Gilles Bransbourg is invited by the Collège de France assembly at the suggestion of Professor Frantz Grenet.
Abstract
The so-called Justinian Plague, which originated in Central Asia, reached Roman Egypt in 541 CE. Literary evidence, combined with the presence of the pathogen Y. pestis in numerous burial sites from the period, confirms the scale of the event. Recent studies suggest that the demographic collapse that followed marked the true end of Antiquity. But quantitative data are lacking.
Egypt represents a real exception in this respect, thanks to the density of its primary sources - of the tens of thousands papyri that survived in the dry desert sands. Yet the plague is mentioned only once among the more than 17 000 documents published and digitized to date for the VIth century.
The vast majority of the period's tax and accounting registers paint a picture of a stable province, providing the imperial authorities with the payments expected of it.
In this context, recently published papyri may offer a window onto " the year of the Plague in 541 ", accrediting the existence of a serious but one-off productive crisis.
What can we deduce from this ?
In the first place , Justinian's plague and the Black Death of this XIVth century are not comparable. The return to normal was too rapid. Secondly, these archives confirm a transmission route via the Red Sea : indeed, the Plague travelled up the Nile, whereas an African origin would have led to contamination from south to north. This reinforces the idea that the contagion originating in Central Asia first struck the Indian subcontinent.
Finally, if the Eastern Roman Empire did indeed collapse in the VIIth century, surviving only around its geographical core, it is probably wrong to see this as a mechanical consequence of the plague that occurred a century earlier. Other phenomena must be taken into account, including climatic ones, and the irruption onto the historical scene of new entrants destined to play a major role - Arabs and Slavs in particular.
