Roman Invasion

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The conquests of Alexander the Great brought Egypt within the orbit of the Greek world for the next 900 years. After 300 years of rule by the Macedonian Ptolemies, Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 30 BC, and was ruled first from Rome and then from Constantinople until the Persian and Arab conquests in AD 616 AD 639 respectively.

The decline of the Ptolemies

In 221 BC Ptolemy III died and was succeeded by his son Ptolemy IV Philopater, a weak and corrupt king under whom the decline of the Ptolemaic kingdom began. His reign was inaugurated by the murder of his mother, and he was always under the influence of favourites, male and female, who controlled the government. Nevertheless his ministers were able to make serious preparations to meet the attacks of Antiochus III the Great on Coele-Syria, and the great Egyptian victory of Raphia in 217 BC secured the kingdom. A sign of the domestic weakness of his reign was rebellions by the native Egyptians. Philopator was devoted to orgiastic religions and to literature. He married his sister Arsinoe, but was ruled by his mistress Agathoclea.

Ptolemy V Epiphanes, son of Philopator and Arsinoe, was a child when he came to the throne, and a series of regents ran the kingdom. Antiochus III and Philip V of Macedon made a compact to seize the Ptolemaic possessions. Philip seized several islands and places in Caria and Thrace, while the battle of Panium in 198 BC transferred Coele-Syria from Egypt to Syria. After this defeat Egypt formed an alliance with the rising power in the Mediterranean, Rome. Once he reached adulthood Epiphanes became a tyrant, before his early death in 180 BC. He was succeeded by his infant son Ptolemy VI Philometor.

In 170 BC Antiochus IV Epiphanes invaded Egypt and deposed Philometor, and his younger brother (later Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II) was installed as a puppet king. When Antiochus withdrew, the brothers agreed to reign jointly with their sister Cleopatra II. They soon fell out, however, and quarrels between the two brothers allowed Rome to interfere and to steadily increase its influence in Egypt. Eventually Philometor regained the throne. In 145 BC he was killed in the battle of Oenoparas near Antioch

The later Ptolemies

Philometor was succeeded by yet another infant, his son Ptolemy VII Neos Philopater. But Euergetes soon returned, killed his young nephew, seized the throne and as Ptolemy VIII soon proved himself a cruel tyrant. On his death in 116 BC he left the kingdom to his wife Cleopatra III and her son Ptolemy IX Philometor Soter II.

The young king was driven out by his mother in 107 BC, who reigned jointly with Euergetes's younger brother Ptolemy X Alexander. In 88 BC Ptolemy IX again returned to the throne, and retained it until his death in 80 BC. He was succeeded by Ptolemy XI Alexander II, the son of Ptolemy X. He was lynched by the Alexandria mob after murdering his mother. These sordid dynastic quarrels left Egypt so weakened that the country became a de facto protectorate of Rome, which had by now absorbed most of the Greek world.

Ptolemy XI was succeeded by a son of Ptolemy IX, Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos, nicknamed Auletes, the flute-player. By now Rome was the arbiter of Egyptian affairs, and annexed both Libya and Cyprus. In 58 BC Auletes was driven out by the Alexandrian mob, but the Romans restored him to power three years later. He died in 51 BC, leaving the kingdom to his ten-year-old son, Ptolemy XIII, who reigned jointly with his 17-year-old sister and wife, Cleopatra VII.

Caesar Augustus

During Cleopatra's reign Egyptian history merged with the general history of the Roman world, owing to the murder of Pompey in Egypt in 48 BC and the appearance in the country of Julius Caesar in 47 BC. In the wars of that period the young king perished and his younger brother, Ptolemy XIV Philopator, was nominally king with Cleopatra till 44 BC, when she had him murdered. From then till her death in 30 BC, Cleopatra's nominal co-ruler was her infant son by Caesar, Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, known as Caesarion. Cleopatra then made her last, and ultimately fatal, alliance with Mark Antony, and when he was defeated by Octavian, she killed herself.

Roman Egypt

In 30 BC, following the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire as the province Aegyptus, governed by a prefect selected by the Emperor from the Equestrian and not a governor from the Senatorial order, to prevent interference by the Roman Senate. The main Roman interest in Egypt was always the reliable delivery of grain to the city of Rome. To this end the Roman administration made no change to the Ptolemaic system of government, although Romans replaced Greeks in the highest offices.

