Rural migration in ancient Egypt
Already attested at the time of the Pharaon S, the rural migration , or Anachorèse, which translates certain a faintness of the Egyptian rural population, takes alarming proportions under the Ptolémées.
Reason first of the desertion from the campaigns east without context the tax pressure. The come to power of Lagides indeed involved an increase in the taxes, as well with regard to the regular taking away as the extraordinary contributions. Moreover, the practice of the Affermage very often involves abuses on behalf of the farmers who want to recover to the maximum their investment. This pressure of as much is less better withstood by the population that it doubles of a problem of identity opposing the Greek minority dominant to the mass of the indigenous population.
Starting from Ptolémée {{IV}}, the situation does nothing but worsen, the tax pressure is weighed down, involving a true vicious circle. The impoverishment of the campaigns creates the marginal ones more and more, reinforcing the reasons for desertion, not only on behalf of the peasants but also of other types of workers. Documentation thus gives a report of carriers and even on a police officer charged to keep harvests of the village which deserted their station.
If the exodus very often involved an impoverishment on the individual level, it also had a consequence on a country scale. Each peasant in escape represented a shortfall for the State. The reactions of the capacity were hardly effective and never managed to stop the phenomenon. Pulled about between taking a maximum of resources on the country and controlling it, Lagides tended more often to privilege the first, adopting authoritative measures. The situation worsened when the villages became responsible with respect to the State for the re-entry of the tenant farming.
In -107, the Serment of Tebtynis is imposed to the peasants of Egypt to bind them to the ground: Until I pour my tenant farming, I remain for present each day and applied to the agricultural work, without taking refuge to the crowned furnace bridge of some temple, without calling upon any protection, inventing any means of concealing me.