As discussed previously, the agricultural wealth of Egypt supported a vibrant and growing urban society, but much of the wealth produced from agriculture remained in the countryside, creating there a demand for manufactured goods and also services. Unfortunately we are much better informed about the agriculture than about nonagricultural sectors of the economy, but we still have ample documentation for how crafts and industries were organized in Graeco-Roman Egypt.
For the most part crafts and industries were organized on a small scale, at the workshop level. The intervention of the state in craft production was limited, the collection of taxes notwithstanding. The Ptolemies sold licences for the production and sale of certain agricultural products, but this was a revenue measure rather than an effort to control the economy, and it was not pursued by the Romans (Manning 2007: 445). One of the most important industries in Egypt, as throughout the ancient world, was cloth production. Weavers seem to have been ubiquitous in Egypt, not just in the cities but also in the rural villages, and the major investment required, the expenses to pay for a loom, was modest. In fact, it is likely that weaving was not necessarily a full-time profession, but an activity in which farmers engaged during slow seasons (Wipszycka 1965; van Minnen 1987). Weavers and other artisans and merchants might form themselves into associations, termed synodoi. These did not fulfil the role of early modern guilds in the sense of determining who was licensed to enter a profession, but on occasion at least they helped to facilitate business by dividing up market territories and setting prices, as well as organizing the payment of the tax on trades, or cheironaxion, but they also performed a social function, providing dinners and also covering for burial expenses (Rathbone 2007: 708-9). Sometimes a weaving establishment might be larger than a workshop of one to four weavers. As we have seen, under the Ptolemies, Apollonios employed specialized weavers to make high-value clothing for the urban elite of Alexandria. During the Principate, another Apollonios, who served as strategos under Trajan, employed weavers on his estate in the Hermopolite nome, but it is likely that they produced largely to meet the needs of his household. There certainly were larger establishments, however. For example, in a petition concerning liturgical obligations a person describes himself as the proprietor of a weaving establishment in Alexandria that employed many linen weavers (P. Oxy. XXII 23410, 192 ad; van Minnen 1987, 47).
The proprietors of workshops in Egypt were generally of free status, but, unlike in agriculture, slave labor might also be employed. We know this especially from the methods used to train people in crafts and other skills important to the economy. In other parts of the Roman Empire such training often took place within the household, where property owners would train their slaves in important skills. Training slaves in this way allowed property owners to be better assured of gaining a return on their investment, and it also allowed owners to exercise greater control over skilled employees. In Egypt property owners had the same incentives to have control over skilled labor, but commonly the setting for training was the workshop of a master artisan, who would train children in his craft. Often apprenticeship contracts would involve a child being turned over to a master craftsperson for a period of several years. The master took on the obligation to instruct the apprentice, and, after a few years, might also pay the apprentice a wage (cf. the apprentice contract involving a weaver, Sel. Pap. I 14, P. Oxy. 725, Oxyrhynchos, 183). The apprentice might be either a free person or a slave. The master gained from this by having access to a supply of relatively inexpensive labor, the chief cost for which was the training he or she provided. It seems likely that the villages of Egypt were full of people trained in various crafts in this way, and the existence of apprenticeship contracts indicates the high value placed on their skills. This, in turn, provides some confirmation for the hypothesis suggested earlier that much of the wealth produced from agriculture remained in the countryside and supported a thriving village economy.
The state also might play a role in non-agricultural production when the resources needed for an enterprise were beyond the capacity of wealthy individuals to provide. In Roman times one important example would be the state’s organization of quarrying, such as at the Mons Claudianus and the Mons Porphyrites in the Eastern Desert in Egypt (Maxfield 2001). These quarries were important suppliers of marble and porphyry for imperial building programs, and the task of quarrying and transporting huge marble columns required the organization of numerous workers and vast resources. The private market was not capable of this. The state’s intervention certainly imposed substantial costs on society, but at the same time it generated employment for many people, from skilled carpenters to owners of draft animals, over a long period of time.
World History
