The City Solution? Theodosiopolis and the System of Joint Administration in the Late Antique Fayyum

Abstract

This article discusses the status of the civitas of Theodosiopolis in the Fayyum Oasis and its place in the administrative and social network of late antique Egypt. First mentioned in 447 CE, the city appears to have held a peculiar position. It functioned as a point of local reference, had its own surrounding territorium (or “nome”) including villages and hamlets, and operated as a fiscal unit on par with other civitates. Yet the affairs of its nome were managed exclusively by authorities of the larger neighboring city of Arsinoe. The Theodosiopolite nome was dissolved by the mid or later seventh century, but some traces of it as a subregion of the Arsinoite nome persist into the eighth century. This model of a “formal city” may constitute a new type of “postcurial” city formation in the late antique Roman East. Tebtynis, while often suggested as a candidate, is unlikely to have been the village that evolved into Theodosiopolis.