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Villages, land and population in Graeco-Roman Egypt*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

D. W. Rathbone
D. W. Rathbone
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Extract

The aim of this paper, which is what scientists would call a ‘working paper’, is to provide some orientation and ideas for future research on the level and distribution of population in Graeco-Roman Egypt. A traditional concern of historians has been to fix the size of the total population. On the shaky basis of an incidental figure in Josephus and a doctored passage of Diodorus Siculus, this is conventionally pitched, for the most prosperous periods of Ptolemaic and Roman domination, in the range of 8 to 10 million. In section 1 of this paper I discuss the literary sources at some length, not because of their value but in the hope of ending misleading citation of them. In the more positive section 2 I use general considerations and what documentary evidence we have to argue instead for a population in the Graeco-Roman period of from around 3 million to a maximum of 5 million.

Such vague total estimates, however, are of limited value. They serve as an introduction to and as parameters for the more historically interesting questions of relative increases and decreases over time, and of the density and distribution of population in relation to other socio-economic factors such as the quantity and type of land under cultivation, the prevailing agricultural regime, the scale of urbanisation, elite exploitation through taxes and rents, and the standard of living of the rural population.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 36 , 1990 , pp. 103 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

NOTES

1. A selection of orthodox views: Wilkcen, U., Griechische Ostraka I (1899) 487–91Google Scholar; Beloch, K. J., Griechische Geschichte IV (1925) 330 n.2Google Scholar; Segrè, A., ‘Note sull'Economia dell ‘Egitto ellenistico’’, BSAA 29 (1934) 257–305 (at 257–62)Google Scholar; Johnson, A. C., Roman Egypt (1936) 149, 245Google Scholar; Walek-Czernecki, T., ‘La population de l'Egypte ancienne’, Actualités scientifiques et industrielles 711 (1938) 7–13Google Scholar and ‘La population de l'Egypte à l'époque saïte’, Bull. Inst. Eg. 23 (1940/1941) 37–62Google Scholar; Jones, A. H. M., The later Roman empire 284–602 II (1964) 1040Google Scholar; Finley, M. I., The ancient economy (1973; ed. 2 1985) 31Google Scholar; Salmon, P., Population et dépopulation dans l'Empire romain (1974) 35–6, 112Google Scholar; Lewis, N., Life in Egypt under Roman rule (1983) 158–9Google Scholar; Bowman, A. K., Egypt after the Pharaohs (1986) 17–18Google Scholar. Dissident voices have been few: Beloch, J., Die Bevölkerung der griechischen-römischen Welt (1886) 254–9Google Scholar opted for a figure of 3 million in Diodorus, but later recanted (see above); Wachsmuth, C., ‘Zwei Kapitel aus der Bevölkerungsstatistik der alten Welt. 1. Die Ziffer der Bevölkerung Ägyptens’, Klio 3 (1903) 272–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar illustrated the untrustworthiness of the ancient sources but thought they were not far wrong anyway; Russell, J. C., ‘Late ancient and medieval population’, Trans. Amer. Philosoph. Ass. 48 (1958) Pt. 3 (at 78–80)Google Scholar and Butzer, K. W., Early hydraulic civilisation in Egypt (1976) 92Google Scholar proposed lower totals based on estimates of urban density (Russell, rather suspect) and the carrying capacity of the land (Butzer, a pioneering study). Cf. also Russell, J. C., ‘The population of medieval Egypt’, JARCE 5 (1966) 69–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baer, K., ‘The low price of land in ancient Egypt’, JARCE 1 (1962) 25–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Diod. Sic. 1.31.6–9:

*1. So CF, the best secondary manuscripts. The other manuscripts have τρισμυρίων.

*2. So all manuscripts except M (a secondary codex) which omits τριακοσίων. Most editors and commentators have followed M. Some replace τριακοσίων with τούτων, following the dubious arguments of Wilcken (n.1) 489–90. Wachsmuth, C., ‘Wirtschaftliche Zustände in Aegypten während der griechisch-römischen Periode’, Jahrb. Nat. ökonomie u. Statistik 19 (1900) 771–809Google Scholar (at 780 n.1) even proposed moving the ‘300’ to make the number of towns under Ptolemy I ‘3 < 3 >, 300’!

