HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B. C. To the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; Member of the EcoleLangues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist andPhilologist

VOL. XI. 

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS, LONDON

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Dam at Aswan

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THE ROMAN, CHRISTIAN, AND ARABIC PERIODS

_THE ROMAN ADMINISTRATION IN EGYPT--THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY--THE ARIANCONTROVERSY--THE GROWTH OF MONASTICISM--THE DECLINE OF ALEXANDRIA--THEARAB INVASION AND THE SPREAD OF MUHAMMEDANISM--THE ARAB DYNASTIES. _

_Augustus remodels the government of Egypt--A new calendarintroduced--Egypt surveyed--Dissension between Jews and Greeks atAlexandria--Strabo's visit--The Egyptian religion at Rome--Wiseadministration of Tiberius--The rise of the Therapeutć--LakeMćris destroyed--The origin of Chemistry--The fable of thePhoenix--Christianity introduced--Fiscal reforms under Galba--Vespasianin Egypt--Fall of Jerusalem--The Nile Canal restored--Hadrian's voyageup the Nile--Death of Antinous--Christians and Gnostics--Astrology andAstronomy--Roman roads in Egypt--Commerce and Sports--The Growthof Christianity--Severus visits Egypt--The massacre of theAlexandrians--Ammonius Saccas and the Alexandrian Platonists--TheSchool of Origen--Rise of Controversy--Decline of Commerce--Zenobiain Syria--Growing importance of the Arabs--Revolt and recapture ofAlexandria--Persecution of the Christians under Diocletian--Introductionof the Manichean heresy. _

_Constantine the Great converted--Privileges of the clergy--Dogmaticdisputes--Council of Nicća and the first Nicene Creed--Athanasianand Arian controversies--Founding of Constantinople--Declineof Alexandria--Imperial appointments in the Church--Religiousriots--Triumphs of Athanasius--Persecution by Bishop George ofCappadocia--Early mission work--Development of the monasticsystem--Text of the Bible--The monks and military service--Saracenicencroachments--Theodosius overthrows Paganism--Destruction of the GreatLibrary--Pagan and Christian literature--Story of Hypatia--The Arabsdefeat the Romans--The Koptic New Testament--Egypt separated fromRome--The Council of Chalcedon--Paganism restored in Upper Egypt--TheHenoticon--The writings of Hierocles--Relations with Persia--Inroads ofthe Arabs--Justinian's fiscal reforms--Coinage restored--The Persiansenter Egypt. The Life of Muhammed--Amr conquers Egypt--The legend ofOmar and the Great Library--The founding of Fostât--The Christianstaxed--Muhammedan oppression in Egypt--The Ommayad and Abbasiddynasties--Caliph Harun er-Rashid--Turkish bodyguards--Rise of theTulunite Dynasty--Office of Prince of Princes--Reign of Muhammedel-Ikshid--War with Byzantium--Fatimite Caliphs--The Ismailians andMahdism--Reign of Mustanssir--Turkish Rapacity--End of the FatimiteRule. _

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CHAPTER I--EGYPT UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE

_The Roman dominion on the Nile: Settlement of the Egyptian frontiers:Religious developments: Rebellions. _

Augustus began his reign in Egypt in B. C. 30 by ordering all the statuesof Antony, of which there were more than fifty ornamenting the variouspublic buildings of the city, to be broken to pieces; and it is saidhe had the meanness to receive a bribe of one thousand talents fromArchibus, a friend of Cleopatra, that the queen's statues might beleft standing. It seems to have been part of his kingcraft to give theoffices of greatest trust to men of low birth, who were at the same timewell aware that they owed their employments to their seeming want ofambition. Thus the government of Egypt, the greatest and richest of theprovinces, was given to Cornelius Gallus. 

Before the fall of the republic the senate had given the command of theprovinces to members of their own body only; and therefore Augustus, notwishing to alter the law, obtained from the senate for himself all thosegovernments which he meant to give to men of lower rank. By this legalfiction, these equestrian prefects were answerable for their conduct tonobody but the emperor on a petition, and they could not be sued at lawbefore the senate for their misdeeds. But he made an exception in thecase of Egypt. While on the one hand in that province he gave to theprefect's edicts the force of law, on the other he allowed him to becited before the senate, though appointed by himself. The power thusgiven to the senate they never ventured to use, and the prefect of Egyptwas never punished or removed but by the emperor. Under the prefect wasthe chief justice of the province, who heard himself, or by deputy, allcauses except those which were reserved for the decision of the emperorin person. These last were decided by a second judge, or in modernlanguage a chancellor, as they were too numerous and too trifling to betaken to Rome. Under these judges were numerous freedmen of the emperor, and clerks entrusted with affairs of greater and less weight. Of thenative magistrates the chief were the keeper of the records, the policejudge, the prefect of the night, and the _Exegetes_, or interpreter ofthe Egyptian law, who was allowed to wear a purple robe like a Romanmagistrate. But these Egyptian magistrates were never treated ascitizens; they were barbarians, little better than slaves, and onlyraised to the rank of the emperor's freedmen. 

Augustus showed not a little jealousy in the rest of the laws by whichhis new province was to be governed. While other conquered citiesusually had a senate or municipal form of government granted to them, no city in Egypt was allowed that privilege, which, by teaching thecitizens the art of governing themselves and the advantages of union, might have made them less at the mercy of their masters. He not onlygave the command of the kingdom to a man below the rank of a senator, but ordered that no senator should even be allowed to set foot in Egyptwithout leave from himself; and centuries later, when the weakness ofthe country had led the emperors to soften some of the other stern lawsof Augustus, this was still strictly enforced. 

Among other changes then brought in by the Romans was the use of a fixedyear in all civil reckonings. The Egyptians, for all the common purposesof life, called the day of the heliacal rising of the dogstar, about our18th of July, their new year's day, and the husbandman marked it withreligious ceremonies as the time when the Nile began to overflow; whilefor all civil purposes, and dates of kings' reigns, they used a year ofthree hundred and sixty-five days, which, of course, had a movablenew year's day. But by the orders of Augustus all public deeds werehenceforth dated by the new year of three hundred and sixty-five daysand a quarter, which was named, after Julius Cćsar, the Julian year. Theyears from B. C. 24 were made to begin on the 29th of August, the dayon which the movable new year's day then happened to fall, and werenumbered from the year following the last of Cleopatra, as from thefirst year of the reign of Augustus. But notwithstanding the manyadvantages of the Julian year, which was used throughout Europe forsixteen centuries, till its faultiness was pointed out by Pope GregoryXIII. , the Egyptian astronomers and mathematicians distrusted it fromthe first, and chose to stick to their old year, in which there couldbe no mistake about its length. Thus there were at the same time threeyears and three new year's days in use in Egypt: one about the 18thof July, used by the common people; one on the 29th of August, used byorder of the emperor; and one movable, used by the astronomers. 

By the conquest of Egypt, Augustus was also able to extend another ofthe plans of his late uncle. Julius Cćsar, whose powerful mind found allsciences within its grasp, had ordered a survey to be taken of the wholeof the Roman provinces, and the length of all the roads to be measuredfor the use of the tax-gatherers and of the army; and Augustus wasnow able to add Egypt to the survey. Polyclitus was employed on thissouthern portion of the empire; and, after thirty-two years from itsbeginning by Julius, the measurement of nearly the whole known world wasfinished and reported to the senate. 

At Alexandria Augustus was visited by Herod, who hastened to beg ofhim those portions of his kingdom which Antony had given to Cleopatra. Augustus received him as a friend; gave him back the territory whichAntony had taken from him, and added the province of Samaria and thefree cities on the coast. He also gave to him the body of four hundredGauls, who formed part of the Egyptian army and had been Cleopatra'sbodyguard. He thus removed from Alexandria the last remains of theGallic mercenaries, of whom the Ptolemies had usually had a troop intheir service. 

[Illustration: 007. Jpg PLAN OF ALEXANDRIA]

Augustus visited the royal burial-place to see the body of Alexander, and devoutly added a golden crown and a garland of flowers to the otherornaments on the sarcophagus of the Macedonian. But he would take nopains to please either the Alexandrians or Egyptians; he despised themboth. When asked if he would not like to see the Alexandrian monarchslying in their mummy-cases in the same tomb, he answered: "No, I came tosee the king, not dead men, " His contempt for Cleopatra and her fathermade him forget the great qualities of Ptolemy Soter. So when he wasat Memphis he refused to humour the national prejudice of two thousandyears' standing by visiting the bull Apis. Of the former conquerors, Cambyses had stabbed the sacred bull, Alexander had sacrificed to it;had Augustus had the violent temper of either, he would have copiedCambyses. The Egyptians always found the treatment of the sacred bull aforetaste of what they were themselves to receive from their sovereigns. 

The Greeks of Alexandria, who had for some time past very unwillinglyyielded to the Jews the right of citizenship, now urged upon Augustusthat it should no longer be granted. Augustus, however, had receivedgreat services from the Jews, and at once refused the prayer; and he setup in Alexandria an inscription granting to the Jews the full privilegesof Macedonians, which they claimed and had hitherto enjoyed underthe Ptolemies. They were allowed their own magistrates and courtsof justice, with the free exercise of their own religion; and soonafterwards, when their high priest died, they were allowed as usualto choose his successor. The Greek Jews of Alexandria were indeed veryimportant, both from their numbers and their learning; they spread overSyria and Asia Minor: they had a synagogue in Jerusalem in common withthe Jews of Cyrene and Libya; and we find that one of the chief teachersof Christianity after the apostles was Apollos, the Alexandrian, whopreached the new religion in Ephesus, in Corinth, and in Crete. 

On his return to Rome, Augustus carried with him the whole of the royaltreasure; and though perhaps there might have been less gold and silverthan usual in the palace of the Ptolemies, still it was so large a sumthat when, upon the establishment of peace over all the world, the rateof interest upon loans fell in Rome, and the price of land rose, thechange was thought to have been caused by the money from Alexandria. At the same time were carried away the valuable jewels, furniture, andornaments, which had been handed down from father to son, with thecrown of Upper and Lower Egypt. These were drawn in waggons through thestreets of Rome in triumph; and with them were shown in chains to thewondering crowd Alexander Helius and Cleopatra Selene, the children ofCleopatra and Antony. 

Augustus threatened a severe punishment to the Alexandrians in thebuilding of a new capital. Only four miles from the Canopic or easterngate of Alexandria he laid out the plan of his new city of Meopolis, onthe spot where he had routed Mark Antony's forces. Here he beganseveral large temples, and removed to them the public sacrifices and thepriesthood from the temples of Alexandria. But the work was carriedno farther, and soon abandoned; and the only change made by it inAlexandria was that the temple of Serapis and the other temples were fora time deserted. 

The rest of the world had long been used to see their finest works ofart carried away by their conquerors; and the Egyptians soon learnedthat, if any of the monuments of which they were so justly proud wereto be left to them, it would only be because they were too heavy to bemoved by the Roman engineers. Beside many other smaller Egyptian works, two of the large obelisks, which even now ornament Rome, were carriedaway by Augustus, that of Thutmosis IV. , which stands in the Piazza delPopolo, and that of Psammetichus, on Monte Citorio. 

Cornelius Gallus, the prefect of Egypt, seems either to havemisunderstood, or soon forgotten, the terms of his appointment. He setup statues of himself in the cities of Egypt, and, copying the kingsof the country, he carved his name and deeds upon the pyramids. On thisAugustus recalled him, and he killed himself to avoid punishment. Theemperor's wish to check the tyranny of the prefects and tax-gathererswas strongly marked in the case of the champion fighting-cock. TheAlexandrians bred these birds with great care, and eagerly watched theirbattles in the theatre. A powerful cock, that had hitherto slain allits rivals and always strutted over the table unconquered, had gained agreat name in the city; and this bird, Eros, a tax-gatherer, roastedand ate. Augustus, on hearing of this insult to the people, sent for theman, and, on his owning what he had done, ordered him to be crucified. Three legions and nine cohorts were found force enough to keep thisgreat kingdom in quiet obedience to their new masters; and whenHeroopolis revolted, and afterwards when a rebellion broke out in theThebaid against the Roman tax-gatherers, these risings were easilycrushed. The spirit of the nation, both of the Greeks and Egyptians, seems to have been wholly broken; and Petronius, who succeededCornelius Gallus, found no difficulty in putting down a rising of theAlexandrians. 

The canals, through which the overflowing waters of the Nile werecarried to the more distant fields, were, of course, each year more orless blocked up by the same mud which made the fields fruitful; and theclearing of these canals was one of the greatest boons that the monarchcould bestow upon the tillers of the soil. This had often been neglectedby the less powerful and less prudent kings of Egypt, in whose reignsthe husbandman believed that Heaven in its displeasure withheld partof the wished-for overflow; but Petronius employed the leisure of hissoldiers on this wise and benevolent work. In order better to understandthe rise of the Nile, to fix the amount of the land-tax, and more fairlyto regulate the overflow through the canals, the Nilometer on the Islandof Elephantine was at this time made. 

[Illustration: 011. Jpg THE NILOMETER AT ELEPHANTINE]

It was under Ćlius Gallus, the third prefect, that Egypt was visited byStrabo, the most careful and judicious of all the ancient travellers. Hehad come to study mathematics, astronomy, and geography in the museum, under the successors of Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus. Heaccompanied the prefect in a march to Syęnę (Aswan), the border town, and he has left us a valuable account of the state of the country atthat time. Alexandria was the chief object that engaged his attention. Its two harbours held more ships than were to be seen in any other portin the world, and its export trade was thought greater than that of allItaly. The docks on each side of the causeway, and the ship canal, fromthe harbour of Eunostus to the Mareotic Lake, were full of bustle andactivity. The palace or citadel on the promontory of Lochias on one sideof the great harbour was as striking an object as the lighthouse on theother. The temples and palaces covered a space of ground equal to morethan one-fourth part of the city, and the suburbs reached even beyondthe Mareotic Lake. Among the chief buildings were the Soma, which heldthe bodies of Alexander and of the Ptolemies; the court of justice;the museum of philosophy, which had been rebuilt since the burning byCćsar's soldiers; the exchange, crowded with merchants, the temple ofNeptune, and Mark Antony's fortress, called the Timonium, on a point ofland which jutted into the harbour; the Cćsarium, or new palace; and thegreat temple of Serapis, which was on the western side of the city, andwas the largest and most ornamented of all these buildings. Farther offwas the beautiful gymnasium for wrestlers and boxers, with its porticoesof a stadium in length, where the citizens used to meet in publicassembly. From the top of the temple of Pan, which rose like asugar-loaf in the middle of the city, and was mounted by a windingstaircase, the whole of this remarkable capital might be seen spreadout before the eye. On the east of the city was the circus, forchariot races, and on the west lay the public gardens and pale greenpalm-groves, and the Necropolis ornamenting the roadside with tombs formiles along the seashore. Other tombs were in the catacombs undergroundon the same side of the city. The banks of the Mareotic Lake werefringed with vineyards, which bore the famed wine of the same name, and which formed a pleasant contrast with the burning whiteness of thedesert beyond. The canal from the lake to the Nile marked its coursethrough the plain by the greater freshness of the green along its banks. In the distance were the new buildings of Augustus' city of Nicopolis. The arts of Greece and the wealth of Egypt had united to adorn thecapital of the Ptolemies. Heliopolis, the ancient seat of Egyptianlearning, had never been wholly repaired since its siege by Cambyses, and was then almost a deserted city. Its schools were empty, itsteachers silent; but the houses in which Plato and his friend Eudoxuswere said to have dwelt and studied were pointed out to the traveller, to warm his love of knowledge and encourage him in the pursuit ofvirtue. Memphis was the second city in Egypt, while Thebes and Abydos, the former capitals, had fallen to the size and rank of villages. AtMemphis Strabo saw the bull-fights in the circus, and was allowed tolook at the bull Apis through a window of his stable. At Crocodilopolishe saw the sacred crocodile caught on the banks of the lake and fedwith cakes and wine. Ptolemais, which was at first only an encampment ofGreek soldiers, had risen under the sovereigns to whom it owed its nameto be the largest city in the Thebaid, and scarcely less than Memphis. It was built wholly by the Greeks, and, like Alexandria, it was underGreek laws, while the other cities in Egypt were under Egyptian laws andmagistrates. It was situated between Panopolis and Abydos; but, whilethe temples of Thebes, which were built so many centuries earlier, arestill standing in awful grandeur, scarcely a trace of this Greek citycan be found in the villages of El Menshieh and Girgeh (Cerkasoros), which now stand on the spot. Strabo and the Roman generals did notforget to visit the broken colossal statue of Amenhôthes, near Thebes, which sent forth its musical sounds every morning, as the sun, risingover the Arabian hills, first shone upon its face; but this inquiringtraveller could not make up his mind whether the music came from thestatue, or the base, or the people around it. He ended his tour withwatching the sunshine at the bottom of the astronomical well at Syęnę, which, on the longest day, is exactly under the sun's northern edge, andwith admiring the skill of the boatmen who shot down the cataracts intheir wicker boats, for the amusement of the Roman generals. 

In the earlier periods of Egyptian history Ethiopia was peopled, or, atleast, governed, by a race of men, whom, as they spoke the same languageand worshipped the same gods as their neighbours of Upper Egypt, we mustcall the Kopts. But the Arabs, under the name of Troglodyte, and othertribes, had made an early settlement on the African side of the Red Sea. So numerous were they in Upper Egypt that in the time of Strabo half thepopulation of the city of Koptos were Arabs; they were the camel-driversand carriers for the Theban merchants in the trade across the desert. Some of the conquests of Ramses had been over that nation in southernEthiopia, and the Arab power must have further risen after the defeat ofthe Ethiopians by Euergetes I. Ethiopia in the time of Augustus was heldby Arabs; a race who thought peace a state of disgraceful idleness, and war the only employment worthy of men; and who made frequent hastyinroads into Nubia, and sometimes into Egypt. They fought for plunder, not for conquest, and usually retreated as quickly as they came, with such booty as they laid their hands on. To use words which wereproverbial while the Nile swarmed with crocodiles, "They did as the dogsdo, they drank and ran away;" and the Romans found it necessary to placea body of troops near the cataracts of Syęnę to stop their marchingnorthward and laying waste the Thebaid. While the larger part of theRoman legions was withdrawn into Arabia on an unsuccessful quest fortreasure, a body of thirty thousand of these men, whom we may calleither Arabs, from their blood and language, or Ethiopians, from theircountry, marched northward into Egypt, and overpowered the threeRoman cohorts at Elephantine, Syęnę, and Philas. Badly armed and badlytrained, they were led on by the generals of Candace, Queen of Napata, to the fourth cataract. They were, however, easily driven back whenGallus led against them an army of ten thousand men, and drove them toEthiopian Pselchis, now remaining as the modern village of Dakkeh. Therehe defeated them again, and took the city by storm. From Pselchis hemarched across the Nubian desert two hundred and fifty miles to Premnis, on the northerly bend of the river, and then made himself master ofNapata, the capital. A guard was at the moment left in the country tocheck any future inroads; but the Romans made no attempts to hold it. 

[Illustration: 016. Jpg ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT]

Of the state of the Ethiopie Arabs under Queen Candace we learn butlittle from this hasty inroad; but some of the tribes must have beenvery far from the barbarians that, from their ignorance of the artsof war, the Romans judged them to be. Those nearest to the Egyptianfrontiers, the Troglodyte and Blemmyes, were unsettled, wandering, andplundering; but the inhabitants of Meroë were of a more civilised race. The Jews had settled in southern Ethiopia in large numbers, and fora long time; Solomon's trade had made them acquainted with Adule andAuxum; some of them were employed in the highest offices, and must havebrought with them the arts of civilised life. A few years later (ActsVIII. 27) we meet with a Jewish eunuch, the treasurer of Queen Candace, travelling with some pomp from Ethiopia to the religious festivals atJerusalem. The Egyptian coins of Augustus and his successors are allGreek; the conquest of the country by the Romans made no change in itslanguage. Though the chief part of the population spoke Koptic, it wasstill a Greek province of the Roman empire; the decrees of the prefectsof Alexandria and of the upper provinces were written in Greek; andevery Roman traveller, who, like a schoolboy, has scratched his nameupon the foot of the musical statue of Amenhôthes, to let the world knowthe extent of his travels, has helped to prove that the Roman governmentof the country was carried on in the Greek language. The coins oftenbear the eagle and thunderbolt on one side, while on the other is theemperor's head, with his name and titles; and, after a few years, theyare all dated with the year of the emperor's reign. In the earliest heis styled a Son of God, in imitation of the Egyptian title of Son of theSun. After Egypt lost its liberty, we no longer find any gold coinage inthe country; that metal, with everything else that was most costly, wascarried away to pay the Roman tribute. This was chiefly taken in money, except, indeed, the tax on grain, which the Egyptian kings had alwaysreceived in kind, and which was still gathered in the same way, andeach year shipped to Rome, to be distributed among the idle poor ofthat great city. At this time it amounted to twenty millions of bushels, which was four times what was levied in the reign of Philadelphus. The trade to the east was increasing, but as yet not large. Aboutone hundred and twenty small vessels sailed every year to India fromMyosHormos, which was now the chief port on the Red Sea. 

