At the top Roman Egypt was ruled quite differently from Ptolemaic Egypt. Most Roman emperors never visited the country, which was governed by a well-organized bureaucracy headed by the prefect (a viceroy/governor). The prefect was Roman, of high (equestrian) rank, who was appointed by the emperor. The country was greatly exploited for its resources, especially its agricultural wealth, with Egypt providing as much as a third of the grain for the city of Rome, to support its disenfranchised population.
Roman citizens were of the highest social status in Roman Egypt. Below them was a social class made up of inhabitants of the four major Greek cities: Alexandria, Naukratis, Ptolemais (in Upper Egypt), and later Antinoopolis, the only new city founded in Egypt by the Romans. (During Hadrian’s visit to Egypt in ad 130-131 his lover Antinous drowned in the Nile, and the emperor founded the city in commemoration of this young man.) The third social class consisted mainly of Egyptians and all others who were not of the two higher classes. All Egyptian males (14-62 years old) had to pay an annual poll tax, but among this class the metropoleis, who were higher-status residents of the chief nome towns, paid reduced rates. At the bottom of the social strata was a large class of slaves.
Alexandria was the center of Roman Egypt, where the Romans built temples and other public monuments, and existing sites on the Mediterranean coast to the east and west of the city were also occupied. As the great commercial center of Roman Egypt, Alexandria had numerous warehouses in its harbor area, and huge granaries must have existed which supplied the grain ships that left for Rome every year in May or June. Although little is known archaeologically about its industries, Alexandria was certainly an important shipbuilding center. Highly desired craft goods, especially papyrus, linen, and glass vessels and beads, were produced there. Jewelry in gold or silver with imported gems, and other metal artifacts, including lamps and vessels in silver or bronze, were also made there. Pottery was made not only for indigenous use, but also for export, including containers for wine produced in the region.
For administrative purposes, Egypt was divided into four major regions, each of which was headed by an epistrategos, who was a Roman of equestrian class. As in Ptolemaic Egypt, the country was further divided into smaller units of nomes, which were administered by strategoi, who were Greco-Egyptians. one of the nome capitals, oxyrhynchus in Middle Egypt, has provided a huge amount of information about local administration, recorded on well-preserved papyri. From 1898 to 1908 over 100,000 fragments were excavated by two British scholars, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, in rubbish mounds of the ancient town, over 6 meters deep.
Oxyrhynchus is so named because a sacred fish with a pointed head was worshipped there. The oxyrhynchus papyri include texts with information about daily life and economic affairs in the town, and also a large collection of literary works in Greek (as well as some lost works of history and philosophy), and a few in Latin. More than 100 years since their discovery, papyri from oxyrhynchus continue to be reconstructed from fragments and translated at oxford university, under the direction of Dirk obbink, with 77 volumes published thus far. New imaging techniques, such as MSI (magnetic source images), have helped to enhance the reading of these texts.
Roman control of Egypt was first enforced by three legions of the army (later two), along with auxiliary troops and cavalry units. Garrisons were placed throughout the country with forts and stations along desert routes. Essentially the troops were there to ensure Roman governance of the population, extraction of taxes (the grain tax) and other resources (including gold mined in the Eastern Desert), and protection of the desert routes leading from quarries and from ports on the Red Sea. Roman troops in Egypt were also used in military campaigns to the east, such as against the Jewish revolts in the 1st and 2nd centuries ad, and the conquest of Arabia.
But even with the substantial Roman military presence in Egypt, there were still internal rebellions, with especially unfortunate consequences for Alexandria. In the 1st century ad conflicts occurred in the city between the Greeks and the large Jewish population there; many Jews were violently killed and their synagogues attacked. As a result of the Jewish revolt in ad 115-117, which began in Cyrene and spread east, huge numbers of Jews were slaughtered, not only in Alexandria but also throughout Egypt. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a revolt occurred in the Delta (171-172), brought on by a widespread plague. In 215, during Caracalla’s visit to Egypt, the emperor ordered the youths of Alexandria to be slaughtered. Queen Zenobia of Palmyra (Syria) conquered Egypt in 270, with much damage to Alexandria when the Romans retook the country. Another rebellion occurred during Diocletian’s reign, with Alexandria under siege for eight months (296-297).
In the far south of Egypt, when Roman troops were withdrawn from Syene (Aswan) in 24 Bc for the Arabian campaign, the city was sacked by the Kushites. Syene had been the negotiated boundary between the two powers, and Roman forces of Gaius Petronius invaded Nubia. Qasr Ibrim, where the 25th-Dynasty Kushite king Taharqo had built a mud-brick temple, was fortified by the Romans, and their army moved upstream, sacking the religious center of Napata. Eventually the Kushites, whose capital was at Meroe, sued for peace with Augustus, and the border was extended about 100 kilometers south of Aswan. Large-scale Roman reoccupation of Lower Nubia occurred, and there are several temples which date to Augustus’s reign. Qasr Ibrim, about 238 kilometers south of Aswan, was occupied by the Kushites and the site became a major Meroitic center.
Meroe continued to be the seat of the kingdom, with royal pyramids built in cemeteries to the east of the city. But by ca. ad 350-360 this very long-lived state had collapsed. Graffiti in Ge’ez, the written language of the Aksumite state, located in what today are northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, have been found at Meroe - evidence of an Aksumite raid there. It is likely that with the development of Roman trade with southern India via the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, Meroe became more marginalized as a source of the exotic raw materials from the Horn of Africa, as Aksum’s seaport of Adulis became the port of call.
