Aegyptus and the Vectigal Maris Rubri

The nature of the portorium in Egypt, Syria and Judaea differed greatly from that in the rest of the Empire. Large districts were not created. Single offices or at most small groups of offices, directed by one collector, were operated. The tax was never collected directly by Imperial officials.

In Egypt the Red Sea formed an exception. Its harbours formed one district, the Vectigal Maris Rubri. Pliny the Elder says this:

Nobis diligentior notitia Claudi principatu contigit legatis etiam ex ea insula advectis. id accidit hoc modo. Anni Plocami, qui maris Rubri vectigal a fisco redemerat, libertus circa Arabiam navigans aquilonibus raptus praeter Carmaniam.	We have obtained more accurate information during the principate of Claudius, when an embassy actually came to Rome from that island [Taprobane, Sri Lanka]. The circumstances were as follows: Annius Plocamus had obtained a contract from the Treasury to collect the taxes from the Red Sea; a freedman of his while sailing round Arabia was carried by gales from the north beyond the coast of Carmania.
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia VI,24,84. Translation H.Rackham.

In one of these harbours, Leuke Kome, an amount of 25% is documented. In the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea we read:

Now to the left of Berenice, sailing for two or three days from Mussel Harbor eastward across the adjacent gulf, there is another harbor and fortified place, which is called White Village [Leuke Kome], from which there is a road to Petra, which is subject to Malichas, King of the Nabataeans. It holds the position of a market-town for the small vessels sent there from Arabia; and so a centurion is stationed there as a collector of one-fourth of the merchandise imported, with an armed force, as a garrison.

Periplus Maris Erythraei 19. Translation W.H. Schoff.

The percentage is exceptionally high. De Laet suggests that it was meant to counteract financial bleeding, because large amounts of money were going to the East to pay for luxury goods. The percentage that was collected on the borders of Egypt other than those of the Red Sea is unknown.

Click on the image to enlarge. Wikimedia, PHGCOM.

The main harbour of Egypt was Alexandria. Strabo provides the following information about the duties, collected in nearby Schedia:

What should one think of the present revenues, which are managed with so much diligence, and when the commerce with the Indians and the Troglodytes has been increased to so great an extent? In earlier times, at least, not so many as twenty vessels would dare to traverse the Arabian Gulf far enough to get a peep outside the straits, but at the present time even large fleets are despatched as far as India and the extremities of Aethiopia, from which the most valuable cargoes are brought to Aegypt, and thence sent forth again to the other regions; so that double duties are collected, on both imports and exports; and on goods that cost heavily the duty is also heavy. And in fact the country has monopolies also; for Alexandria alone is not only the receptacle of goods of this kind, for the most part, but also the source of supply to the outside world. Schedia is four schoeni distant from Alexandria; it is a settlement of the city, and contains the station of the cabin-boats on which the praefects sail to Upper Aegypt. And at Schedia is also the station for paying duty on the goods brought down from above it and brought up from below it; and for this purpose, also, a schedia [a pontoon bridge] has been laid across the river, from which the place has its name.

Strabo, Geography XVII,1,13 and 16. Translation H.L. Jones.

The situation in Egypt was discussed recently in a monograph by Lucia Rossi, published in 2020.

A pontoon bridge over the Nile, depicted in Ostia on the Square of the Corporations (statio 27). Photo: SO IV, Tav. 187.