No change was made in the Egyptian religion by this change of masters;and, though the means of the priests were lessened, they still carriedforward the buildings which were in progress, and even began new ones. The small temple of Isis, at Tentyra, behind the great temple of Hâthor, was either built or finished in this reign, and it was dedicated to thegoddess, and to the honour of the emperor as Jupiter Liberator, in aGreek inscription on the cornice, in the thirty-first year of the reign, when Publius Octavius was prefect of the province. 

[Illustration: 018. Jpg A KOPTIC MAIDEN]

The large temple at Talmis, in Nubia, was also then built, though notwholly finished; and we find the name of Augustus at Philć, on some ofthe additions to the temple of Isis, which had been built in the reignof Philadelphus. In the hieroglyphical inscriptions on these temples, Augustus is called Autocrator Cćsar, and is styled Son of the Sun, Kingof Upper and Lower Egypt, with the other titles which had always beengiven by the priests to the Ptolemies and their own native sovereignsfor so many centuries. These claims were evidently unknown in Rome, where the modesty of Augustus was almost proverbial. 

The Greeks had at all times been forward in owning the Egyptians astheir teachers in religion; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos, the boat of Charon, and the river Styx of their mythology, we see aclear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faintglimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a futurestate of rewards and punishments; and, now that Rome was in closeintercourse with Egypt, the Romans were equally ready to borrow thencetheir religious ceremonies. They brought to Rome the Egyptian opinionswith the statues of the gods. They ran into the new superstition toavoid the painful uneasiness of believing nothing, and, though theRomans ridiculed their own gods, they believed in those of Egypt. Sofashionable was the worship of Isis and Serapis becoming in Italy, thatAugustus made a law that no Egyptian ceremonies should enter the cityor even the suburbs of Rome. His subjects might copy the luxuries, thefollies, and the vices of the Alexandrians, but not the gloomy devotionof the Egyptians. But the spread of opinions was not so checked;even Virgil taught the doctrine of the Egyptian millennium, or theresurrection from the dead when the thousand years were ended; and thecripple asking for alms in the streets of Rome would beg in the name ofthe holy Osiris. 

Egypt felt no change on the death of Augustus. The province was wellgoverned during the whole of the reign of Tiberius, and the Alexandrianscompleted the beautiful temple to his honour, named the Sebaste, orCćsar's Temple. It stood by the side of the harbour, and was surroundedwith a sacred grove. It was ornamented with porticoes, and fitted upwith libraries, paintings, and statues, and was the most lofty buildingin the city. In front of this temple they set up two ancient obelisks, which had been made by Thutmosis III. And carved by Ramses II. , andwhich, like the other monuments of the Theban kings, have outlivedall the temples and palaces of their Greek and Roman successors. Theseobelisks are now generally known as "Cleopatra's Needles. " One of them, in 1878, was taken to London and set up on the Thames Embankment; theother was soon afterward brought to New York, and is now in Central Parkin that city. It is sixty-seven feet high to its sharpened apex, andseven feet, seven inches in diameter at its base. On its face aredeeply incised inscriptions in hieroglyphic character, giving the namesThutmosis III. , Ramses II. , and Seti II. 

[Illustration: 022b. Jpg FRAGMENTS IN WOOD PAINTED]

The harsh justice with which Tiberius began his reign was at Rome soonchanged into a cruel tyranny; but in the provinces it was only felt asa check to the injustice of the prefects. On one occasion, when ĆmiliusRectus sent home from Egypt a larger amount of taxes than was usual, he hoped that his zeal would be praised by Tiberius. But the emperor'smessage to the prefect was as stern as it was humane: "I should wish mysheep to be sheared, but not to be flayed. " On the death of one ofthe prefects, there was found among his property at Rome a statue ofMenelaus, carved in Ethiopian obsidian, which had been used in thereligious ceremonies in the temple of Heliopolis, and Tiberius returnedit to the priests of that city as its rightful owners. Another proof ofthe equal justice with which this province was governed was to be seenin the buildings then carried on by the priests in Upper Egypt. We findthe name of Tiberius carved in hieroglyphics on additions or repairsmade to the temples at Thebes, at Aphroditopolis, at Berenicę, on theRed Sea, at Philć, and at the Greek city of Parembole, in Nubia. Thegreat portico was at this time added to the temple at Tentyra, with aninscription dedicating it to the goddess in Greek and in hieroglyphics. As a building is often the work of years, while sculpture is only thework of weeks, so the fashion of the former is always far less changingthan that of the latter. The sculptures on the walls of this beautifulportico are crowded and graceless; while, on the other hand, thebuilding itself has the same grand simplicity and massive strength thatwe find in the older temples of Upper Egypt. 

We cannot but admire the zeal of the Egyptians by whom this workwas then finished. They were treated as slaves by their Greekfellow-countrymen; their houses were ransacked every third year bymilitary authority in search of arms; they could have had no help fromtheir Roman masters, who only drained the province of its wealth; andthe temple had perhaps never been heard of by the emperor, who couldhave been little aware that the most lasting monument of his reign wasbeing raised in the distant province of Egypt. 

[Illustration: 024. Jpg TEMPLE AT TENTYRA, ENLARGED BY ROMAN ARCHITECTS]

The priests of the other parts of the country sent gifts out of theirpoverty in aid of this pious work; and among the figures on the wallswe see those of forty cities, from Semneh, at the second cataract, toMemphis and Saďs, in the Delta, each presenting an offering to the godof the temple. 

In the third year of this reign Germanicus Cćsar, who, much against hiswill, had been sent into the East as governor, found time to leave hisown province, and to snatch a hasty view of the time-honoured buildingsof Egypt. Descending the river to Thebes, and, while gazing on thehuge remains of the temples, he asked the priests to read to him thehieroglyphical writing on the walls. He was told that it recounted thegreatness of the country in the time of King Ramses, when there wereseven hundred thousand Egyptians of an age to bear arms; and thatwith these troops Ramses had conquered the Libyans, Ethiopians, Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, Syrians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Bithynians, and Lycians. He was also told the tributes laid upon eachof those nations; the weight of gold and silver, the number of chariotsand horses, the gifts of ivory and scents for the temples, and thequantity of grain which the conquered provinces sent to feed thepopulation of Thebes. After listening to the musical statue ofAmenhothes, Germanicus went on to Elephantine and Syęnę; and, on hisreturn, he turned aside to the pyramids and the Lake of Mceris, whichregulated the overflow of the Nile on the neighbouring fields. AtMemphis, Germanicus consulted the sacred bull Apis as to his futurefortune, and met with an unfavourable answer. The manner of consultingApis was for the visitor to hold out some food in his hand, and theanswer was understood to be favourable if the bull turned his headto eat, but unfavourable if he looked another way. When Germanicusaccordingly held out a handful of grain, the well-fed animal turned hishead sullenly towards the other side of his stall; and on the death ofthis young prince, which shortly followed, the Egyptians did notforget to praise the bull's foresight. This blameless and seeminglypraiseworthy visit of Germanicus did not, however, escape the noticeof the jealous Tiberius. He had been guilty of gaining the love of thepeople by walking about without guards, in a plain Greek dress, and oflowering the price of grain in a famine by opening the public granaries;and Tiberius sternly reproached him with breaking the known law ofAugustus, by which no Roman citizen of consular or even of equestrianrank might enter Alexandria without leave from the emperor. 

There were at this time about a million of Jews in Egypt. In Alexandriathey seem to have been about one-third of the population, as theyformed the majority in two wards out of the five into which the city wasdivided. They lived under their own elders and Sanhedrim, going up attheir solemn feasts to worship in their own temple at Onion; but, fromtheir mixing with the Greeks, they had become less strict than theirHebrew brethren in their observance of the traditions. Some few of them, however, held themselves in obedience to the Sanhedrim in Jerusalem, andlooked upon the temple of Jerusalem as the only Jewish temple; and thesemen were in the habit of sending an embassy on the stated solemn feastsof the nation to offer the appointed sacrifices and prayers to Jahvehin the holy city on their behalf. But though the decree by Cćsar, whichdeclared that the Jews were Alexandrian citizens, was engraved on apillar in the city, yet they were by no means treated as such, either bythe government, or by the Greeks, or by the Egyptians. 

[Illustration: 027. Jpg ON THE BANKS OF THE NILE. ]

When, during the famine, the public granaries seemed unable to supplythe whole city with food, even the humane Germanicus ordered that theJews, like the Egyptians, should have no share of the gift. They weredespised even by the Egyptians themselves, who, to insult them, saidthat the wicked god Typhon had two sons, Hierosolymus and Judćus, andthat from these the Jews were descended. 

In the neighbourhood of Alexandria, on a hill near the shores of theLake Mareotis, was a little colony of Jews, who, joining their ownreligion with the mystical opinions and gloomy habits of the Egyptians, have left us one of the earliest known examples of the monastic life. They bore the name of Therapeutć. They had left, says Philo, theirworldly wealth to their families or friends; they had forsaken wives, children, brethren, parents, and the society of men, to bury themselvesin solitude and pass their lives in the contemplation of the divineessence. Seized by this heavenly love, they were eager to enter upon thenext world, as though they were already dead to this. Every one, whetherman or woman, lived alone in his cell or monastery, caring for neitherfood nor raiment, but having his thoughts wholly turned to the Law andthe Prophets, or to sacred hymns of their own composing. They had theirGod always in their thoughts, and even the broken sentences which theyuttered in their dreams were treasures of religious wisdom. They prayedevery morning at sunrise, and then spent the day in turning over thesacred volumes, and the commentaries, which explained the allegories, or pointed out a secondary meaning as hidden beneath the surface of eventhe historical books of the Old Testament. At sunset they again prayed, and then tasted their first and only meal. Selfdenial indeed was thefoundation of all their virtues. Some made only three meals in the week, that their meditations might be more free; while others even attemptedto prolong their fast to the sixth day. During six days of the week theysaw nobody, not even one another. On the seventh day they met togetherin the synagogue. Here they sat, each according to his age; the womenseparated from the men. Each wore a plain, modest robe, which coveredthe arms and hands, and they sat in silence while one of the elderspreached. As they studied the mystic powers of numbers, they thought thenumber seven was a holy number, and that seven times seven made a greatweek, and hence they kept the fiftieth day as a solemn festival. On thatday they dined together, the men on one side and the women on the other. The rushy papyrus formed the couches; bread was their only meat, watertheir drink, salt the seasoning, and cresses the delicacy. They wouldkeep no slaves, saying that all men were born equal. Nobody spoke, unless it was to propose a question out of the Old Testament, or toanswer the question of another. The feast ended with a hymn of praise. 

[Illustration: 029. Jpg BEDOUIN TENT IN THE DESERT]

The ascetic Jews of Palestine, the Essenes on the banks of the Dead Sea, by no means, according to Philo, thus quitted the active duties of life;and it would seem that the Therapeutas rather borrowed their customsfrom the country in which they had settled, than from any sects of theJewish nation. Some classes of the Egyptian priesthood had always heldthe same views of their religious duties. These Egyptian monks slept ona hard bed of palm branches, with a still harder wooden pillow for thehead; they were plain in their dress, slow in walking, spare in diet, and scarcely allowed themselves to smile. They washed thrice a day, andprayed as often; at sunrise, at noon, and at sunset. They often fastedfrom animal food, and at all times refused many meats as unclean. They passed their lives alone, either in study or wrapped in religiousthought. They never met one another but at set times, and were seldomseen by strangers. Thus, leaving to others the pleasures, wealth, andlesser prizes of this life, they received from them in return what mostmen value higher, namely, honour, fame, and power. 

The Romans, like the Greeks, feeling but little partiality in favourof their own gods, were rarely guilty of intolerance against those ofothers; and would hardly have checked the introduction of a new religionunless it made its followers worse citizens. But in Rome, whereevery act of its civil or military authorities was accompanied with areligious rite, any slight towards the gods was a slight towards themagistrate; many devout Romans had begun to keep holy the seventh day;and Egypt was now so closely joined to Italy that the Roman senate madea new law against the Egyptian and Jewish superstitions, and, in A. D. 19, banished to Sardinia four thousand men who were found guilty ofbeing Jews. 

Egypt had lost with its liberties its gold coinage, and it was nowmade to feel a further proof of being a conquered country in having itssilver much alloyed with copper. But Tiberius, in the tenth year of hisreign, altogether stopped the Alexandrian mint, as well as those of theother cities which occasionally coined; and after this year we find nomore coins, but the few with the head and name of Augustus Cćsar, whichseem hardly to have been meant for money, but to commemorate on somepeculiar occasions the emperor's adoption by his stepfather. The Nubiangold mines were probably by this time wholly deserted; they had been sofar worked out as to be no longer profitable. For fifteen hundred years, ever since Ethiopia was conquered by Thebes, wages and prices had beenhigher in Egypt than in the neighbouring countries. But this was now nolonger the case. Egypt had been getting poorer during the reigns of thelatter Ptolemies; and by this time it is probable that both wages andprices were higher in Rome. 

It seems to have been usual to change the prefect of Egypt every fewyears, and the prefect-elect was often sent to Alexandria to waittill his predecessor's term of years had ended. Thus in this reign oftwenty-three years Ćmilius Rectus was succeeded by Vetrasius Pollio;and on his death Tiberius gave the government to his freedman Iberus. During the last five years Egypt was under the able but stern governmentof Flaccus Avillius, whose name is carved on the temple of Tentyra withthat of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities ofprudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business, which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, whowere liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justicewas administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise overthe poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legionswere regularly paid, so that they had no excuse for plundering theEgyptians. 

On the death of Tiberius, in A. D. 37, the old quarrel again broke outbetween Jews and Greeks. The Alexandrians were not slow in learning thefeelings of his successor, Caius, or Caligula, towards the Jews, norin turning against them the new law that the emperor's statue shouldbe honoured in every temple of the empire. They had very unwillinglyyielded a half-obedience to the law of Augustus that the Jews shouldstill be allowed the privileges of citizenship; and, as soon as theyheard that Caligula was to be worshipped in every temple of the empire, they denounced the Jews as traitors and rebels, who refused so to honourthe emperor in their synagogues. It happened, unfortunately, that theircountryman, King Agrippa, at this time came to Alexandria. He had fullleave from the emperor to touch there, as being the quickest and mostcertain way of making the voyage from Rome to the seat of his owngovernment. Indeed, the Alexandrian voyage had another merit in the eyesof a Jew; for, whereas wooden water-vessels were declared by the Law tobe unclean, an exception was made by their tradition in favour of thelarger size of the water-wells in the Alexandrian ships. Agrippa hadseen Egypt before, on his way to Rome, and he meant to make no staythere; but, though he landed purposely after dark, and with no pomp orshow, he seems to have raised the anger of the prefect Flaccus, who feltjealous at any man of higher rank than himself coming into his province. The Greeks fell into the prefect's humour, and during the stay ofAgrippa in Alexandria they lampooned him in songs and ballads, of whichthe raillery was not of the most delicate kind. They mocked him byleading about the streets a poor idiot dressed up with a paper crown anda reed for a sceptre, in ridicule of his rather doubtful right to thestyle of royalty. 

As these insults towards the emperor's friend passed wholly uncheckedby the prefect, the Greeks next assaulted the Jews in the streets andmarket-place, attacked their houses, rooted up the groves of treesaround their synagogues, and tore down the decree by which theprivileges of citizenship had been confirmed to them. The Greeks thenproceeded to set up by force a statue of the emperor in each Jewishsynagogue, as if the new decree had included those places of worshipamong the temples, and, not finding statues enough, they made use of thestatues of the Ptolemies, which they carried away from the gymnasiumfor that purpose. During the last reign, under the stern governmentof Tiberius, Flaccus had governed with justice and prudence, but underCaligula he seemed to have lost all judgment in his zeal against theJews. When the riots in the streets could no longer be overlooked, instead of defending the injured party, he issued a decree in whichhe styled the Jews foreigners; thus at one word robbing them of theirprivileges and condemning them unheard. By this the Greeks were hurriedforward into further acts of injustice, and the Jews of resistance. Butthe Jews were the weaker party: they were overpowered, and all driveninto one ward, and four hundred of their houses in the other wards wereplundered, and the spoil divided as if taken in war. They were stoned, and even burnt in the streets, if they ventured forth to buy food fortheir families. Flaccus seized and scourged in the theatre thirty-eightof their venerable councillors, and, to show them that they were nolonger citizens, the punishment was inflicted by the hands of Egyptianexecutioners. While the city was in this state of riot, the Greeks gaveout that the Jews were concealing arms; and Flaccus, to give them afresh proof that they had lost the rights of citizenship, ordered thattheir houses should be forcibly entered and searched by a centurion anda band of soldiers. 

During their troubles the Jews had not been allowed to complain to theemperor, or to send an embassy to Rome to make known their grievances. But the Jewish King Agrippa, who was on his way from Rome to hiskingdom, forwarded to Caligula the complaints of his countrymen, theJews, with an account of the rebellious state of Alexandria. The riots, it is true, had been wholly raised by the prefect's zeal in setting upthe emperor's statue in the synagogues to be worshipped by the Jews, andin carrying into effect the emperor's decree; but, as he had not beenable to keep his province quiet, it was necessary that he shouldbe recalled, and punished for his want of success. To have found itnecessary to call out the troops was of course a fault in a governor;but doubly so at a time and in a province where a successful generalmight so easily become a formidable rebel. Accordingly, a centurion, with a trusty cohort of soldiers, was sent from Rome for the recallof the prefect. On approaching the flat coast of Egypt, they keptthe vessel in deep water till sunset, and then entered the harbour ofAlexandria in the dark. The centurion, on landing, met with a freedmanof the emperor, from whom he learned that the prefect was then atsupper, entertaining a large company of friends. The freedman led thecohort quietly into the palace, into the very room where Flaccus wassitting at table; and the first tidings that he heard of his governmentbeing disapproved of in Rome was his finding himself a prisoner in hisown palace. The friends stood motionless with surprise, the centurionproduced the emperor's order for what he was doing, and as no resistancewas attempted all passed off quietly; Flaccus was hurried on board thevessel then at anchor in the harbour on the same evening and immediatelytaken to Rome. 

It so happened that on the night that Flaccus was seized, the Jewshad met together to celebrate their autumnal feast, the feast of theTabernacles: not as in former years with joy and pomp, but in fear, in grief, and in prayer. Their chief men were in prison, their nationsmarting under its wrongs and in daily fear of fresh cruelties; and itwas not without alarm that they heard the noise of soldiers moving toand fro through the city, and the heavy tread of the guards marching bytorchlight from the camp to the palace. But their fear was soon turnedinto joy when they heard that Flaccus, the author of all their wrongs, was already a prisoner on board the vessel in the harbour; and theygave glory to God, not, says Philo, that their enemy was going to bepunished, but because their own sufferings were at an end. 

The Jews then, having had leave given them by the prefect, sentan embassy to Rome, at the head of which was Philo, the platonicphilosopher, who was to lay their grievances before the emperor, and tobeg for redress. The Greeks also at the same time sent their embassy, at the head of which was the learned grammarian Apion, who was to accusethe Jews of not worshipping the statue of the emperor, and to argue thatthey had no right to the same privileges of citizenship with those whoboasted of their Macedonian blood. But, as the Jews did not deny thecharge that was brought against them, Caligula would hear nothing thatthey had to say; and Philo withdrew with the remark, "Though the emperoris against us, God will be our friend. "

We learn the sad tale of the Jews' suffering under Caligula from thepages of their own historian only. But though Philo may have felt andwritten as one of the sufferers, his truth is undoubted. He was a manof unblemished character, and the writer of greatest learning and of thegreatest note at that time in Alexandria; being also of a great age, hewell deserved the honour of being sent on the embassy to Caligula. Hewas in religion a Jew, in his philosophy a platonist, and by birth anEgyptian: and in his numerous writings we may trace the three sourcesfrom which he drew his opinions. He is always devotional and in earnest, full of pure and lofty thoughts, and often eloquent. His fondness forthe mystical properties of numbers, and for finding an allegory orsecondary meaning in the plainest narrative, seems borrowed from theEgyptians. According to the Eastern proverb every word in a wise bookhas seventy-two meanings; and this mode of interpretation was calledinto use by the necessity which the Jews felt of making the OldTestament speak a meaning more agreeable to their modern views ofreligion. In Philo's speculative theology he seems to have borrowed lessfrom Moses than from the abstractions of Plato, whose shadowy hints hehas embodied in a more solid form. He was the first Jewish writerthat applied to the Deity the mystical notion of the Egyptians, thateverything perfect was of three parts. Philo's writings are valuable asshowing the steps by which the philosophy of Greece may be tracedfrom the writings of Plato to those of Justin Martyr and ClemensAlexandrinus. They give us the earliest example of how the mysticalinterpretation of the Scriptures was formed into a system, by whichevery text was made to unfold some important philosophic or religioustruth to the learned student, at the same time that to the unlearnedreader it conveyed only the simple historic fact. 

