During the era of the Roman Empire, most of modern-day Egypt, except for the Sinai, was ruled as the imperial province of Aegyptus, from the time it was conquered by Roman forces in 30 BC, to AD 642. The last few centuries of this period has been called late antique Egypt. The province was bordered by Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, later Arabia Petraea, to the East.
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.Maddison, Angus (2007), Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History, p. 55, table 1.14, Oxford University Press, The population of Roman Egypt is unknown, although estimates vary from . Alexandria, its capital, was the largest port and second largest city of the Roman Empire.Popkin, M. (2022), Souvenirs and the Experience of Empire in Ancient Rome, Cambridge University Press, p61Reinhold, M. (2002), Studies in Classical History and Society, Oxford University Press, p36
Three Roman legions garrisoned Egypt in the early Roman imperial period, with the garrison later reduced to two, alongside formations of the Roman army. The major town of each nome (administrative region) was known as a metropolis and granted additional privileges. The inhabitants of Roman Egypt were divided by social class along ethnic and cultural lines. Most inhabitants were peasant farmers, who lived in rural villages and spoke the Egyptian language (which evolved from the Demotic Egyptian of the Late and Ptolemaic periods to Coptic under Roman rule). In each metropolis, the citizens spoke Koine Greek and followed a Hellenistic culture. However, there was considerable social mobility, increasing urbanization, and both the rural and urban population were involved in trade and had high literacy rates. In AD 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana gave Roman citizenship to all free Egyptians.
The Antonine Plague struck in the late 2nd century, but Roman Egypt recovered by the 3rd century. Having escaped much of the Crisis of the Third Century, Roman Egypt fell under the control of the breakaway Palmyrene Empire after an invasion of Egypt by Zenobia in 269. 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. Diocletian then introduced administrative and economic reforms. These coincided with the Christianization of the Roman Empire, especially the growth of Christianity in Egypt. After Constantine the Great gained control of Egypt in AD 324, the emperors promoted Christianity. The Coptic language, derived from earlier forms of Egyptian, emerged among the Christians of Roman Egypt.
Under Diocletian the frontier was moved downriver to the First Cataract of the Nile at Syene (Aswan), withdrawing from the Dodekaschoinos region. This southern frontier was largely peaceful for many centuries, likely garrisoned by limitanei of the late Roman army. Regular units also served in Egypt, including Scythians known to have been stationed in the Thebaid by Justinian the Great (). Constantine introduced the gold solidus coin, which stabilized the economy. The trend towards private ownership of land became more pronounced in the 5th century and peaked in the 6th century, with large estates built up from many individual plots. Some large estates were owned by Christian churches, and smaller land-holders included those who were themselves both tenant farmers on larger estates and landlords of tenant-farmers working their own land. The First Plague Pandemic arrived in the Mediterranean Basin with the emergence of the Justinianic Plague at Pelusium in Roman Egypt in 541.
Egypt was conquered by the Sasanian Empire in 618, who ruled the territory for a decade, but it was returned to the Eastern Roman Empire by the defection of the governor in 628. Egypt ceased to be a part of the Roman Empire in 642, when it became part of the Rashidun Caliphate following the Muslim conquest of Egypt.
Formation
The Ptolemaic Kingdom (, the Thirty-first Dynasty) had ruled Egypt since the Wars of Alexander the Great that overthrew Achaemenid Egypt. The Ptolemaic pharaoh Cleopatra VII sided with Julius Caesar during Caesar's Civil War (49–45 BC) and Caesar's subsequent Roman dictatorship. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Cleopatra aligned Egypt with Mark Antony, the Roman triumvir who controlled the eastern Mediterranean. In the last war of the Roman Republic (32–30 BC), Antony (with Cleopatra's support) fought against Octavian. The decisive naval Battle of Actium was won by Octavian, who then invaded Egypt. In 30 August BC, following the Battle of Alexandria the defeated Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves. The Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt ceased to exist; Egypt was seized by Octavian as his personal possession.
The legal status was settled in 27 January BC, when Octavian was granted the honorific name of Augustus and Egypt became an imperial province of the newly established Roman Empire. Augustus (and succeeding Roman emperors) ruled Egypt as the Roman pharaoh. The Ptolemaic institutions were dismantled: the government administration was wholly reformed, as was the social structure, though some bureaucratic elements were maintained. The Graeco-Egyptian legal system of the Hellenistic period continued in use, but within the bounds of Roman law. The tetradrachm coinage minted at the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria continued to be the currency of an increasingly monetized economy, but its value was made equal to the Roman denarius. Augustus introduced land reforms that enabled wider entitlement to private ownership of land (previously rare under the Ptolemaic cleruchy system of allotments under royal ownership) and the local administration reformed into a Roman liturgical system, in which land-owners were required to serve in local government. The priesthoods of the Ancient Egyptian deities and Hellenistic religions of Egypt kept most of their temples and privileges, and in turn the priests also served the Roman imperial cult of the deified emperors and their families.
