof, and it usually though not always was restricted to the taxpaying adults. Some groups were exempt from certain taxes under the Ptolemids, for instance Greeks, Persians and tutors were exempt from the obol tax which was payable by all other adult males, and the exemption of Alexandrians from certain taxes.
The Romans continued this practice, and it appears that they carried out a census every 14 years which listed the names and ages of the individuals within each household for the purpose of taxation which makes sense given that all males living outside of Alexandria had to pay the annual poll tax, which had been introduced to the province in the reign of Augustus, between the ages of 14 and 62 so eligible males born after the last census could always be registered in this way. However, the full purpose of the the different censuses which were carried out during both the Ptolemaic and Roman period is somewhat murky and there is plenty of conjecture as to why some information was included or excluded. For instance, the inclusion of ethnicity or occupation makes perfect sense as priests were exempt from the poll tax as were registered citizens of Alexandria. This special status for Alexandria is hardly unusual, as allied cities would sometimes be given special privileges by the Roman Republic based on their loyalty or value and might have maintained their own constitutions or increased their prestige through this relationship. “Status Greeks” (I will get back to this term later) were exempt from the salt tax which was levied on every individual including slaves and children. However women and the elderly are included on the 14 year census even though they would not be eligible for the poll tax so it is clear that the census was useful for a variety of reasons, including the assessment of the annual salt and pig taxes (which were only paid by village residents), it may have been used to compare against existing records or as a general register which makes sense as it also included information on births, deaths and relationships between cohabitants.
For the most part the Romans maintained the old system of land management, tenure and taxation on the local level, but they changed the legal terminology and in doing so the implicit and explicit rights associated with them to better fit within a Roman conceptual framework of property.
In Ptolemaic Egypt cultivated land fell into three main categories: crown land, temple lands and cleruchic land and these three categories continued to have practical significance in the Roman period as they formed the basis for the entirely new legal categories which were introduced. Tenants, that is to say, the occupants and farmers who would be responsible for maintaining the property and cultivating it would generally pay their rents in an agreed upon amount of grain that would be somewhere between 20-50% of an expected harvest depending on economic conditions and differences between nomes, but these were also often paid in kind using other crops or even in cash at an established rate. The lands that were used as pastures, in the cultivation of orchards, vegetables or fodder were taxed in cash but again, alternate methods of payment were often employed. Tenants would often rent the land out to small scale farmers. Farmers would have tools and additional labour provided and would receive advances on seed during planting season to be paid back with interest after harvest either by the state or their landlord. In addition to these were smaller plots of land owned by private individuals and which may have been used to grow orchards, vegetables and as pastures but never for the cultivation of grain, and these holdings were similarly subject to a cash tax.
Ptolemaic crown land probably comprised around 30% of the total arable real estate (although there have been higher estimates placing it around 50%) this land was owned by the monarch directly. Rent collected from the tenants of this land who were responsible for cultivating it went directly to the royal treasury in addition to the usual taxes and levies making it a crucial source of revenue for the state. Following Egypt’s reorganization as a province, crown lands were redefined as ager publicus, or public land and the farmers occupying them retained a similar status as public tenants. The rents and taxes which were collected from them were now designated as tribute and taxes to Rome and the provincial administration. Generally speaking, the amount of public land decreased gradually throughout the Roman period, after an Imperial edict reducing them in 117, the favourability of private land ownership over state leasing and thepractice of selling uncultivated public land to private accounts, although land also found its way back into the public account via confiscations. The creation of Imperial estates owned by the Emperor and his family, friends and favourites as a subcategory of ager publicus was also a new development, these estates functioned in a similar fashion to other public lands, rents were not levied as tribute and they were often confiscated back into the public account.
Of course, under the Ptolemids and Romans sub-leasing and sub-contracting was often between private individuals was the norm for these properties and tenancies were not guaranteed to be renewed which means that tenants could find themselves replaced.
Cleruchic lands, or kleroi were granted by the crown to military settlers from throughout the Hellenic world who would owe their military service to the crown and originally formed the backbone of the Ptolemaic army being supplemented only by Persian officers left over from the Achaemenid administration and foreign mercenaries until the conscription and gradual integration of Egyptian and Graeco-Egyptian hoplites. Although these were originally treated as gift estates from the king to an individual, in the late period they were sometimes heritable to a limited extent and the power the landholder held over the estates increased somewhat.
