The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt

Egypt (Roman province)

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If a common Egyptian wanted to become a Roman citizen he would first have to become an Alexandrian citizen. These landowning elites were put in a position of privilege and power and had more self-administration than the Egyptian population. Within the citizenry, there were gymnasiums that Greek citizens could enter if they showed that both parents were members of the gymnasium based on a list that was compiled by the government in 4—5 AD. The candidate for the gymnasium would then be let into the ephebus.

There was also the council of elders known as the gerousia. This council of elders did not have a boulai to answer to. All of this Greek organization was a vital part of the metropolis and the Greek institutions provided an elite group of citizens. The Romans looked to these elites to provide municipal officers and well-educated administrators.

It is well documented that Alexandrians in particular were able to enjoy lower tax-rates on land. These privileges even extended to corporal punishments.

Romans were protected from this type of punishment while native Egyptians were whipped. Alexandrians, on the other hand, had the privilege of merely being beaten with a rod. The Gnomon of the Idios Logos shows the connection between law and status. It lays out the revenues it deals with, mainly fines and confiscation of property, to which only a few groups were apt. The Gnomon demonstrates the social controls that the Romans had in place through monetary means based on status and property.

The Patriarchate of Alexandria is held to be founded by Mark the Evangelist around The ancient religion of Egypt put up surprisingly little resistance to the spread of Christianity. Possibly its long history of collaboration with the Greek and Roman rulers of Egypt had robbed its religious leaders of authority. Alternatively, the life-affirming native religion may have begun to lose its appeal among the lower classes as a burden of taxation and liturgical services instituted by the Roman emperors reduced the quality of life.

In a religious system which views earthly life as eternal, when earthly life becomes strained and miserable, the desire for such an everlasting life loses its appeal.

Thus, the focus on poverty and meekness found a vacuum among the Egyptian population. In addition, many Christian tenets such as the concept of the trinity, a resurrection of deity and union with the deity after death had close similarities with the native religion of ancient Egypt. By it is clear that Alexandria was one of the great Christian centres. The Christian apologists Clement of Alexandria and Origen both lived part or all of their lives in that city, where they wrote, taught, and debated.

Over the course of the 5th century, paganism was suppressed and lost its following, as the poet Palladius bitterly noted. It lingered underground for many decades: Many Egyptian Jews also became Christians, but many others refused to do so, leaving them as the only sizable religious minority in a Christian country. No sooner had the Egyptian Church achieved freedom and supremacy than it became subject to a schism and prolonged conflict which at times descended into civil war.

Alexandria became the centre of the first great split in the Christian world, between the Arians , named for the Alexandrian priest Arius , and their opponents, represented by Athanasius , who became Archbishop of Alexandria in after the First Council of Nicaea rejected Arius's views. The Arian controversy caused years of riots and rebellions throughout most of the 4th century.

In the course of one of these, the great temple of Serapis , the stronghold of paganism, was destroyed. Athanasius was alternately expelled from Alexandria and reinstated as its Archbishop between five and seven times. Egypt had an ancient tradition of religious speculation, enabling a variety of controversial religious views to thrive there.

Not only did Arianism flourish, but other doctrines, such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism , either native or imported, found many followers. Another religious development in Egypt was the monasticism of the Desert Fathers , who renounced the material world in order to live a life of poverty in devotion to the Church. Egyptian Christians took up monasticism with such enthusiasm that the Emperor Valens had to restrict the number of men who could become monks.

Egypt exported monasticism to the rest of the Christian world. Another development of this period was the development of Coptic , a form of the Ancient Egyptian language written with the Greek alphabet supplemented by several signs to represent sounds present in Egyptian which were not present in Greek. It was invented to ensure the correct pronunciation of magical words and names in pagan texts, the so-called Greek Magical Papyri.

Coptic was soon adopted by early Christians to spread the word of the gospel to native Egyptians and it became the liturgical language of Egyptian Christianity and remains so to this day. Christianity was quickly accepted by the people who were oppressed in first-century Roman Egypt. Christianity eventually spread out west to the Berbers.

The Coptic Church was established in Egypt.

