The Economic Organisation of Egyptian Monasteries and their Estates, c. 400-900 AD

This thesis provides a new analysis of the papyrological and archaeological evidence relating to the economic management of two particularly well-documented Middle Egyptian monasteries. Through a comprehensive synthesis and re-analysis of material from these sites, this work provides new conclusions about the organisation of these monasteries and the management of their estates, focusing first on the Bawit monastery in Section I, and then the Wadi Sarga monastery in Section II. Insights from both institutions regarding profit, commerce, and investment are then synthesised in Section III. Both monasteries appear to have been relatively centralised economic entities, and owned large estates which they directly cultivated through a system of permanent, specialised, and dependent agricultural settlements. This allowed them to cultivate substantial amounts of arable land and vines directly, using both monastic and hired labour. This was done without significant recourse to share-crop leasing or credit, the means which had previously been assumed to be responsible for the bulk of deliveries to these institutions. The management of these estates appears to have been highly rational and commercially oriented. They produced both consumption goods and inputs for craft production, and at scales far beyond their own needs. These surplus goods were primarily disposed of in city markets across Egypt, although with some local exchange alongside this. The profits of these sales appear to have been continually reinvested in the economic activities of each monastery, rather than being used only to meet fiscal demands or to fund religious activities. As such, we might speak of these institutions as proto-capitalist, deploying their capital in markets for goods, labour, land, and credit to grow their wealth continually over time. This work therefore overturns previous assumptions of how large Late Antique monasteries managed their economic affairs, demonstrating that monasteries’ wealth was often the product of their own economic proactivity rather than the result of donations alone. This work therefore situates itself within the broad study of monasteries across Egypt and the wider Late Antique world, and provides new insights regarding the place of these institutions in the social, political, and religious fabric of Late Antique society. It also offers a fresh contribution to the long-running substantivist/formalist debate in ancient and medieval economic history, arguing that the economic activities of monasteries – and thus, likely other pre-modern households as well – should not be understood as entirely culturally determined, but instead as more economically minded than is presently assumed.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Laver, Thomas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sarris, Peter Andrew Vincent

• Late Antiquity
• Economic History
• Social History
• Monasteries
• Egypt
• Early Islamic
• Agrarian History

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/cede637c-1c09-403f-b7ea-27071dfa561b/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0009-0007-3966-7290

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/393431