The Roman province of Egypt has provided modern scholars with more information than any other, thanks to the dry desert sand which has preserved copious numbers of papyrus documents. What these show is a rural population gradually coming under the economic control of a small group of extremely wealthy families. To what extent this is true for other provinces is not clear, though it probably does represent a general trend through the eastern parts of the empire (as it had in the west in the previous two centuries.)

Egypt is a vibrant centre of Christianity, with many monks living in tough conditions in the desert. Perhaps because of the economic hardships of the people, Egypt has become a centre for Christian groups that are at odds with the official Church centred on the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire,^[1]http://www.timemaps.com/history/middle-east-500ad Constantinople.