But Greeks continued to staff most of the administrative offices and Greek remained the language of government except at the highest levels. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans did not settle in Egypt in large numbers. Culture, education and civic life largely remained Greek throughout the Roman period. The Romans, like the Ptolemies, respected and protected Egyptian religion and customs, although the cult of the Roman state and of the Emperor was gradually introduced.

Roman Egypt

Roman rule in Egypt

The first prefect of Egypt, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, brought Upper Egypt under Roman control by force of arms, 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: the Red Sea coast of Egypt 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.

From the reign of Nero onwards, Egypt enjoyed an era of prosperity which lasted a century. Much trouble was caused by religious conflicts between the Greeks and the Jews, particularly in Alexandria, which after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 become the world centre of Jewish religion and culture. Under Trajan a Jewish revolt occurred, resulting in the suppression of the Jews of Alexandria and the loss of all their privileges, although they soon returned. Hadrian, who twice visited Egypt, founded Antinoopolis in memory of his drowned lover Antinous. From his reign onwards buildings in the Greco-Roman style were erected throughout the country.

Under Marcus Aurelius, however, oppressive taxation led to a revolt (139) of the native Egyptians, which was suppressed only after several years of fighting. This Bucolic War caused great damage to the economy and marked the beginning of Egypt's economic decline. Avidius Cassius, who led the Roman forces in the war, declared himself Emperor, and was acknowledged by the armies of Syria and Egypt. On the approach of Marcus Aurelius, however, he was deposed and killed, and the clemency of the emperor restored peace. A similar revolt broke out in 193, when Pescennius Niger was proclaimed emperor on the death of Pertinax. The Emperor Septimius Severus gave a constitution to Alexandria and the provincial capitals in 202.

Example for Roman Ship

The most revolutionary event in the history of Roman Egypt was the introduction of Christianity in the 2nd century. It was at first vigorously persecuted by the Roman authorities, who feared religious discord more than anything else in a country where religion had always been paramount.

But it soon gained adherents among the Jews of Alexandria. From them it apidly passed to the Greeks, and then to the native Egyptians, who found ts promise of personal salvation and its eachings of social equality appealing. The ancient religion of Egypt put up surprisingly little resistance to the pread of hristianity. Possibly its long history of collaboration with the Greek and oman rulers of Egypt had robbed it of its uthority.

Caracalla (211-217) granted Roman citizenship to all Egyptians, in common with the other provincials, but this was ainly to extort more taxes, which grew increasingly onerous as the needs of the Emperors for more revenue grew more esperate. There was a series of revolts, both military and civilian, through the 3rd century.

Under Decius, in 250, the hristians again suffered from persecution, but their religion continued to pread. In 272 Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, riefly conquered Egypt, but lost it when Aurelian crushed her rebellion against Rome. Two generals based in Egypt, robus and omitius Domitianus, led successful revolts and made themselves Emperor.

Diocletian captured Alexandria rom Domitius in 296 and reorganised the hole province. His edict of 303 against the Christians began a new era of ersecution. But this was the last serious attempt to stem the steady growth of Christianity in Egypt. hristian Egypt

Egyptian Christians believe that the Patriarchate of Alexandria was founded by Mark the Evangelist around AD 33, but ittle is known about how Christianity entered Egypt. The historian Helmut Koester has suggested, with some evidence, hat originally the Christians in Egypt were predominantly influenced by gnosticism until the efforts of Demetrius of lexandria gradually brought the beliefs of the majority into harmony with the rest of Christianity.

While the collective mbarrassment over their heretical origins would explain the lack of details for the first centuries of Christianity in Egypt, here are too many gaps in the history of Roman times to claim that our ignorance in this situation is a special case. evertheless, by AD 200 it is clear that Alexandria was one of the great Christian centres. The Christian apologists lement of Alexandria and Origen both lived part or all of their lives in that city, where they wrote, taught, and debated. ith the Edict of Milan in 312, Constantine the Great ended the persecution of Christians, and in 324 he made hristianity the religion of the Empire. Over the course of the 4th century, paganism gradually lost its following, as the oet Palladius bitterly noted.

