In 200/201, the emperor Septimius Severus ( r. 193–211) allowed to each metropolis, and to the city of Alexandria, a boulē (a Hellenistic town council). The mētropoleis were governed by magistrates drawn from the liturgy system these magistrates, as in other Roman cities, practised euergetism and built public buildings. The status of Egypt's cities were increased, particularly the major towns of each nome (administrative region), known as a mētropolis ( Koinē Greek: μητρόπολις, lit.'mother city'). 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. 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. Both the governor and the major officials were of equestrian rank (rather than of senatorial rank).
įrom 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 ( Latin: praefectus). 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. 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. The Graeco-Egyptian legal system of the Hellenistic period continued in use, but within the bounds of Roman law.
The Ptolemaic institutions were dismantled, and though some bureaucratic elements were maintained the government administration was wholly reformed along with the social structure. Augustus and many subsequent emperors ruled Egypt as the Roman pharaohs. After the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, the Roman Republic annexed the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Īfter the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, the Ptolemaic Kingdom ( r. 305–30 BC), which had ruled Egypt since the Wars of Alexander the Great brought an end to Achaemenid Egypt (the Thirty-first Dynasty), took the side of Mark Antony in the last war of the Roman Republic, against the eventual victor Octavian, who as Augustus became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC, having defeated Mark Antony and the pharaoh, Cleopatra VII, at the naval Battle of Actium. In Alexandria, its capital, it possessed the largest port, and was the second largest city of the Roman Empire. The population of Roman Egypt is unknown although estimates vary from 4 to 8 million. Aegyptus was by far the wealthiest Eastern Roman province, and by far the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italy. Egypt came to serve as a major producer of grain for the empire and had a highly developed urban economy. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai, and was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judea, later Arabia Petraea, to the East.
*.Egypt ( Latin: Aegyptus Koinē Greek: Αἴγυπτος Aígyptos ) was a subdivision of the Roman Empire from Rome's annexation of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in 30 BC to its loss by the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic conquests in AD 641.