Apartheid

163
were quite obviously not to be raised to become free men and women, since ‘the recording of
their mother’s name only was an indication of their illegitimacy’. 315 Unlike the Islamic and
indigenous African, including ancient Egyptian, versions of slavery, the Greeks in the
Ptolemaic state obviously wanted to make sure that the blood of the upper classes, the free
classes, remained unadulterated by slaves. This is essentially the same racist system of slavery
that would later be used by the Dutch in South Africa and by Europeans and their
(supposedly) pure-blooded descendants in the Western Hemisphere. I am not aware of any
racist system of slavery prior to this Greek one in Egypt.
Similar to Britain in South Africa, Rome was mainly an occupying force and an
administration in Egypt. Both Rome and Britain arrived centuries after the Greeks and the
Dutch, respectively, had set themselves up as the main apartheid minority. Interestingly, they
both perpetuated vast arrays of privileges for the previous waves of European invaders as well
as discrimination against the indigenous Africans. They did this although they had to fight the
former in order to assume control over the countries.
So why did the Romans not attempt an alliance with the Egyptians against the Greeks,
why did the British not invite the black South Africans (on a large scale) to help fight the
Dutch? The answers are complex. First of all, the new invaders knew that they were by far
militarily superior to both the majority and the minority, whether the latter two were isolated
or united. Second, the minority was armed and militarily and politically organized, as opposed
to the oppressed majority, which lacked weapons, was militarily unorganized and politically
split as a result of the previous centuries of oppression. Therefore the marginal losses for the
imperial forces would be even smaller if they ganged up with the oppressive minority against
the majority. Third, the Romans and the British realized that they could make larger profits
from exploiting the work of a majority than from that of a minority, the latter of which was
largely an idle class, unskilled in and unaccustomed to the most exploitable kinds of work.
Fourth, there was racism.
According to the ancient historian, Klaus Koch, the Romans’ ‘apartheid provisions’
for Egypt were not fully ethnicized, but nearly so. The Romans alone constituted the upper
class. According to him, the upper middle class consisted of urban Greeks. Urban Jews were
classified as a lower middle class, whereas Egyptians and rural Greeks made up the lowest
stratum of society. 316 It seems, however, as if Koch was a little unspecific with this
description. The rural Greeks may indeed have been treated on a par with the only favored
class of Egyptians, the priests. But it seems unlikely that they sank all the way to the level of
normal Egyptians. We shall see many examples in the following of how even the rural Greeks
were privileged.
The Romans, then, basically decided to let the Greek elites, especially the major landowners,
who were all urban Greeks, continue their oppression and exploitation of the
indigenous and of the lesser minorities, as long as substantial portions of the profits went to
Rome and to the Romans stationed in Egypt. The Romans ran Egypt as a colony or province,
but the apartheid features remained strong, not only with regard to the substantial Greek
minority, but also in favor of a smaller, Roman one. Alexandria would remain the second
largest city of the empire and therefore it was of immense importance over and beyond
Egypt’s pivotal role as wheat producer for the empire. Just like the British in South Africa, the
Romans also made sure that there was a Roman civilian element in Egypt.
The flow of immigrants probably never dried up completely. Later on
Romans or Italians were perhaps attracted by trade or stayed on after
315 Ibid: 84f
316 Koch 1993: 589f. Lewis, N. 1983: 18f analyzes the middle class as consisting of both urban Greeks and Jews
without differentiating between them. Lewis also differentiates between ‘Egyptians’ of different status, with the
non-urban Greeks at the top of this social ladder.