Brendan Haug

University of Michigan, Classical Studies, Faculty Member

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Address: University of Michigan
Papyrology Collection
Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
913 S. University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1190

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Papers by Brendan Haug

(2017) Fluvial Landscapes in the Roman World (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 104)

by Tyler Franconi, Brendan Haug, Philippe LEVEAU, Nicholas Purcell, Marlena Whiting, Andrew Wilson, hugo delile, Cécile Vittori, Ilaria Mazzini, Matthieu Giaime, and Brian Campbell

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Politics, Partage, and Papyri Excavated Texts between Cairo and Ann Arbor (1924-53)

American Journal of Archaeology, 2021

Following its nominal independence from Britain in 1922, Egypt increasingly protested continued E... more Following its nominal independence from Britain in 1922, Egypt increasingly protested continued European control of the Service des antiquités de l’Égypte, the office that administered archaeology and the antiquities trade. Public conflicts were frequent, pitting Western researchers against Egyptian nationalists who advocated for the decolonization of the Service. Research in the University of Michigan’s archives reveals the impact of these conflicts on the university’s papyrus collection, specifically the papyri and ostraka excavated in the Fayyum between 1924 and 1935. Unlike other objects, excavated texts were not subjected to immediate partage but were instead loaned to Michigan on the understanding that they would be divided after publication. In response to Egyptian pressure in the 1930s, however, the Service began to assert its right to recall the loans and frequently urged Michigan to expedite their publication and return. By the early 1950s, the largely Egyptianized postwar Service finally issued a recall, thereby abrogating the promised partage. Some 1,900 excavated texts nonetheless still remain in Ann Arbor, Michigan, their ownership status uncertain. In view of the recent series of controversies involving papyri of uncertain ownership and provenance, this research is of considerable salience and represents a move toward full transparency at papyrus-holding institutions.

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Civilizing the Past: Egyptian Irrigation in the Colonial Imagination

Journal of Egyptian History, 2020

Reviews of the historiography of irrigation regularly single out Karl August Wittfogel's "hydraul... more Reviews of the historiography of irrigation regularly single out Karl August Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis" as a uniquely deleterious contribution to the study of ancient water management. His errors notwithstanding, this article argues that the ideological misshaping of Western scholarship on irrigation instead emerged from Egypt's long colonial experience. First articulated in the Napoleonic Description de l'Égypte, the theory of a centralized, ancient Egyptian "hydraulic state" was crafted to justify French attempts to reshape Egypt's irrigated landscape. British hydraulic engineers later received and refined this narrative during the British colonial period. Their popularizing discourse retrojected the technocratic character of modern irrigation into antiquity, defining the Egyptian "irrigation system" as a static and unchanging fusion of hydraulic expertise and state power. Widely disseminated in specialist and popular fora, this tendentious argument had become received wisdom by the beginning of the twentieth century and subtly shaped early Egyptological descriptions of irrigation in antiquity. Abstract Reviews of the historiography of irrigation regularly single out Karl August Wittfogel's "hydraulic

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Governing Water: Irrigation and the State in the Premodern Fayyum (JAPANESE)

The Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Jinbun Gakuhō), 2019

Although Egyptologists were once convinced that the state was essential to the health of Egyptian... more Although Egyptologists were once convinced that the state was essential to the health of Egyptian irrigation, recent scholarship instead emphasizes local agency. This article attempts to bridge the gap between these two perspectives through a case study of Fayyum irrigation between the Hellenistic and Ayyubid periods. It argues that a dense entanglement between state power and local agency was essential to preserving the full extent of the Fayyum’s Ptolemaic canal system, itself a product of state planning. In the absence of an interventionist central power, however, the system retrenched and rural society established a new, locally-sustainable equilibrium. State power was accordingly instrumental rather than existential: essential to the preservation of a specific infrastructural configuration, not to the survival of irrigated agriculture itself.

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Governing Water: Irrigation and the State in the Premodern Fayyum (ENGLISH)

The Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Jinbun Gakuhō), 2019

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Water and power: Reintegrating the state into the study of Egyptian irrigation

The study of irrigation in ancient Egypt has swung between two poles. Early environmental‐determi... more The study of irrigation in ancient Egypt has swung between two poles. Early environmental‐determinist scholarship stressed the imperative of state control while the most recent work denies the state any significant role and instead emphasizes the agency of local communities. This article briefly explores the historiography of Egyptian irrigation, critiquing both its colonialist roots and the extreme reaction against colonialist preconceptions that marks current scholarship. A case study of Roman state coordination is then presented as an argument for reintegrating the state into the history of Egyptian water management.

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Roman Egypt

An introduction to the agriculture of Roman Egypt covering a selection of critical issues: the en... more An introduction to the agriculture of Roman Egypt covering a selection of critical issues: the environment, the strengths and weaknesses of our evidence, population and the size of the cultivated area, land tenure and taxation, crops and diet, the management of Egypt’s natural resources, and changes to Egyptian agriculture toward the end of the period in question (i.e. Augustus to Diocletian). Forthcoming in Wiley-Blackwell, A Companion to Ancient Agriculture, ed. Timothy Howe and David Hollander.

