Римдік Египет: Тарих, экономика және әлеуметтік құрылым

Roman province that encompassed most of modern day Egypt
the Roman subdivision which was called "Aegyptus"
Egypt was conquered by Roman forces in 30 BC and became a province of the new Roman Empire upon its formation in 27 BC. Egypt came to serve as a major producer of grain for the empire and had a highly developed urban economy. It was by far the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italy. The population of Roman Egypt is unknown, although estimates vary from 4 to 8 million. Alexandria, its capital, was the largest port and second largest city of the Roman Empire. Three Roman legions garrisoned Egypt in the early Roman imperial period, with the garrison later reduced to two, alongside auxilia formations of the Roman army. and granted additional privileges. The emperor Aurelian successfully besieged Alexandria and recovered Egypt. The usurpers Domitius Domitianus and Achilleus took control of the province in opposition to emperor Diocletian , who recovered it in 297–298. The Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt ceased to exist; Egypt was seized by Octavian as his personal possession. Local government in the hinterland outside Alexandria was divided into traditional regions known as nomoi. Egypt was unique in that its garrison was commanded by the praefectus Aegypti, an official of the equestrian order, rather than, as in other provinces, a governor of the senatorial class. Alexandria was the Mediterranean's second city in the early Roman empire, the cultural capital of the Greek East and rival to Rome under Antony and Cleopatra. To further compound the whole situation, Jews, who themselves were very Hellenized overall, had their own communities, separate from both Greeks and native Egyptians. In between those classes was the metropolite, who was almost certainly of Hellenic origin. Gaining citizenship and moving up in ranks was very difficult and there were not many available options for ascendancy. One of the routes that many followed to ascend to another caste was through enlistment in the army. Although only Roman citizens could serve in the legions, many Greeks found their way in. The native Egyptians could join the auxiliary forces and attain citizenship upon discharge. The different groups had different rates of taxation based on their social class. Roman citizens and citizens of Alexandria were exempted from the poll tax. Hellenized inhabitants of the nome capitals paid a low rate of poll tax, while native Egyptians paid a higher rate. Within the mētropoleis there was a Hellenic socio political élite, an urban land owning aristocracy that dominated Egypt by the 2nd and throughout the 3rd centuries through their large private estates. The city of Oxyrhynchus had many papyri remains that contain much information on the subject of social structure in these cities. This city, along with Alexandria, shows the diverse set up of various institutions that the Romans continued to use after their takeover of Egypt. Just as under the Ptolemies, Alexandria and its citizens had their own special designations. The capital city enjoyed a higher status and more privileges than the rest of Egypt. Just as it was under the Ptolemies, the primary way of becoming a citizen of Roman Alexandria was through showing when registering for a deme that both parents were Alexandrian citizens. Alexandrians were the only Egyptians that could obtain Roman citizenship. If a common Egyptian wanted to become a Roman citizen he would first have to become an Alexandrian citizen. The Augustan period in Egypt saw the creation of urban communities with "Hellenic" landowning elites. These landowning elites were put in a position of privilege and power and had more self administration than the Egyptian population. Within the citizenry, there were gymnasiums that Greek citizens could enter if they showed that both parents were members of the gymnasium based on a list that was compiled by the government in 4–5 AD. The candidate for the gymnasium would then be let into the ephebus. There was also the council of elders known as the gerousia. This council of elders did not have a boulai to answer to. All of this Greek organization was a vital part of the metropolis and the Greek institutions provided an elite group of citizens. The Romans looked to these elites to provide municipal officers and well educated administrators. Egyptian landholders paid about 3 times more than the elites per aroura of land in tax rates, and about 4 5 times more than Alexandrians per aroura of land in tax rates. Although Alexandria enjoyed the greatest status of the Greek cities in Egypt, it is clear that the other Greek cities, such as Antinoöpolis, enjoyed privileges very similar to the ones seen in Alexandria; for instance, like Alexandrians, Antinoöpolites were exempted from paying poll taxes. All of these changes amounted to the Greeks being treated as an ally in Egypt and the native Egyptians were treated as a conquered race. The Gnomon of the Idios Logos shows the connection between law and status. It lays out the revenues it deals with, mainly fines and confiscation of property, to which only a few groups were apt. The Gnomon also confirms that a freed slave takes his former master's social status. The Gnomon demonstrates the social controls that the Romans had in place through monetary means based on status and property.