In the Roman period this system of a landed military class was abolished completely, and these estates became private property of the former katoikoi and machimoi who paid taxes roughly equivalent to that which was previously owed to the crown without the requirement of military service. These cleruchic lands ended forming the basis of private property in Egypt and their privatization created a demographic of privately owned estates similar to other provinces. Moreover, these former katoikoi, being registered in the gymnasium, would come to occupy a privileged role compared to other non-Romans in Egypt but I will address this later on.
Temple land is any land under the direct authority of the temple priests and officials. It was administered in much the same way as crown lands when it came to the collection of rents and taxes. Although this was an important category in the Ptolemaic period, especially Upper Egypt, but it appears to have experienced a significant decline under Roman rule as the amount of temple lands decreased rapidly. Another important factor in the apparent decline in temple estates is the introduction of new legal terminology and property laws, under the Roman system a large amount of temple land was reclassified as a subcategory of ager publicus or became more of a subcategory of private land with hereditary transfer of ownership and increased personal control on the part of the account holder. Although it is often claimed that Augustus confiscated all temple lands following Egypt’s annexation this is proven untrue by the occasional records of temple estates throughout Roman Egypt, that said exactly what changes were applied to temple estates are not known and likely varied between regions making their fate is murky at best.
When unproductive ager publicus, or other lands taken in confiscations were put up for auction they were almost always sold to local landlords, particularly Greeks or Roman veterans in Egypt, unlike other provinces in Asia Minor which saw a relatively high amount of wealthy landowners from Italy purchasing large estates. One of the principal reasons for this was that Augustus had set a precedent for limiting the amount of political and economic influence that Romans in the aristocracy and in particular the Senatorial elite could attain. These restrictions and the administration of Egypt by a prefect from outside of the Senate ensured the Egypt remained within the Imperial sphere of influence and later Emperors made sure to maintain this policy as well as helping to develop a taxable land-owning demographic comparable to other provinces.
Political Administration & Commerce
So taxes and tenure is all well and good but without a stable internal infrastructure it is kind of all for naught.
Egypt was divided into nomes for most of its Pharaonic history although the size and number of these nomes varied, and in the Ptolemaic period the number was set at 42. The governor in charge of these districts was known as the strategos and where the dioikesis was responsible for fiscal and economic matters the strategoi were in charge of the more practical governance and military administration. As the name suggests the strategoi were originally the Macedonian generals who were given governance of the Egyptian provinces post-conquest and served as a local, boots-on-the-ground authority under the satrap. As time went on the military importance of the strategoi lessened and they became more of a civil authority although they continued to be an authority on conscriptions, salaries, promotions and discipline on military units within their nome.
The Greek poleis were unique in Egypt, they had their own constitution and elected councils of officials and it was this more democratic and therefore potentially discontent nature that motivated the Ptolemaic monarchy to limit their number and influence. These three cities were Alexandria the capital, Naukratis a Greek port city dating to the 6th century BC and Ptolemais Hermou which was founded by Ptolemy I to replace Memphis as the capital of the Memphite nome in Upper Egypt. A significant Greek presence existed outside of these poleis however, as the descendants of Greek and Macedonian immigrants who settled in the chora and Hellenized Egyptians lived the more Hellenized towns and nome capitals and they brought with them many aspects of Greek civic life such as the method of city planning, gymnasiums and Hellenic culture in general.
Rather than completely uprooting this system of internal management, it was merely co-opted. Of course Egypt would no longer have a king but rather a prefect who had authority over all of Egypt, essentially filling the role that the Ptolemaic kings had but was directly answerable to the Emperor. Given that the prefect was the final authority many legal petitions were addressed to him directly or were referred to him by inferior courts and magistrates. To address his duties throughout the nomes he generally travelled between them yearly and saw to his various duties in the province. Edicts issued by him were the primary way in which Roman Imperial law was introduced and enforced in the province, although others were generated specifically to address issues in a specific nome and covered problems over taxation or announced changes in administration.
In the reign of Augustus, some nomarchs who had been part of Cleopatra’s administration actually retained their positions and many nomarchs in the early Empire continued to come from the same Hellenistic elite as they had before. Inside the poleis elected councils of magistrates and the civic authorities of the nome capitals, towns and villages continued to administer the localities as they had before. For instance, the position of sitologos, keeper of the royal granary, is attested to in village papyri from the Roman period and most village authorities such as the office of komarches the highest village official and komogrammateus in charge of assessing village taxes and grain, and grammateus metropoleis were retained by the Roman administration while the village watch and guards also continued in their necessary roles. The presbuteroi or village elders represented the interests of farmers and inhabitants of their village as well as distributing seed but their position of mediating between the needs of the farmers and the fiscal priorities of the state placed them in a precarious situation often coming to the forefront of confrontation between farmers seeking to protect what they saw as ancestral rights over the land and their livelihood and Roman officials who sought to increase efficiency and profit throughout their jurisdiction. Petitions, appeals and edicts addressing issues over tenancy, rights to cultivate land and the ever important distribution of water show this dynamic and the underpinnings of social tensions clearly in the papyrological record.
