Egyptian villages in the Roman era
The word village in the Greek language means (koma) plural (komoi), as the Egyptian village had its own will that followed the will of the region that belongs to it, and as the Romans kept the administration of the Egyptian territories as they were in the Ptolemaic era, they kept managing the villages.
Each region was divided into a number of departments (administrative units). These units were known as the village, and the village had an administrative apparatus represented by the village elder called (Comadchus) and also the village clerk (Comogramatius), who was affiliated with the central administration and performed the same work that the royal scribe or district clerk does (Nomogramatius) Where it was incumbent upon him to inform the central administration in the region of the amount of tax collection on the land, the amount of water availability, the type of cultivated crop, and the distribution of compulsory and compulsory work or exemption from it, and from these actions (building bridges, splitting and cleaning canals).
The task of the village sheikh was the representative of the central government, and his task was to form a committee of senior men of the village who are the owners of the lands. This elite has the jurisdiction to collect taxes and provide sufficient numbers of workers for the obligatory work and the term of service of the village sheikh is one year.
There is also another job, which is the general supervisor (epistates) and he has different authorities and supervises the important villages. The major villages used to be grouped with the smaller villages to form its own administrative unit known as tobos, meaning a center (Tobarchia). Regal, known as (Tobogramatius), with the same duties as a village and county clerk.
The village is a microcosm of the regions. Its buildings are made of mud bricks, surrounded by landscapes of obtaining and its streets are a successive layer. One of the most important Egyptian villages is the village of Karanis in Fayoum.
Social life in the village
Peasants go to their fields on foot or on donkeys, and Herodotus states that he was surprised that the Egyptian peasants put their animals inside the house since they are the only ones who do so.
Usually the peasants reside near their lands to care for it, but the wealthy farmers were looking for better social status and housing and they would move to the capitals of the regions or (Toparchia) and then make their children look after their farms in the villages.
An example of this is the family of Sarapion, son of Autochides, who was residing in the city of Hermopolis in the year 100 AD, where he accompanied his wife, four children, her daughter, and her nanny, as that family-owned vineyards and pastures planted with other crops in addition to trade, as there are 50 papyri located in the Museum of Europe and the United States. And their revolution of cattle amounted to more than a thousand heads.
There were also wealthy people who did not guide their decision but created houses in the villages like those of the provinces in terms of space, decorations, and slaves, and when they wanted access to education and entertainment, they brought that to the villages, and this is the reason for the presence of the works of Homer, Hesiodus and Plato in the Egyptian villages.
The wealthy represented a small group relative to the rest of its population, but there is a question that raises the number of residents of the villages and despite the existence of an accurate census does not make us assume the number, but the existence of a population census for the village is unknown, its foundations are in the year 94 AD This census mentions that the adult population of the village is men 636 men pay head tax, meaning that their ages range from 14 to 60 years old. The population is 3000 people.
Also, the village of (Karanis) in Fayoum, through its tax census for the year 172-173 AD, we guessed the number of its inhabitants ranging from 4 to 6 thousand people, but this matter differs when an epidemic was established, for example during the reign of the emperor (Marcus Aurelius) the spread of the epidemic The number of men He became 3 after it was 27.
Villagers food
Meals that consist of grains and legumes that they grow, wild plants, lotus, papyrus and their cultivation and nutrition on board, animal meat in chicken, meat and wonderful in chicken and fish meat in the river, lakes and fish farms, fresh or salted, and there is a papyrus whose date is for the year 31 AD. At the end of 161 AD, 3 men paid the price of hunting 80 drachmas on an industrial farm.
And the value of the food that the individual consumed daily, and its value, value, value, value, nutritional value, Her own clothes, her own clothes.
The village of (Tibbunis) in the far south of the region (Arsinoe) in Fayoum is an example of that for a middle-class family dating back to the year 153-107 AD. This picture is from the house (Crohnion) whose oysters lived and cultivated and rented them for lands and houses.
Private loans raised from installments and private loans (kronion).
Marriage within villages
The law of marriage within the institutions that own a single-family, in signing the contract of signing the inheritance and depriving a young person (Crohnion) of his right. He was 54, he was 54, and he was 45.
Land ownership
Temple lands, where space was used in the first century in the first century, where this space was used to obtain the loss. More investment for the wealthy, especially Alexandrians, and by the end of the century the largest owner of the lost was the emperor.
The lands were administered by employees in the metropolitan area or centers and they were rented by some farmers. They knew the state farmers who cultivated the land themselves and they provided advice in the form of a deposit in exchange for the rent and supervised by special supervisors for the emperor who knew they valued the emperor’s farms or the estate and applied bids in renting lands in the African states. He used to sublet the land in exchange for profit and divide it into small ones, for example, a sublease contract dating back to 121 AD.
The emperor was the largest owner of suitable lands and privileges more than landowners, such as the lawsuits filed for their delay in paying the rent or breaching the terms of the contract. He was before the court, lands far from the tenant, the owner sees it first. That land was not the owner of agricultural land and land areas and large areas Of its lands and areas in homes and housing. There were 28 complaints in the year 28 - 41 AD due to the hostilities in the village of (Yohimeria), including 7 war complaints, 3 complaints of storming, 17 complaints of theft, 8 complaints of livestock damage.
The relationship in the villages was represented in friendship, love, and sympathy. For example, there is a document in the first century, a person asked his father to take care of the wife of a pregnant friend, close to her due date, and in terms of reading and writing, ignorance spread within the villages and among 6000 individuals there are only 3000 who can read and write.