It lingered underground for many decades: the final edict against aganism was issued in 90, but graffiti at Philae in Upper Egypt proves worship of Isis persisted at ts temples into the 5th century. Many gyptian Jews also became Christians, but many others refused to do so, leaving them as the only sizeable religious inority in a Christian country. They became the object of bitter hostility, and this may be seen as the beginning of anti- emitism in the modern sense of the word.

No sooner had the Egyptian Church achieved freedom and supremacy, however, than it became subject to schism and rolonged conflict which at times descended into civil war. Alexandria became the centre of the first great split in the hristian world, between the Arians, named for the lexandrian priest Arius, and orthodoxy, represented by Athanasius, ho became Archbishop of Alexandria in 326 after the First Council of icaea rejected Arius's views.

The Arian ontroversy caused years of riots and rebellions throughout most of the fourth century. In the course of one of these, the reat temple of Serapis, the stronghold of paganism, was destroyed. Athanasius was alternately expelled from lexandria and reinstated as its Archbishop between five and seven times.
It was never easy to impose religious orthodoxy on Egypt, a country with an ancient tradition of religious speculation. Not nly did Arianism flourish there, but other heresies, such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, either native or imported, ound many followers. Another religious development in Egypt was the monasticism of the Desert Fathers, who renounced the material world in rder to live a life of poverty in devotion to the Church.

Egyptian Christians took up onasticism with such enthusiasm that the Emperor Valens had to restrict the number of men who could become monks. gypt exported monasticism to the rest of the Christian world. Another development of this period was the mutation of he Ancient Egyptian language into Coptic, which became the liturgical language of Egyptian Christianity and remains so to this day.

Byzantine Egypt

landscap of ancient egypt

The reign of Constantine also saw the founding of onstantinople as a new capital for the Roman Empire, and i the ourse of the 4th century the Empire was divided in two, with gypt finding itself in the Eastern Empire with its capital at onstantinople. This meant that within a few years Latin, never well established in Egypt, disappeared, and Greek easserted itself as the language of government.

During the 5th and 6th centuries the Eastern Roman Empire gradually ecame the Byzantine Empire, a Christian, Greek-speaking state that had little in common with the old Empire of Rome, hich disappeared in the face of the barbarian invasions in the 5th century. Another consequence of the triumph of hristianity was the final demise of the old Egyptian culture: with the disappearance of the pagan priesthood, no-one ould read the hieroglyphics of Pharaonic Egypt, and its temples ere converted to churches or abandoned to the desert.

The Eastern Empire became increasingly "oriental" in style sts links with the old Gr?co-Roman world faded. The reek ystem of local government by citizens had now entirely isappeared. Offices, with new Byzantine names, were almost ereditary in the wealthy land-owning families.

The rule of the Church in alliance with the State grew more oppressive.But Alexandria, the second city of the Empire, continued to be a centre of religious controversy and violence. Cyril, the atriarch of Alexandria, convinced the city's governor to expel the Jews from the city in 415 with the aid of the mob, in esponse to the Jews' nighttime massacre of many Christians. The murder of the philosopher Hypatia marked the final end of classical Hellenic culture in Egypt. Another schism in he Church produced a prolonged civil war and alienated Egypt from the Empire.

The new religious controversy was over the nature of the Trinity. The majority of the Christian world supported the orthodox view that God is three persons in one ( Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and that Jesus was therefore of the same nature as God. But Egypt was a stronghold of Monophysitism: the belief that God has only one nature, that of God the Father, and that Jesus (God the Son) and the Holy Spirit are of a different nature: they are from God but not of God. This may seem an arcane distinction, but in an intensely religious age it was enough to divide an empire.

The Monophysite controversy arose after the First Council of Constantinople in 381 and continued until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which ruled in favour of the orthodox position. Many of the monophysites claimed that they were misunderstood, that there was really no difference between their position and the orthodox position, and that the Council of Chalcedon ruled against them because of political motivations. But Egypt and Syria remained hotbeds of Monophysite sentiment, and organised resistance to the orthodox view was not suppressed until the 570s.

The reign of Justinian (482–565) saw the Empire recapture Rome and much of Italy from the barbarians, but these successes left the Empire's eastern flank exposed.