The Hellenistic Jews, while suffering under severe politicaldisabilities, had taken up a high literary position in Alexandria, andhad forced their opinions into the notice of the Greeks. The glowingearnestness of their philosophy, now put forward in a platonic dress, and heir improved style, approaching even classic elegance, laced theirwritings on a lofty eminence far above anything which the cold, lifelessgrammarians of the museum were then producing. Apion, who went to Rometo plead against Philo, was a native of the Great Oasis, but as he wasborn of Greek parents, he claimed and received the title and privilegesof an Alexandrian, which he denied to the Jews who were born in thecity. He had studied under Didymus and Apollonius and Euphranor, and wasone of the most laborious of the grammarians and editors of Homer. Allhis writings are now lost. Some of them were attacks upon the Jews andtheir religion, calling in question the truth of the Jewish historyand the justice of that nation's claim to high antiquity; and to theseattacks we owe Josephus' _Answer_, in which several valuable fragmentsof history are saved by being quoted against the pagans in support ofthe Old Testament. One of his works was his _Ćgyptiaca_, an account ofwhat he thought most curious in Egypt. But his learned trifling is nowlost, and nothing remains of it but his account of the meeting betweenAndroclus and the lion, which took place in the amphitheatre at Romewhen Apion was there on his embassy. Androclus was a runaway slave, who, when retaken, was brought to Rome to be thrown before an African lionfor the amusement of the citizens, and as a punishment for his flight. But the fierce and hungry beast, instead of tearing him to pieces, wagged his tail at him, and licked his feet. It seems that the slave, when he fled from his master, had gained the friendship of the lion inthe Libyan desert, first by pulling a thorn out of his foot, and thenby living three years with him in a cave; and, when both were broughtin chains to Rome, Androclus found a grateful friend in the amphitheatrewhere he thought to have met with a cruel death. 

We may for a moment leave our history, to bid a last farewell to thefamily of the Ptolemies. Augustus, after leading Selene, the daughterof Cleopatra and Antony, through the streets of Rome in his triumph, hadgiven her in marriage to the younger Juba, the historian of Africa; andabout the same time he gave to the husband the kingdom of Mauritania, the inheritance of his father. His son Ptolemy succeeded him on thethrone, but was soon turned out of his kingdom. We trace the last ofthe Ptolemies in his travels through Greece and Asia Minor by theinscriptions remaining to his honour. The citizens of Xanthus in Lyciaset up a monument to him; and at Athens his statue was placed besidethat of Philadelphus in the gymnasium of Ptolemy, near the temple ofTheseus, where he was honoured as of founder's kin. He was put to deathby Caligula. Drusilla, another grandchild of Cleopatra and Antony, married Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judća, after the death of hisfirst wife, who was also named Drusilla. These are the last notices thatwe meet with of the royal family of Egypt. 

As soon as the news of Caligula's death (A. D. 41) reached Egypt, thejoy of the Jews knew no bounds. They at once flew to arms to revengethemselves on the Alexandrians, whose streets were again the seat ofcivil war. The governor did what he could to quiet both parties, butwas not wholly successful till the decree of the new emperor reachedAlexandria. In this Claudius granted to the Jews the full rights ofcitizenship, which they had enjoyed under the Ptolemies, and which hadbeen allowed by Augustus; he left them to choose their own high priest, to enjoy their own religion without hindrance, and he repealed the lawsof Caligula under which they had been groaning. At this time the Jewishalabarch in Egypt was Demetrius, a man of wealth and high birth, who hadmarried Mariamne, the daughter of the elder Agrippa. 

[Illustration: 041. Jpg EGYPTIAN THRESHING-MACHINE]

The government under Claudius was mild and just, at least as far asa government could be in which every tax-gatherer, every militarygovernor, and every sub-prefect was supposed to enrich himself by hisappointment. Every Roman officer, from the general down to the lowesttribune, claimed the right of travelling through the country free ofexpense, and seizing the carts and cattle of the villagers to carry himforward to the next town, under the pretence of being a courier on thepublic service. But we have a decree of the ninth year of this reign, carved on the temple in the Great Oasis, in which Cneius Capito, theprefect of Egypt, endeavours to put a stop to this injustice. He ordersthat no traveller shall have the privilege of a courier unless he has aproper warrant, and that then he shall only claim a free lodging; thatclerks in the villages shall keep a register of all that is taken onaccount of the public service; and that if anybody make an unjust claimhe shall pay four times the amount to the informer and six times theamount to the emperor. But royal decrees could do little or nothingwhere there were no judges to enforce them; and the people of UpperEgypt must have felt this law as a cruel insult when they were told thatthey might take up their complaints to Basilides, at Alexandria. Theemployment of the informer is a full acknowledgment of the weaknessof this absolute government, and that the prefect had not the powerto enforce his own decrees; and, when we compare this law with thatof Alexander on his conquest of the country, we have no difficulty inseeing why Egypt rose under the Ptolemies and sunk under the selfishpolicy of Augustus. 

Claudius was somewhat of a scholar and an author; he wrote severalvolumes both in Greek and in Latin. The former he might perhaps thinkwould be chiefly valued in Alexandria; and when he founded a new collegein that city, called after himself the Claudian Museum, he ordered thaton given days every year his history of Carthage should be publiclyread in one museum, and his history of Italy in the other; thus securingduring his reign an attention to his writings which their merits alonewould not have gained. 

Under the government of Claudius the Egyptians were again allowed tocoin money; and in his first year begins that historically importantseries in which every coin is dated with the year of the emperor'sreign. The coins of the Ptolemies were strictly Greek in theirworkmanship, and the few Egyptian characters that we see upon them areso much altered by the classic taste of the die-engraver that we hardlyknow them again. But it is far otherwise with the coins of the emperors, which are covered with the ornaments, characters, and religiousceremonies of the native Egyptians; and, though the style of art isoften bad, they are scarcely equalled by any series of coins whatever inthe service they render to the historian. 

It was in this reign that the route through Egypt to India first becamereally known to the Greeks and Romans. The historian Pliny, who died in79 A. D. , has left us a contemporary account of these early voyages. "Itwill not be amiss, " he says in his _Natural History_, "to set forth thewhole of the route from Egypt, which has been stated to us of late, uponinformation on which reliance may be placed and is here published forthe first time. The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeingthat in no year does India drain our empire of less than five hundredand fifty millions of sesterces [or two million dollars], giving backher own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully one hundredtimes their cost price. 

"Two miles distant from Alexandria is the town of Heliopolis. Thedistance thence to Koptos, up the Nile, is three hundred and eightmiles; the voyage is performed, when the Etesian winds are blowing, intwelve days. From Koptos the journey is made with the aid of camels, stations being arranged at intervals for the supply of fresh water. Thefirst of these stations is called Hydreuma, and is distant twenty-twomiles; the second is situate on a mountain at a distance of one day'sjourney from the last; the third is at a second Hydreuma, distant fromKoptos ninety-five miles; the fourth is on a mountain; the next to thatis another Hydreuma, that of Apollo, and is distant from Koptos onehundred and eighty-four miles; after which there is another on amountain; there is then another station at a place called the NewHydreuma, distant from Koptos two hundred and thirty miles; and nextto it there is another called the Old Hydreuma, where a detachmentis always on guard, with a caravansary that affords lodging for twothousand persons. The last is distant from the New Hydreuma sevenmiles. After leaving it, we come to the city of Berenicę, situate upona harbour of the Red Sea, and distant from Koptos two hundred andfifty-seven miles. The greater part of this distance is generallytravelled by night, on account of the extreme heat, the day being spentat the stations; in consequence of which it takes twelve days to performthe whole journey from Koptos to Berenicę. 

"Passengers generally set sail at midsummer before the rising of theDog-star, or else immediately after, and in about thirty days arriveat Ocelis in Arabia, or else at Cane, in the region which bearsfrankincense. To those who are bound for India, Ocelis is the best placefor embarkation. If the wind called Hippolus happens to be blowing, it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest mart of India, Muziris by name [the modern Mangalore]. This, however, is not a verydesirable place for disembarkation, on account of the pirates whichfrequent its vicinity, where they occupy a place, Mtrias; nor, in fact, is it very rich in articles of merchandise. Besides, the roadstead forshipping is a considerable distance from the shore, and the cargoeshave to be conveyed in boats, either for loading or discharging. At themoment that I am writing these pages, " continues Pliny, "the name ofthe king of the place is Cćlobotras. Another part, and a much moreconvenient one, is that which lies in the territory of the people calledNeacyndi, Barace by name. Here King Pandian used to reign, dwelling at aconsiderable distance from the mart in the interior, at a city knownas Modiera. The district from which pepper is carried down to Baracein boats hollowed out of a single tree, is known as Cottonara. None ofthese names of nations, ports, and cities are to be found in any ofthe former writers, from which circumstance it would appear that thelocalities have since changed their names. Travellers set sail fromIndia on their return to Europe, at the beginning of the Egyptian monthTybus, which is our December, or, at all events, before the sixth day ofthe Egyptian month Mechir, the same as our ides of January: if they dothis, they can go and return in the same year. They set sail fromIndia with a south-east wind, and, upon entering the Red Sea, catch thesouth-west or south. "

The places on the Indian coast which the Egyptian merchant vessels thenreached are verified from the coins found there; and as we know thecourse of the trade-wind by which they arrived, we also know the part ofAfrica where they left the shore and braved the dangers of the ocean. A hoard of Roman gold coins of these reigns has been dug up in our owndays near Calicut, under the roots of a banyan-tree. It had been thereburied by an Alexandrian merchant on his arrival from this voyage, andleft safe under the cover of the sacred tree to await his return from asecond journey. But he died before his return, and his secret died withhim. The products of the Indian trade were chiefly silk, diamonds, andother precious stones, ginger, spices, and some scents. The state ofEthiopia was then such that no trade came down the Nile to Syęnę;and the produce of southern Africa was brought by coasting vessels toBerenicę. These products were ivory, rhinoceros teeth, hippopotamusskins, tortoise shell, apes, monkeys, and slaves, a list which throwsa sidelight both on the pursuits of the natives and the tastes of theultimate purchasers. 

[Illustration: 047. Jpg AN ARAB GIRL]

The Romans in most cases collected the revenues of a province by meansof a publican or farmer, to whom the taxes were let by auction; but suchwas the importance of Egypt that the same jealousy which made them thinkits government too great to be trusted to a man of high rank, made themthink its revenues too large to be trusted to one farmer. The smallerbranches of the Egyptian revenue were, however, let out as usual, andeven the collection of the customs of the whole of the Red Sea was notthought too much to trust to one citizen. Annius Plocamus, who farmedthem in this reign, had a little fleet under his command to collect themwith; and, tempted either by trade or plunder, his ships were sometimesas far out as the south coast of Arabia. On one occasion one of hisfreedmen in the command of a vessel was carried by a north wind intothe open ocean, and after being fifteen days at sea found himself on thecoast of Ceylon. This island was not then wholly new to the geographersof Egypt and Europe. It had been heard of by the pilots in the voyage ofAlexander the Great; Eratosthenes had given it a place in his map; andit had often been reached from Africa by the sailors of the Red Sea inwickerwork boats made of papyrus; but this was the first time it hadbeen visited by a European. 

In the neighbourhood of the above-mentioned road from Koptos to Berenicęwere the porphyritic quarries and the emerald mines, which were brisklyworked under the Emperor Claudius. The mountain was now named theClaudian Mountain. 

As this route for trade became known, the geographers began tounderstand the wide space that separates India from Africa. Hitherto, notwithstanding a few voyages of discovery, it had been the commonopinion that Persia was in the neighbourhood of Ethiopia. The Greeks hadthought that the Nile rose in India, in opposition to the Jews, who saidthat it was the river Gibon of the garden of Eden, which made a circuitround the whole of the land of Cush, or Ethiopia. The names of thesecountries got misused accordingly; and even after the mistake wascleared up we sometimes find Ethiopia called India. 

The Egyptian chemists were able to produce very bright dyes by methodsthen unknown to Greece or Rome. They dipped the cloth first into aliquid of one colour, called a mordant, to prepare it, and then intoa liquid of a second colour; and it came out dyed of a third colour, unlike either of the former. The ink with which they wrote the name ofa deceased person on the mummy-cloth, like our own marking-ink, was madewith nitrate of silver. Their knowledge of chemistry was far greaterthan that of their neighbours, and the science is even now named fromthe country of its birth. The later Arabs called it Alchemia, _theEgyptian art_, and hence our words alchemy and chemistry. So alsoNaphtha, or _rock oil_, from the coast of the Red Sea; and Anthracite, or _rock fuel_, from the coast of Syria, both bear Egyptian names. To some Egyptian stones the Romans gave their own names; as the blackglassy obsidian from Nubia they called after Obsidius, who found it;the black Tiberian marble with white spots, and the Augustan marble withregular wavy veins, were both named after the emperors. Porphyry wasnow used for statues for the first time, and sometimes to make a kind ofpatchwork figure, in which the clothed parts were of the coloured stone, while the head, hands, and feet were of white marble. And it was thoughtthat diamonds were nowhere to be found but in the Ethiopian gold mines. 

Several kinds of wine were made in Egypt; some in the Arsinoďte nome onthe banks of the lake Mceris; and a poor Libyan wine at Antiplme on thecoast, a hundred miles from Alexandria. Wine had also been made inUpper Egypt in small quantities a very long time, as we learn from themonuments; but it was produced with difficulty and cost and was notgood; it was not valued by the Greeks. It was poor and thin, and drunkonly by those who were feverish and afraid of anything stronger. Thatof Anthylla, to the east of Alexandria, was very much better. But betterstill were the thick luscious Tćniotic and the mild delicate Mareoticwines. This last was first grown at Plinthine, but afterwards on all thebanks of the lake Mareotis. The Mareotic wine was white and sweet andthin, and very little heating or intoxicating. Horace had carelesslysaid of Cleopatra that she was drunk with Mareotic wine; but Lucan, whobetter knew its quality, says that the headstrong lady drank wine farstronger than the Mareotic. Near Sebennytus three kinds of wine weremade; one bitter named Peuce, a second sparkling named Ćthalon, andthe third Thasian, from a vine imported from Thasus. But none of theseEgyptian wines was thought equal to those of Greece and Italy. Nor werethey made in quantities large enough or cheap enough for the poor; andhere, as in other countries, the common people for their intoxicatingdrink used beer or spirits made from barley. 

[Illustration: 051. Jpg FARMING IN EGYPT]

The Egyptian sour wine, however, made very good vinegar, and it was thenexported for sale in Rome. During this half-century that great nationalwork, the lake of Moeris, by which thousands of acres had been floodedand made fertile, and the watering of the lower country regulated, was, through the neglect of the embankments, at once destroyed. The latesttraveller who mentions it is Strabo, and the latest geographer PomponiusMela. By its means the province of Arsinoë was made one of the mostfruitful and beautiful spots in Egypt. Here only does the olive growwild. Here the vine will grow. And by the help of this embanked lake theprovince was made yet more fruitful. But before Pliny wrote, the bankhad given way, the pentup waters had made for themselves a channel intothe lake now called Birket el Kurun, and the two small pyramids, whichhad hitherto been surrounded by water, then stood on dry ground. Thuswas the country slowly going to ruin by the faults of the government, and ignorance in the foreign rulers. But, on the other hand, thebeautiful temple of Latopolis, which had been begun under the Ptolemies, was finished in this reign; and bears the name of Claudius with those ofsome later emperors on its portico and walls. 

In the Egyptian language the word for a year is _Bait_, which is alsothe name of a bird. In hieroglyphics this word is spelt by a palm-branch_Bai_ and the letter T, followed sometimes by a circle as a picture ofthe year. Hence arose among a people fond of mystery and allegory a modeof speaking of the year under the name of a palm-branch or of a bird;and they formed a fable out of a mere confusion of words. The Greeks, who were not slow to copy Egyptian mysticism, called this fabulous birdthe _Phoenix_ from their own name for the palm-tree. The end of any longperiod of time they called the return of the phonix to earth. The Romansborrowed the fable, though perhaps without understanding the allegory;and in the seventh year of this reign, when the emperor celebrated thesecular games at Rome, at the end of the eighth century since the citywas built, it was said that the phoenix had come to Egypt and was thencebrought to Rome. This was in the consulship of Plautius and Vitellius;and it would seem to be only from mistakes in the name that Plinyplaces the event eleven years earlier, in the consulship of Plautiusand Papinius, and that Tacitus places it thirteen years earlier in theconsulship of Fabius and Vitellius. This fable is connected with someof the remarkable epochs in Egyptian history. The story lost nothing bytravelling to a distance. In Rome it was said that this wonderful birdwas a native of Arabia, where it lived for five hundred years, that onits death a grub came out of its body which in due time became a perfectbird; and that the new phonix brought to Egypt the bones of its parentin the nest of spices in which it had died, and laid them on the altarin the temple of the sun in Heliopolis. It then returned to Arabia tolive in its turn for five hundred years, and die and give life againto another as before. The Christians saw in this story a type of theresurrection; and Clement, Bishop of Rome, quotes it as such in hisEpistle to the Corinthians. 

We find the name of Claudius on several of the temples of Upper Egypt, particularly on that of Apollinopolis Magna, and on the portico of thegreat temples of Latopolis, which were being built in this reign. 

In the beginning of the reign of Nero, 55 A. D. , an Egyptian Jew, who claimed to be listened to as a prophet, raised the minds of hiscountrymen into a ferment of religious zeal by preaching about thesufferings of their brethren in Judća; and he was able to get togethera body of men, called in reproach the Sicarii, or _ruffians_, whosenumbers are variously stated at four thousand and thirty thousand, whom he led out of Egypt to free the holy city from the bondage of theheathen. But Felix, the Roman governor, led against them the garrison ofJerusalem, and easily scattered the half-armed rabble. By such acts ofreligious zeal on the part of the Jews they were again brought to blowswith the Greeks of Alexandria. The Macedonians, as the latter stillcalled themselves, had met in public assembly to send an embassy toRome, and some Jews who entered the meeting, which as citizens they hada full right to do, were seized and ill-treated by them as spies. Theywould perhaps have even been put to death if a large body of theircountrymen had not run to their rescue. The Jews attacked the assembledGreeks with stones and lighted torches, and would have burned theamphitheatre and all that were in it, if the prefect, TiberiusAlexander, had not sent some of the elders of their own nation to calmtheir angry feelings. But, though the mischief was stopped for a time, it soon broke out again; and the prefect was forced to call out thegarrison of two Roman legions and five thousand Libyans before hecould re-establish peace in the city. The Jews were always the greatestsufferers in these civil broils; and Josephus says that fifty thousandof his countrymen were left dead in the streets of Alexandria. But thisnumber is very improbable, as the prefect was a friend to the Jewishnation, and as the Roman legions were not withdrawn to the camp tillthey had guarded the Jews in carrying away and burying the bodies oftheir friends. 

It was a natural policy on the part of the emperors to change a prefectwhenever his province was disturbed by rebellion, as we have seen in thecase of Flaccus, who was recalled by Caligula. It was easier to send anew governor than to inquire into a wrong or to redress a grievance; andaccordingly in the next year C. Balbillus was sent from Rome as prefectof Egypt. He reached Alexandria on the sixth day after leaving theStraits of Sicily, which was spoken of as the quickest voyage known. TheAlexandrian ships were better built and better manned than any others, and, as a greater number of vessels sailed every year between that portand Puteoli on the coast of Italy than between any other two places, novoyage was better understood or more quickly performed. They were out ofsight of land for five hundred miles between Syracuse and Cyrene. Hencewe see that the quickest rate of sailing, with a fair wind, was at thattime about one hundred and fifty miles in the twenty-four hours. Butthese ships had very little power of bearing up against the wind; andif it were contrary the voyage became tedious. If the captain on sailingout of the port of Alexandria found the wind westerly, and was unable tocreep along the African coast to Cyrene, he stood over to the coast ofAsia Minor, in hopes of there finding a more favourable wind. If a stormarose, he ran into the nearest port, perhaps in Crete, perhaps in Malta, there to wait the return of fair weather. If winter then came on, he hadto lie by till spring. Thus a vessel laden with Egyptian wheat, leavingAlexandria in September, after the harvest had been brought down to thecoast, would sometimes spend five months on its voyage from that port toPuteoli. Such was the case with the ship bearing the children of Joveas its figurehead, which picked up the Apostle Paul and the historianJosephus when they had been wrecked together on the island of Malta; andsuch perhaps would have been the case with the ship which they beforefound on the coast of Lycia, had it been able to reach a safe harbour, and not been wrecked at Malta. 

