An anti-imperial revolt led by Domitius Domitianus broke out in Egypt around 297, inspired by fiscal and social oppression. Domitianus was declared emperor and controlled the country for almost a year, until Diocletian personally went to Egypt to quell the revolt (Schwartz 1975; Boak and Youtie 1957; Barnes 1982: 11-12; Palme 2007). The edict of the Prefect Aristius Optatus of 16 March 297 (PCairlsid 1) spoke directly to the provincials, promising imperial benevolence in exchange for the prompt payment of taxes: ‘‘For it is fitting that each person discharge with the utmost enthusiasm everything that is due to their loyalty, and, if anyone should be seen doing otherwise after such concessions, he will risk punishment... The collectors of every kind of tax are also reminded to be on their guard, with all their strength, for, if anyone should be seen transgressing, he will risk his head’’ (transl. Parsons 2007: 174). Tax collectors no longer simply risked a fine, as in previous years, but could be sentenced to death.
In 284 the emperor Diocletian (284-305) undertook a comprehensive reform. He divided the empire into an eastern and western half, and Egypt itself was divided into two smaller provinces (Bagnall 1993: 64). Egypt was also forced to give up its special closed currency system and its special dating-system, and was assimilated to the Roman norm. Latin became the language of bureaucracy, probably in the attempt to cement, at least in terms of language, a fragmented empire. Diocletian’s reforms have been read as a sign of the decline of the city council and of the bureaucratization of Late Antique Egypt: in the first half of the fourth century most civic offices of the city disappeared and new authorities were created, and individual officials, such as the logistes or curator civitatis, superseded the municipal council as the chief executive of the city and the governor of the district. The magistrates connected with the gymnasium and the ephebate, the Greek curriculum, and eventually also the councillors and the gymnasiarchs declined (Bagnall 1993: 60; Keenan 2007; Kiss 2007; van Minnen 2007; Gascou 2008).
One reason for these changes may be sought in the spread of Christianity and the decline of Paganism: while Christian bishops appeared and gradually superseded pagan High Priests, the Greek educational and recreational center, the gymnasium, was overtaken by a new concept of both education and entertainment. Alexandria was the cultural capital of the Mediterranean and naturally played a special part in the rise of Christianity, with a number of scholars, mystics, heretics, and saints. Origen worked on commentaries of the Old and New Testament with a large staff of pupils and was tortured and killed in the persecution launched by Decius in 250-1 (Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 6.23), while St Anthony left his home around 270 and took refuge in the Western Desert of rock and sand as a Christian ascetic. Diocletian and his co-emperors (303-11) launched the most violent persecution against the Christians: a decree of Diocletian in 303 ordered a systematic destruction of churches and sacred books and a general enslavement of Christians, so that this period has come down to us as the ‘‘Age of the Martyrs.’’
In 313 Emperor Constantine and his colleague Licinius issued edicts of toleration and Christianity was made the official religion of the empire. After defeating Licinius in 324 and founding Constantinople (modern Istanbul) as a ‘‘Second Rome,’’ Constantine directed Egypt’s taxes to the new capital, and Egypt thereafter was for more than three centuries part of the Byzantine Empire. Most of that time was peaceful (324-617) apart from Egypt’s role in supporting Heraclius’ usurpation from Phocas. In 324, the ecumenical Council of Nicaea established the patriarchate of Alexandria as second only to that of Rome, with powers over both Egypt and Libya, but Christianization was slow and regional. The History of the Monks of Egypt, certainly prone to hyperbole, reports that Oxyrhynchos was ‘‘so full of monasteries inside that the monks themselves make the walls resound, and it is surrounded outside by other monasteries, so that there is another city outside the city. . . There are twelve churches in it. . . ten thousand monks. . . and twenty thousand virgins.’’ (Historia monachorum in Aegypto 5. trans. Parsons 2007: 193). The papyri
Figure 10.3 The monastery of St Simeon (strictly Anba Hadra) at Aswan, a seventh-century foundation substantially rebuilt in the tenth century and dedicated to a hermit saint who was bishop of Aswan during the Patriarchate ofTheophilos (389-412). Courtesy Alan K. Bowman.
Show that traditional religion coexisted with Christianity until at least the fifth century, but by the sixth century, Oxyrhynchos had at least thirty churches (POxy 11.1357; 67.4618-19).
Rebellious Alexandria soon came into conflict with Constantinople, as it was the home of alternative Christianities and heresies. Among others the Gnostics (literally ‘‘Those who Know’’) saw the universe in a Neo-Platonic way, the presbyter Areios (died 336) founded the Arian heresy that minimized the divinity of Christ, and the bishop Athanasius (bishop 328, died 373) waged doctrinal war over the relation between the Son and the Father - Athanasius’ view that they both proceed from the same substance has prevailed to the present day as the orthodox doctrine. The Egyptian desert hosted the legendary lives of the Desert Fathers, and the rise of monasticism and the monastery in Egypt deeply affected and stimulated the rest of the empire. Nevertheless, despite the triumph of Christianity, some Greek aristocrats in Egypt looked back nostalgically at Greek culture (Cameron 2007), and magic continued to flourish, almost as an anti-church. Egypt also saw some pagan martyrs, victims of the intolerance of Christians. In 391, when the emperor Theodosius decreed the closing of pagan temples and the banning of pagan cults, the mob of Alexandria, encouraged by the patriarch Theophilus, destroyed the Serapeion, and possibly the library that it contained, and in 415 the pagan mathematician and philosopher Hypatia, the first female lecturer in Alexandria, was stoned to death in the church of the Kaisareion: ‘‘They watch for her to return home from somewhere, and throwing her out of her carriage, they drag her to the church known as the Kaisareion, and stripping off her clothes they took her life with pieces of broken pot, and after tearing her apart limb by limb they brought the limbs together at the so-called Kinaron and consumed them with fire’’ (Socrates Hist. Eccl. 3.10; transl. Parsons 2007: 195).