3. Porphyry, Quaest. hom. II. 9.383 ( = FGrH 264, F19a): . Steph. Byz., s.v. Διόσπολις ( = FGrH 264, F19b): .

4. Burton, A., Diodorus Siculus Book I. A commentary (1972) (esp. 8, 126–7)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues convincingly for a plurality of direct and indirect sources; cf. also Jacoby, , FGrH 250, F20Google Scholar; Beloch, , Bevölkerung (n.1) 256Google Scholar; Wachsmuth (n.1) 280.

5. Hdt. 2.177: .

Pliny, HN 5.60: Aegyptus super ceteram anliquitatis gloriam XX urbium sibi Amase regnante habitata praefert, nunc quoque multis etiamsi ignobilibus frequens.

Note that while Hdt. 2.165–6 put the warrior caste of Pharaonic Egypt at 410,000 men, Tac., Ann. 2.60 put it at 70,000 – read to Germanicus by a priest from a hieroglyphic inscription! Ampelius, Liber Memorialis 13.2 gives 70,000, presumably a corruption of the traditional 700,000. This looks like another case of further inflation of tradition to a significant figure.

6. A. S. F. Gow (ad Theocr. 17) usefully compares Fabius Maximus' vow of Great Games at the ‘significant’ cost of a third of a million asses (Livy 22.10.7; Plut. Fab. Max. 4.4–5).

7. Jos. BJ 2.385: .

8. Jos., Vita 415Google Scholar; or possibly with Titus, cf. Vita 422.

9. Asian cities (Jos. BJ 2.366): 500 cities also in Philostratus, Vita Soph. 2.1.4 and Apoll. Tyan. Ep. 78, but Pliny, HN 5.150 gives 282 communities, probably the official Augustan figure, which a fragmentary inscribed list suggests may have risen to just over 300 by the Flavian period (see Habicht, C., JRS 65 (1975) 67Google Scholar). Rome's grain supply (Jos. BJ 2.386): the idea seems to derive from Hdt. 1.192 on Babylonia's contribution to the Persian empire; cf. Rathbone, D. W., ‘The ancient economy and Graeco-Roman Egypt’, in Criscuolo, L. and Geraci, G. (eds.), Egitto e storia antica dall'ellenismo all'età araba (1989) 159–76 (at 173)Google Scholar.

10. For the fourteen-yearly census in Egypt see Hombert, M. and Préaux, C., Recherches sur le recensement dans l'Egypte romaine (Pap. Lugd.-Bat. 5; 1952)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Ann Hanson for pointing out to me that the census returns were used to compile the lists of poll-tax payers.

11. Cited by Wilcken, U., Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde I (1912) 237–8Google Scholar.

12. Diod. Sic. 17.52.6: .

Cf. Wilcken (n.11) 1.173. I take the ‘other cities’ which Alexandria surpasses to be those of Egypt; cf. Diod. Sic. 33.28b: the Roman envoys of circa 139 BC were impressed by ‘the mass of cities in Egypt and the countless tens of thousands of their inhabitants’ ().

13. Beloch (n.1) 257.

14. Populations: Besancon, J., L'homme et le Nil (1957) 161–5Google Scholar; Lane, E. W., The manners and customs of the modern Egyptians ed. 5 (1860)Google Scholar – different pages in the different reprints. Land: Barois, J., Irrigation in Egypt ed. 2 (1911)Google Scholar; Segrè (n.1) 258–9; cf. Kees, H., Das alte Ägypten: kleine Landeskunde (1956) 1Google Scholar. Note the breakdown of Barois' figures for the 1880s: Delta 14,026 km2, Fayum 1,233 km2, Nile valley 8,846 km2, making a total of 24,105 km2.