The once powerful priesthoods found themselves stripped of a lot of the authority they had retained under the Ptolemaic dynasty as their extensive estates were reduced and all temples were placed under the authority of a procurator. However they were still subsidized to an extent with what lands they retained, tax exemptions for priests and temple holdings, and occasionally direct subsidies, and they remained central to life in Egypt providing not only religious services, but temples also provided asylum and occasionally assisted in the collection.
Most of the former officials of the royal court such as the dioketes (minister of finance) and basilikos grammateus (royal scribe) were removed entirely and their functions taken up by Roman officials working under or laterally with the prefect, generally procurators selected from the Equestrian class as quaestors were not appointed to Egypt. These procurators and indeed, all of the prefect’s staff, were small in number but seem to have been reasonably effective in facilitating the no doubt difficult periods of transition. Notably was the Idios Logos, a procuratorial office which retained the name of the Ptolemaic royal official. The Idios Logos was responsible for land confiscations, accounts and auctions of the state, under Augustus this came to cover the roughly corresponding categories of the public treasury and the Imperial estates and was given to a procurator Augustii who worked separately from the prefect and directly under the Emperor.
Greek became the universal language of official texts and completely replaced already diminished use of Demotic Egyptian script which disappeared from use in all but the most local levels as authorized translations of texts not in Greek became necessary for official petitions and declarations. Although Latin is occasionally attested to, in Egypt as in most of the Eastern Mediterranean, it never replaced the use of Greek whereas the West was largely Latin speaking.
The vast maritime trade network which emerged in the Ptolemaic period and connected Egypt to the rest of North Africa, Rome, Syria, Arabia, Asia Minor and Bactria/India was immensely profitable and all important for the development and prestige of a pan-Mediterranean empire like Rome. Overland trade routes connecting port cities and quarries from the Red Sea coast and Eastern desert were maintained and protected by the Roman legions who guarded Egypt’s borders and these same legions assisted in the construction of new roads. The primary port cities and hubs in this network like Berenike and Myos Hormos retained their importance to trade in the East and were complemented by the construction of Portus in Italy which funneled goods into Ostia and Rome itself.
Given that Egypt offered such a diverse range of both affordable staples and luxury commodities, the sheer volume of Egyptian trade grew in the Empire and expanded to trade with far flung provinces. Taxation in kind ensured that vast quantities of grain produced in Egypt found their way to Italy and helped feed the mammoth appetite of Rome in particular. That said, this tribute was not normal trade as it neither brought currency or other goods back into the economy and was directly tied to the food needs of foreign cities. In fact, it is entirely possible that the increased need to export grain both as tribute to Rome and to bring profits in from regular trade led to a decreased carrying capacity for the land despite the increasing cultivation of wheat and decline in cultivation of fodder crops like barley, this could be one of the factors in the reduced population and apparent depopulation of some rural villages in the early 2nd Century, while the urban populations do not seem to have been impacted to the same extent, although near contemporaneous plagues and chronic issues over distribution of water have to also be taken into account.
Speaking of money and trade, the closed currency system that had existed under the Ptolemies was maintained by the Romans which presents a very specific problem as to what exactly did the Roman government did with Egyptian currency raised through taxation if it was not usable outside of Egypt, especially given that some taxes had to be paid in cash. In all likelihood, most of the cash was exchanged for other denominations with foreign traders looking to do business in Egypt where only Egyptian currency could be used and the money then remained in the Egyptian economy.
Under Roman rule a fittingly complex system emerged to handle the manufacturing, distribution and taxation of the multitude of goods and materials leaving Egyptian trade hubs. Port cities like Myos Hormos underwent extensive expansion in the Roman period and as raw materials were taxed at a markedly reduced rate a series of subindustries emerged to manufacture, refine or render these raw materials into components or finished products further on down the network with such manufacturers appearing first in Alexandria and eventually spreading to Italy in regions like Capua. The Romans also did some truly mind boggling work on the quarries in Egypt, building and operating on a staggering scale to dwarf the already monumental level that quarrying in Late Period Egypt had been undertaken in order to supply expensive marbles, granites and porphry for the Empire. On a less grand but equally important note, cheap bulk goods like Egyptian vinegar, grain and olive oil became available as staples in Italy and more expensive medicines, dyes, textiles, art and religious artefacts became sought after by the Roman elite making Egypt’s own captor into a captive consumer base.