[Illustration: 056. Jpg EGYPTIAN THRESHING MACHINE]

The rocky island of Malta, with the largest and safest harbour inthe Mediterranean, was a natural place for ships to touch at betweenAlexandria and Italy. Its population was made up of those races whichhad sailed upon its waters first from Carthage and then from Alexandria;it was a mixture of Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Grćco-Egyptians. Tojudge from the skulls turned up in the burial-places, the Egyptianswere the most numerous, and here as elsewhere the Egyptian superstitionsconquered and put down all the other superstitions. While the island wasunder the Phoenicians, the coins had the head of the Sicilian goddesson one side, and on the other the Egyptian trinity of Isis, Osiris, andNepthys. When it was under the Greek rule the head on the coins receivedan Egyptian head-dress, and became that of the goddess Isis, and on theother side of the coin was a winged figure of Osiris. It was atthis time governed by a Roman governor. The large temple, built withbarbarian rudeness, and ornamented with the Phoenician palm-branch, wason somewhat of a Roman plan, with a circular end to every room. But itwas dedicated to the chief god of Egypt, and is even yet called by itsGreek name Hagia Chem, _the temple of Chem_. The little neighbouringisland of Cossyra, between Sicily and Carthage, also shows upon itscoins clear traces of its taste for Egyptian customs. 

[Illustration: 057. Jpg MALTESE COIN]

The first five years of this reign, the _quinquennium Neronis_, whilethe emperor was under the tutorship of the philosopher Seneca, became inRome proverbial for good government, and on the coinage we see marks ofEgypt being equally well treated. In the third year we see on a coin thequeen sitting on a throne with the word _agreement_, as if to praisethe young emperor's good feeling in following the advice of his motherAgrippina. On another the emperor is styled the young good genius, andhe is represented by the sacred basilisk crowned with the double crownof Egypt. The new prefect, Balbillus, was an Asiatic Greek, and no doubtreceived his Roman names of Tiberius Claudius on being made a freedmanof the late emperor. He governed the country mildly and justly; andthe grateful inhabitants declared that under him the Nile was more thanusually bountiful, and that its waters always rose to their just height. But in the latter part of the reign the Egyptians smarted severely underthat cruel principle of a despotic monarchy that every prefect, everysub-prefect, and even every deputy tax-gatherer, might be equallydespotic in his own department. 

[Illustration: 058. Jpg COIN OF COSSYRA]

On a coin of the thirteenth year of the reign of this ruler, we see aship with the word _emperor-bearer_, being that in which he then sailedinto Greece, or in which the Alexandrians thought that he would visittheir city. But if they had really hoped for his visit as a pleasure, they must have thought it a danger escaped when they learned hischaracter; they must have been undeceived when the prefect CćcinnaTuscus was punished with banishment for venturing to bathe in the bathwhich was meant for the emperor's use if he had come on his projectedvisit. 

During the first century and a half of Roman sway in Egypt the schoolof Alexandria was nearly silent. We have a few poems by Leonides ofAlexandria, one of which is addressed to the Empress Poppća, as the wifeof Jupiter, on his presenting a celestial globe to her on her birthday. Pamphila wrote a miscellaneous history of entertaining stories, and herlively, simple style makes us very much regret its loss. Chćremon, aStoic philosopher, had been, during the last reign, at the head of theAlexandrian library, but he was removed to Rome as one of the tutors tothe young Nero. 

[Illustration: 059. Jpg COIN OF NERO]

He is ridiculed by Martial for writing in praise of death, when, fromage and poverty, he was less able to enjoy life. We still possess amost curious though short account by him of the monastic habits of theancient Egyptians. He also wrote on hieroglyphics, and a small fragmentcontaining his opinion of the meanings of nineteen characters stillremains to us. But he is not always right; he thinks the characters wereused allegorically for thoughts, not for sounds; and fancies that thepriests used them to keep secret the real nature of the gods. 

He was succeeded at the museum by his pupil Dionysius, who had thecharge of the library till the reign of Trajan. Dionysius was alsoemployed by the prefect as a secretary of state, or, in the language ofthe day, secretary to the embassies, epistles, and answers. He was theauthor of the _Periegesis_, and aimed at the rank of a poet by writinga treatise on geography in heroic verse. From this work he is namedDionysius Periegetes. While careful to remind us that his birthplaceAlexandria was a Macedonian city, he gives due honour to Egypt and theEgyptians. There is no river, says he, equal to the Nile for carryingfertility and adding to the happiness of the land. It divides Asia fromLibya, falling between rocks at Syęnę, and then passing by the old andfamous city of Thebes, where Memnon every morning salutes his belovedAurora as she rises. On its banks dwells a rich and glorious race ofmen, who were the first to cultivate the arts of life; the first to maketrial of the plough and sow their seed in a straight furrow; and thefirst to map the heavens and trace the sloping path of the sun. 

According to the traditions of the church, it was in this reign thatChristianity was first brought into Egypt by the Evangelist Mark, thedisciple of the Apostle Peter. Many were already craving for religiousfood more real than the old superstitions. The Egyptian had been shakenin his attachment to the sacred animals by Greek ridicule. The Greek hadbeen weakened in his belief of old Homer's gods by living with menwho had never heard of them. Both were dissatisfied with the scheme ofexplaining the actions of their gods by means of allegory. The crumblingaway of the old opinions left men more fitted to receive the newreligion from Galilee. Mark's preaching converted crowds in Alexandria;but, after a short stay, he returned to Rome, in about the eleventhyear of this reign, leaving Annianus to watch over the growing church. Annianus is usually called the first bishop of Alexandria; and Eusebius, who lived two hundred years later, has given us the names of hissuccessors in an unbroken chain. If we would inquire whether the earlyconverts to Christianity in Alexandria were Jews, Greeks, or Egyptians, we have nothing to guide us but the names of these bishops. Annianus, or Annaniah, as his name was written by the Arabic historians, was verylikely a Jew; indeed, the Evangelist Mark would begin by addressinghimself to the Jews, and would leave the care of the infant church toone of his own nation. In the platonic Jews, Christianity found soilso exactly suited to its reception that it is only by he dates that theThérapeute of Alexandria and their historian Philo are proved not to beChristian; and, again, it was in the close union between the platonicJews and the platonists that Christianity found its easiest path to theears and hearts of the pagans. The bishops that followed seem to havebeen Greek converts. Before the death of Annaniah, Jerusalem had beendestroyed by the Roman armies, and the Jews sunk in their own eyesand in those of their fellow-citizens throughout the empire; hence thesecond bishop of Alexandria was less likely to be of Hebrew blood; andit was long before any Egyptians aimed at rank in the church. But thoughthe spread of Christianity was rapid, both among the Greeks and theEgyptians, we must not hope to find any early traces of it in thehistorians. It was at first embraced by the unlearned and the poor, whose deeds and opinions are seldom mentioned in history; and we mayreadily believe the scornful reproach of the unbelievers, that it waschiefly received by the unfortunate, the unhappy, the despised, and thesinful. When the white-robed priestesses of Ceres carried the sacredbasket through the streets of Alexandria, they cried out, "Sinners away, or keep your eyes to the ground; keep your eyes to the ground!" Whenthe crier, standing on the steps of the portico in front of the greattemple, called upon the pagans to come near and join in the celebrationof their mysteries, he cried out, "All ye who are clean of hands andpure of heart, come to the sacrifice; all ye who are guiltless inthought and deed, come to the sacrifice. "

But many a repentant sinner and humble spirit must have drawn back indistrust from a summons which to him was so forbidding, and been gladto hear the good tidings of mercy offered by Christianity to those wholabour and are heavy laden, and to the broken-hearted who would turnaway from their wickedness. While such were the chief followers of thegospel, it was not likely to be much noticed by the historians; and wemust wait till it forced its way into the schools and the palace beforewe shall find many traces of the rapidity with which it was spreading. 

[Illustration: 063. Jpg ETHIOPIAN ARABS]

During these reigns the Ethiopian Arabs kept up their irregular warfareagainst the southern frontier. The tribe most dreaded were the Blemmyes, an uncivilised people, described by the affrighted neighbours as havingno heads, but with eyes and mouth on the breast; and it was under thatname that the Arabs spread during each century farther and farther intoEgypt, separating the province from the more cultivated tribes of UpperEthiopia or Meroë. The cities along the banks of the Nile in LowerEthiopia, between Nubia and Meroë, were ruined by being in the debatableland between the two nations. The early Greek travellers had countedabout twenty cities on each side of the Nile between Syęnę and Meroë;but when, in a moment of leisure, the Roman government proposed topunish and stop the inroads of these troublesome neighbours, and sentforward a tribune with a guard of soldiers, he reported on his returnthat the whole country was a desert, and that there was scarcely acity inhabited on either side of the Nile beyond Nubia. But he had notmarched very far. The interior of Africa was little known; and to seekfor the fountain of the Nile was another name for an impossible orchimerical undertaking. 

But Egypt itself was so quiet as not to need the presence of so largea Roman force as usual to keep it in obedience; and when Vespasian, whocommanded Nero's armies in Syria, found the Jews more obstinate in theirrebellion and less easily crushed than he expected, the emperor sent theyoung Titus to Alexandria, to lead to his father's assistance all thetroops that could be spared. Titus led into Palestine through Arabia twolegions, the Fifth and the Tenth, which were then in Egypt. 

We find a temple of this reign in the oasis of Dakleh, or the WesternOasis, which seems to have been a more flourishing spot in the timeof the Romans than when Egypt itself was better governed. It is so farremoved from the cities in the valley of the Nile that its position, andeven existence, was long unknown to Europeans, and to such hiding-placesas this many of the Egyptians fled, to be farther from the tyranny ofthe Roman tax-gatherers. 

Hitherto the Roman empire had descended for just one hundred yearsthrough five emperors like a family inheritance; but, on the death ofNero, the Julian and Claudian families were at an end, and Galba, whowas raised to the purple by the choice of the soldiers, endeavoured topersuade the Romans and their dependent provinces that they had regainedtheir liberties. The Egyptians may have been puzzled by the word_freedom_, then struck upon the coins by their foreign masters, but musthave been pleased to find it accompanied with a redress of grievances. 

Galba began his reign with the praiseworthy endeavour of repairing theinjustice done by his cruel predecessor. He at once recalled the prefectof Egypt, and appointed in his place Tiberius Julius Alexander, anAlexandrian, a son of the former prefect of that name; and thus Egyptwas under the government of a native prefect. The peaceable situation ofthe Great Oasis has saved a long Greek inscription of the decree whichwas now issued in redress of the grievances suffered under Nero. It isa proclamation by Julius Demetrius, the commander of the Oasis, quotingthe decree of Tiberius Julius Alexander, the new prefect of Egypt. 

The prefect acknowledges that the loud complaints with which he was meton entering upon his government were well founded, and he promises thatthe unjust taxes shall cease; that nobody shall be forced to act as aprovincial tax-gatherer; that no debts shall be cancelled or sales madevoid under the plea of money owing to the revenue; that no freeman shallbe thrown into prison for debt, unless it be a debt due to theroyal revenue, and that no private debt shall be made over to thetax-gatherer, to be by him collected as a public debt; that no propertysettled on the wife at marriage shall be seized for taxes due from thehusband; and that all new charges and claims which had grown up withinthe last five years shall be repealed. In order to discourage informers, whom the prefects had much employed, and by whom the families inAlexandria were much harassed, and to whom he laid the great falling offin the population of that city, he orders, that if anybody shouldmake three charges and fail in proving them, he shall forfeit half hisproperty and lose the right of bringing an action at law. The land hadalways paid a tax in proportion to the number of acres overflowed andmanured by the waters of the Nile; and the husbandmen had latterly beenfrightened by the double threat of a new measurement of the land, and ofmaking it at the same time pay according to the ancient registers of theoverflow when the canals had been more open and more acres flooded; butthe prefect promises that there shall be no new measurements, and thatthey shall only be taxed according to the actual overflow. In 69 A. D. Galba was murdered, after a reign of seven months. Some of his coins, however, are dated in the second year of his reign, according to theAlexandrian custom of counting the years. They called the 29th ofAugust, the first new year's day after the sovereign came to the throne, the first day of his second year. 

Otho was then acknowledged as emperor by Rome and the East, while thehardy legions of Germany thought themselves entitled to choose forthemselves. They set up their own general, Vitellius. The two legions inEgypt sided with the four legions in Syria under Mucianus, and thethree legions which, under Vespasian, were carrying on the memorablewar against the Jews; and all took the oaths to Otho. We find nohieroglyphical inscriptions during this short reign of a few weeks, butthere are many Alexandrian coins to prove the truth of the historian;and some of them, like those of Galba, bear the unlooked-for word_freedom_. In the few weeks which then passed between the news of Otho'sdeath and of Vespasian being raised to the purple in Syria, Vitelliuswas acknowledged in Egypt; and the Alexandrian mint struck a few coinsin his name with the figure of Victory. But as soon as the legions ofEgypt heard that the Syrian army had made choice of another emperor, they withdrew their allegiance from Vitellius, and promised it to hisSyrian rival. 

Vespasian was at Cćsarea, in command of the army employed in the Jewishwar, when the news reached him that Otho was dead, and that Vitelliushad been raised to the purple by the German legions, and acknowledgedat Rome; and, without wasting more time in refusing the honour than wasnecessary to prove that his soldiers were in earnest in offering it, heallowed himself to be proclaimed emperor, as the successor of Otho. He would not, however, then risk a march upon Rome, but he sent toAlexandria to tell Tiberius Alexander, the governor of Egypt, what hehad done; he ordered him to claim in his name the allegiance of thatgreat province, and added that he should soon be there himself. The twoRoman legions in Egypt much preferred the choice of the Eastern tothat of the Western army, and the Alexandrians, who had only justacknowledged Vitellius, readily took the oath to be faithful toVespasian. This made it less necessary for him to hasten thither, and heonly reached Alexandria in time to hear that Vitellius had been murderedafter a reign of eight months, and that he himself had been acknowledgedas emperor by Rome and the Western legions. His Egyptian coins in thefirst year of his reign, by the word _peace_, point to the end of thecivil war. 

When Vespasian entered Alexandria, he was met by the philosophers andmagistrates in great pomp. The philosophers, indeed, in a city where, beside the officers of government, talent formed the only aristocracy, were a very important body; and Dion, Euphrates, and Apollonius had beenuseful in securing for Vespasian the allegiance of the Alexandrians. Dion was an orator, who had been professor of rhetoric, but he had givenup that study for philosophy. His orations, or declamations, gained forhim the name of Chrysostom, or _golden-mouthed_. Euphrates, his friend, was a platonist, who afterwards married the daughter of the prefect ofSyria, and removed to Rome. Apollonius of Tyana, the most celebrated ofthese philosophers, was one of the first who gained his eminence fromthe study of Eastern philosophy, which was then rising in the opinionsof the Greeks as highly worth their notice. He had been travelling inthe East; and, boasting that he was already master of all the fabledwisdom of the Magi of Babylon and of the Gymnosophists of India, he wascome to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermitsof Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to thepriests, he willingly yielded his belief to their mystic claims; and, whether from being deceived or as a deceiver, whether as an enthusiastor as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernaturalknowledge which they pretended to teach. By the Egyptians he waslooked upon as the favourite of Heaven; he claimed the power of workingmiracles by his magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledgeof astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the biddingof the priests one of the sacred trees spoke to him, as had been theircustom from of old with favourites, and in a clear and rather womanlyvoice addressed him as a teacher from heaven. 

It was to witness such practices as these, and to learn the art ofdeceiving their followers, that the Egyptian priests were now consultedby the Greeks. The oracle at Delphi was silent, but the oracle of Ammoncontinued to return an answer. The mystic philosophy of the East hadcome into fashion in Alexandria, and the priests were more celebrated asmagicians than as philosophers. They would tell a man's fortune and theyear that he was to die by examining the lines of his forehead. Some ofthem even undertook, for a sum of money, to raise the dead to life, or, rather, to recall for a time to earth the unwilling spirits, and makethem answer any questions that might be put to them. Ventriloquism wasan art often practised in Egypt, and perhaps invented there. By this thepriests gained a power over the minds of the listeners, and could makethem believe that a tree, a statue, or a dead body, was speaking tothem. 

The Alexandrian men of letters seldom erred by wrapping themselves up inpride to avoid the fault of meanness; they usually cringed to the great. Apollonius was wholly at the service of Vespasian, and the emperorrepaid the philosopher by flattery as well as by more solid favours. He kept him always by his side during his stay in Egypt; he acknowledgedhis rank as a prophet, and tried to make further use of him inpersuading the Egyptians of his own divine right to the throne. Vespasian begged him to make use of his prayers that he might obtainfrom God the empire which he had as yet hardly grasped; but Apollonius, claiming even a higher mission from Heaven than Vespasian was grantingto him, answered, with as much arrogance as flattery, "I have myselfalready made you emperor. " With the intimacy between Vespasian andApollonius begins the use of gnostic emblems on the Alexandrian coins. The imperial pupil was not slow in learning from such a master; andthe people were as ready to believe in the emperor's miracles as inthe philosopher's. As Vespasian was walking through the streets ofAlexandria, a man well known as having a disease in his eyes threwhimself at his feet and begged of him to heal his blindness. He had beentold by the god Serapis that he should regain his sight if the emperorwould but deign to spit upon his eyelids. Another man, who had lost theuse of a hand, had been told by the same god that he should be healed ifthe emperor would but trample on him with his feet. Vespasian at firstlaughed at them and thrust them off; but at last he so far yieldedto their prayers, and to the flattery of his friends, as to have thephysicians of Alexandria consulted whether it was in his power to healthese unfortunate men. The physicians, like good courtiers, were not sounwise as to think it impossible; besides, it seemed meant by the god asa public proof of Vespasian's right to the throne; if he were successfulthe glory would be his, and if he failed the laugh would be against thecripples. The two men were therefore brought before him, and in the faceof the assembled citizens he trampled on one and spit on the other; andhis flatterers declared that he had healed the maimed and given sight tothe blind. 

Vespasian met with further wonders when he entered the temple of Serapisto consult the god as to the state and fortunes of the empire. He wentinto the inner sanctuary alone, and, to his surprise, there he beheldthe old Basilides, the freedman of Claudius, one of the chief men ofAlexandria, whom he knew was then lying dangerously ill, and severaldays' journey from the city. He inquired of the priests whetherBasilides had been in the temple, and was assured that he had not. Hethen asked whether he had been in Alexandria; but nobody had seen himthere. Lastly, on sending messengers, he learned that he was on hisdeath-bed eighty miles off. With this miracle before his eyes, he couldnot distrust the answers which the priests gave to his questions. 

From Alexandria Vespasian sent back Titus to finish the siege ofJerusalem. The Jewish writer Joseph, the son of Matthias, or FlaviusJosephus, as he called himself when he entered the service of theemperor, was then in Alexandria. He had been taken prisoner byVespasian, but had gained his freedom by the betrayal of his country'scause. He joined the army of Titus and marched to the overthrow ofJerusalem. Notwithstanding the obstinate and heroic struggles of theJews, Judća was wholly conquered by the Romans, and Jerusalem and itsother fortresses either received Roman garrisons or were dismantled. The Temple was overthrown in the month of September, A. D. 70. Titus madeslaves of ninety-seven thousand men, many of whom he led with him intoEgypt, and then sent them to work in the mines. These were soon followedby a crowd of other brave Jews, who chose rather to quit their homesand live as wanderers in Egypt than to own Vespasian as their king. Theyknew no lord but Jahveh; to take the oaths or to pay tribute to Cćsarwas to renounce the faith of their fathers. But they found no safety inEgypt. Their Greek brethren turned against them, and handed six hundredof them up to Lupus, the governor of Egypt, to be punished; and theircountryman Josephus brands them all with the name of Sicarii. They triedto hide themselves in Thebes and other cities less under the eyes of theRoman governor. They were, however, followed and taken, and the couragewith which the boys and mere children bore their sufferings, sooner thanacknowledge Vespasian for their king, drew forth the praise of even thetime-serving Josephus. 

The Greek Jews of Egypt gained nothing by this treachery towardstheir Hebrew brethren; they were themselves looked down upon by theAlexandrians, and distrusted by the Romans. The emperor ordered Lupus toshut up the temple at Onion, near Heliopolis, in which, during the lastthree hundred years, they had been allowed to have an altar, in rivalryto the Temple of Jerusalem. Even Josephus, whose betrayal of hiscountrymen might have saved him from their enemies, was sent with manyothers in chains to Rome, and was only set free on his making himselfknown to Titus. Indeed, when the Hebrew Jews lost their capital andtheir rank as a nation, their brethren felt lowered in the eyes of theirfellow-citizens, in whatever city they dwelt, and in Alexandria theylost all hope of keeping their privileges; although the emperor refusedto repeal the edict which granted them their citizenship, an edict towhich they always appealed for protection, but often with very littlesuccess. 

The Alexandrians were sadly disappointed in Vespasian. They had beenamong the first to acknowledge him as emperor while his power was yetdoubtful, and they looked for a sum of money as a largess; but to theirsorrow he increased the taxes, and re-established some which had falleninto disuse. They had a joke against him, about his claiming from one ofhis friends the trifling debt of six oboli; and, upon hearing of theirwitticisms, he was so angry that he ordered this sum of six oboli to belevied as a poll-tax upon every man in the city, and he only remittedthe tax at the request of his son Titus. He went to Rome, carrying withhim the nickname of Cybiosactes, _the scullion_, which the Alexandriansgave him for his stinginess and greediness, and which they had beforegiven to Seleucus, who robbed the tomb of Alexander the Great, atAlexandria, of its famous golden sarcophagus. 

