The Last Pharaohs by Manning J. G.;

Author:Manning, J. G.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

CITIES

The growth of Alexandria by immigration, and of other places as well, must have effected the organization of food Egypt’s supply. No figures survive on the pre-Ptolemaic population of Egypt, but most scholars assume growth under the Ptolemies due largely to immigration into the newly founded urban centers.88 The usually accepted estimate for the first century BC, including the city of Alexandria, lies between 3.5 and 4.5 million, on a theoretical maximum agricultural base of nine million arouras (1 aroura = ca. two-thirds of an American acre, or 2756 m2 ; the total land under cultivation would be then around six million acres, 24,793 KM2 ), roughly comparable to Egypt’s agricultural land at the beginning of the nineteenth century AD.89 Greeks amounted to about 10 percent of the population.

The growth of Alexandria and the reclamation of the Fayyum were without question the two most impressive developments of the period. The city of Alexandria, occupied by 311 BC, was the first “urban giant” in the Mediterranean.90 The centralization of political power in the city, the rent-seeking behavior of its Greek elites, and its role as a trading center all played their part in concentrating a population of around 200,000 by the middle of the third century BC (and by the early Roman period that figure would more than double to perhaps 500,00091 ). We know very little about the grain supply to the city. It seems likely that market exchange, as in Memphis, played an important role. The ancient capital city of Memphis, an important political center since the unification of the Egyptian state ca. 3000 BC, remained a vital economic center of manufacture, distribution and shipping under the Ptolemies.92 The population of the city was something on the order of 50,000–60,000.93

In addition to these achievements in the urban sphere, the Ptolemies could boast the reclamation of land and the settlement of new populations in the Fayyum and in the Herakleopolite and Oxyrhynchite nomes as great accomplishments of the early Ptolemaic period. New land in the Fayyum was perhaps trebled (the exact figure is debated). Ptolemaic expansion was centered in the Fayyum for two main reasons: (1) it was possible to reclaim land there; and (2) the Ptolemies could directly project state power on the new land and new settlements, important both for revenues and for building loyalty among key groups.94 Expansion in this area allowed the Ptolemies to establish, as it were, new rules, and direct management of the land, although the process itself was a combination of the state and private initiative. The amount of royal land in the area was probably higher than elsewhere, and it became a kind of “showcase” of state power (the density of banks and of the military population were notable).95 Fayyum villages are believed, on average, to have been larger than those in the Nile valley, and the census registers suggest a total population in the Fayyum of between 85,000 and 100,000 in the mid-third century BC.96

The most important center in the Thebaid was Ptolemaïs Hermeiou, which we discussed in the last chapter.

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