Économie et société de l’Égypte romano-byzantine (IVe-VIIe siècles). À propos de quelques publications récentes

The author presents a critical overview of recent publications which bring forward both new documents and new discussions on the economic and social development of Roman and Byzantine Egypt. The agricultural accounts from Kellis modify our view of the Egyptian rural economy, and the dominant role traditionally attributed to the 'great estates'. They raise the issue of the abandonment of agricultural activity in the southern quarter of the Great Oasis, which is also the subject of an archaeo-ecological study by Bernard Bousquet at the site of Douch. Even in areas so close in place and time, the causes of abandonment may yet have been different. The reconsideration of the role of money in the late antique economy, and the reaction against the 19th century models of a 'natural economy' are reinforced, with regard to salaries, by the study by Francesco Morelli, of allocations of oil. On the question of professional 'corporations', as well as the issue of curiales, several historians have tackled the contradiction between the impressions given by the legal sources and by the papyrus documents, even when they are describing the same situation; this invites us to reconsider the ways in which these different kinds of source should be used, with more attention to their particular nature, and a more cautious approach to establishing their relationship to one another. [Author, translated by Charlotte Roueché]