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Donatist Christianity blended with local African religious practices and beliefs. Donatus and some other African bishops stepped out of line according to the Romans and the Romans persecuted the Christians in Northern Africa. Since Christianity blended it with local traditions it never truly united the people against Arabian forces in the seventh and eight centuries.

Later on in the seventh and eighth centuries, Christianity spread out to Nubia. The reign of Constantine also saw the founding of Constantinople as a new capital for the Roman Empire, and in the course of the 4th century the Empire was divided in two, with Egypt finding itself in the Eastern Empire with its capital at Constantinople. Latin, never well established in Egypt, would play a declining role with Greek continuing to be the dominant language of government and scholarship.

During the 5th and 6th centuries the Eastern Roman Empire, today known as the Byzantine Empire , gradually transformed itself into a thoroughly Christian state whose culture differed significantly from its pagan past. The fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century further isolated the Egyptian Romans from Rome's culture and hastened the growth of Christianity. The triumph of Christianity led to a virtual abandonment of pharaonic traditions: The Greek system of local government by citizens had now entirely disappeared.

Offices, with new Byzantine names, were almost hereditary in the wealthy land-owning families. Alexandria, the second city of the empire, continued to be a centre of religious controversy and violence. Cyril , the patriarch of Alexandria , convinced the city's governor to expel the Jews from the city in with the aid of the mob, in response to the Jews' alleged nighttime massacre of many Christians. The new religious controversy was over the nature of Jesus of Nazareth. The issue was whether he had two natures, human and divine, or a combined one hypostatic union from His humanity and divinity.

This may seem an arcane distinction, but in an intensely religious age it was enough to divide an empire. The Miaphysite controversy arose after the First Council of Constantinople in and continued until the Council of Chalcedon in , which ruled in favour of the position that Jesus was "In two natures" due to confusing Miaphytism combined with Monophystism single.

The Monophysite belief was not held by the miaphysites as they stated that Jesus was out of two natures in one nature called, the "Incarnate Logos of God". Many of the miaphysites claimed that they were misunderstood, that there was really no difference between their position and the Chalcedonian position, and that the Council of Chalcedon ruled against them because of political motivations alone. The Church of Alexandria split from the Churches of Rome and Constantinople over this issue, creating what would become the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, which remains a major force in Egyptian religious life today.

Egypt nevertheless continued to be an important economic center for the Empire supplying much of its agriculture and manufacturing needs as well as continuing to be an important center of scholarship. It would supply the needs of the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean as a whole. The reign of Justinian — saw the Empire recapture Rome and much of Italy from the barbarians, but these successes left the empire's eastern flank exposed. The Empire's "bread basket" now lacked for protection.

Ancient episcopal sees of the Roman province of Aegyptus Primus I listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees , [18] suffragans of the Patriarchate of Alexandria:. From - , they incorporated Egypt once again within their territories , the previous much longer time being under the Achaemenids. A Byzantine counteroffensive launched by Emperor Heraclius in the spring of shifted the advantage, and the war was brought to an end by the fall of Khosrow on 25 February Frye, pp.

The Egyptians had no love of the emperor in Constantinople and put up little resistance. The Persian conquest allowed Miaphysitism to resurface in the open in Egypt, and when imperial rule was restored by Emperor Heraclius in , the Miaphysites were persecuted and their patriarch expelled. Egypt was thus in a state of both religious and political alienation from the Empire when a new invader appeared. The Imperial garrisons retreated into the walled towns, where they successfully held out for a year or more.

The Arabs sent for reinforcements, and in April they besieged and captured Alexandria. The Byzantines assembled a fleet with the aim of recapturing Egypt, and won back Alexandria in The Muslims retook the city in , completing the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Mummy Mask of a Man, early 1st century AD, Funerary masks uncovered in Faiyum , 1st century. In the obverse, Egypt is personified as a reclining woman holding the sistrum of Hathor. Her left elbow rests on a basket of grain, while an ibis stands on the column at her feet.

Zenobia coin reporting her title as queen of Egypt Augusta , and showing her diademed and draped bust on a crescent. The obverse shows a standing figure of Ivno Regina Juno holding a patera in her right hand and a sceptre in her left hand, with a peacock at her feet and a brilliant star on the left. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. April Learn how and when to remove this template message.

Maps of Roman Egypt. The Roman Empire during the reign of Hadrian — List of governors of Roman Egypt. Part of a series on the. Agnus Andropolis Kherbeta Butus near Desuq? Roman—Persian Wars and Sasanian Egypt. Muslim conquest of Egypt. From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest. The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from to Essays in Macro-Economic History , p. Coinage in Roman Egypt: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Ethnicity and Social Space in Roman Alexandria". On Government and Law in Roman Egypt. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Alexandrian Citizenship During the Roman Principate.

Outline Index Major topics Glossary of artifacts. Provinces of the early Roman Empire AD.

Late Roman provinces 4th—7th centuries AD. As found in the Notitia Dignitatum. Provincial administration reformed and dioceses established by Diocletian , c. Permanent praetorian prefectures established after the death of Constantine I. Empire permanently partitioned after But thoughts of maintaining a permanent presence in Lower Nubia were soon abandoned, and within a year or two the limits of Roman occupation had been set at Hiera Sykaminos, some 50 miles 80 km south of the First Cataract.

Egypt achieved its greatest prosperity under the shadow of the Roman peace, which, in effect, depoliticized it. Occasionally its potential as a power base was realized. Others were less successful. In gratitude, the citizens of Alexandria erected a statue of the horse. The only extended period during the turbulent 3rd century ce in which Egypt was lost to the central imperial authority was —, when it fell into the hands of the ruling dynasty of the Syrian city of Palmyra.

Egypt as a province of Rome

Internal threats to security were not uncommon but normally were dissipated without major damage to imperial control. The Romans introduced important changes in the administrative system, aimed at achieving a high level of efficiency and maximizing revenue. The duties of the prefect of Egypt combined responsibility for military security through command of the legions and cohorts, for the organization of finance and taxation, and for the administration of justice.

But the prefect was assisted by a hierarchy of subordinate equestrian officials with expertise in particular areas. It was in these growing towns that the Romans made the most far-reaching changes in administration.

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They introduced colleges of magistrates and officials who were to be responsible for running the internal affairs of their own communities on a theoretically autonomous basis and, at the same time, were to guarantee the collection and payment of tax quotas to the central government. These institutions were the Egyptian counterpart of the councils and magistrates that oversaw the Greek cities in the eastern Roman provinces.

Alexandria lost the right to have a council, probably in the Ptolemaic period. This extension of privilege represented an attempt to shift more of the burden and expense of administration onto the local propertied classes, but it was eventually to prove too heavy.

The consequences were the impoverishment of many of the councillors and their families and serious problems in administration that led to an increasing degree of central government interference and, eventually, more direct control. The economic resources that this administration existed to exploit had not changed since the Ptolemaic period, but the development of a much more complex and sophisticated taxation system was a hallmark of Roman rule. Taxes in both cash and kind were assessed on land, and a bewildering variety of small taxes in cash, as well as customs dues and the like, was collected by appointed officials.

Despite frequent complaints of oppression and extortion from the taxpayers, it is not obvious that official tax rates were all that high. In fact the Roman government had actively encouraged the privatization of land and the increase of private enterprise in manufacture, commerce, and trade, and low tax rates favoured private owners and entrepreneurs. The poorer people gained their livelihood as tenants of state-owned land or of property belonging to the emperor or to wealthy private landlords, and they were relatively much more heavily burdened by rentals, which tended to remain at a fairly high level.

The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt [Paperback]

Overall, the degree of monetarization and complexity in the economy, even at the village level, was intense. Goods were moved around and exchanged through the medium of coin on a large scale and, in the towns and the larger villages, a high level of industrial and commercial activity developed in close conjunction with the exploitation of the predominant agricultural base. The volume of trade, both internal and external, reached its peak in the 1st and 2nd centuries ce.

However, by the end of the 3rd century ce , major problems were evident. A series of debasements of the imperial currency had undermined confidence in the coinage, and even the government itself was contributing to this by demanding increasing amounts of irregular tax payments in kind, which it channeled directly to the main consumers—army personnel.

Local administration by the councils was careless, recalcitrant , and inefficient. The evident need for firm and purposeful reform had to be squarely faced in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. One of the more noticeable effects of Roman rule was the clearer tendency toward classification and social control of the populace.

Members of this group were entitled to lower rates of poll tax , subsidized or free distributions of food, and maintenance at the public expense when they grew old. If they or their descendants were upwardly mobile, they might gain Alexandrian citizenship, Roman citizenship, or even equestrian status, with correspondingly greater prestige and privileges. The Rule-Book prescribed conditions under which people of different status might marry, for instance, or bequeath property, and it fixed fines, confiscations, and other penalties for transgression.

Naturally, it was the Greek-speaking elite that continued to dictate the visibly dominant cultural pattern, though Egyptian culture was not moribund or insignificant. One proof of its continued survival can be seen in its reemergent importance in the context of Coptic Christianity in the Byzantine period. An important reminder of the mixing of the traditions comes from a family of Panopolis in the 4th century, whose members included both teachers of Greek oratory and priests in Egyptian cult tradition. The towns and villages of the Nile valley have preserved thousands of papyri that show what the literate Greeks were reading e.

In copying out a long list of taxpayers, the clerk translated an Egyptian name in the list by an extremely rare Greek word that he could only have known from having read the Alexandrian Hellenistic poet Callimachus; he must have understood the etymology of the Egyptian name as well. Alexandria continued to develop as a spectacularly beautiful city and to foster Greek culture and intellectual pursuits, though the great days of Ptolemaic court patronage of literary figures had passed. But the flourishing interest in philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, had important effects.

The great Jewish philosopher and theologian of the 1st century, Philo of Alexandria Philo Judaeus , brought a training in Greek philosophy to bear on his commentaries on the Bible. This anticipated by a hundred years the period after the virtual annihilation of the great Jewish community of Alexandria in the revolt of — ce , when the city was the intellectual crucible in which Christianity developed a theology that took it away from the influence of the Jewish exegetical tradition and toward that of Greek philosophical ideas.

There the foundations were laid for teaching the heads of the Christian catechetical school , such as Clement of Alexandria.

The City In Roman and Byzantine Egypt by Alston, Richard

And in the 3rd century there was the vital textual and theological work of Origen , the greatest of the Christian Neoplatonists, without which there would hardly have been a coherent New Testament tradition at all. Outside the Greek ambience of Alexandria, traditional Egyptian religious institutions continued to flourish in the towns and villages, but the temples were reduced to financial dependence on a state subvention syntaxis , and they became subject to stringent control by secular bureaucrats.

Nevertheless, like the Ptolemies before them, Roman emperors appear in the traditional form as Egyptian kings on temple reliefs until the mid-3rd century, and five professional hieroglyph cutters were still employed at the town of Oxyrhynchus in the 2nd century. Differences between cults of the Greek type and the native Egyptian cults were still highly marked, in the temple architecture and in the status of the priests. Priests of Egyptian cults formed, in effect, a caste distinguished by their special clothing, whereas priestly offices in Greek cults were much more like magistracies and tended to be held by local magnates.

Cults of Roman emperors, living and dead, became universal after 30 bce , but their impact is most clearly to be seen in the foundations of Caesarea Temples of Caesar and in religious institutions of Greek type, where divine emperors were associated with the resident deities. One development that did have an important effect on this religious amalgam, though it was not decisive until the 4th century, was the arrival of Christianity. The tradition of the foundation of the church of Alexandria by St. Mark cannot be substantiated , but a fragment of a text of the Gospel According to John provides concrete evidence of Christianity in the Nile valley in the second quarter of the 2nd century ce.

Inasmuch as Christianity remained illegal and subject to persecution until the early 4th century, Christians were reluctant to advertise themselves as such, and it is therefore difficult to know how numerous they were, especially because later pro-Christian sources may often be suspected of exaggerating the zeal and the numbers of the early Christian martyrs. But several papyri survive of the libelli —certificates in which people swore that they had performed sacrifices to Greek, Egyptian, or Roman divinities in order to prove that they were not Christians—submitted in the first official state-sponsored persecution of Christians, under the emperor Decius ruled — By the s, a decade or so before the great persecution under Diocletian, a list of buildings in the sizeable town of Oxyrhynchus, some miles km south of the apex of the delta, included two Christian churches, probably of the house-chapel type.

