The Demography of Roman Egypt

by Roger S. Bagnall , Bruce W. Frier , Foreword by Ansley J. Coale

• ISBN13: 9780521025966
• ISBN10: 0521025966
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-20
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The traditional demographic regime of ancient Greece and Rome is almost entirely unknown; but our best chance for understanding its characteristics is provided by the three hundred census returns that survive on papyri from Roman Egypt. These returns, which date from the first three centuries AD, list the members of ordinary households living in the Nile valley: not only family members, but lodgers and slaves. The Demography of Roman Egypt has a complete and accurate catalogue of all demographically relevant information contained in the returns. On the basis of this catalogue, the authors use modern demographic methods and models to reconstruct the patterns of mortality, marriage, fertility and migration that are likely to have prevailed in Roman Egypt. They recreate a more or less typical Mediterranean population as it survived and prospered nearly two millennia ago.

Table of Contents

List of figures	xi
List of tables	xii
Foreword by Ansley J. Coale	xiii
Preface	xv
A note on references and abbreviations	xix
1 The census returns	1	(30)
1 The documents and the history of the census	1	(10)
2 The census process	11	(9)
3 The form of the returns	20	(6)
4 Government uses of the returns	26	(5)
2 The census returns as demographic evidence	31	(22)
1 The scientific study of human populations	31	(7)
2 Data bases	38	(2)
3 Demographic quality of the census returns	40	(10)
4 Assessment of the census returns	50	(3)
3 Households	53	(22)
1 The population of Egypt	53	(4)
2 Household forms	57	(9)
3 Metropoleis and villages	66	(9)
4 Female life expectancy	75	(16)
1 Life tables and stable populations	76	(5)
2 The female age structure	81	(3)
3 The female life table	84	(7)
5 Male life expectancy and the sex ratio	91	(20)
1 The sex ratio	92	(3)
2 The age-specific sex ratio	95	(4)
3 A provisional male life table	99	(4)
4 The total Egyptian age distribution	103	(6)
5 Egyptian mortality: a general assessment	109	(2)
6 Marriage	111	(24)
1 Age at first marriage	111	(7)
2 The age difference between husbands and wives	118	(3)
3 Marriage patterns	121	(6)
4 Brother-sister marriage	127	(8)
7 Fertility	135	(25)
1 Overall female fertility	135	(12)
2 Controls on population growth	147	(8)
3 Births outside of marriage	155	(1)
4 Births to slave women	156	(4)
8 Migration	160	(10)
9 Conclusion	170	(9)
1 A typical Mediterranean population?	171	(2)
2 A stable population?	173	(6)
Catalogue of census declarations	179	(134)
Catalogue of census declarations Supplement	313	(14)
Appendixes
1 Minor corrections to census texts	327	(7)
2 Concordance of publications and household numbers	334	(10)
3 Statistical methods	344	(4)
4 Tables A-D	348	(11)
A Persons with exact ages	348	(3)
B Incidence of marriage	351	(3)
C Incidence of fertility	354	(2)
D Slave ages	356	(3)
Bibliography	359	(4)
Index	363