Egyptian Censuses

As early as Egypt’s Old Kingdom period, Egyptian officials conducted biennial censuses of arable land, cattle, and gold. The Palermo Stone, a part of the Royal Annals dating to the Old Kingdom, records the reinstatement of a regular census to account for gold and fields. Although we know that certain scribes were assigned to conduct them, we have little evidence from the Old Kingdom regarding census taking.

During the period of the Middle Kingdom, certain officials were employed as census takers. The extant lists from the Middle Kingdom include registers of laborers and temple staff, as well as a few lists recording household members in the town of Lahun. The purpose of the lists recording household members is uncertain. These censuses were conducted on a recurring basis, and several lists show the history of the same family across six different census periods (Garcia, Ancient Egyptian Administration, 511).

Pharaoh Ramesses V (12th century bc) commissioned a census of an area of Middle Egypt to account for grain production and tax collection, resulting in a document 33 feet long (Wilkinson, Rise and Fall, 347). Census lists from third-century bc Ptolemaic Egypt show that people were required to pay a salt tax. The Karnak Ostracon, dating to the mid-third century bc, preserves a royal edict for a comprehensive audit of Egypt, field by field, to account for produce and taxes (Manning, Land and Power, 149). Ptolemaic Egypt conducted a census for the purposes of taxation every 14 years because males were subject to taxes beginning at 14 years of age (Wallace, “Census and Poll-Tax,” 431).

Over 850 documents related to census records have survived from Roman Egypt. These texts provide us with a good picture of Roman Egyptian society, including mortality rates, average life expectancy, and demographics. About two-thirds of households during this time consisted of conjugal families or multiple families linked by kinship. The remaining households were single persons or cohabitating kin. Slaves constituted about 11 percent of the population (Shaw, Oxford History, 435). It has been difficult to determine the population of Roman Egypt since Greek and Roman historians provide conflicting numbers. Josephus (first century ad) records that 7.5 million people lived in Alexandria. However, the historian Diodorus Siculus states that the population of Roman Egypt in the first century bc was only three million.