Titus saw the importance of pleasing the people; and his wish to humourtheir ancient prejudices, at the ceremony of consecrating a new bullas Apis, brought some blame upon him. He there, as became the occasion, wore the state crown, and dazzled the people of Memphis with his regalpomp; but, while thus endeavouring to strengthen his father's throne, hewas by some accused of grasping at it for himself. 

The great temple of Kneph, at Latopolis, which had been the work of manyreigns and perhaps many centuries, was finished under Vespasian. It isa building worthy of the best times of Egyptian architecture. It has agrand portico, upheld by four rows of massive columns, with capitals inthe form of papyrus flowers. On the ceiling is a zodiac, like that atTentyra; and, though many other kings' names are carved on the walls, that of Vespasian is in the dedication over the entrance. 

Of the reign of Titus in Egypt we find no trace beyond his coins struckeach year at Alexandria, and his name carved on one or two temples whichhad been built in former reigns. 

Of the reign of Domitian (81--96 A. D. ) we learn something from the poetJuvenal, who then held a military post in the province; and he givesus a sad account of the state of lawlessness in which the troops livedunder his commands. All quarrels between soldiers and citizens weretried by the officers according to martial law; and justice was veryfar from being even-handed between the Roman and the poor Egyptian. No witness was bold enough to come forward and say anything against asoldier, while everybody was believed who spoke on his behalf. Juvenalwas at a great age when he was sent into Egypt; and he felt that thecommand of a cohort on the very borders of the desert was a cruelbanishment from the literary society of Rome. His death in the camp washastened by his wish to return home. As what Juvenal chiefly aimed atin his writings was to lash the follies of the age, he, of course, foundplenty of amusement in the superstitions and sacred animals of Egypt. But he sometimes takes a poet's liberty, and when he tells us that man'swas almost the only flesh that they ate without sinning, we need notbelieve him to the letter. He gives a lively picture of a fight which hesaw between the citizens of two towns. The towns of Ombos and Tentyra, though about a hundred miles apart, had a long-standing quarrelabout their gods. At Ombos they worshipped the crocodile and thecrocodile-headed god Savak, while at Tentyra they worshipped the goddessHâthor, and were celebrated for their skill in catching and killingcrocodiles. So, taking advantage of a feast or holiday, they marched outfor a fight. The men of Ombos Avere beaten and put to flight; but one ofthem, stumbling as he ran away, was caught and torn to pieces, and, as Juvenal adds, eaten by the men of Tentyra. Their worship of beasts, birds, and fishes, and even growing their gods in the garden, arepleasantly hit off by him; they left nothing, said he, without worship, but the goddess of chastity. The mother goddess, Isis, the queen ofheaven, was the deity to whom they bowed with the most tender devotion, and to swear by Isis was their favourite oath; and hence the leek, intheir own language named Isi, was no doubt the vegetable called a god bythe satiric Juvenal. 

At the same time also the towns of Oxyrrhynchos and Cynopolis, inthe Heptanomos, had a little civil war about the animals whichthey worshipped. Somebody at Cynopolis was said to have caught anoxyrrhynchus fish in the Nile and eaten it; and so the people ofOxyrrhynchos, in revenge, made an attack upon the dogs, the gods ofCynopolis. They caught a number of them, killed them in sacrifice totheir offended fish-god, and ate them. The two parties then flew to armsand fought several battles; they sacked one another's cities in turns, and the war was not stopped till the Roman troops marched to the spotand punished them both. 

But we gain a more agreeable and most likely a more true notion of themystical religion and philosophy of the Egyptians in these days from theserious enquiries of Plutarch, who, instead of looking for what he couldlaugh at, was only too ready to believe that he saw wisdom hiddenunder an allegory in all their superstitions. Many of the habits ofthe priests, such as shaving the whole body, wearing linen instead ofcotton, and refusing some meats as impure, seem to have arisen from alove of cleanliness; their religion ordered what was useful. And italso forbade what was hurtful; so to stir the fire with a sword wasdispleasing to the gods, because it spoilt the temper of the metal. None but the vulgar now looked upon the animals and statues as gods; thepriests believed that the unseen gods, who acted with one mind and withone providence, were the authors of all good; and though these, like thesun and moon, were called in each country by a different name, yet, likethose luminaries, they were the same over all the world. 

[Illustration: 078b. Jpg SCENE IN A SEPUUCHRAL CHAMBER]

Outward ceremonies in religion were no longer thought enough without agood life; and, as the Greeks said, that beard and cloak did not make aphilosopher, so the Egyptians said that white linen and a tonsurewould not make a follower of Isis. All the sacrifices to the gods had asecondary meaning, or, at least, they tried to join a moral aim to theoutward act; as on the twentieth day of the month, when they ate honeyand figs in honour of Thot, they sang "Sweet is truth. " The Egyptians, like most other Eastern polytheists, held the doctrine which wasafterwards called Manicheism; they believed in a good and in a wickedgod, who governed the world between them. Of these the former madehimself threefold, because three is a perfect number, and they adoptedinto their religion that curious metaphysical opinion that everythingdivine is formed of three parts; and accordingly, on the Thebanmonuments we often see the gods in groups of three. They worshippedOsiris, Isis, and Horus under the form of a right-angled triangle, inwhich Horus was the side opposite to the right angle. The favouritepart of their mythology was the lamentation of Isis for the death ofher husband Osiris. By another change the god Horus, who used to be acrowned king of manly stature, was now a child holding a finger to hismouth, and thereby marking that he had not yet learned to talk. TheRomans, who did not understand this Egyptian symbol for youthfulness, thought that in this character he was commanding silence; and they gavethe name of Harpocrates, _Horus the powerful_, to a god of silence. Horus was also often placed as a child in the arms of his mother Isis;and thus by the loving nature of the group were awakened the more tenderfeelings of the worshipper. The Egyptians, like the Greeks, had alwaysbeen loud in declaring that they were beloved by their gods; but theyreceived their favours with little gratitude, and hardly professed thatthey felt any love towards the gods in return. But after the time of theChristian era, we meet with more kindly feelings even among the pagans. We find from the Greek names of persons that they at least had begun tothink their gods deserving of love, and in this group of the mother andchild, such a favourite also in Christian art, we see in what directionthese more kindly feelings found an entrance into the Egyptian religion. As fast as opinion was raising the great god Serapis above his fellowsand making the wrathful judge into the ruler of the world, so fast wasthe same opinion creating for itself a harbour of refuge in the childHorus and its mother. 

[Illustration: 080. Jpg HARPOCRATES]

The deep earnestness of the Egyptians in the belief of their ownreligion was the chief cause of its being adopted by others. The Greekshad borrowed much from it. Though in Rome it had been forbidden by law, it was much cultivated there in private; and the engraved rings on thefingers of the wealthy Romans which bore the figures of Harpocrates andother Egyptian gods easily escaped the notice of the magistrate. But thesuperstitious Domitian, who was in the habit of consulting astrologersand Chaldćan fortune-tellers, allowed the Egyptian worship. He builtat Rome a temple to Isis, and another to Serapis; and such was theeagerness of the citizens for pictures of the mother goddess with herchild in her arms that, according to Juvenal, the Roman painters alllived upon the goddess Isis. For her temple in the Campus Martius, holywater was even brought from the Nile to purify the building and thevotaries; and a regular college of priests was maintained there by theirzeal and at their cost, with a splendour worthy of the Roman capital. Domitian, also, was somewhat of a scholar, and he sent to Alexandria forcopies of their books, to restore the public library at Rome which hadbeen lately burnt; while his garden on the banks of the Tiber wasricher in the Egyptian winter rose than even the gardens of Memphis andAlexandria. 

During this century the coinage continues one of the subjects of chiefinterest to the antiquary. In 92 A. D. , in the eleventh year of hisreign, when Domitian took upon himself the tribunitian power at Romefor a second period of ten years, the event was celebrated in Alexandriawith a triumphal procession and games in the hippodrome, of all which wesee clear traces on the Egyptian coins. 

[Illustration: 081. Jpg COINS OF DOMITIAN]

The coinage is almost the only trace of Nerva (96--98 A. D. ) havingreigned in Egypt; but it is at the same time enough to prove themildness of his government. The Jews who by their own law were of oldrequired to pay half a shekel, or a didrachm, to the service of theirtemple, had on their conquest been made to pay that sum as a yearlytribute to the Ptolemies, and afterwards to the emperors. It was apoll-tax levied on every Jew throughout the empire. But Nerva had thehumanity to relieve them from this insulting tribute, and well did hedeserve the honour of having it recorded on the coins struck in hisreign. 

The coinage of the eleventh year of his successor, Trajan (98-117A. D. ), is very remarkable for its beauty, its technical skill, andvariety, even more so than that of the eleventh year of Domitian. 

[Illustration: 082. Jpg COIN OF NERVA]

The coins have hitherto proclaimed, in a manner unmistakably plain tothose who study numismatics, the games and conquests of the emperors, the bountiful overflow of the Nile, and sometimes the worship ofSerapis; but we now enter upon the most brilliant and most importantperiod of the Egyptian coinage, and find a rich variety of fables takenboth from Egyptian and Greek mythology. The coins of Rome in this andthe following reigns show the wealth, good taste, and learning of thenation, but they are surpassed by the coins of Egypt. While historyis nearly silent, and the buildings and other proofs of Roman goodgovernment have perished, the coins alone are quite enough to provethe well-being of the people. Among the Egyptian coins those of Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines equal in number those of all the otheremperors together, while in beauty they far surpass them. They aremostly of copper, of a small size, and thick, weighing about one hundredand ten grains, and some larger of two hundred and twenty grains; thesilver coins are less common, and of mixed metal. 

Though the Romans, while admiring and copying everything that was Greek, affected to look upon the Egyptians as savages, who were only known tobe human beings by their power of speech, still the Egyptian physicianswere held by them in the highest repute. The more wealthy Romans oftensailed to Alexandria for the benefit of their advice. Pliny the Elder, however, thought that of the invalids who went to Egypt for theirhealth more were cured by the sea voyage than by the physicians on theirarrival. 

[Illustration: 083. Jpg TRINITY OF ISIS, HORUS AND NEPHTHYS]

One of Cicero's physicians was an Egyptian. Pliny the Younger repaid hisEgyptian oculist, Harpocrates, by getting a rescript from the emperorto make him a Roman citizen. But the statesman did not know under whatharsh laws his friend was born, for the grant was void in the case of anEgyptian, the emperor's rescript was bad as being against the law; andPliny had again to beg the greater favour that the Egyptian might firstbe made a citizen of Alexandria, without which the former favour wasuseless. Thus, even in Alexandria, a conquered province governed bythe despotic will of a military emperor, there were still some laws orprinciples which the emperor found it not easy to break. The courts ofjustice, those to whom the edicts were addressed and by whom they wereto be explained and carried into effect, claimed a power in some casesabove the emperor; and the first article in the Roman code was that animperial rescript, by whomsoever or howsoever obtained, was void if itwas against the law. As the lawyers and magistrates formed part of thebody of citizens, the Alexandrians had so far a share in the governmentof their own affairs; but this was an advantage that the Egyptians lostby being under the power of the Greek magistrates. 

[Illustration: 084. Jpg COINS OF TRAJAN]

Trajan always kept in the public granaries of Rome a supply of Egyptiangrain equal to seven times the _canon_, or yearly gift to the poorcitizens; and in this prudent course he was followed by all hissuccessors, until the store was squandered by the worthless Elagabalus. One year, when the Nile did not rise to its usual height, and much ofthe grain land of the Delta, instead of being moistened by its watersand enriched by its mud, was left a dry, sandy plain, the granaries ofRome were unlocked to feed the city of Alexandria. The Alexandrians thensaw the unusual sight of ships unloading their cargoes of wheat in theirharbour, and the Romans boasted that they took the Egyptian tributein grain, not because they could not feed themselves, but because theEgyptians had nothing else to send them. 

Alexandria under the Romans was still the centre of the trading world, not only having its own great trade in grain, but being the port throughwhich the trade of India and Arabia passed to Europe, and at which theSyrian vessels touched in their way to Italy. The harbour was crowdedwith masts and strange prows and uncouth sails, and the quays alwaysbusy with loading and unloading; while in the streets might be seen menof all languages and all dresses, copper-coloured Egyptians, swarthyJews, lively, bustling Greeks, and haughty Italians, with Asiatics fromthe neighbouring coasts of Syria and Cilicia, and even dark Ethiopians, painted Arabs, Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and Indians, all gay withtheir national costumes. Alexandria was a spot in which Europe met Asia, and each wondered at the strangeness of the other. 

Of the Alexandrians themselves we receive a very unfavourable accountfrom their countryman, Dion Chrysostom. With their wealth, theyhad those vices which usually follow or cause the loss of nationalindependence. They were eager for nothing but food and horse-races. Theywere grave and quiet in their sacrifices and listless in business, butin the theatre or in the stadium men, women, and children were alikeheated into passion, and overcome with eagerness and warmth of feeling. A scurrilous song or a horse-race would so rouse them into a quarrelthat they could not hear for their own noise, nor see for the dustraised by their own bustle in the hippodrome; while all those acts oftheir rulers, which in a more wholesome state of society would havecalled for notice, passed by unheeded. 

[Illustration: 086. Jpg EGYPTIAN WIG (BRITISH MUSEUM)]

They cared more for the tumble of a favourite charioteer than for thesinking state of the nation. The ready employment of ridicule in theplace of argument, of wit instead of graver reason, of nicknamesas their most powerful weapon, was one of the worst points in theAlexandrian character. Frankness and manliness are hardly to be lookedfor under a despotic government where men are forbidden to speak theirminds openly; and the Alexandrians made use of such checks upon theirrulers as the law allowed them. They lived under an absolute monarchytempered only by ridicule. Though their city was four hundred years old, they were still colonists and without a mother-country. They had verylittle faith in anything great or good, whether human or divine. Theyhad few cherished prejudices, no honoured traditions, sadly little loveof fame, and they wrote no histories. But in luxury and delicacy theyset the fashion to their conquerors. The wealthy Alexandrian walkedabout Rome in a scarlet robe, in summer fanning himself with gold, anddisplaying on his fingers rings carefully suited to the season; as hishands were too delicate to carry his heavier jewels in the warm weather. At the supper tables of the rich, the Alexandrian singing boys weremuch valued; the smart young Roman walked along the Via Sacra hummingan Alexandrian tune; the favourite comic actor, the delight of thecity, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, was an Alexandrian; theRetiarius, who, with no weapon but a net, fought against an armedgladiator in the Roman forum, and came off conqueror in twenty-six suchbattles, was an Alexandrian; and no breed of fighting-cocks was thoughtequal to those reared in the suburbs of Alexandria. 

In the reign of Augustus the Roman generals had been defeated in theirattacks on Arabia; but under Trajan, when the Romans were masters of allthe countries which surround Arabia Nabatća, and when Egypt was sofar quiet that the legions could be withdrawn without danger to theprovinces, the Arabs could hold out no longer, and the rocky fastnessof Petra was forced to receive a Roman garrison. The event was as usualcommemorated on the coins of Rome; and for the next four hundred yearsthat remarkable Arab city formed part of the Roman empire; and Europeansnow travelling through the desert from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem areagreeably surprised at coming upon temples, carved out of the solidrock, ornamented with Corinthian columns of the age of the Antonines. 

In the twelfth year of this reign, when Lucius Sulpicius Simius wasprefect, some additions which had been made to the temple at Panopolisin the Thebaid were dedicated in the name of the emperor; and in thenineteenth year, when Marcus Rutilius Lupus was prefect, a new porticoin the oasis of Thebes was in the same manner dedicated to Serapis andIsis. A small temple, which had been before built at Denderah, near thegreat temple of Venus, was in the first year of this reign dedicated tothe Empress Plotina, under the name of the great goddess, the YoungerVenus. 

The canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, which hadbeen first made by Necho, had been either finished or a second timemade by Philadelphus; and in this reign that great undertaking was againrenewed. But the stream of the Nile was deserting the Bubastite branch, which was less navigable than formerly; and the engineers now changedthe greater part of the canal's bed. They thought it wiser to bringwater from a higher part of the Nile, so that the current in the canalmight run into the Red Sea instead of out, and its waters might stillbe fresh and useful to agriculture. It now began at Babylon oppositeMemphis and entered the Red Sea at a town which, taking its name fromthe locks, was called Clysmon, about ten miles to the south of Arsinoë. This latter town was no longer a port, having been separated from thesea by the continual advance of the sands. We have no knowledge of howlong the care of the imperial prefects kept this new canal open and inuse. It was perhaps one of the first of the Roman works that went todecay; and, when we find the Christian pilgrims sailing along it sevencenturies later, on their way from England to the holy sepulchre, it hadbeen again opened by the Muhammedan conquerors of Egypt. 

[Illustration: 089. Jpg ANTONINIAN TEMPLE NEAR SINAI]

Writings which some now regard as literary forgeries appeared inAlexandria about this time. They prophesied the re-establishment ofthe Jews at Jerusalem, and, as the wished-for time drew near, all theeastern provinces of the Roman empire were disturbed by rebelliousrisings of the Jews. Moved by the religious enthusiasm which gave birthto the writings, the Jews of Egypt in the eighteenth year of thisreign (116 A. D. ) were again roused into a quarrel with their Greekfellow-citizens; and in the next year, the last of the reign, they roseagainst their Roman governors in open rebellion, and they were not putdown till the prefect Lupus had brought his forces against them. Afterthis the Jews of Cyrene marched through the desert into Egypt, under thecommand of Lucuas, to help their brethren; and the rebellion took theregular form of a civil war, with all its usual horrors. The emperorsent against the Jews an army followed by a fleet, which, after numerousskirmishes and battles, routed them with great slaughter, and drovenumbers of them back into the desert, whence they harassed the villageas robbers. By these unsuccessful appeals to force, the Jews lost allright to those privileges of citizenship which they always claimed, andwhich had been granted by the emperors, though usually refused by theAlexandrians. The despair and disappointment of the Jews seem in manycases to have turned their minds to the Christian view of the OldTestament prophecies; henceforth, says Eusebius, the Jews embraced theChristian religion more readily and in greater numbers. 

In A. D. 122, the sixth year of the reign of Hadrian, Egypt was honouredby a visit from the emperor. He was led to Egypt at that time by someriots of a character more serious than usual, which had arisen betweentwo cities, probably Memphis and Heliopolis, about a bull, as to whetherit was to be Apis or Mnevis. Egypt had been for some years without asacred bull; and when at length the priests found one, marked with themystic spots, the inhabitants of those two cities flew to arms, andthe peace of the province was disturbed by their religious zeal, eachclaiming the bull as their own. 

Hadrian also undertook a voyage up the Nile from Alexandria in order toexplore the wonders of Egypt. This was the fashion then, for the ancientmonuments and the banks of this mysterious river offered just as manyattractions at that time as they have done to all nations sincethe expedition of Napoleon. That animal-worship, which had remainedunchanged for centuries, a riddle of human religion, was bound to excitethe curiosity of strangers. In this divinisation of animals lay thegreatest contempt for human understanding, and it was a bitter satireon the apotheosis of kings and emperors. For what was the divinityof Sesostris, of Alexander, of Augustus, or Hadrian compared withthe heavenly majesty of the ox Apis, or the holy cats, dogs, kites, crocodiles, and god-apes? Egypt was at this epoch already a museum ofthe Pharaoh-time and its enbalamed culture. Strange buildings, raresculptures, hieroglyphics, and pictures still filled the ancient towns, even though these had lost their splendour. Memphis and Heliopolis, Bubastis, Abydos, Saďs, Tanis, and the hundred-gated Thebes had longfallen into ruin, although still inhabited. 

The emperor's escort must have been an extraordinary sight as it steeredup the stream on a fleet of dahabiehs. The emperor was accompanied bystudents of the museum, interpreters, priests, and astrologers. Amongsthis followers were Verus and the beautiful Antinous. 

The Empress Sabina also accompanied him; she had the poetess JuliaBalbilla amongst her court ladies. They landed wherever there wasanything of interest to be seen, and there was more in those days thanthere is now. They admired the great pyramids, the colossal sphinx, andthe sacred town of Memphis. This city, the ancient royal seat of thePharaohs, and even in Strabo's time the second town in Egypt, was notyet buried under the sand of the desert; its disappearance had, however, already begun. Under the Ptolemies it had given much of the material ofher temples and palaces for the building of Alexandria. The great palaceof the Pharaohs had long been destroyed, but there still remainedmany notable monuments, such as the temple of Phtah, the pyramids, thenecropolis, and the Serapeum, and they retained their ancient cult. The town was still the chief seat of the Egyptian hierarchy and theresidence of Apis; for this very reason the Roman government haddestined it to be one of her strong military stations, for here a legionwas quartered. The emperor could walk through the time-worn avenues ofsphinxes which led to the wonderful vaults where the long succession ofdivine animals was buried, each like a Pharaoh, in a magnificent granitesarcophagus. Hadrian could admire the beautifully sculptured tomb of Di, an Egyptian officer of the fifth dynasty, with less trouble than wemust experience now; for now the palaces, the pictures of the gods, and almost all the pyramids are swallowed up in sand. Miserable Arabvillages, such as Saqqâra, have fixed themselves in the ruins ofMemphis, and from a thick palm grove one can look with astonishmentupon the torso of the powerful Ramses II. Lying solitary there, the lastwitness to the glory of the temple of Phtah, before which this colossusonce had its stand. In the neighbourhood of Memphis lay Heliopolis, thetown of the sun-god, with its ancient temple, and a school of Egyptianwisdom, in which Plato is supposed to have studied. 