In Ptolemaic times ports were founded on the Red Sea, especially during the reign of Ptolemy II. These included Berenike and Myos Hormos (probably the site of Quseir el-Qadim), which were reached via desert routes from Coptos and Edfu in Upper Egypt. In Roman times trade goods from the southern Red Sea region and India, as well as quarried stone from the Eastern Desert, were carried overland via the desert routes to the Nile and then taken downstream by ship or barge to Alexandria. Along these desert routes the Romans built posts and dug deep wells, still visible today. Two desert routes from Qena passed near the important quarrying sites of Mons Porphyrites and Mons claudianus. At Mons Porphyrites imperial purple porphyry was quarried - the only known source of this rock in the world. Used in major Roman monuments, purple porphyry can still be seen as reused columns in early churches in Rome. Mons claudianus was the source of a special grey granodiorite, while the pharaonic granite quarry at Aswan also continued to be exploited by the Romans.
In the Western Desert the Romans exploited the oases (especially Kharga and Dakhla) for their produce. At Dakhla Oasis nearly 250 sites that date to the 1st-5th centuries ad have been located. Irrigation farming was practiced intensively throughout the oasis and evidence of huge aqueducts has been found at Deir el-Haggar, extending from spring mounds to the area of cultivated fields. Bahariya Oasis was also farmed during the Roman Period, and archaeologists of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) have been excavating a huge cemetery there with multi-chambered rock-cut tombs for possibly thousands of mummies, many of which were buried in family groups. Although some decorated tombs in Bahariya Oasis date to the 26th Dynasty, the Roman Period ones come from an area popularly known as the “Valley of the Golden Mummies" Gold foil still covers the masks of the higher-status burials, which have not been robbed.
The Roman Period burials at Bahariya Oasis demonstrate the continuing importance of ancient Egyptian mortuary beliefs. Decoration on a female mummy from Tomb 54 (Mummy B) includes images of protective Egyptian deities, and although the hairstyle is Roman, the clothes are Egyptian in style.
At Hawara in the Faiyum Flinders Petrie excavated a large number of intact mummies from the Roman Period that were buried in coffins decorated with images of Egyptian gods and scenes relating to the mortuary cult, but with inset portraits painted on wooden panels (the “Faiyum mummy portraits”). Other similar coffins have since been found in other parts of Egypt. In these portraits the deceased is shown with Roman dress and jewelry, painted in an illusionistic style that is Greco-Roman and not Egyptian. In Alexandria, high-status burials in a complex of underground tombs and chambers of the Kom el-Shuqafa, which date to the 2nd century ad, also show a mixture of Egyptian and Greco-Roman architecture, decoration, and mortuary beliefs.
Under the Romans construction and decoration of Egyptian temples continued, and some earlier structures were repaired, including the Giza Sphinx. on temple walls Roman emperors were portrayed as Egyptian pharaohs honoring the gods and their names were carved in hieroglyphs in cartouches. Several Egyptian cults were popular throughout the Roman Mediterranean world outside of Egypt - including Rome. The cult of Isis, which had been popular outside of Egypt in Ptolemaic times, continued to be so in Roman times. But the Romans in Egypt also had temples of their own deities, and there were Greek cults which had not been syncretized with Egyptian ones. Egyptian priests continued to be trained to read Egyptian religious texts and perform temple rites, but there was a decrease in temple support and in the status of these priests.
Although persecuted by the Romans, Christianity by the late 2nd century was becoming increasingly accepted in Alexandria, where the local schools of Greek philosophy influenced the development of early christian thought. In the next century the new religion spread throughout Egypt. When the emperor Constantine decreed the Edict of Toleration in 311, the religion gained legal status in the Roman Empire. There were certainly conflicts in Egypt between Christians and worshippers of the traditional cults, and Christianity was still not widely accepted. But Christians were intolerant of pagan religion, and in 392 the emperor Theodosius decreed that Egyptian temples be closed - which actually occurred more gradually over the next two centuries.
Egyptian Christians used the Coptic alphabet, based on the Greek one, to write their spoken language - the last phase of the language spoken by the pharaohs. The last known hieroglyphic text was written at Philae in 394, with the last demotic text there dating to 452. Although a treaty was made in 451-452 with the Blemmyes and Nobadae, tribal groups of the Eastern Desert and Nubia, allowing them to continue worshipping there, Philae was finally converted into a church by ca. 575.
Christianity brought about the end of pharaonic Egypt - there were no more pharaohs who patronized the cults of Egyptian gods in temples with walls inscribed in the “sacred writing” of hieroglyphs, the most tangible and recognizable evidence of this very long-lived civilization. Christian beliefs of the afterlife were also very different from ancient Egyptian ones, and the concept of a mortuary cult with associated deities was alien to Christians. The monastic movement was invented in Egypt, with monks living in isolated places, including ancient tombs, which had been robbed long before. Alexandria, the great center of learning and cults of Greco-Roman Egypt, became the seat of the church Patriarch.
Despite over 1,000 years of intermittent rule and conquest of Egypt by foreigners, from the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty to the Roman emperors, pharaonic civilization was visibly present throughout Egypt. Under Roman rule there was a decline of state support for temples and the indigenous elite, but the cults of pharaonic gods continued to be practiced.
Foreign conquest did not bring Egyptian civilization to an end; this occurred with the increasing acceptance in Egypt of a new monotheistic religion that was intolerant of many - and all other - gods.
World History