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Review of Carolin Arlt and Martin Andreas Stadler (eds.), Das Fayyûm in Hellenismus und Kaiserzeit: Fallstudien zu multikulturellem Leben in der Antike.

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Villages, Requisitions, and Tax Districts: Two Greek Lists from the Eighth-Century Fayyūm

by Brendan Haug and Lajos Berkes

Edition of two 8th-century Greek lists from the southwestern Fayyūm organized by choria.

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360 Days of Summer: Experiencing the Fluvial in Egypt's Fayyum

Study of the environment of the central Fayyum--an area largely undocumented in the papyri--throu... more

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Review of Katherine Blouin's Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta Under Roman Rule

American Journal of Philology, forthcoming

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Environment, Adaptation, and Administration in the Roman Fayyūm

Nadine Quenouille (ed.) Von der Pharaonenzeit bis zur Spätantike - Kulturelle Vielfalt im Fayum (Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Fayyum Conference). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Forthcoming

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Dependent Labor: The Case of the Enapographoi Georgoi

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Review of Brian Campbell, Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome

The Dossier of Flavia Anastasia, Part One: Document Prescripts

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Military Pork: Two Receipts for Rations

Two receipts for military meat (pork) rations from 6th century Egypt.

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Talks by Brendan Haug

Ecology and the Administration of the Fayyum

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Environment and Irrigation in the Fayyum

Drafts by Brendan Haug

Predictably Unpredictable: Water Rights, Community, and Conflict in Fayyūm Irrigation

Draft study of water rights along the margins of the Graeco-Roman Fayyum, which identifies the ab... more Draft study of water rights along the margins of the Graeco-Roman Fayyum, which identifies the absence of attested water entitlements or quotas as an adaptation to the predictably unpredictable water supplies that characterized the area. Water, in whatever amount it arrived, was regarded as common property and "water rights" were simply the traditional rights to irrigation from a public canal. This externally unregulated irrigation system required significant inputs of social capital, both to maintain the physical infrastructure and to defend access to water from upstream irrigators. Against theories of external administrative neglect, decline in population and the subsequent internal decay of the social bonds between individuals and communities that had facilitated equitable water sharing is cited as the cause of the breakdown of the marginal Fayyum's irrigation system in Late Antiquity.

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Books by Brendan Haug

Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyum

Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environm... more Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environmental history of Egypt’s Fayyūm depression. The volume studies human relationships with flowing water, from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century, the Fayyūm was the only region of premodern Egypt to be irrigated by a network of artificial canals. By linking large numbers of rural communities together in shared dependence on this public irrigation infrastructure, canalization introduced to Egypt a radically new way of interacting both with the water of the Nile and with fellow farmers. Drawing upon ancient Greek papyri, medieval Arabic literature, and modern comparative evidence, this book explores the ways in which the Nile’s water, local farmers, and state power together continually reshaped this irrigated landscape over more than thirteen centuries. Following human/water relationships through both space and time further helps to erode disciplinary boundaries and bring multiple periods of Egyptian history into contact with one another.

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(2017) Fluvial Landscapes in the Roman World (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 104)

by Tyler Franconi, Brendan Haug, Philippe LEVEAU, Nicholas Purcell, Marlena Whiting, Andrew Wilson, hugo delile, Cécile Vittori, Ilaria Mazzini, Matthieu Giaime, and Brian Campbell

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Politics, Partage, and Papyri Excavated Texts between Cairo and Ann Arbor (1924-53)

American Journal of Archaeology, 2021

Download

Civilizing the Past: Egyptian Irrigation in the Colonial Imagination

Journal of Egyptian History, 2020

Download

Governing Water: Irrigation and the State in the Premodern Fayyum (JAPANESE)

The Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Jinbun Gakuhō), 2019

Download

Governing Water: Irrigation and the State in the Premodern Fayyum (ENGLISH)

The Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Jinbun Gakuhō), 2019

Download

Water and power: Reintegrating the state into the study of Egyptian irrigation

Download

Roman Egypt

Download

Review of Carolin Arlt and Martin Andreas Stadler (eds.), Das Fayyûm in Hellenismus und Kaiserzeit: Fallstudien zu multikulturellem Leben in der Antike.

Download

Villages, Requisitions, and Tax Districts: Two Greek Lists from the Eighth-Century Fayyūm

by Brendan Haug and Lajos Berkes

Edition of two 8th-century Greek lists from the southwestern Fayyūm organized by choria.

Download

360 Days of Summer: Experiencing the Fluvial in Egypt's Fayyum

Study of the environment of the central Fayyum--an area largely undocumented in the papyri--throu... more

Download

Review of Katherine Blouin's Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta Under Roman Rule

American Journal of Philology, forthcoming

Download

Environment, Adaptation, and Administration in the Roman Fayyūm

Nadine Quenouille (ed.) Von der Pharaonenzeit bis zur Spätantike - Kulturelle Vielfalt im Fayum (Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Fayyum Conference). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Forthcoming

Download

Dependent Labor: The Case of the Enapographoi Georgoi

Download

Review of Brian Campbell, Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome