Although the Egyptian census returns are often poorly preserved, they contain much valuable information on the form of ordinary households; in better-preserved returns, the kinship between household members can virtually always be reconstructed with considerable confidence. As will emerge in subsequent chapters, the form of Egyptian households is of considerable importance to Egyptian demography.

We begin with a brief discussion of Egypt's probable population during the early Roman Empire, then treat in more detail the composition of households, especially the large differences between the metropoleis and villages.

The population of Egypt

Roman Egypt's total population has long been the subject of dispute, mainly because the two principal literary sources contradict each other. The historian Diodorus Siculus, writing toward the end of the first century BC, places current Egyptian population at 3 million (1.31.6–9). By contrast, Josephus, in the latter half of the following century, gives a population of 7.5 million for Egypt exclusive of Alexandria, an estimate allegedly based on the amount collected from the poll tax (BJ 2.385, in a speech). This would imply a total Egyptian population on the order of eight to nine million.

Many historians accept Josephus' estimate as close to accurate; accordingly they denigrate or explain away Diodorus' figure. However, not only is Josephus' estimate of doubtful provenance—avowedly not derived from an actual count, in any case—it also supposes a population level that Egypt would not reattain until the late nineteenth century, after the introduction of perennial irrigation and Egypt's partial integration into European industrial economies. Dominic Rathbone has recently argued that Diodorus deserves more credence than Josephus, and that for various reasons, Roman Egypt's population must in any case have been far lower than Josephus.