15. Segrè (n.1) 259 n.1, citing Naumann, , Das moderne Ägypten 52Google Scholar; Butzer (n.1) 47, 77, 89.

16. Cf. Butzer (n.1) 83, 91–2; Schlott, A., Die Ausmaße Ägyptens nach altägyptischen Texten (Diss. Tubingen 1969)Google Scholar.

17. See D. W. Rathbone, Economic rationalism and rural society in third-century A.D. Egypt (forthcoming) ch. 6 sect. D.

18. See Foxhall, L. and Forbes, H. A., ‘Σιτομετρεία: the role of grain as a staple food in classical antiquity’, Chiron 12 (1982) 41–90Google Scholar; Rathbone, D. W., ‘The weight and measurement of Egyptian grains’, ZPE 53 (1983) 265–75Google Scholar. I assume that the average artaba of unmilled Egyptian wheat weighed 30.3 kg, that its calorific value was 3,200 cal/kg (cf. Foxhall and Forbes 46 n.14), and that the population can be conceived of as consisting of six-member family units (cf. Hombert and Préaux (n.10) 154 for this as the average in census returns) with a daily subsistence requirement of 13,250 calories (reducing Foxhall and Forbes' estimate at 49 n.26 to the ‘moderately active’ level).

19. See Rathbone (n.9) 173.

20. Butzer (n.1) passim.

21. For the standard view see Butzer (n.1) 36–7, 47, 92–3; Wendorf, F. and Schild, R., ‘Archaeology and pleistocene stratigraphy of the Northern Fayum depression’, in Wendorf, F. and Schild, R. (eds.), Prehistory of the Nile valley (1976) 155–226Google Scholar. For an over-zealous statement of the minority view see Armayor, O. K., Herodotus' autopsy of the Fayoum: Lake Moeris and the labyrinth of Egypt (1985) 18–34Google Scholar.

22. See the discussion of Crawford, D. J., ‘Food: tradition and change in Hellenistic Egypt’, World Archaeology 11 (1979) 136–46CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

23. Segrè (n.1) 263–7. No totals are estimated by Uebel, F., Die Kleruchen Ägyptens unter den ersten sechs Ptolemäern (1968)Google Scholar.

24. Cf. Jerome, Comm. in Daniel 11.5 ( = FGrH II.260, F42): 200,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. For other indications of the size of field armies of the early Ptolemies see Winnicki, J. K., ‘Das ptolemäische und das hellenistische Heerwesen’, in Criscuolo, and Geraci, (eds.) (n.9) 213–30 (at 219–22)Google Scholar. These, however, are not totals, and include unknown numbers of mercenaries.

25. Bagnall, R. S., ‘The origins of Ptolemaic cleruchs’, BASP 21 (1984) 7–20Google Scholar.

26. For references see table 2 in section 4.3 below.

27. Cf. Ptolemy I's order that 8.000 soldiers taken prisoner at Gaza in 312 BC ‘should be distributed (sc. as settlers) among the nomarchies’ (Diod. Sic. 19.85.3–4).

28. Traditional view: Boak, A. E. R., ‘Egypt and the plague of Marcus Aurelius’, Historia 8 (1959) 248–50Google Scholar; Salmon (n.1) ch. 5 sect. Sceptical, D.: Gilliam, J. F., ‘The plague under Marcus Aurelius’, AJP 82 (1961) 225–51Google Scholar; Casanova, G., ‘Epidemie e fame nella documentazione greca d'Egitto’, Aeg. 64 (1984) 163–201 (at 176)Google Scholar, and ‘La peste nella documentazione greca d'Egitto’, Atti XVII Congr. Int. Pap. (1984) 3.949–56Google Scholar, but see now ‘Altre testimonianze sulla peste in Egitto’, Aeg. 68 (1988) 93–7Google Scholar.

29. In his history of this war Crepereius Calpurnianus is said to have made the plague originate in Ethiopia and spread to the Roman Empire through Egypt (Lucian, , Quom. hist. conscr. 15Google Scholar), but this variant is pure imitation of Thucydides.

