Land Transport in Roman Egypt: A Study of Economics and Administration in a Roman Province (review)

Adams’ book is a revised version of his Oxford Ph.D. dissertation. It is the first monograph devoted to the topic of land transport in Roman Egypt. There is certainly material here to support the author’s suggestion, implied in the subtitle, that Egypt can shed light on the provincial economy and administration of land transport in the Roman Empire. Perhaps the main thesis is that land transport was cheaper and played a larger role in private commerce and state administration than previously thought. Adams frames his conclusions largely as a critique of Moses Finley and the primitivist approach to the ancient economy. What the book aims to achieve is laudable, but the results are mixed.

One should not mistake visibility with importance. Land transport is better attested in Egypt than water transport owing to the patterns of survival. Many sources come from the Fayyum, especially Soknopaiou Nesos, which reflects its links to desert trade routes. If this small remote village was a major center for the animal trade in Egypt (98–99, 106–107, 110–11, 115), it hardly indicates an important role for animal transport generally. Adams’ section on the transport of taxes paid in grain from threshing floors and village granaries is one of the most interesting, because such logistical problems were not unique to the Fayyum or to Egypt (165–95). Even in the Fayyum, however, it was usually carried only as far as the ports on navigable canals to be shipped onwards to the Nile. Since no one would deny the existence of land transport, describing it in isolation cannot substantiate the book’s thesis. Adams admits that it is too simplistic to separate land and water transport but he clearly needed to limit the scope of his dissertation (7, 13–15, cf. 161).

Chapter 10, “Trade and Transport,” is one of the strongest chapters. The economic importance of overland routes from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea and the western oases has indeed been underestimated. Adams provides a useful summary of the archaeological and papyrological evidence that has recently come out of the eastern desert. For example, the archive of Nikanor reveals a trading firm on the lucrative Coptos–Red Sea land route that did business with Roman and Alexandrian elites (221–25). Ongoing work, especially in the western oases, promises to make his survey outdated in its details, but all indications are that it will support his thesis of a thriving overland economy.

A number of flaws and inconsistencies stand out, especially when Adams attempts to explain economic phenomena. At one point Adams argues that the high rental cost of transport is misleading, because it would be cheaper if one used one’s own animals (6) or combined the journey with water transport (12–13). Later, he states that farmers could cut costs by hiring wagons or animals since their maintenance was too expensive (14, 66, 90, 102–105). Adams is skeptical of supply and demand determining prices (7–8, 101, 108–109). He claims that the decision to buy a donkey in one nome and resell it in another was not based on market conditions but on its size and gender (93) and that soldiers paid higher prices for goods because they earned more money (95). It is unclear whether animal requisitions were as oppressive as Adams assumes; the state took pains to distribute the burden evenly and even rented animals if its normal requisitions fell short (138–55). What is described as the “archive of the descendents of Laches” (272–73) is that of Patron, since Laches was just an administrator. Some dubious statements are presented as facts without evidence: the densely populated Delta (18); the fertility of the Fayyum (27); the priesthood’s lack of economic innovation (108–109); the inability to own land before the Roman period (165). Lastly, Adams’ critique...