EGYPT WITHIN EMPIRE

The centrality of Egypt to the wider political economy of the Eastern Roman Empire in the early sixth century cannot be overstated. On one level, the significance of the region can be gauged in straightforwardly demographic terms. The cultural and administrative focal point of Egypt in late antiquity was the city of Alexandria, which, with Constantinople and Antioch, was one of the great metropoleis of the eastern Mediterranean, with a population of perhaps some 200,000–300,000. The lands of the Nile Valley beyond Alexandria may have supported a further five million souls, up to one third of whom, it has been estimated, may have lived in urban centres, a density of population which was not to be seen again in the Mediterranean world until the early modern period. While such figures can never be anything more than rough estimates, to suggest that perhaps one-quarter of the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire in about 500 lived in Egypt would not be wildly misleading.

The demographic contribution of Egypt to the Eastern Roman Empire was as nothing, however, in comparison to its economic significance. Egypt was the economic powerhouse of the late antique Mediterranean. On a recent analysis, it has been postulated that the ‘gross provincial product’ of sixth-century Egypt amounted to a minimum of some 20 million solidi. For the same period, it has been estimated that the region contributed three-eighths of all fiscal revenues collected by the imperial authorities from the eastern provinces.