Villages, land and population in Graeco-Roman Egypt

TLDR

Historians have traditionally attempted to estimate Egypt’s total population, with conventional figures of 8–10 million based on unreliable sources, but such vague totals are of limited value and mainly serve as a backdrop for studying relative demographic changes, density, and distribution in relation to land use, agriculture, urbanization, elite exploitation, and rural living standards. The study seeks to orient future research on the level and distribution of population in Graeco‑Roman Egypt by critically reviewing literary sources and proposing a revised estimate of 3–5 million inhabitants. The authors examine literary sources and combine general considerations with documentary evidence to argue for a revised population estimate of 3–5 million inhabitants during the Graeco‑Roman period.

Abstract

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.