Transformation and change in the Roman province of Egypt from the early to late imperial periods: The Chester Beatty Papyri from Panopolis

罗马控制着一个庞大的帝国，但几乎没有直接证据表明它是如何管理的。尽管如此，有一种普遍的观点认为，罗马在其省份的管理是“没有官僚机构的”，到公元2世纪和3世纪，就效率而言，罗马已经达到顶峰。这是建立在第一，随行省长的罗马官员数量很少，第二，与省政府有关的法律越来越多，保存在法典中。但这些概念具有误导性，尤其是将官僚机构与政府中活跃的官员或公务员的数量等同起来是不准确的。这些观点没有考虑到保存在罗马埃及纸莎草纸上的广泛的文件记录，这些记录提供了一个省如何在地面上管理的生动图景，并且对于研究公元3世纪之后的罗马帝国特别相关，因为埃及变得更多地融入罗马帝国，行政税收结构与其他省份保持一致。该项目利用了来自Panopolis的Chester Beatty纸莎草纸的证据，两份长长的文件保存了大约87封信件和公元四世纪之交在埃及高级政府官员办公室产生的公告。这些文件和其他当代文件详细描述了省级政府在转型和变革的重要历史时期的工作。事实上，“官僚机构”一词的原意是“局的内容”，特别适合形容这些信件，因为它们是作为记录保存的信件副本，大概保存在高级官员的办公室内。根据这些文件，该项目考虑了埃及的行政制度、各级国家官员之间的互动和交流、官员之间往往是肤浅的关系、这些国家官员与负责地方政府的主要机构、镇议会及其治安法官之间的紧张关系，以及罗马国家如何通过公告传播信息。事实上，这些信件的内容表明，罗马政府的现实不是效率的现实，而往往是相反的。由于我们从埃及获得了大量文件，我们很容易认为政府起作用了/更多的时候它没有起作用。罗马官员，就像他们在行政环境中的现代同行一样，花了大量的时间追查逾期的报告，诱骗组织混乱或无私的官员。纸莎草纸还揭示了罗马政府无法提高政府效率，这在很大程度上是因为他们未能消除许多问题的根本原因：地方政府中的那些人感受到了利益冲突，他们经常违背自己的意愿服务，而且在这个过程中，他们需要遵守自己的指示，但又不能疏远自己的人民。我们的证据表明，官员，甚至国家本身，对他们的下属并没有真正的制裁，因为一再要求采取行动的要求被忽视了。如果我们根据行政制度旨在确保官员为罗马国家的目标和利益做出贡献的基础来判断罗马官僚制度的成功，那么Beatty Papyri表明罗马官僚制度没有实现这样的成功。这个项目使用纸莎草纸来研究罗马官僚机构和省级政府的机制。它还评估了戴克里先在埃及的行政和税收改革的意义和目的，将它们置于更广泛的历史背景中。该项目所产生的专著将是对这些重要文献的第一次重大研究，并将对罗马省级政府的研究做出重大贡献。

Rome controlled a vast empire, yet there is little direct evidence for how it was administered. Despite this, there is a commonly held belief that Roman administration in its provinces was 'without bureaucracy', and that by the second and third centuries AD had reached its zenith in terms of efficiency. These are founded on first, the small number of Roman officials accompanying provincial governors, and secondly, the increasing body of laws relating to provincial government preserved in law codes. But these notions are misleading, not least in that it is inaccurate to equate' bureaucracy' and the number of officials or 'civil servants' active within government. These views do not take into account the extensive documentary record preserved on the papyri of Roman Egypt, which provide a vivid picture of how a province was administered at ground level, and is particularly relevant to the study of the Roman empire in the period after the third century AD, for Egypt becomes more incorporated into the Roman empire and administrative a tax structures came into line with other provinces. This project utilises the evidence of the Chester Beatty papyri from Panopolis, two long documents preserving some 87 letters and public announcements generated in the office of senior government officials in Egypt at the turn of the third and fourth centuries AD. These and other contemporary documents provide a detailed picture of provincial government at work in an important period of history, one of transformation and change. Indeed, the term 'bureaucracy', in its original meaning of the 'content of a bureau', is particularly apt to describe these letters, for they are copies of correspondence kept as records, presumably in the office of a senior official. This project considers, in the light of these documents, the administrative systems of Egypt, interaction and communication between state officials at various levels, the often superficial relationship between officials, the uneasy relationship between these state officials and the principal body responsible for the local government, the town council and its magistrates, and how, through public announcements, the Roman state disseminated information. The content of the letters, in fact their very generation, shows that the reality of Roman government was not one of efficiency, but very often the opposite. Because of the extent of documentation we have from Egypt, it is all too easy to assume that administration worked / more often it did not. Roman officials, like their modern counterparts in administrative environments, spent a good deal of their time chasing overdue reports and cajoling disorganised or disinterested officials. What the papyri also reveal is the inability of the Roman state to increase the efficiency of government, largely because they failed to remove the root cause of many problems: the conflict of interests felt by those in local government, who were often serving against their will and also in the position where they needed to adhere to their instructions but not alienate their own population in the process. Our evidence suggests that officials, and even the state itself, had no real sanction over their subordinates, for repeated requests for action are ignored. If we judge the success of Roman bureaucracy on the basis that administrative systems were designed to ensure that officials contributed to the goals and interests of the Roman state, then the Beatty papyri show that Roman bureaucracy fell short of achieving such success. This project uses papyri to study the machinery of Roman bureaucracy and provincial government. It also assesses the significance and purpose of Diocletian's administrative and tax reforms in Egypt, placing them in their wider historical context. The monograph resulting from the project will represent the first major study of these important documents and will make a major contribution to the study of Roman provincial government.