In Heliopolis the worship of the god Ra was preserved, the centre ofwhich was the holy animal Mnevis, a rival or comrade of Apis. Cambyseshad partly destroyed the temple and even the obelisks which the Pharaohshad in the course of centuries erected to the sun-god; nowhere in Egyptexisted so many of these monuments as here and in Thebes. Hadrian sawmany of them lying half-burnt on the ground just as Strabo had done. On the site of Heliopolis, now green with wheat-fields, only a singleobelisk has remained upright, which is considered as the oldest of all, and was erected in the twelfth dynasty by Usirtasen I. 

The royal assemblage had arrived in the course of their journey at Besa, a place on the right bank of the river, opposite Hermopolis, when astrange event occurred. This was the death of Hadrian's favourite, Antinous, a young Greek from Claudiopolis, who had been degraded to theposition of Ganymede to the emperor on account of his beauty. It is notknown where the emperor first came across the youth; possibly in hisnative land, Bithynia. Not till he came to Egypt did he become hisinseparable companion, and this must have been a deep offence tohis wife. The unfortunate queen was delivered in Besa from his hatedpresence, for Antinous was drowned there in the Nile. 

His death was surrounded by mystery. Was it accident? Was he a victim?Hadrian's humanity protects him from the suspicion that he sacrificedhis victim in cold blood, as Tiberius had once sacrificed the beautifulHypatus in Capri. Had the fantastic youth sacrificed himself of his ownfree will to the death divinities in order to save the emperor's life?Had the Egyptian priests foreseen in the stars some danger threateningHadrian, only to be averted by the death of his favourite? Such an ideacommended itself to the superstition of the time, especially inthis land and by the mysterious Nile. It corresponded, too, with theemperor's astrological arts. Was Antinous certain when he plunged intothe waves of the Nile that he would arise from them as a god? Hadrianasserts in his memoirs that it was an accident, but no one believed him. The divine honours which he paid to the dead youth lead us to supposethat they formed the reward of a self-sacrifice, which, according to thecustom of those times, constituted a highly moral action, and was lookedupon as heroic devotion. At any rate, we will assume that this sacrificesank into the Nile without Hadrian's will. Hadrian mourned for Antinouswith unspeakable pain and "womanly tears. " Now he was Achilles by thecorpse of Patroklus, or Alexander by the pyre of the dead Hephaistus. He had the youth splendidly buried in Besa. This most extraordinaryintermezzo of all Nile journeys supplied dying heathendom with a newgod, and art with its last ideal form. Probably, also, during theburial, far-sighted courtiers already saw the star of Antinous shiningin Egypt's midnight sky, and then Hadrian saw it himself. 

In the mystical land of Egypt, life might still be poetical even in theclear daylight of Roman universal history in the reign of Hadrian. Thedeath of the young Bithynian seems to have occurred in October, 130. The emperor continued his journey as soon as he had given orders fora splendid town to be erected on the site of Besa, in honour of hisfriend. In November, 130, the royal company is to be found amongst theruins of Thebes. 

Thebes, the oldest town in Egypt, had been first put in the shadeby Memphis, and then destroyed by Cambyses. Since the time of thePtolemies, it had been called Diospolis, and Ptolemais had taken itsplace as capital of the Thebaid. Already in Strabo's time it was splitup. It formed on either side of the Nile groups of gigantic temples andpalaces, monuments, and royal graves similar to those scattered to-dayamongst Luxor, Karnak, Medinet-Habu, Deir-el-Bahari, and Kurna. 

[Illustration: 095. Jpg COMMEMORATIVE COIN OF ANTINOUS]

In Hadrian's time the Rameseum, the so-called grave of Osymandias, onthe western bank of the Nile, the wonderful building of Ramses II. , must still have been in good repair. These pylons, pillars, arcades, andcourts, these splendid halls with their sculpture-covered walls, appeareven to have influenced the Roman art in the time of the emperors. Theirreflex influence has been even seen in Trajan's forum, in which thechief thing was the emperor's tomb. 

In Alexandria the emperor mixed freely with the professors of themuseum, asking them questions and answering theirs in return; and hedropped his tear of pity on the tomb of the great Pompey, in the form ofa Greek epigram, though with very little point. He laid out large sumsof money in building and ornamenting the city, and the Alexandrians weremuch pleased with his behaviour. Among other honours that they paidhim, they changed the name of the month December, calling it the monthHadrian; but as they were not followed by the rest of the empire thename soon went out of use. The emperor's patronage of philosophy wasrather at the cost of the Alexandrian museum, for he enrolled among itspaid professors men who were teaching from school to school in Italy andAsia Minor. Thus Polemon of Laodicea, who taught oratory and philosophyat Rome, Laodicea, and Smyrna, and had the right of a free passage forhimself and his servants in any of the public ships whenever he chose tomove from city to city for the purposes of study or teaching, had atthe same time a salary from the Alexandrian museum. Dionysius of Miletusalso received his salary as a professor in the museum while teachingphilosophy and mnemonicsat Miletus and Ephesus. Pancrates, theAlexandrian poet, gained his salary in the museum by the easy task of alittle flattery. On Hadrian's return to Alexandria from the Thebaid, thepoet presented to him a rose-coloured lotus, a flower well known inIndia, though less common in Egypt than either the blue or white lotus, and assured him that it had sprung out of the blood of the lion slain byhis royal javelin at a lion-hunt in Libya. 

[Illustration: 097. Jpg ROSE-COLOURED LOTUS]

The emperor was pleased with the compliment, and gave him a place in themuseum; and Pancrates in return named the plant the lotus of Antinous. Pancrates was a warm admirer of the mystical opinions of the Egyptianswhich were then coming into note in Alexandria. He was said to havelived underground in holy solitude or converse with the gods fortwenty-three years, and during that time to have been taught magic bythe goddess Isis, and thus to have gained the power of working miracles. He learned to call upon the queen of darkness by her Egyptian nameHecate, and when driving out evil spirits to speak to them in theEgyptian language. Whether these Greek students of the Eastern mysticismwere deceivers or deceived, whether they were led by a love of notorietyor of knowledge, is in most cases doubtful, but they were surrounded bya crowd of credulous admirers, who formed a strange contrast with thesceptics and critics of the museum. 

Among the Alexandrian grammarians of this reign was Apollonius Dyscolus, so called perhaps from a moroseness of manner, who wrote largely onrhetoric, on the Greek dialects, on accents, prosody, and on otherbranches of grammar. In the few pages that remain of his numerouswritings, we trace the love of the marvellous which was then growingamong some of the philosophers. He tells us many remarkable stories, which he collected rather as a judicious inquirer than as a credulousbeliever; such as of second sight; an account of a lad who fell asleepin the field while watching his sheep, and then slept for fifty-sevenyears, and awoke to wonder at the strangeness of the changes that hadtaken place in the meanwhile; and of a man who after death used fromtime to time to leave his body, and wander over the earth as a spirit, till his wife, tired of his coming back again so often, put a stop to itby having his mummy burnt. He gives us for the first time Eastern talesin a Greek dress, and we thus learn the source from which Europe gainedmuch of its literature in the Middle Ages. The Alexandrian author ofgreatest note at this time was the historian Appian, who tells us thathe had spent some years in Rome practising as a lawyer, and returned toEgypt on being appointed to a high post in the government of his nativecity. There he wrote his Roman history. 

In this reign the Jews, forgetful of what they had just suffered underTrajan, again rose against the power of Rome; and, when Judća rebelledagainst its prefect, Tinnius Rufus, a little army of Jews marched out ofEgypt and Libya, to help their brethren and to free the holy land(130 A. D. ). But they were everywhere routed and put down with resoluteslaughter. 

[Illustration: 099. Jpg VOCAL STATUE OF AMENHOTHES]

Travellers, on reaching a distant point of a journey, or on viewing anyremarkable object of their curiosity, have at all times been fond ofcarving or scribbling their names on the spot, to boast of theirprowess to after-comers; and never had any place been more favoured withmemorials of this kind than the great statue of Amenhôthes at Thebes. This colossal statue, fifty-three feet high, was famed, as long asthe Egyptian priesthood lasted, for sending forth musical soundsevery morning at sunrise, when first touched by the sun's rays; and notraveller ever visited Thebes without listening for these remarkablenotes. The journey through Upper Egypt was at this time perfectly openand safe, and the legs and feet of the statue are covered with names, and inscriptions in prose and verse, of travellers who had visited itat sunrise during the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. From thesecurious memorials we learn that Hadrian visited Thebes a second timewith his queen, Sabina, in the fifteenth year of his reign. When theempress first visited the statue she was disappointed at not hearingthe musical sounds; but, on her hinting threats of the emperor'sdispleasure, her curiosity was gratified on the following morning. This gigantic statue of hard gritstone had formerly been broken in halfacross the waist, and the upper part thrown to the ground, either by theshock of an earthquake or the ruder shock of Persian zeal against theEgyptian religion; and for some centuries past the musical notes hadissued from the broken fragments. Such was its fallen state whenthe Empress Sabina saw it, and when Strabo and Juvenal and Pausaniaslistened to its sounds; and it was not till after the reign of Hadrianthat it was again raised upright like its companion, as travellers nowsee it. 

[Illustration: 100b. . Jpg The Slumber Song]

 From the painting by P. Grot. Johann

From this second visit, and a longer acquaintance, Hadrian seems to haveformed a very poor opinion of the Egyptians and Egyptian Jews; and thefollowing curious letter, written in 134 A. D. To his friend Servianus, throws much light upon their religion as worshippers of Serapis, atthe same time that it proves how numerous the Christians had become inAlexandria, even within seventy years of the period during which theevangelist Mark is believed to have preached there:

"Hadrian Augustus to Servianus, the consul, greeting:

"As for Egypt, which you were praising to me, dearest Servianus, I havefound its people wholly light, wavering, and flying after every breathof a report. Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those whocall themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There isno ruler of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of theChristians, who is not a mathematician, an augur, and a soothsayer. Thevery patriarch himself, when he came into Egypt, was by some said toworship Serapis, and by others to worship Christ. As a race of men, theyare seditious, vain, and spiteful; as a body, wealthy and prosperous, of whom nobody lives in idleness. Some blow glass, some make paper, andothers linen. There is work for the lame and work for the blind; eventhose who have lost the use of their hands do not live in idleness. Their one god is nothing; Christians, Jews, and all nations worship him. I wish this body of men was better behaved, and worthy of their number;for as for that they ought to hold the chief place in Egypt. I havegranted everything unto them; I have restored their old privileges, andhave made them grateful by adding new ones. "

Among the crowd of gods that had formerly been worshipped in Egypt, Serapis had latterly been rising above the rest. He was the god ofthe dead, who in the next world was to reward the good and punish thewicked; and in the growing worship of this one all-seeing judge wecannot but trace the downfall of some of the evils of polytheism. Aplurality in unity was another method now used to explain away thepolytheism. 

[Illustration: 102. Jpg EGYPTIAN ORACLE]

The oracle when consulted about the divine nature had answered, "I amRa, and Horus, and Osiris;" or, as the Greeks translated it, Apollo, and Lord, and Bacchus; "I rule the hours and the seasons, the wind andthe storms, the day and the night; I am king of the stars and myself animmortal fire. " Hence arose the opinion which seems to have been givento Hadrian, that the Egyptians had only one god, and his mistake inthinking that the worshippers of Serapis were Christians. The emperor, indeed, himself, though a polytheist, was very little of an idolater;for, though he wished to add Christ to the number of the Roman gods, he on the other hand ordered that the temples built in his reign shouldhave no images for worship; and in after ages it was common to callall temples without statues Hadrian's temples. But there were other andstronger reasons for Hadrian's classing the Christians with the Egyptianastrologers. A Christian heresy was then rising into notice in Egypt inthat very form, taking its opinions from the philosophy on which it wasengrafted. Before Christianity was preached in Alexandria, there werealready three religions or forms of philosophy belonging to the threeraces of men who peopled that busy city; first, the Greek philosophy;which was chiefly platonism; secondly, the mysticism of the Egyptians;and lastly, the religion of the Jews. These were often more or lessmixed, as we see them all united in the works of Philo-Judć; and inthe writings of the early converts we usually find Christianity clothedin one or other of these forms, according to the opinions held by thewriters before their conversion. The first Christian teachers, theapostolic fathers as they are called, because they had been hearers ofthe apostles themselves, were mostly Jews; but among the Egyptians andGreeks of Alexandria their religion lost much of its purely moral caste, and became, with the former, an astrological mysticism, and with thelatter an abstract speculative theology. It is of the Egyptian Jews thatHadrian speaks in his letter just quoted; many of them had been alreadyconverted to Christianity, and their religion had taken the form ofGnosticism. 

Gnosticism, or Science, for the name means no more, was not then newin Alexandria, nor were its followers originally Christians. It was theproud name claimed for their opinions by those who studied the Easternphilosophy of the Magi; and Egypt seems to have been as much its nativesoil as India. The name of Gnostic, says Weber, was generally given tothose who distinguished between belief on authority and gnosis, i. E. , between the ordinary comprehension and a higher knowledge only grantedto a few gifted or chosen ones. They were split up into different sects, according as they approached more nearly the Eastern theosophy or theplatonic philosophy; but in general the Eastern conception, with itssymbols and unlimited fantasy, remained dominant. The "creed of thosewho know" never reached actual monotheism, the conception of onepersonal god, who created everything according to his own free will andrules over everything with unlimited wisdom and love. The god ofthe Gnostics is a dark, mysterious being which can only arrive at aconsciousness of itself through a manifold descending scale of forces, which flow from the god himself. The visible world was created out ofdead and evil matter by Demiurgos, the divine work-master, a productionand subordinate of the highest god. Man, too, is a production of thissubordinate creator, a production subject to a blind fate, and a prey tothose powers which rule between heaven and earth, without free-will, the only thing which makes the ideas of sin and responsibility possible. Matter is the seat of evil, and as long as man stands under theinfluence of this matter, he is in the hands of evil and knows nofreedom. Redemption can only reach him through those higher beings oflight, which free man from the power of matter and translate him intothe kingdom of light. According to the Gnostic teaching, Christ isone of these beings of light; he is one of the highest who appeared onearth, and is transformed into a mythical, allegorical being, withhis human nature, his sufferings and death completely suppressed. Theredeemed soul is then as a kind of angel, or ideal being, brought intriumph into the idealistic realm of light as soon as it has purifieditself to the nature of a spirit, by means of penitence, chastisements, and finally the death of the physical body. Hence the Gnostics attachedlittle importance to the means of mercy in the Church, to the Bible, orthe sacraments; they allowed the Church teaching to exist as a necessaryconception for the people, but they placed their own teachings far aboveit as mysterious or secret teachings. As regards their morals andmode of life, the Gnostics generally went to extremes. It was due toGnosticism that art and science found an entrance into the Church. Itpreserved the Church from becoming stereotyped in form; but, built upentirely on ideas and not on historical facts, it died from its ownhollowness and eccentricity. 

We still possess the traces of the Gnostic astrology in a number ofamulets and engraved gems, with the word _Abraxas_ or rather _Abrasax_and other emblems of their superstition, which they kept as charmsagainst diseases and evil spirits. The word _Abrasax_ may be translated_Hurt me not_. To their mystic rites we may trace many of the reproachesthrown upon Christianity, such as that the Christians worshipped thehead of an ass, using the animal's Koptic name _Eeo_, to represent thename of IAn, or Jahveh. To the same source we may also trace some ofthe peculiarities of the Christian fathers, such as St. Ambrose callingJesus "the good scarabćus, who rolled up before him the hithertoun-shapen mud of our bodies;" a thought which seems to have beenborrowed as much from the hieroglyphics as from the insect's habits; andperhaps from the Egyptian priests in some cases, using the scarabousto denote the god Horus-Ra, and sometimes the word _only begotten_. Wetrace this thought on the Gnostic gems where Ave see a winged griffinrolling before him a wheel, the emblem of eternity. He sits like aconqueror on horseback, trampling under foot the serpent of old, thespirit of sin and death. His horse is in the form of a ram, with aneagle's head and the crowned asp or basilisk for its tail. Before himstands the figure of victory giving him a crown; above are written thewords Alpha and Omega, and below perhaps the word [IAH], Jahveh. 

So far we have seen the form which Christianity at first took among theEgyptians; but, as few writings by these Gnostics have come down toour time, we chiefly know their opinions from the reproaches of theirenemies. It was not till the second generation of Gnostic teachers werespreading their heresies that the Greek philosophers began to embraceChristianity, or the Christians to study Greek literature; but as soonas that was the case we have an unbroken chain of writings, in whichwe find Christianity more or less mixed with the Alexandrian form ofplatonism. 

[Illustration: 106. Jpg KOPTIC CHARM AND SCARABEUS]

The philosopher Justin, after those who had talked with the apostles, is the earliest Christian writer whose works have reached us. He was aGreek, born in Samaria; but he studied many years in Alexandria underphilosophers of all opinions. He did not, however, at once find inthe schools the wisdom he was in search for. The Stoic could teach himnothing about God; the Peripatetic wished to be paid for his lessonsbefore he gave them; and the Pythagorean proposed to begin with musicand mathematics. 

[Illustration: 107. Jpg GNOSTIC GEM]

Not content with these, Justin turned to the platonist, whose purerphilosophy seemed to add wings to his thoughts, and taught him to mountaloft towards true wisdom. While turning over in his mind what he hadthus learned in the several schools, dissatisfied with the philosopher'sviews, he chanced one day to meet with an old man walking on theseashore near Alexandria, to whom he unbosomed his thoughts, and by whomhe was converted to Christianity. Justin tells us that there were nopeople, whether Greeks or barbarians, or even dwellers in tent andwaggons, among whom prayers were not offered up to the heavenly fatherin the name of the crucified Jesus. The Christians met every Sunday forpublic worship, which began with a reading from the prophets, or fromthe memoirs of the apostles called the gospels. This was followed bya sermon, a prayer, the bread and wine, and a second prayer. Justin'squotations prove that he is speaking of the New Testament, which withina hundred years of the crucifixion wras read in all the principal citiesin which Greek was spoken. Justin died as a martyr in 163 A. D. 

The platonic professorship in Alexandria had usually been held by anAthenian, and for a short time Athenagoras of Athens taught that branchof philosophy in the museum; but he afterwards embraced the Christianreligion, and then taught Christianity openly in Alexandria. He enjoyswith Justin the honour of being one of the first men of learning whowere converted, and, like Justin, his chief work is an apology for theChristians, addressed to the emperor, Marcus Aurelius. 

[Illustration: 108. Jpg GEMS SHOWING SYMBOL OF DEATH AND THE WORD [ÎAH]JAVEH]

Athenagoras confines himself in his defence to the resurrection fromthe dead and the unity of the Deity, the points chiefly attacked by thepagans. 

Hadrian's Egyptian coins are remarkable both for number and variety. Inthe sixth year of the reign we see a ship with spread sails, most likelyin gratitude for the emperor's safe arrival in Egypt. In the eighth yearwe see the head of the favourite Antinous, who had been placed among thegods of the country. In the eleventh year, when the emperor took up thetribunitial power at Rome for a second period of ten years, we find aseries of coins, each bearing the name of the nome or district in whichit was coined. This indeed is the most remarkable year of the mostremarkable reign in the whole history of coinage; we have numerous coinsfor every year of this reign, and, in this year, for nearly every nomein Egypt. Some coins are strongly marked with the favourite opinion ofthe Gnostics as to the opposition between good and evil. 

[Illustration: 109. Jpg Hadrian's Egyptian coins]

On one we have the war between the serpent of good and the serpent ofevil, distinguished by their different forms and by the emblems of Isisand Serapis; on others the heads of Isis and Serapis, the principles oflove and fear; while on a third these two are united into a trinity byHorus, who is standing on an eagle instead of having an eagle's head, asrepresented on previous coins. 

The beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius (A. D. 138) was remarkableas being the end of the Sothic period of one thousand four hundred andsixty years; the movable new year's day of the calendar had come roundto the place in the natural year from which it first began to move inthe reign of Menophres or Thűtmosis III. ; it had come round to the daywhen the dog-star rose heliacally. If the years had been counted fromthe beginning of this great year, there could have been no doubt when itcame to an end, as from the want of a leap year the new year's daymust have been always moving one day in four years; but no satisfactoryreckoning of the years had been kept, and, as the end of the period wasonly known by observation, there was some little doubt about the exactyear. Indeed, among the Greek astronomers, Dositheus said the dog-starrises heliacally twenty-three days after midsummer, Meton twenty-eightdays, and Euctemon thirty-one days; they thus left a doubt of thirty-twoyears as to when the period should end, but the statesmen placed it inthe first year of the reign of Antoninus. This end of the Sothic periodAvas called the return to the phoenix, and had been looked forward to bythe Egyptians for many years, and is well marked on the coins of thisreign. The coins for the first eight years teem with astronomy. Thereare several with the goddess Isis in a boat, which we know, from thezodiac in the Memnonium at Thebes, was meant for the heliacal rising ofthe dog-star. In the second and in the sixth year we find on the coinsthe remarkable word aion, _the age_ or _period_, and an ibis with aglory of rays round its head, meant for the bird phoenix. In the seventhyear we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of theforest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age. In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis circled by the sevenplanets, and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac; and onanother coin we have the sun and moon within the signs of the zodiac. Aseries of twelve coins for the same year tells us that the house of thesun, in the language of the astrologers, is in the lion, that of themoon in the crab, the houses of Venus in the scales and the bull, thoseof Mars in the scorpion and the ram, those of Jupiter in the archerand the fishes, those of Saturn in the sea-goat and aquarius, those ofMercury in the virgin and the twins. On the coins of the same year wehave the eagle and thunderbolt, the sphinx, the bull Apis, the Nile andcrocodile, Isis nursing the child Horus, the hawk-headed Aroëris, andthe winged sun. On coins of other years we have a camelopard, Horussitting on the lotus-flower, and a sacrifice to Isis, which wascelebrated on the last day of the year. 

The coins also tell us of the bountiful overflow of the Nile, and ofthe goodness of the harvests that followed; thus, in the ninth, tenth, thirteenth, and seventeenth years, we see the river Nile in the formof an old man leaning on a crocodile, pouring corn and fruit out of acornucopia, while a child by his side, with the figures 36, tellsus that in those years the waters of the Nile rose at Memphis to thewished-for height of sixteen cubits. From these latter coins it wouldseem that but little change had taken place in the soil of the Delta bythe yearly deposit of mud; Herodotus says that sixteen cubits was thewished-for rise of the Nile at Memphis when he was there. And we shouldalmost think that the seasons were more favourable to the husbandmanduring the reign of an Antonine than of a Caligula, did we not set itdown to the canals being better cleansed by the care of the prefect, andto the mildness of the government leaving the people at liberty to enjoythe bounties of nature, and at the same time making them more gratefulin acknowledging them. 

[Illustration: 112. Jpg COINS OF ANTONINUS PIUS. ]

The mystic emblems on the coins are only what we might look for from thespread of the Gnostic opinions, and the eagerness with which the Greekswere copying the superstitions of the Egyptians; and, while astrologywas thus countenanced by the state, of course it was not less followedby the people. The poor Jews took to it as a trade. In Alexandria theJewess, half beggar, half fortune-teller, would stop people in thestreets and interpret dreams by the help of the Bible, or sit under asacred tree like a sibyl, and promise wealth to those who consulted her, duly proportioned to the size of the coin by which she was paid. We findamong the Theban ruins pieces of papyrus with inscriptions, describingthe positions of the heavens at particular hours in this reign, for theastrologers therewith to calculate the nativities of the persons thenborn. On one is a complete horoscope, containing the places of the sun, moon, and every planet, noted down on the zodiac in degrees and minutesof a degree; and with these particulars the mathematician undertook toforetell the marriage, fortune, and death of the person who had beenborn at the instant when the heavenly bodies were so situated; and, asthe horoscope was buried in the tomb with the mummy, we must supposethat it was thought that the prognostication would hold good even in thenext world. 

But astrology was not the only end to which mathematics were thenturned. Claudius Ptolemy, the astronomer and geographer, was at thattime the ornament of the mathematical school of Alexandria. In hiswritings he treats of the earth as the centre of the heavens, and thesun, moon, and planets as moving in circles and epicycles round it. Thishad been the opinion of some of the early astronomers; but since thistheory of the heavens received the stamp of his authority, it is nowalways called the Ptolemaic system. 

In this reign was made a new survey of all the military roads in theRoman empire, called the _Itinerary of Antoninus_. It included thegreat roads of Egypt, which were only six in number. One was fromContra-Pselcis in Nubia along the east bank of the Nile, to Babylonopposite Memphis, and there turning eastward through Heliopolis and thedistrict of the Jews to Clysmon, where Trajan's canal entered the RedSea. A second, from Memphis to Pelusium, made use of this forabout thirty miles, joining it at Babylon, and leaving it at ScenseVeteranorum. By these two roads a traveller could go from Pelusium tothe head of the Red Sea; but there was a shorter road through the desertwhich joined the first at Serapion, about fifty miles from Clysmon, instead of at Sceno Veteranorum, which was therefore about a hundredmiles shorter. A fourth was along the west bank of the Nile from HieraSycaminon in Nubia to Alexandria, leaving the river at Andropolis, about sixty miles from the latter city. A fifth was from Palestine toAlexandria, running along the coast of the Mediterranean from Raphia toPelusium, and thence, leaving the coast to avoid the flat country, whichwas under water during the inundation; it joined the last at Andropolis. The sixth road was from Koptos on the Nile to Berenicę on the Red Sea. These six were probably the only roads under the care of the prefect. Though Syęnę was the boundary of the province of Egypt, the Roman powerwas felt for about one hundred miles into Nubia, and we find the namesof the emperors on several temples between Syęnę and Hiera Sycaminon. But beyond this, though we find inscriptions left by Roman travellers, the emperors seem never to have aimed at making military roads, orholding any cities against the inroads of the Blemmyes and other Arabs. 

To this survey we must add the valuable geographical knowledge givenby Arrian in his voyage round the shores of the Red Sea, which has comedown to us in an interesting document, wherein he mentions the severalseaports and their distances, with the tribes and cities near thecoast. The trade of Egypt to India, Ethiopia, and Arabia was then mostvaluable, and carried on with great activity; but, as the merchandisewas in each case carried only for short distances from city to city, thetraveller could gain but little knowledge of where it came from, or evensometimes of where it was going. 

[Illustration: 115. Jpg STATUE OF THE NILE]

The Egyptians sent coarse linen, glass bottles, brazen vessels, brassfor money, and iron for weapons of war and hunting; and they receivedback ivory, rhinoceros' teeth, Indian steel, Indian ink, silks, slaves, tortoise-shell, myrrh, and other scents, with many other Easternarticles of high price and little weight. The presents which themerchants made to the petty kings of Arabia were chiefly horses, mules, and gold and silver vases. Beside this, the ports on the Red Sea carriedon a brisk trade among themselves in grain, expressed oil, wickerboats, and sugar. Of sugar, or honey from the cane, this is perhapsthe earliest mention found in history; but Arrian does not speak ofthe sugar-cane as then new, nor does he tell us where it was grown. Hadsugar been then seen for the first time he would certainly have saidso; it must have been an article well known in the Indian trade. Whilepassing through Egypt on his travels, or while living there and holdingsome post under the prefect, the historian Arrian has left us his nameand a few lines of poetry carved on the foot of the great sphinx nearthe pyramids. 

At this time also the travellers continued to carve their names andtheir feelings of wonder on the foot of the musical statue at Thebes andin the deep empty tombs of the Theban kings. These inscriptions are fullof curious information. For example, it has been doubted whether theRoman army was provided with medical officers. Their writers have notmentioned them. But part of the Second Legion was at this time stationedat Thebes; and one Asclepiades, while cutting his name in a tomb whichonce held some old Theban, has cleared up the doubt for us, by sayingthat he was physician to the Second Legion. 

Antoninus made a hippodrome, or race-course, for the amusement of thecitizens of Alexandria, and built two gates to the city, called the gateof the sun and the gate of the moon, the former fronting the harbour andthe latter fronting the lake Mareotis, and joined by the great streetwhich ran across the whole width of the city. But this reign was notwholly without trouble; there was a rebellion in which the prefectDinarchus lost his life, and for which the Alexandrians were severelypunished by the emperor. 

[Illustration: 117. Jpg COINS OF MARCUS AURELIUS]

The coins of Marcus Aurelius, the successor of Antoninus Pius, have arich variety of subjects, falling not far short of those of the lastreign. On those of the fifth year, the bountiful overflow of the Nile isgratefully acknowledged by the figure of the god holding a cornucopia, and a troop of sixteen children playing round him. It had been notunusual in hieroglyphical writing to express a thought by means of afigure which in the Koptic language had nearly the same sound; and wehave seen this copied on the coins in the case of a Greek word, when thebird phoenix was used for the palm-branch phoenix, or the hieroglyphicalword _year_; and a striking instance may be noticed in the case of aLatin word, as the sixteen children or _cupids_ mean sixteen _cubits_, the wished-for height of the Nile's overflow. The statue of the Nile, which had been carried by Vespasian to Rome and placed in the temple ofPeace, was surrounded by the same sixteen children. On the coins of histwelfth year the sail held up by the goddess Isis is blown towards thePharos lighthouse, as if in that year the emperor had been expected inAlexandria. 

We find no coins in the eleventh or fourteenth years of this reign, which makes it probable that it was in the eleventh year (A. D. 172) thatthe rebellion of the native soldiers took place. These were very likelyArabs who had been admitted into the ranks of the legions, but havingwithdrawn to the desert they now harassed the towns with their maraudinginroads, and a considerable time elapsed before they were wholly putdown by Avidius Cassius at the head of the legions. But Cassius himselfwas unable to resist the temptations which always beset a successfulgeneral, and after this victory he allowed himself to be declaredemperor by the legions of Egypt; and this seems to have been the causeof no coins being struck in Alexandria in the fourteenth year of thereign. Cassius left his son Moecianus in Alexandria with the title ofPretorian Prefect, while he himself marched into Syria to secure thatprovince. There the legions followed the example of their brethren inEgypt, and the Syrians were glad to acknowledge a general of the Easternarmies as their sovereign. But on Marcus leading an army into Syria hewas met with the news that the rebels had repented, and had put Cassiusto death, and he then moved his forces towards Egypt; but before hisarrival the Egyptian legions had in the same manner put Moecianus todeath, and all had returned to their allegiance. 

When Marcus arrived in Alexandria the citizens were agreeably surprisedby the mildness of his conduct. He at once forgave his enemies; andno offenders were put to death for having joined in the rebellion. Theseverest punishment, even to the children of Cassius, was banishmentfrom the province, but without restraint, and with the forfeiture ofless than half their patrimony. In Alexandria the emperor laid aside theseverity of the soldier, and mingled with the people as a fellow-citizenin the temples and public places; while with the professors in themuseum he was a philosopher, joining them in their studies in theschools. 

Borne and Athens at this time alike looked upon Alexandria as the centreof the world's learning. The library was then in its greatest glory;the readers were numerous, and Christianity had as yet raised no doubtsabout the value of its pagan treasures. All the wisdom of Greece, written on rolls of brittle papyrus or tough parchment, was ranged inboxes on the shelves. Of these writings the few that have been savedfrom the wreck of time are no doubt some of the best, and they areperhaps enough to guide our less simple taste towards the unornamentedgrace of the Greek model. But we often fancy those treasures mostvaluable that are beyond our reach, and hence when we run over the namesof the authors in this library we think perhaps too much of those whichare now missing. The student in the museum could have read the lyricpoems of Alcćus and Stersichorus, which in matter and style wereexcellent enough to be judged not quite so good as Homer; the tenderlamentations of Simonides; the warm breathings of Sappho, the tenthmuse; the pithy iambics of Archilochus, full of noble flights andbrave irregularities; the comedies of Menander, containing every kindof excellence; those of Eupolis and Cratinus, which were equal toAristophanes; the histories of Theopompus, which in the speeches wereas good as Thucydides; the lively, agreeable orations of Hyperides, theaccuser of Demosthenes; with the books of travels, chronologies, andcountless others of less merit for style and genius, but which, if theyhad been saved, would not have left Egypt wholly without a history. 

[Illustration: 120. Jpg ALEXANDRIAN FORMS OF WRITING]

The trade of writing and making copies of the old authors employeda great many hands in the neighbourhood of the museum. Two kinds ofhandwriting were in use. One was a running hand, with the letters joinedtogether in rather a slovenly manner; and the other a neat, regularhand, with the letters square and larger, written more slowly but readmore easily. Those that wrote the first were called _quick-writers_, those that wrote the second were called _book-writers_. If an author wasnot skilled in the use of the pen, he employed a _quickwriter_ to writedown his words as he delivered them. But in order that his work might bepublished it was handed over to the _book-writers_ to be copied out moreneatly; and numbers of young women, skilled in penmanship, were employedin the trade of copying books for sale. For this purpose parchmentwas coming into use, though the old papyrus was still used, as aninexpensive though less lasting writing material. 

Athenćus, if we may judge from Iris writings, was then the brightest ofthe Alexandrian wits and men of learning. We learn from his own pagesthat he was born at Naucratis, and was the friend of Pancrates, wholived under Hadrian, and also of Oppian, who died in the reign ofCaracalla. His _Deipnosophist_, or table-talk of the philosophers, is alarge work full of pleasing anecdotes and curious information, gatheredfrom comic writers and authors without number that have long since beenlost. But it is put together with very little skill. His industry andmemory are more remarkable than his judgment or good taste; and thetable-talk is too often turned towards eating and drinking. His amusingwork is a picture of society in Alexandria, where everything frivolouswas treated as grave, and everything serious was laughed at. The witsinks into scandal, the humour is at the cost of morality, and thenumerous quotations are chosen for their point, not for any loftythoughts or noble feeling. Alexandria was then as much the seat ofliterary wit as it was of dry criticism; and Martial, the lively authorof the _Epigrams_, had fifty years before remarked that there were fewplaces in the world where he would more wish his verses to be repeatedthan on the banks of the Nile. 

Nothing could be lower than the poetic taste in Alexandria at this time. The museum was giving birth to a race of poets who, instead of bringingforth thoughts out of their own minds, found them in the storehouse ofthe memory only. They wrote their patchwork poems by the help of Homer'slines, which they picked from all parts of the Iliad and Odyssey andso put together as to make them tell a new tale. They called themselvesHomeric poets. 

Lucian, the author of the _Dialogues_, was at that time secretary to theprefect of Egypt, and this philosopher found a broad mark for hishumour in the religion of the Egyptians, their worship of animals andwater-jars, their love of magic, the general mourning through the landon the death of the bull Apis, their funeral ceremonies, their placingof their mummies round the dinner-table as so many guests, and pawning afather or a brother when in want of money. 

[Illustration: 122. Jpg A SNAKE-CHARMER]

So little had the customs changed that the young Egyptians of high birthstill wore their long hair tied in one lock, and hanging over the rightear, as we see on the Theban sculptures fifteen centuries earlier. Itwas then a mark of royalty, but had since been adopted by many familiesof high rank, and continues to be used even in the twentieth century. 

[Illustration: 123. Jpg THE SIGN OF NOBILITY]

Before the end of this reign we meet with a strong proof of the spreadof Christianity in Egypt. The number of believers made it necessary forthe Bishop of Alexandria to appoint three bishops under him, to lookafter the churches in three other cities; and accordingly Demetrius, whothen held that office, took upon himself the rank, if not the name, ofPatriarch of Alexandria. A second proof of the spread of Christianityis the pagan philosophers thinking it necessary to write against it. Celsus, an Epicurean of Alexandria, was one of the first to attack it. Origen answered the several arguments of Celsus with skill and candour. He challenges his readers to a comparison between the Christians andpagans in point of morals, in Alexandria or in any other city. Heargues in the most forcible way that Christianity had overcome alldifficulties, and had spread itself far and wide against the power ofkings and emperors, and he says that nobody but a Christian ever dieda martyr to the truth of his religion. He makes good use of the Jewishprophecies; but he brings forward no proofs in support of the truth ofthe gospel history; they were not wanted, as Celsus and the pagans hadnot considered it necessary to call it into question. 

Another proof of the number of Egyptian Christians is seen in theliterary frauds of which their writers were guilty, most likely tosatisfy the minds of those pagan converts that they had already maderather than from a wish to make new believers. About this time waswritten by an unknown Christian author a poem in eight books, named the_Sibylline Verses_ which must not be mistaken for the pagan fragmentsof the same name. It is written in the form of a prophecy, in the styleused by the Gnostics, and is full of dark sentences and half-expressedhints. 

Another spurious Christian work of about the same time is the_Clementina_, or the _Recognitions of Clemens_, Bishop of Rome. It isan account of the travels of the Apostle Peter and his conversation withSimon Magus; but the author's knowledge of the Egyptian mythology, ofthe opinions of the Greek philosophers, and of the astrological rules bywhich fortunes are foretold from the planets' places, amply prove thathe was an Egyptian or an Alexandrian. No name ranked higher among theChristians than that of Clemens Romanus; and this is only one out ofseveral cases of Christian authors who wished to give weight to theirown opinions by passing them upon the world as his writings. 

Marcus Aurelius, who died in 181 A. D. , had pardoned the children of therebel general Avidius Cassius, but Commodus began his reign by puttingthem to death; and, while thus disregarding the example and advice ofhis father, he paid his memory the idle compliment of continuing hisseries of dates on his own coins. But the Egyptian coinage of Commodusclearly betrays the sad change that was gradually taking place in thearts of the country; we no longer see the former beauty and variety ofsubjects; and the silver, which had before been very much mixed withcopper, was under Commodus hardly to be known from brass. 

[Illustration: 125. Jpg CARTOUCHE OF COMMODUS]

Commodus was very partial to the Egyptian superstitions, and he adoptedthe tonsure, and had his head shaven like a priest of Isis, that hemight more properly carry an Anubis staff in sacred processions, whichcontinued to be a feature of the religious activities of the age. UpperEgypt had latterly been falling off in population. It had been drainedof all its hoarded wealth. Its carrying trade through Koptos to the RedSea was much lessened. Any tribute that its temples received from thepiety of the neighbourhood was small. Nubia was a desert; and a fewsoldiers at Syęnę were enough to guard the poverty of the Thebaidfrom the inroads of the Blemmyes. It was no longer necessary tosend criminals to the Oasis; it was enough to banish them to theneighbourhood of Thebes. Hence we learn but little of the state ofthe country. Now and then a traveller, after measuring the pyramids ofMemphis and the underground tombs of Thebes, might venture as far as thecataracts, and watch the sun at noon on the longest day shining to thebottom of the sacred well at Syęnę, like the orator Aristides and hisfriend Dion. But such travellers were few; the majority of those whomade this journey have left the fact on record. 

The celebrated museum, which had held the vast library of the Ptolemies, had been burnt by the soldiers of Julius Cćsar in one of their battleswith the Egyptian army in the streets of Alexandria; but the loss hadbeen in part repaired by Mark Antony's gift of the library from Pergamusto the temple of Serapis. The new library, however, would seem to havebeen placed in a building somewhat separated from the temple, as whenthe temple of Serapis was burnt in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, andagain when it was in part destroyed by fire in the second year of thisreign we hear of no loss of books; and two hundred years later thelibrary of the Serapium, it is said, had risen to the number of sevenhundred thousand volumes. The temple-keeper to the great god Serapis, orone of the temple-keepers, at this time was Asclepiades, a noted boxerand wrestler, who had been made chief of the wrestling-ground and hadreceived the high rank of the emperor's freedman. He set up a statue tohis father Demetrius, an equally noted boxer and wrestler, who had beenchief priest of the wrestling-ground and of the emperor's baths in thelast reign. 

[Illustration: 126. Jpg THE ANUBIS STAFF]

Another favourite in the theatre was Apolaustus of Memphis, who removedto Rome, where he was crowned as conqueror in the games, and as a rewardmade priest to Apollo and emperor's freedman. 

The city of Canopus was still a large mart for merchandise, as theshallow but safe entrance to its harbour made it a favourite with pilotsof the small trading vessels, who rather dreaded the rocks at the mouthof the harbour of Alexandria. A temple of Serapis which had lately beenbuilt at Canopus was dedicated to the god in the name of the EmperorCommodus; and there some of the grosser superstitions of the polytheistsfled before the spread of Christianity and platonism in Alexandria. TheCanopic jars, which held those parts of the body that could not be madesolid in the mummy, and which had the heads of the four lesser godsof the dead on their lids, received their name from this city. Thesculptures on the beautiful temples of Contra-Latopolis were alsofinished in this reign, and the emperor's names and titles were carvedon the walls in hieroglyphics, with those of the Ptolemies, under whomthe temple itself had been built. Commodus may perhaps not have beenthe last emperor whose name and praises were carved in hieroglyphics;but all the great buildings in the Thebaid, which add such value to theearly history of Egypt, had ceased before his reign. Other buildings ofa less lasting form were no doubt being built, such as the Greek templesat Antinoopolis and Ptolemais, which have long since been swept away;but the Egyptian priests, with their gigantic undertakings, their nobleplan of working for after ages rather than for themselves, were nearlyruined, and we find no ancient building now standing in Egypt that wasraised after the time of the dynasty of the Antonines. 