Roman government in Egypt
As Rome overtook the Ptolemaic system in place for areas of Egypt, they made many changes. The effect of the Roman conquest was at first to strengthen the position of the Greeks and of Hellenism against Egyptian influences. Some of the previous offices and names of offices under the Hellenistic Ptolemaic rule were kept, some were changed, and some names would have remained but the function and administration would have changed.
The Romans introduced important changes in the administrative system, aimed at achieving a high level of efficiency and maximizing revenue. The duties of the prefect of Aegyptus combined responsibility for military security through command of the legions and cohorts, for the organization of finance and taxation, and for the administration of justice.
The Egyptian provinces of the Ptolemaic Kingdom remained wholly under Roman rule until the administrative reforms of the augustus Diocletian (). In these first three centuries of Roman Egypt, the whole country came under the central Roman control of single governor, officially called in and more usually referred to as the or the . The double title of the governor as prefect "of Alexandria and Egypt" reflects the distinctions between Upper and Lower Egypt and Alexandria, since Alexandria, outside the Nile Delta, was not within the then-prevailing traditional geographic boundaries of Egypt.
From the 1st century BC, the Roman governor of Egypt was appointed by the emperor for a multi-year term and given the rank of prefect (). Both the governor and the major officials were of equestrian rank (unlike other Roman provinces, which had governors of senatorial rank). The prefect of Egypt had more or less equivalent civil and military powers (imperium) to a proconsul, since a Roman law (a ) granted him "proconsular imperium" (). Unlike in senatorial provinces, the prefect was responsible for the collection of certain taxes and for the organization of the all-important grain shipments from Egypt (including the annona). Because of these financial responsibilities, the governor's administration had to be closely controlled and organized. The governorship of Egypt was the second-highest office available to the equestrian class on the cursus honorum (after that of the praetorian prefect (), the commander of the imperial Praetorian Guard) and one of the highest-paid, receiving an annual salary of 200,000 sesterces (a "ducenarian" post). The prefect was appointed at the emperor's discretion; officially the governors' status and responsibilities mirrored those of the augustus himself: his fairness () and his foresight (). From the early 2nd century, service as the governor of Egypt was frequently the penultimate stage in the career of a praetorian prefect.
The governor's powers as prefect, which included the rights to make edicts () and, as the supreme judicial authority, to order capital punishment (), expired as soon as his successor arrived in the provincial capital at Alexandria, who then also took up overall command of the Roman legions of the Egyptian garrison. (Initially, three legions were stationed in Egypt, with only two from the reign of Tiberius ().) The official duties of the praefectus Aegypti are well known because enough records survive to reconstruct a mostly complete official calendar (fasti) of the governors' engagements. Yearly in Lower Egypt, and once every two years in Upper Egypt, the praefectus Aegypti held a conventus (), during which legal trials were conducted and administrative officials' practices were examined, usually between January (Ianuarius) and April (Aprilis) in the Roman calendar. Evidence exists of more than 60 edicts issued by the Roman governors of Egypt.
To the government at Alexandria besides the prefect of Egypt, the Roman emperors appointed several other subordinate procurators for the province, all of equestrian rank and, at least from the reign of Commodus () of similar, "ducenarian" salary bracket. The administrator of the Idios Logos, responsible for special revenues like the proceeds of bona caduca property, and the iuridicus (), the senior legal official, were both imperially appointed. From the reign of Hadrian (), the financial powers of the prefect and the control of the Egyptian temples and priesthoods was devolved to other procurators, a dioiketes (), the chief financial officer, and an archiereus (). A procurator could deputize as the prefect's representative where necessary.
Procurators were also appointed from among the freedmen (manumitted slaves) of the imperial household, including the powerful , responsible for state property in the province. Other procurators were responsible for revenue farming of state monopolies (the ), oversight of farm lands (the ), of the warehouses of Alexandria (the ), and of exports and emigration (the ). These roles are poorly attested, with often the only surviving information beyond the names of the offices is a few names of the incumbents. In general, the central provincial administration of Egypt is no better-known than the Roman governments of other provinces, since, unlike in the rest of Egypt, the conditions for the preservation of official papyri were very unfavourable at Alexandria.