Citizenship, Identity & the Law
While the ethnic and cultural distinctions between the inhabitants of Ptolemaic Egypt is often emphasized, it is still true that rather than being based firmly in ethnicity the status of individuals was dependent on their socioeconomic status and cultural performance. Individuals in the upper classes or other privileged groups like priests are sometimes recorded as “Greeks” for the purpose of tax exemption even in cases where the individual appears to be monolingual and only able to letter in Demotic Egyptian. The widespread use of double names, bilingualism, syncretism and even some degree of intermarriage in the chora all point to a system where cultural affinity and social standing was used to dictate belonging as much as ancestry, and this holds true more for the later period of Ptolemaic rule. Most important to the distinction between Roman Egypt and Ptolemaic Egypt however, is the absence of a legal system dictated by binary ethnic groupings. Although there were notable distinctions between Hellenes, native Egyptians and others like Jews, Arabs, Indians and Persians which were often recorded, most of the barriers to Egyptians advancing in political or military prestige were based on language and cultural affiliation which allowed for some upwards mobility. This is evident in the presence of double-names and names suspected of being approximated Egyptian names in the records of military officers and civil authorities as well as otherwise unusual declarations of ethnicity in the censuses and registers.
In the Roman period this system was heavily modified to better fit into a Roman framework and new a social hierarchy emerged based on citizenship and community. Naturally the most privileged group were Roman citizens, after this came citizens of Alexandria who were the only ones capable of applying for Roman citizenship in the 1st and 2nd centuries and were exempt from paying the poll tax. Outside of Alexandria was a binary system of “Hellenes” and “Egyptians”, (Aiguptoi or laoi, the poll tax I mentioned was called the laographia for this reason). Hellenes were not necessarily of entirely Greek descent but were all of the inhabitants of the poleis (Ptolemais, Naukratis and in 130 AD the new city of Antinoopolis). The new category of Egyptians now came to include not only those native Egyptians but any and all inhabitants living in the chora which just so happened to be home to a fairly large Greek population that now found themselves considered another demographic of the disenfranchised populace.
To further differentiate between members of the sweepingly diverse category of Egyptians and soften the change in status for the Hellenes, two overlapping categories were formed, the metropolites, that is the inhabitants of nome capitals who paid roughly half of what those in the chora did. Around the same time we have the formation of the “gymnasial elite”, who were not a further sub group of the metropolites as has been suggested but were a separate albeit overlapping group. Although the metropolite status was restricted to those living in the poleis, the gymnasium was central to the lives of Greeks in the towns and villages throughout the chora meaning that the privileged status Greeks and Hellenized Egyptians had previously held was somewhat accounted for in the new system. This relationship between both orders is evident both in the presence of individuals registered as metropolites and ephebes (gymnasial group), and that the strategos acted as gymnasiarch in the 1st Century AD (there was not originally a municipal office for this function) indicating that the office was nome-wide not restricted to the urban centers.
Qualifying for either order was generally conducted when a male reached the age of 14 and applied for the episkrisis which proved that either both parents belonged to the metropolites (if applying for metropolite status) or through patrilineal descent (if applying for the gymnasial order). The episkrisis was the method of assessing new members and deciding which ones were to be expelled. The metropolite order was more heavily influenced by Roman tradition as emancipated slaves gained the status of their former master and both parents had to be registered to qualify while the gymnasial elite clearly shows a Hellenic basis as the emphasis is not on the community that the individual came from but on the status of the father. This difference if we take into account that the metropolites were a Roman invention but in the poleis the gymnasial elite had a history under the Ptolemies which under the Roman period was extended to the chora and made into something similar to the metropolites.
Of course this caused some very real fiscal problems, as Greek and Hellenized Egyptians from the chora began registering into these orders and otherwise unqualified villagers married into the gymnasial elite and attained eligibility for their children. With a sizeable portion of the population not paying the full poll tax and the system of distinguishing between classes becoming increasingly muddled several reforms were made to close the orders and more effectively compartmentalize the population. In the mid 1st Century and probably the reign of Nero was a “a closing of the orders”, when nome-wide epikrisis assessments were held in the metropoleis and the restrictions around membership were tightened. To be eligible for the already more exclusive metroplite order it had to be proved that both parents were of the metropoleis and they resided in a nome capital (although freed slaves still retained their ability to gain metropolite status automatically), but the restrictions on the gymnasial elite were much more substantial, as applicants had to provide all the information of one applying for metropolitan status as well as prove they had at least one ancestor registered in the last revised archive which depending on the nome was as recent as the 70s AD or 4-5 AD leading to lengthy genealogical claims. To further restrict the gymnasial elite, all of the village gymnasiums were closed to help limit membership to the metropoleis. In this way the otherwise uncontrollable growth and regain lost revenue while restricting the amount of new members of this privileged group.