30. Figures and evidence discussed in sections 4.3 and 4.4 below.

31. Tax document: Hobson, D. W., ‘P. Vindob. Gr. 24951 + 24556: new evidence for tax-exempt status in Roman Egypt’, Atti XVII Congr. Int. Pap. (1984) 3.847–64Google Scholar. Other documents, discussed by Casanova 1988 (n.28): BGU XIII 2242Google Scholar, P. Prag. I 19Google Scholar and SPP II 33Google Scholar; also BGU I 79Google Scholar, from the same meris as Soknopaiou Nesos and Karanis.

32. Kambitsis, S., Le Papyrus Thmouis 1 colonnes 68–180 (1985)Google Scholar. Other previously published fragments of the roll are: BGU III 902 and 903Google Scholar, PSI I 101 and 102Google Scholar and SB I 8Google Scholar ( = cols. 38, 27, 43, 45 and 30 respectively).

33. See table 4 in section 4.4 below.

34. Other reports of village-scribes in 166–70 cite a decision by Syriacus, which suggests he may have dealt with similar cases for other villages (in addition to Psenerienepsis) which had been settled and had therefore dropped out of this register. On PSI I 103Google Scholar see Kambitsis (n.32) 26 n.3.

35. The most recent discussion is by Casanova, G., ‘Le epigrafe di Terenouthis e la peste’, YCS 28 (1985) 145–54Google Scholar. He prefers to identify the year 20 as 311/2, but the plague which according to Eusebius began then is not specifically said to have affected Egypt.

36. For other Prefects' responses to similar problems see the edicts of M. Sempronius Liberalis (29 August 154) and of Q. Baienus Blassianus (21 February 168). Of Liberalis: BGU II 372Google Scholar = WChr 19, republished with commentary by Strassi, S., L'editto di M. Sempronius Liberalis (1988)Google Scholar. Of Blassianus: SB XIV 11374Google Scholar; cf. Lewis, N., ZPE 38 (1980) 249–54Google Scholar.

37. Cf. Kambitsis (n.32) 30 n.5.

38. Cf. Russell 1958 (n.1) 37–43.

39. The most recent discussion is by Delia, D., ‘The population of Roman Alexandria’, TAPA 118 (1989) 275–92Google Scholar. Fraser, P. M., Ptolemaic Alexandria II (1972) 171–2 (n. 358)Google Scholar opted on dubious grounds for one million.

40. One other possible piece of evidence for the size of Alexandria is a summary, extant in one sixteenth-century manuscript of a twelfth-century Syriac chronicle, of the number of temples, courts, houses, baths, taverns and porticoes in the five ‘quarters’ of Alexandria, excluding some suburbs: see Fraser, P. M., ‘A Syriac Notitia Urbis Alexandrinae’ JEA 37 (1951) 103–8Google Scholar; cf. Russell 1958 (n.1) 66. The numbers of courts given individually for the quarters total 6,152 and the houses 24,296, but the overall totals actually given in the text are 8.102 courts and 47.790 houses. If the lower numbers relate to the time of the document's last recension, which seems to have been around AD 300 (after, that is, the troubles and plague of the 260s), the higher ones may have been inadvertently copied from a similar earlier survey, perhaps of the first or second century AD. If we assume an average of 6 inhabitants in each of 47,790 houses and of 20 inhabitants in each of 8.102 courts, we get a total population of 450,000, to which we must add the residents of the areas excluded from the list. However I chose the figure of 20 inhabitants per court purely to show that this information could be compatible with a total population of 0.5 million, and the calculation has no independent value.

41. Strabo 17.1.20, 32, 42, 46. Rather implausibly high estimates of the population of Ptolemaic Memphis are made by Thompson, D. J., Memphis under the Ptolemies (1988) 32–5Google Scholar.

42. Amm. Marc. 22.16.2–5: sites such as Casium and Thebes are clearly mentioned only for their antiquarian interest; I less confidently put Pelusium, Memphis and Antinoe too in this category.