The economic resources that this imperial government existed to exploit had not changed since the Ptolemaic period, but the development of a much more complex and sophisticated taxation system was a hallmark of Roman rule. Taxes in both cash and kind were assessed on land, and a bewildering variety of small taxes in cash, as well as customs dues and the like, was collected by appointed officials. A massive amount of Aegyptus' grain was shipped downriver (north) both to feed the population of Alexandria and for export to the Roman capital. There were frequent complaints of oppression and extortion from the taxpayers. For land management and tenure, the Ptolemaic state had retained much of the categorization of land as under the earlier pharaohs, but the Roman Empire introduced a distinction between private and public lands – the earlier system had categorized little land as private property – and a complex arrangement was developed consisting of dozens of types of land holding. Land's status was determined by the hydrological, juridical, and function of the property, as well as by the three main categories of ownership held over from the Ptolemaic system: the sacred property belonging to the temples ; the royal land belonging to the state and forming most of its revenue; and the "gifted land" (; ) leased out under the cleruchy system.]] By the end of the 3rd century, major problems were evident. A series of debasements of the imperial currency had undermined confidence in the coinage, and even the government itself was contributing to this by demanding more and more irregular tax payments in kind, which it channelled directly to the main consumers, the army personnel. Local administration by the councils was careless, recalcitrant, and inefficient; the evident need for firm and purposeful reform had to be squarely faced in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I. There are numerous indications of Roman trade with India during the period, particularly between Roman Egypt and the Indian subcontinent. Kushan Empire ruler Huvishka (150–180 CE) incorporated in his coins the Hellenistic Egyptian god Serapis (under the name ϹΑΡΑΠΟ, "Sarapo"). Since Serapis was the supreme deity of the pantheon of Alexandria in Egypt, this coin suggests that Huvishka had as strong orientation towards Roman Egypt, which may have been an important market for the products coming from the Kushan Empire.]] In the administrative provincial capitals of the nomoi, the mētropoleis mostly inherited from the Pharaonic and Ptolemaic period, Roman public buildings were erected by the governing strategos and the local gymnasiarch. In most cases, these have not survived and evidence of them is rare, but it is probable that most were built in the classical architecture of the Graeco Roman world, employing the classical orders in stone buildings. After the Roman conquest of Egypt, Augustus instituted a new Roman imperial cult in Egypt. Instead, the image of Augustus was identified with Zeus Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος ), and modelled on the example of Alexander the Great, who was said to have "liberated" Egypt from the old pharaohs. Serapis assumed the role of Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon as god of the afterlife and regeneration, the husband of the fertility goddess Isis, and the father of the child Horus, known to the Hellenistic world as Harpocrates. The Julio Claudian emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero all sponsored religious monuments and institutions at Coptos and Dendera. After Domitian's assassination, the emperor Nerva's patronage of Egyptian temples is recorded only at Esna. After inscriptions of Commodus, Greek inscriptions are no longer found in the temples of the Faiyum. ( and .) An Alexandrian Jew, Apollos, is recorded in the Book of Acts as speaking in the synagogue at Ephesus, and because of an interpolation to current by the 5th century – e. g. in the Codex Bezae – which suggested Apollos had been converted to Christianity in Egypt , Christianity's arrival has been dated to the 1st century, but there is no sure evidence of this, as Apollos may have been converted elsewhere. The fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century further isolated the Egyptian Romans from Rome's culture and hastened the growth of Christianity. The success of Christianity led to a virtual abandonment of pharaonic traditions: with the disappearance of the Egyptian priests and priestesses who officiated at the temples, no one could read the hieroglyphs of Pharaonic Egypt, and its temples were converted to churches or abandoned to the desert. Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, convinced the city's governor to expel the Jews from the city in 415 with the aid of the mob, in response to the Jews' alleged night time massacre of many Christians. The murder of the philosopher Hypatia in March 415 marked a dramatic turn in classical Hellenic culture in Egypt but philosophy thrived in sixth century Alexandria. Another schism in the Church produced prolonged disturbances and may have alienated Egypt from the Empire. The countless papyrus finds mark the continuance of Greek culture and institutions at various levels. The new religious controversy was over the Christ's human and divine nature. The issue was whether he had two natures, human and divine, or a combined one (hypostatic union from his humanity and divinity). In an intensely religious age, it was enough to divide an empire. The Miaphysite controversy arose after the First Council of Constantinople in 381 and continued until well after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which ruled in favour of the position that Christ was "one person in two natures" as opposed to Monophysitism (a single nature). Monophysite belief was not held by the 'miaphysites' as they stated that Jesus was out of two natures in one nature called, the "Incarnate Logos of God". Many of the 'miaphysites' claimed that they were misunderstood, that there was really no difference between their position be the Chalcedonian position, and that the Council of Chalcedon ruled against them because of political motivations alone. The Church of Alexandria split from the Churches of Rome and Constantinople over this issue, creating what would become the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, which remains a major force in Egyptian religious life today. Egypt and Syria remained hotbeds of Miaphysite sentiment, and organised resistance to the Chalcedonian view was not suppressed until the 570s.

The province was established in 30 BC after Octavian (the future Roman emperor Augustus) defeated his rival Mark Antony, deposed Pharaoh Cleopatra, and annexed the Ptolemaic Kingdom to the Roman Empire. The first prefect of Aegyptus, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, brought Upper Egypt under Roman control by force of arms, and established a protectorate over the southern frontier district, which had been abandoned by the later Ptolemies. The second prefect, Aelius Gallus, made an unsuccessful expedition to conquer Arabia Petraea and even Arabia Felix. The Red Sea coast of Aegyptus was not brought under Roman control until the reign of Claudius. The third prefect, Gaius Petronius, cleared the neglected canals for irrigation, stimulating a revival of agriculture. Petronius even led a campaign into present day central Sudan against the Kingdom of Kush at Meroe, whose queen Imanarenat had previously attacked Roman Egypt. Failing to acquire permanent gains, in 22 BC he razed the city of Napata to the ground and retreated to the north. The reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius were mainly peaceful in Egypt, with intermittent civil strife between Greeks and Jews in Alexandria. Claudius refused Alexandrian demands for self government under their own senate, and attempted to quell the unrest between Alexandrian Greek and Jews.]] The Sasanian Empire invaded the Nile Delta in the reign of Anastasius I , though the Sasanian army retreated after they failed to capture Alexandria or make significant gains. suffragans of the Patriarchate of Alexandria are enumerated in the following. The list here, however, does not cover other provinces such as Augustamnica, Arcadia and Thebais. Ancient episcopal sees of the Roman province of Aegyptus Secundus (II) listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees : The Egyptians had no love of the emperor in Constantinople and put up little resistance. Khosrow's son and successor, Kavadh II Šêrôe (Šêrôy), who reigned until September, concluded a peace treaty returning territories conquered by the Sassanids to the Eastern Roman Empire. The Sassanian conquest allowed Miaphysitism to resurface in the open in Egypt, and when imperial rule was restored by Emperor Heraclius in 629, the Miaphysites were persecuted and their patriarch expelled. Egypt was thus in a state of both religious and political alienation from the Empire when a new invader appeared.

An army of 4,000 Arabs led by Amr Ibn Al Aas was sent by the Caliph Umar, successor to Muhammad, to spread Islamic rule to the west. Arabs crossed into Egypt from Palestine in December 639, and advanced rapidly into the Nile Delta. The Imperial garrisons retreated into the walled towns, where they successfully held out for a year or more. The Arabs sent for reinforcements, and in April 641 they besieged and captured Alexandria. The Byzantines assembled a fleet with the aim of recapturing Egypt, and won back Alexandria in 645. The Muslims retook the city in 646, completing the Muslim conquest of Egypt. 40,000 civilians were evacuated to Constantinople with the imperial fleet, thus ending 975 years of Greco Roman rule over Egypt.