Diocletian was the last reigning Roman emperor to visit Egypt, in ce. Within about 10 years of his visit, the persecution of Christians ceased. The end of persecution had such far-reaching effects that from this point on it is necessary to think of the history of Egypt in a very different framework. No single point can be identified as the watershed between the Roman and Byzantine period, as the divide between a brighter era of peace, culture, and prosperity and a darker age, supposedly characterized by more-oppressive state machinery in the throes of decline and fall.

The crucial changes occurred in the last decade of the 3rd century and the first three decades of the 4th. With the end of persecution of Christians came the restoration of the property of the church. In a new system of calculating and collecting taxes was introduced, with year tax cycles, called indictions , inaugurated retrospectively from the year Many other important administrative changes had already taken place. In the separation of the Egyptian coinage from that of the rest of the empire had come to an end when the Alexandrian mint stopped producing its tetradrachms, which had been the basis of the closed-currency system.

One other event that had an enormous effect on the political history of Egypt was the founding of Constantinople now Istanbul on May 11, Second, it diverted the resources of Egypt away from Rome and the West. Henceforth, part of the surplus of the Egyptian grain supply, which was put at 8 million artabs about million litres of wheat one artab was roughly equivalent to one bushel in an edict of the emperor Justinian of about or , went to feed the growing population of Constantinople, and this created an important political and economic link.

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The cumulative effect of these changes was to knit Egypt more uniformly into the structure of the empire and to give it, once again, a central role in the political history of the Mediterranean world. The key to understanding the importance of Egypt in that period lies in seeing how the Christian church came rapidly to dominate secular as well as religious institutions and to acquire a powerful interest and role in every political issue.

The corollary of this was that the head of the Egyptian church, the patriarch of Alexandria, became the most influential figure within Egypt, as well as the person who could give the Egyptian clergy a powerful voice in the councils of the Eastern church. During the course of the 4th century, Egypt was divided for administrative purposes into a number of smaller units but the patriarchy was not, and its power thus far outweighed that of any local administrative official. Only the governors of groups of provinces vicarii of dioceses were equivalent, and the praetorian prefects and emperors were superior.

When a patriarch of Alexandria was given civil authority as well, as happened in the case of Cyrus, the last patriarch under Byzantine rule, the combination was very powerful indeed. The turbulent history of Egypt in the Byzantine period can largely be understood in terms of the struggles of the successive or, after , coexisting patriarchs of Alexandria to maintain their position both within their patriarchy and outside it in relation to Constantinople. Conversely, when weak they failed to control the church.

For the patriarchs of Alexandria, it proved impossible to secure the approval of the imperial authorities in Constantinople and at the same time maintain the support of their power base in Egypt. The two made quite different demands, and the ultimate result was a social, political, and cultural gulf between Alexandria and the rest of Egypt and between Hellenism and native Egyptian culture, which found a powerful new means of expression in Coptic Christianity. The gulf was made more emphatic after the Council of Chalcedon in established the official doctrine that Christ was to be seen as existing in two natures, inseparably united.

Despite the debilitating effect of internal quarrels between rival churchmen, and despite the threats posed by the hostile tribes of Blemmyes and Nubade in the south until their conversion to Christianity in the mid-6th century , emperors of Byzantium still could be threatened by the strength of Egypt if it were properly harnessed. The last striking example is the case of the emperor Phocas , a tyrant who was brought down in or The difficulty of defending Egypt from a power base in Constantinople was forcefully illustrated during the last three decades of Byzantine rule.

First, the old enemy, the Persians, advanced to the Nile delta and captured Alexandria. Their occupation was completed early in and continued until , when Persia and Byzantium agreed to a peace treaty and the Persians withdrew. This had been a decade of violent hostility to the Egyptian Coptic Christians; among other oppressive measures, the Persians are said to have refused to allow the normal ordination of bishops and to have massacred hundreds of monks in their cave monasteries.

The Persian withdrawal hardly heralded the return of peace to Egypt. In Arabia events were taking place that would soon bring momentous changes for Egypt. These were triggered by the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina and by his declaration in ce of a holy war against Byzantium.

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