Apartheid

188
Alexandria, was erected on the site of 16 existing Egyptian villages, only one of which –
Rhakotis – remained populated by Egyptians. Rhakotis later grew into a big slum, eventually
making up approximately a quarter of the area of the metropolis, although the Egyptian
element certainly amounted to considerably more than half of the total of the capital’s
population. 386 The Egyptian temples were the only indigenous institutions able to keep
considerable portions of their previous wealth, including agricultural land, although they too,
gradually became impoverished through Greek and especially Roman land seizures and
confiscation, though in fits and starts. 387
This system was essentially carried on during the Roman and Byzantine eras,
gradually becoming even more unequal: ‘…the first three centuries AD saw an extension in
the power and prosperity of the landed elite in the cities. . . the continued concentration of
property in later centuries, and also in the Byzantine period, saw a narrowing of that elite.’
Just like in Israel 2,000 years later, the indigenous people were specifically prohibited from
buying land, at least during the first 100 years of Roman rule. 388
As in South Africa and Israel, a comparatively rapid population increase among the
indigenous posed a constant threat to the European minority’s privileged position in Egypt
under Ptolemaic rule. Although the Ptolemaic state feverishly encouraged further immigration
from Greece as well as imports of third ethnicity labor (mainly slaves, but also free civilians
such as Jews from Palestine), the demographic trend could not be reversed. At the end of the
third century BCE, things came to a head. In a war against the Seleucid kingdom, another
Greek-led kingdom, based in Persia and Syria, King Ptolemy IV saw himself forced to arm
numerous Egyptians for the first time to fight in his army. 20,000 indigenous soldiers were
called up by the monarch in 217 BCE. It was a costly war, and the economy started to sag.
The first to suffer were the Egyptians, whose protests then became increasingly daring. This
led to a hardened stance of the security establishment. Social unrest and several attempts at
rebellion were the natural consequences, and finally a civil war broke out which led to the
independence of Upper Egypt under indigenous kings for 21 years. 389
This was a potentially fatal child disease for apartheid on the scale of world history.
As far as I know, none of the latter-day emulators of the Ptolemies, such as apartheid South
Africa or modern Israel, ever repeated the mistake of arming so many indigenous people at
once. During the first 100 years of Roman rule, Egyptians were again strictly prohibited from
joining the army. But then things changed, yet only in a very controlled fashion. There were
black policemen in South Africa, and even (lightly armed) black mercenaries in the
Bantustans. Through implementation of the Oslo accords, the Palestinian authority was also
armed lightly, under strict Israeli and US supervision, apparently in order to police the radical
Palestinians, perhaps even in order to provoke a Palestinian civil war.
Especially Alexandria, the new capital city founded at the beginning of the Ptolemaic
era, was divided spatially, in an oppressive manner, between Greeks (and later Romans) on
the one hand and Egyptians on the other. There were also separate Jewish quarters and even
386
Hellström: Alexandria – En Hellenistisk Metropol, 1997: 13; Clauss 2003: 57. Fraser believes the ethnic
Greek historian and geographer, Strabo, who 300 years after the foundation of Alexandria suggested that it was
built on a previously largely unpopulated site. (Fraser 1996: 186). One might as well believe at face value the
former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, who alleged that there were no Palestinians in Palestine until 1948.
(See footnote 400, below.) Interestingly, Fraser seems to have taken the other main source on the origin of
Alexandria, pseudo-Calisthenes’ ‘Life of Alexander’ (to which Hellström also refers), much more seriously in
his earlier, massive monograph on the city. There, he also wisely concludes that Strabo and pseudo-Callisthenes
do not necessarily deliver mutually contradicting testimonies. Fraser 1972: 5f. Compared to the most populous
city in the world, ‘largely unpopulated’ could well have been meant to include 16 relatively sparsely populated
villages. At least one further ancient source, Pausanias, nevertheless held Rhakotis to have been a ‘small town’
before Alexandria was imposed upon it. See Brazil: Alexandria: The Umbilicus of the Ancient World, 2002: 37.
387 3
Walbank 1992 (1981): 107ff
388
Alston, Richard: The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt, 2002: 345; Lewis, N. 1983: 27, 57
389 3
Walbank 1992 (1981): 119; cf. Iliffe 1995: 271ff