5 VI 2025: Thomas Laver (Cambridge) New Insights into the Organisation of Monastic Estates in Egypt, 5th-9th c.

The growth of the monastic movement in Late Antique Egypt brought with it highly practical concerns for those ascetics that chose to live in communities, with the necessities of survival driving monks to engage with the world outside to find wheat, wine, and clothing through their labours. Over the course of decades and centuries, some of these communities developed into permanent institutions that were not only spiritual centres, but also productive settlements that combined agriculture, craft, and donations in their economic models.

This paper presents the results of a recent synthesis of the documentary evidence from the well-known Bawit and Wadi Sarga monasteries, specifically focusing on these institutions’ agricultural operations. Building on recent work that has shown the occasional proactivity of monks in managing their landholdings as labourers and landlords, this paper seeks to show that both of these monasteries were interested in directly cultivating large portions of the estates that they (as institutions) owned and operated. This directly cultivated estate was not formed of piecemeal landholdings worked by monks commuting from the monastery, but by permanent agricultural settlements in which monks and hired workers lived year-round. The documents from these two monasteries – particularly the delivery ostraca – can be productively studied to sketch out this new picture of these monasteries’ estates as more directly managed, more proactive, and substantially larger than previously estimated. In doing so, this work challenges previous assumptions regarding the relative prevalence of leasing on monastic estates, and seeks to build a new picture of the economic mentality of large monasteries in Late Antique Egypt.