Limes 2018

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34. Roman Egypt

Session organisers / Chairpersons:
Steven Sidebotham, University of Delaware, College of Arts & Sciences (E-mail: ses@udel.edu)

Egypt, the southeastern-most province and limes of the Roman empire, provided grain, building stone, precious metals and gemstones. Egypt was a conduit for commerce passing down the Nile from sub-Saharan Africa. Egypt also served as the nexus of a huge and very lucrative trade network linking the wider Mediterranean world with the northwestern Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and other points in Arabia, Africa and south Asia. This sea-borne commerce then crossed the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea along roads protected by military installations. It was in this desert region that the quarrying and mining activities noted above, much of which was state sponsored and protected by the Roman army, secured highly desirable building stone, gold, amethysts, emeralds and other minerals sought by the rest of the Mediterranean world.

This session will report on some of the recent archaeological fieldwork in Egypt related to these commercial and military activities in the Roman period.

Confirmed participants for this session:
  1. Steven Sidebotham, (University of Delaware, USA): Results of Fieldwork at Berenike (a Ptolemaic-Roman Port on Egypt’s Red Sea Shore): 2013-2018
  2. Steven Sidebotham, (University of Delaware, USA): Survey of the Berenike-Nile Roads 1987-2015: the Highways, the Military Installations, Mines and Quarries
  3. Rodney Ast (Heidelberg University, Germany): New Greek Inscriptions from the Temple of Isis at Berenike
  4. Joan Oller Guzmán (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain): Controlling the Mons Smaragdus: The Presence (or Absence) of the Roman Army in a Productive Frontier Region
  5. Julia Lougovaya-Ast (Heidelberg University, Germany): Pleasure and Entertainment on the Roman Frontier
  6. Iwona Zych: The Blemmyan record in Berenike of the late period (4th–6th centuries AD)
  7. Julien Cooper: Trade routes, raiding, and mining: thoughts on the Blemmyean desert state in Late Antiquity
  8. Peter Sheehan, Dmitry Karelin, Maria Karelina, Tatiana Zhitpeleva: Babylon of Egypt: the Reconstruction of the Diocletianic Fortress.