How Egypt Was Squeezed Dry

A History of Mankind (242)

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Under the Romans, Egypt wasn’t a common province, but the wealthiest corner of the empire and one that was squeezed hard for revenue, sometimes on very harsh terms.

Reports of Egyptian farmers who tried to escape excessive taxation by leaving their lands behind led to administrative measures to bind them to their place of origin, feudal style, ever since Augustus’ time; Egypt was also unique in having a near-stable population of insurgents in the marshy expanse of the Nile Delta, the “boukoloi” (rangers), who created a separate culture and even their own particular language¹.

Just as ethnic and social groups slowly dissolved into Romanitas in much of the empire’s West, in Egypt the need for high tax income from the local peasantry created precise definitions of class and status on the basis of descent and wealth. Romans, Alexandrians, Greek gymnasials (members of the Greek gymnasium), metropolites (the elite of the nome metropoleis, the bigger towns) and ethnic Egyptian villagers were all set apart by the administration.