Thereafter, a turning point was the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which marked the beginning of the Monophysite schism, separating the Catholics from the Egyptian church. The Egyptian church, also called Coptic, from the Egyptian language, written in Greek letters, that was becoming predominant, never recognized the authority of Constantinople, and the schism has lasted for centuries up to the present day as a form of national religion (Emmel 2007). These doctrinal wars eventually marginalized Egypt from the rest of the empire: although the Alexandrian patriarchs were enormously important in the Christological disputes, Alexandria was eventually overtaken by Constantinople and lost ground also to Antioch as a regional political center (Bagnall 2007: 4-5).
Documentary papyri of the fifth and sixth century come mostly from the archives of great families of landowners. Among them it is worth mentioning the archive of the Apions, a powerful Oxyrhynchite family of the fifth and the sixth centuries with large landholdings in the Oxyrhynchite Nome and in the Fayum (Mazza 2001; Alston 2002: 313-16; POxy Vols. 6 and 16). The Apions were so influential that they had political careers both in Egypt and Constantinople and may even have married into the imperial family. Their estate archive has been preserved with a huge number of documents, giving us details on the management of the land and insights into the life of the fifth and sixth centuries. Numerous accounts record payments and charitable donations from the Apions to churches, monasteries, and hospitals and enlighten us on the links between the ecclesiastical administration and the aristocracy. The Apions supported circus factions, for instance, by sending wine to the faction of the Blues, showing the important role played by the Hippodrome in sixth-century civic life (POxy 27.2480; Alston 2002: 313-16). The archive seems to point to a continuity of the institutions (such as the curator civitatis) which had been introduced during the fourth century, although, naturally, the survival of these offices does not guarantee that they did not have their own evolution. In a recent study Beaucamp (2007) argues, on the basis of the papyri, that there was no general, religiously motivated opposition to Justinian’s legislation in Egypt and that Egypt was no more distinct in the field of law than any other province in the empire.
Under Justinian (527-65) a terrible plague and an earthquake devastated Egypt and spread throughout the eastern empire, and the religious persecutions of the Christian Copts and the growing burden of taxation fueled the Egyptians’ conflicts with and hatred of the Byzantine court. Egypt was in constant turmoil. Frequent riots afflicted Alexandria, while the Thebaid and Upper Egypt were raided by brigands, Beduin, and Nubians. The peace enjoyed by Egypt under the Byzantine Empire was interrupted by the role of the province in Heraclius’s usurpation. Under the reign of Phocas (602-10) Heraclius, the Prefect of Africa, attempted a coup d’etat while his general Nicetas planned to occupy Alexandria and cut off the corn supplies from
Constantinople. Phocas hurried from Syria supported by Bonosus who failed to conquer Alexandria. Heraclius was master of Egypt and Nicetas the governor of Alexandria. For the thirty years between the accession of Heraclius and the Arab conquest we depend on ecclesiastical sources with a strong religious bias. In the seven century in Egypt religious issues predominated and the interest in politics declined (Butler 1978: 6-7, 44; Kiss 2007).
In the time of the Coptic Patriarch Anastasius (died 616) and of the emperor Maurice, the Persians invaded Egypt and ended temporarily Byzantine rule, which was restored in 629. The country was devastated by battles and famines, and Alexandria was swollen by refugees who had come to Egypt after the Persian invasion of Syria. In 618 the keys of Alexandria were sent to Chosroes along with spoils of war. (Butler 1978: 72-80; Bagnall 2007: 1-3). While the Persians had been relatively tolerant of the Copts, the restoration of Roman domination in Egypt in 631 was followed by ten years of persecutions, which, in effect, opened the way to the conquering armies of Islam. In 640 ‘Amr bin al-‘AsI, a general of the Caliph Omar, besieged the fortress of Babylon in the Delta and subsequently conquered Alexandria. A treaty, signed by the patriarch Cyrus and by ‘Amr on 8 November 641, sealed the Arab conquest of Egypt (Butler 1978: 310-20; Sijpestein 2007).
The theory that Egypt was hostile to the Byzantine Empire and that the local population welcomed the Arabs as liberators should be rejected, as the Arabs entered Egypt thanks to the support of the privileged, not the lower classes. Furthermore, Egypt was not alienated from the empire. Wealthy Egyptians, such as the Apions, sometimes lived in Constantinople (POxy 43.4397), monks traveled to the capital on financial business (POxy 43.4397) and villagers sent delegations to defend their rights there. Naturally, the literary sources, all concerned with theological issues, do not expand on these details, something that the documents do - and Byzantine Egypt is probably the most documented of the ancient societies. Probably, the cities of Egypt remained prosperous until the Persian invasion, and the villages also continued to exist, although the growing number of monasteries as rural centers transformed the geography and connectivity of the countryside (Bagnall 2007: 4-10).
World History