43. SPP V 101Google Scholar: cf. Wilcken, U., APF 6 (1920) 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. PSI III 230Google Scholar: cf. Wilcken, U., APF 6 (1920) 381CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kambitsis (n.32) 3 n.5.

45. P. Brem. 23 + P. Flor. III 333Google Scholar, joined by Wilcken, U., APF 6 (1920) 426–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Theatre: Petrie, W. M. F., Tombs of the courtiers and Oxyrhynchos (1925) 14Google Scholar. Corn-dole: Rea, J. R., P. Oxy. XL pp. 2–5Google Scholar.

47. SPP IV pp. 58–83Google Scholar. Daris, S., ‘I quartieri di Arsinoe in età romana’, Aeg. 61 (1981) 143–54Google Scholar counts at least 39 amphoda attested in papyri of Roman date. For the ratio of adult males to total population see section 4.3 below.

48. Packer, J. E., ‘Housing and population in imperial Ostia and Rome’, JRS 57 (1967) 80–95Google Scholar, as opposed to Meiggs' guess-estimate of 50–60,000. For a general critique of estimates of ancient urban populations see Duncan-Jones, R., The economy of the Roman empire: quantitative studies ed. 2 (1982) 259–77Google Scholar.

49. Lloyd, A. B., Herodotus Book II. Commentary 99–182 (1988) 219Google Scholar, ad Hdt. 2.177.

50. Habib-Ayrout, H., The fellaheen Engl. transl. (1945) 172 n. 57Google Scholar.

51. Hewison, R. N., The Fayoum: a practical guide ed. 2 (1986) 4Google Scholar.

52. Karanis: see Bagnall, R. S., ‘Agricultural productivity and taxation in later Roman Egypt", TAPA 115 (1985) 289–308Google Scholar. Epoikia: see Lewuillon-Blume, M., ‘Problèmes de la terre au IVe siècle après J.C.’ Actes XV Congr. Int. Pap. (1979) 177–85Google Scholar. See also the comments of Bowman, A. K., Gnomon 55 (1983) 463–5Google Scholar.

53. Pruneti, P., I centri abitati dell' Ossirinchite. Repertorio toponomastico (1981)Google Scholar; Drew-Bear, M., Le nome Hermopolite: toponymes et sites (1979)Google Scholar; Calderini, A. and Daris, S., Dizionario dei nomi geografici e topografici dell'Egitto greco-romano (1935– )Google Scholar. Braunert, H., Die Binnenwanderung (1964)Google Scholar covers a great mass of evidence, but is a social rather than an economic study, and is thin on historical synthesis. Some interesting ideas are trailed by Butzer, K. W., ‘Remarks on the geography of settlement in the Nile valley during Hellenistic times’, Bull. Soc. Geog. Eg. 33 (1960) 5–36Google Scholar.

54. See Butzer (n.1) 93, 105; Grenfell, and Hunt, , P. Tebt. 2 p. 361Google Scholar, who reject Wessely's estimate of 154 villages known in the Fayum before AD 300 and 198 in the fourth to eighth centuries in favour of over 165 before AD 300 and 170 later, but still admit that 117 settlements are not mentioned in papyri before the fifth century. Compare too the large number of new sixth-century Oxyrhynchite toponyms in Pruneti (n.53).

55. I ignore the common picture of decline in the Julio-Claudian period found in, for example, Milne, J. G., ‘The ruin of Egypt by Roman mismanagement’, JRS 17 (1927) 1–13Google Scholar; Bell, H. I., ‘The economic crisis in Egypt under Nero’, JRS 28 (1938) 1–8Google Scholar; Chalon, G., L'édit de Tiberius Julius Alexander (1964)Google Scholar. I have never been able to understand why this edict, a classic propagandist promise to remedy chronic problems, should be taken as evidence of a specific crisis. The other main prop of the traditional view, the tax documents from Philadelphia, is equally shaky: see Hanson, A. E., ‘The keeping of records at Philadelphia in the Julio-Claudian period and the “economic crisis under Nero”’, Proc. XVIII Int. Congr. Pap. (1988) 2. 261–77Google Scholar.