When it came to personal legal dealings (sales, marriages, etc) in Ptolemaic Egypt, a certain amount of concessions between Greek and Egyptian law is evidenced in various contracts although the overarching legal system that was applied always corresponded to the language the document was written in and separate courts handled cases involving Greek, Egyptian or Jewish law (this was the legal system allowed for the sizeable Jewish community and applied to contracts in Hebrew or Aramaic). For this reason, Greeks and Egyptians might have contracts written in either language in order to exploit the advantages in either legal system. By the late Ptolemaic period this led to crossreferencing and mixture of the two once clearly distinct systems in personal exchanges. This practice did not end with Roman conquest and many provinces and civitates foedarate had been allowed to maintain their own constitutions and civic laws, and Egypt was no exception. In a fascinating turn of events, during the late 1st century petitions and appeals based on citations from archival records of legal precedent emerged to counter the established Greek and Egyptian traditions based on past rulings made during the Roman period, which not only highlighted the negotiation of customs between the established legal system and Roman tradition but demonstrates the impact that a complex and extensive imperial bureaucracy was having on legal cases in Egypt.
You see although the Romans allowed the use of traditional Greek or Egyptian law, there were no longer separate courts dealing with one or the other exclusively and both Greek and Egyptian law were lumped together as “laws of the Egyptians” alongside Roman law which was used by Roman citizens and Egyptians (including Greeks) who found it to be preferable for their purposes. These laws were often treated as custom and retained their importance in private exchanges but do not seem to have held the same weight as local laws in other provinces as Roman officials had no qualms with arbitrarily overturning them. It did not take long under a system of Roman officials making rulings in cases which picked and chose between the three legal traditions for petitioners seeking restitution or a favourable ruling to cite past outcomes of similar cases to add weight to their arguments. So in personal dealings within communities it is likely that individuals continued to use whatever legal customs they might have in the Ptolemaic period but individuals who might otherwise have little recourse in the legal system applied could appeal to Roman officials to come up with their own rulings. The most common types of petitions mentioning past rulings are either from private individuals seeking compensation from and/or punishment for the individual who wronged them in a business transaction or arrangement (usually someone they know from their community or private life), or from multiple villagers in a community seeking respite or restitution from landowners or local authorities who have abused their land rights, levied unfair rents/taxes or otherwise threatened their ability to cultivate the land. And to an extent, these citations seem to have had some weight with Roman officials and rulings were made which took them into account and at the very least their frequency shows that they were seen as being important to the argument of the alleged victim.
Precedents still were not a part of the underlying legal system but they developed as petitioners sought take advantage of an administrative system whose function had more to do with protecting Rome’s fiscal interests than looking after the grievances of the average person. It is of course, impossible to know exactly how much knowledge of the various laws involved the average petitioner would really have had as local scribes would have drawn up, formatted and cited petitions for the individual. In any case, these petitions have a tendency to focus less on the letter of the law and more on the principle of the individual being wronged in an attempt to persuade the official to their side, which is fairly standard of petitions in the Ptolemaic period as well.
Sources
From the Ptolemies to the Romans: Political and Economic Change in Egypt by Andrew Monson
Land Tenure and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt by J.G. Manning
The Demography of Roman Egypt by Roger Bagnall and Bruce Frier
Egypt, Augustus, and Roman Taxation by Dominic Rathbone
The Organisation of Public Land in Roman Egypt and Gender & Identity in Roman Egypt by Jane Rowlandson
Fragile Hierarchies: The Urban Elites of Roman Egypt in the Third Century by Laurens E. Tacoma
Creating a New Local Elite: The Establishment of the Metropolitan Orders of Roman Egypt by Yanne Broux
Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt by Benjamin Kelly
Egyptian Temples and Priests: Graeco-Roman by Willy Clarisse
The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt by Richard Alston
Tradition, Precedent and Power in Roman Egypt by Ari Bryen
Agriculture and the “Taxes-and Trade” model in Roman Egypt by Peter Van Minnen
Soldier And Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History by Richard Alston
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, Ch.5 “The Roman Army in Egypt” by Rudolf Haensch
Leave a Reply