Imperial Waters: Unraveling the Impact of Nile Floods on Roman Egypt and the Empire

Sabine Huebner | University of Basel; Harvard University

This lecture is part of the ISAW Library events series and will take place in person at ISAW. 

Registration is required at THIS LINK

Prof. Sabine Huebner returns to ISAW (VRS 2008) to share some of her recent work on the ancient environment, exploring how the Nile's floods shaped Egypt’s agriculture, society, and political stability, highlighting the incredible adaptability of the Egyptian people to environmental changes over centuries. By reconstructing the annual patterns of Nile floods during the Roman era, using a mix of papyri, inscriptions, coins, literature sources, and environmental data, one may gain a clearer understanding of how these floods varied year by year in terms of timing and volume and of how they influenced daily life. The annual summer floods did not just affect Egypt’s ability to grow food—it was also vital for supplying grain and other resources to Rome and its military. Understanding these flood patterns allows us to see their deep impact on the Roman Empire's political and economic journey. This paper will reveal how a blend of climate change, particularly in the Nile flooding, and political choices shaped agricultural output, tax policies, and overall economy of Egypt under Roman rule. Notably, it shows that several Roman emperors implemented key reforms as strategic responses to the Nile’s declining flood levels, reflecting a complex interplay between nature and governance.

Sabine R. Huebner is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for the 2024–2025 academic year. She was a Visiting Research Scholar at ISAW in 2007–2008. Her scholarly contributions include three monographs, notably The Family in Roman Egypt (CUP 2013) and Papyri and the Social World of the New Testament (CUP 2019), as well as several edited volumes and numerous articles. Her research focuses on the religious and social history, ancient disease, and human-environment interactions of antiquity, with a particular emphasis on Graeco-Roman Egypt. Her current monograph project is Roman Egypt in the Third Century CE: Climate Change, Societal Transformations, and the Transition to Late Antiquity; and she is co-editing a volume entitled The Roman Climate Optimum and the Disintegration of the Roman Empire.

The lecture will be followed by a reception.