[Illustration: 128. Jpg CANOPIC JARS]

But the poverty of the Egyptians was not the only cause why they builtno more temples. Though the colossal statue of Amenhôthes utteredits musical notes every morning at sunrise, still tuneful amid thedesolation with which it was surrounded, and the Nile was stillworshipped at midsummer by the husbandman to secure its fertilisingoverflow; nevertheless, the religion itself for which the temples hadbeen built was fast giving way before the silent spread of Christianity. The religion of the Egyptians, unlike that of the Greeks, was nolonger upheld by the magistrate; it rested solely on the belief of itsfollowers, and it may have merged into Christianity the faster for thegreater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganismof other nations. The scanty hieroglyphical records tell us littleof thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Indeed that cumbersome mode ofwriting, which alone was used in religious matters, was little fittedfor anything beyond the most material parts of their mythology. Hencewe must not believe that the Egyptian polytheism was quite so gross aswould appear from the sculptures; and indeed we there learn that theybelieved, even at the earliest times, in a resurrection from the tomb, aday of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments. 

The priests made a great boast of their learning and philosophy, andcould each repeat by heart those books of Thot which belonged to his ownorder. The singer, who walked first in the sacred processions, bearingthe symbols of music, could repeat the books of hymns and the rules forthe king's life. The soothsayer, who followed, carrying a clock and apalm-branch, the emblem of the year, could repeat the four astrologicalbooks; one on the moon's phases, one on the fixed stars, and two ontheir heliacal risings. The scribe, who walked next, carrying a bookand the flat rule which held the ink and pen, was acquainted with thegeography of the world and of the Nile, and with those books whichdescribe the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and the furnitureof the temple and consecrated places. The master of the robes understoodthe ten books relating to education, to the marks on the sacredheifers, and to the worship of the gods, embracing the sacrifices, thefirst-fruits, the hymns, the prayers, the processions, and festivals. The prophet or preacher, who walked last, carrying in his arms thegreat water-pot, was the president of the temple, and learned in the tenbooks, called hieratic, relating to the laws, the gods, the managementof the temples, and the revenue. Thus, of the forty-two chief books ofThot, thirty-six were learned by these priests, while the remainingsix on the body, its diseases, and medicines, were learned by thePastophori, priests who carried the image of the god in a small shrine. These books had been written at various times: some may have been veryold, but some were undoubtedly new; they together formed the Egyptianbible. Apollonius, or Apollonides Horapis, an Egyptian priest, hadlately published a work on these matters in his own language, namedShomenuthi, _the book of the gods_. 

[Illustration: 130. Jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION]

But the priests were no longer the earnest, sincere teachers as ofold; they had invented a system of secondary meanings, by which theyexplained away the coarse religion of their statues and sacred animals. 

They had two religions, one for the many and one for the few; one, material and visible, for the crowds in the outer courtyards, in whichthe hero was made a god and every attribute of deity was made a person;and another, spiritual and intellectual, for the learned in the schoolsand sacred colleges. Even if we were not told, we could have no doubtbut the main point of secret knowledge among the learned was a disbeliefin those very doctrines which they were teaching to the vulgar, andwhich they now explained among themselves by saying that they had asecond meaning. This, perhaps, was part of the great secret of thegoddess Isis, the secret of Abydos, the betrayer of which was moreguilty than he who should try to stop the _baris_ or sacred barge in theprocession on the Nile. The worship of gods, before whose statues thenation had bowed with unchanging devotion for at least two thousandyears was now drawing to a close. Hitherto the priests had been able toresist all new opinions. 

[Illustration: 131. Jpg SHRINE]

The name of Amon-Ra had at one time been cut out from the Thebanmonuments to make way for a god from Lower Egypt; but it had been cut inagain when the storm passed by. The Jewish monotheism had left thecrowd of gods unlessened. The Persian efforts had overthrown statues andbroken open temples, but had not been able to introduce their worship ofthe sun. The Greek conquerors had yielded to the Egyptian mind withouta struggle; and Alexander had humbly begged at the door of the templeto be acknowledged as a son of Amon. But in the fulness of timethese opinions, which seemed as firmly based as the monuments whichrepresented them, sunk before a religion which set up no new statues, and could command no force to break open temples. 

The Egyptian priests, who had been proud of the superiority of their owndoctrines over the paganism of their neighbours, mourned the overthrowof their national religion. "Our land, " says the author of HermesTrismegistus, "is the temple of the world; but, as wise men shouldforesee all things, you should know that a time is coming when it willseem that the Egyptians have by an unfailing piety served God invain. For when strangers shall possess this kingdom religion willbe neglected, and laws made against piety and divine worship, withpunishment on those who favour it. Then this holy seat will be full ofidolatry, idols' temples, and dead men's tombs. O Egypt, Egypt, thereshall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity willrefuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety. TheScythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell inEgypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven; and Egypt shall be adesert, widowed of men and gods. "

The spread of Christianity among the Egyptians was such that theirteachers found it necessary to supply them with a life of Jesus, writtenin their own language, that they might the more readily explain tothem his claim to be obeyed, and the nature of his commands. The Gospelaccording to the Egyptians, for such was the name this work bore, haslong since been lost, and was little quoted by the Alexandrians. It wasmost likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it hadsome different readings suited to its own church, and contained somepraise of celibacy not found in the New Testament; but it was not valuedby the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Koptic translation ofthe whole New Testament. 

The grave, serious Christians of Upper Egypt were very unlike the livelyAlexandrians. But though the difference arose from peculiarities ofnational character, it was only spoken of as a difference of opinion. The Egyptians formed an ascetic sect in the church, who were calledheretics by the Alexandrians, and named Docetas, because they taughtthat the Saviour was a god, and did not really suffer on the cross, butwas crucified only _in appearance_. They of necessity used the Gospelaccording to the Egyptians, which is quoted by Cassianus, one of theirwriters; many of them renounced marriage with, the other pleasuresand duties of social life, and placed their chief virtue in painfulself-denial; and out of them sprang that remarkable class of hermits, monks, and fathers of the desert who in a few centuries covered Europewith monasteries. 

It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Koptic introduceda Greek alphabet into the Koptic language. Though for all religiouspurposes the scribes continued to use the ancient hieroglyphics, inwhich we trace the first steps by which pictures are made to representwords and syllables rather than letters, yet for the common purposes ofwriting they had long since made use of the _enchorial_ or common hand, in which the earlier system of writing is improved by the charactersrepresenting only letters, though sadly too numerous for each to have afixed and well-known force. But, as the hieroglyphics were also alwaysused for carved writing on all subjects, and the common hand only usedon papyrus with a reed pen, the latter became wholly an indistinctrunning hand; it lost that beauty and regularity which thehieroglyphics, like the Greek and Roman characters, kept by being carvedon stone, and hence it would seem arose the want of a new alphabet forthe New Testament. This was made by merely adding to the Greek alphabetsix new letters borrowed from the hieroglyphics for those sounds whichthe Greeks did not use; and the writing was then written from left toright like a European language instead of in either direction accordingto the skill or fancy of the scribe. 

It was only upon the ancient hieroglyphics thus falling into disuse thatthe Greeks of Alexandria, almost for the first time, had thecuriosity to study the principles on which they were written. ClemensAlexandrinus, who thought no branch of knowledge unworthy of hisattention, gives a slight account of them, nearly agreeing with theresults of our modern discoveries. He mentions the three kinds ofwriting; first, the _hieroglyphic_; secondly, the _hieratic_, which isnearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental thanthe carved figures; and thirdly, the _demotic_, or common alphabeticwriting. He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic andthe symbolic; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into theimitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instancesof these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines whichby simple imitation mean "water;" for the second, the oval which mean"a name, " because kings' names were written within ovals; and for thethird, a cup with three anvils, which mean "Lord of Battles, " because"cup" and "lord" have nearly the same sound _neb_, and "anvils" and"battles" have nearly the same sound _meshe_. 

In this reign Pantonus of Athens, a Stoic philosopher, held the firstplace among the Christians of Alexandria. He is celebrated for unitingthe study of heathen learning with a religious zeal which led him topreach Christianity in Abyssinia. 

[Illustration: 135. Jpg HIEROGLYPHIC, HIERATIC, AND DEMOTIC WRITING]

He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians; and, thoughAthenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founderof the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learnedChristian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. Tohave been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learningamong the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no greatpraise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness overthe world? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introducedwithout some danger that learning and science may get forbidden, together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in thesame schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagansand Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians, learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion;and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have foundeda school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearlytwo centuries. Pantćnus has left no writings of his own, and is bestknown through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens. He is said to havebrought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he metwith on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel in the originalHebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, wouldsettle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all thatnow bears that Apostle's name in the Greek translation. 

The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish himfrom Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeededPantćnus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time avoluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a platonist, thoughsometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to theGentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eightbooks of Stromata, or _collections_, which he wrote to describe theperfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model forhis imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects ofGnostics "falsely so called. " By his advice, and by the imitation ofChrist, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, toknowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant andthen a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh. 

Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief markof the Gnostic sect. He thought much of the sacred power of numbers. Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot, which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred signfor the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of thecommandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and thereare seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and thetwo fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude weremiraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egyptunder Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventhday, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but herethere is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud ofsome zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found inthe pagan poets. 

During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months (194 A. D. ), we find no trace of his power in Egypt, except the money which theAlexandrians coined in his name. It seems to have been the duty of theprefect of the mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor's death, to loseno time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of themeans to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the newemperor. 

During the reign of Commodus, Pescennius Niger had been at the head ofthe legion that was employed in Upper Egypt in stopping the inroads oftheir troublesome neighbours, who already sometimes bore the name ofSaracens. He was a hardy soldier, and strict in his discipline, while heshared the labours of the field and of the camp with the men under him. He would not allow them the use of wine; and once, when the troops thatguarded the frontier at Syęnę (Aswan) sent to ask for it, he bluntlyanswered, "You have got the Nile to drink, and cannot possibly wantmore. " Once, when a cohort had been routed by the Saracens, the mencomplained that they could not fight without wine; but he would notrelax in his discipline. "Those who have just now beaten you, " saidNiger, "drink nothing but water. " He gained the love and thanks of thepeople of Upper Egypt by thus bridling the lawlessness of the troops;and they gave him his statue cut in black basalt, in allusion to hisname Niger. This statue was placed in his Roman villa. 

[Illustration: 138b. Jpg A NATIVE OF ASWAN]

But on the death of Pertinax, when Septimus Severus declared himselfemperor in Pannonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, didthe same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joinedhis party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part ofthe empire; so he marched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But there, after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also senta second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus inMysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria forperhaps a year and a few months. 

[Illustration: 139b. Jpg PAINTING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTH TOMB]

We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow ashorter space of time to his reign than one whole year, together witha few months of the preceding and following years. Within that timeSeverus had to march upon Rome against his first rival, Julian, topunish the praetorian guards, and afterwards to conquer Niger. 

After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master ofthe empire, and was no longer wanted in the other provinces, he foundleisure, in A. D. 196, to visit Egypt; and, like other active-mindedtravellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples atThebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egyptian animals. His visit to Alexandria wras marked by many new laws. Now that theGreeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, hadlost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared bytheir Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. Hegave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege thathad hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freelygranted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded. He alsoornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, whichwas named after himself the Bath of Severus. 

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, undera severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian. But he who givesthe blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts underit; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenthyear of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from theirgovernors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost theirlives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen. He leftseven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebratedwriter, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read inthe Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece. As the property ofLeonides was forfeited, his children were left in poverty; but the youngOrigen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion, by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens. Inorder to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself masterof Hebrew, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whetherJews or Christians. 

In this persecution of the Church all public worship was forbidden tothe Christians; and Tertullian of Carthage eloquently complains that, while the emperor allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, orcrocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those thatbowed down before the Creator and Governor of the world. Of course, at this time of trouble the catechetical school was broken up andscattered, so that there was no public teaching of Christianity inAlexandria. But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbiddento be done openly; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, thebishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which hehad already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger. Origencould boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list ofmartyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best knownwas Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas. Origen afterwards removed for atime to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop forbeing there ordained a presbyter. 

In Egypt Severus seems to have dated the years of his reign from thedeath of Niger, though he had reigned in Rome since the deaths ofPertinax and Julian. His Egyptian coins are either copper, or brassplated with a little silver; and after a few reigns even those lasttraces of a silver coinage are lost in this falling country. In tracingthe history of a word's meaning we often throw a light upon the customsof a nation. Thus, in Rome, gold was so far common that avarice wascalled the love of gold; while in Greece, where silver was the metalmost in use, money was called _argurion_. In the same way it iscuriously shown that silver was no longer used in Egypt by our findingthat the brass coin of one hundred and ten grains weight, as being theonly piece of money seen in circulation, was named an _argurion_. 

The latter years of the reign of Caracalla were spent in visiting theprovinces of his wide empire; and, after he had passed through Thraceand Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit fromits emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the midst of their ownfollies and vices were always clever in lashing those of their rulers, had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. Theyhad laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, whilein his person he was below the usual height; and they had not forgottenhis murder of his brother, and his talking of marrying his own mother. Some of these dangerous witticisms had reached his ears at Rome, andthey were not forgotten. But Caracalla never showed his displeasure;and, as he passed through Antioch, he gave out that he was going tovisit the city founded by Alexander the Great, and to consult the oraclein the temple of Serapis. 

The Alexandrians in their joy got ready the hecatombs for hissacrifices; and the emperor entered their city through rows of torchesto the sound of soft music, while the air was sweetened with costlyscents, and the road scattered with flowers. After a few days hesacrificed in the temple of Serapis, and then visited the tomb ofAlexander, where he took off his scarlet cloak, his rings, and hisgirdle covered with precious stones, and dutifully laid them on thesarcophagus of the hero. The Alexandrians were delighted with theirvisitor; and crowds flocked into the city to witness the daily andnightly shows, little aware of the unforgiving malice that was lurkingin his mind. 

The emperor then issued a decree that all the youths of Alexandria of anage to enter the army should meet him in a plain on the outside of thecity; they had already a Macedonian and a Spartan phalanx, and he wasgoing to make an Alexandrian phalanx. Accordingly the plain was filledwith thousands of young men, who were ranged in bodies according totheir height, their age, and their fitness for bearing arms, while theirfriends and relations came in equal numbers to be witnesses of theirhonour. 

The emperor moved through their ranks, and was loudly greeted with theircheers, while the army which encircled the whole plain was graduallyclosing round the crowd and lessening the circle. When the ring wasformed, Caracalla withdrew with his guards and gave the looked-forsignal. The soldiers then lowered their spears and charged on theunarmed crowd, of whom a part were butchered and part driven headlonginto the ditches and canals; and such was the slaughter that the watersof the Nile, which at midsummer are always red with the mud from theupper country, were said to have flowed coloured to the sea withthe blood of the sufferers. Caracalla then returned to Antioch, congratulating himself on the revenge that he had taken on theAlexandrians for their jokes; not however till he had consecrated in thetemple of Serapis the sword with which he boasted that he had slain hisbrother Geta. 

Caracalla also punished the Alexandrians by stopping the public gamesand the allowance of grain to the citizens; and, to lessen the danger oftheir rebelling, he had the fortifications carried between the restof the city and the great palace-quarter, the Bruchium, thus dividingAlexandria into two fortified cities, with towers on the wallsbetween them. Hitherto, under the Romans as under the Ptolemies, theAlexandrians had been the trusted favourites of their rulers, who madeuse of them to keep the Egyptians in bondage. But under Caracalla thatpolicy was changed; the Alexandrians were treated as enemies; and we seefor the first time Egyptians taking their seat in the Roman senate, andthe Egyptian religion openly cultivated by the emperor, who then built atemple in Rome to the goddess Isis. 

On the murder of Caracalla in A. D. 217, Macrinus, who was thought to bethe author of his death, was acknowledged as emperor; and though he onlyreigned for about two months, yet, as the Egyptian new year's day fellwithin that time, we find Alexandrian coins for the first and secondyears of his reign. The Egyptians pretended that the death of Caracallahad been foretold by signs from heaven; that a ball of fire had fallenon the temple of Serapis, which destroyed nothing but the sword withwhich Caracalla had slain his brother; and that an Egyptian namedSerapion, who had been thrown into a lion's den for naming Macrinus asthe future emperor, had escaped unhurt by the wild beasts. 

Macrinus recalled from Alexandria Julian, the prefect of Egypt, andappointed to that post his friend Basilianus, with Marius Secundus, asenator, as second in command, who was the first senator that had everheld command in Egypt. He was himself at Antioch when Bassianus, aSyrian, pretending to be the son of Caracalla, offered himself to thelegions as that emperor's successor. When the news reached Alexandriathat the Syrian troops had joined the pretended Antoninus, the prefectBasilianus at once put to death the public couriers that brought theunwelcome tidings. But when, a few days afterwards, it was known thatMacrinus had been defeated and killed, the doubts about his successorled to serious struggles between the troops and the Alexandrians. TheAlexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla; Basilianusand Secundus had before declared against him; but, on the other hand, the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria. Thecitizens flew to arms, and day after day was the battle fought in thestreets of Alexandria between two parties, neither of whom was strongenough, even if successful, to have any weight in settling the fate ofthe Roman empire. Marius Secundus lost his life in the struggle. Theprefect Basilianus fled to Italy to escape from his own soldiers; andthe province of Egypt then followed the example of the rest of the Eastin acknowledging the new emperor. 

For four years Rome was disgraced by the sovereignty of Elagabalus, the pretended son of Caracalla, and we find his coins each year inAlexandria. He was succeeded by the young Alexander, whose amiablevirtues, however, could not gain for him the respect which he lostby the weakness of his government. The Alexandrians, always ready tolampoon their rulers, laughed at his wish to be thought a Roman; theycalled him the Syrian, the high priest, and the ruler of the synagogue. And well might they think slightly of his government, when a prefect ofEgypt owed his appointment to the emperor's want of power to punish him. Epagathus had headed a mutiny of the prćtorian guards in Rome, in whichtheir general Ulpian was killed; and Alexander, afraid to punish themurderers, made the ringleader of the rebels prefect of Egypt in orderto send him out of the way; so little did it then seem necessary tofollow the cautious policy of Augustus, or to fear a rebellion in thatprovince. But after a short time, when Epagathus had been forgotten bythe Roman legion, he was removed to the government of Crete, and then atlast punished with death. 

In this reign Ammonius Saccas became the founder of a new and mostimportant school of philosophy, that of the Alexandrian platonists. Heis only known to us through his pupils, in whose writings we trace themind and system of the teacher. The most celebrated of these pupils werePlotinus, Herennius, and Origen, a pagan writer, together with Longinus, the great master of the "sublime, " who owns him his teacher in elegantliterature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of hisknowledge, and was by his followers called heaven-taught. He aimed atputting an end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers byshowing that all the great truths were the same in each system, andby pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of wherethey differed; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools ofphilosophy, and by gathering together the scattered limbs of Truth, whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four windslike the mangled body of Osiris. 

Origen in the tenth year of this reign (A. D. 231) withdrew to Cćsarea, on finding himself made uncomfortable at Alexandria by the displeasureof Demetrius the bishop; and he left the care of the Christian school toHeraclas, who had been one of his pupils. Origen's opinions met with noblame in Cćsarea, where Christianity was not yet so far removed from itsearly simplicity as in Egypt. 

The Christians of Syria and Palestine highly prized his teaching whenit was no longer valued in Alexandria. He died at Tyre in the reign ofGallus. 

[Illustration: 149. Jpg A MODERN SCRIBE]

On the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had just before succeededOrigen in the charge of the Christian school, was chosen Bishop ofAlexandria; and Christianity had by that time so far spread through thecities of Upper and Lower Egypt that he found it necessary to ordaintwenty bishops under him, while three had been found enough by hispredecessor. From his being the head of the bishops, who were all styledfathers, Heraclas received the title of _Papa_, pope or grandfather, thetitle afterwards used by the bishops of Rome. 

Among the presbyters ordained by Heraclas was Ammonius Saccas, thefounder of the platonic school; but he afterwards forsook the religionof Jesus; and we must not mistake him for a second Alexandrian Christianof the name of Ammonius, who can hardly have been the same person asthe former, for he never changed his religion, and was the author ofthe _Evangelical Canons_, a work afterwards continued by Eusebius ofCćsarea. 

On the death of the Emperor Alexander, in A. D. 235, while Italy wastorn to pieces by civil wars and by its generals' rival claims for thepurple, the Alexandrians seem to have taken no part in the struggles, but to have acknowledged each emperor as soon as the news reached themthat he had taken the title. In one year we find Alexandrian coins ofMaximin and his son Maximus, with those of the two Gordians, who for afew weeks reigned in Carthage, and in the next year we again have coinsof Maximin and Maximus, with those of Balbinus and Pupienus, and ofGordianus Pius. 

The Persians, taking advantage of the weakness in the empire caused bythese civil wars, had latterly been harassing the eastern frontier; andit soon became the duty of the young Gordian to march against themin person. Hitherto the Roman armies had usually been successful; butunfortunately the Persians, or, rather, their Syrian and Arab allies, had latterly risen as much as the Romans had fallen off in courage andwarlike skill. The army of Gordian was routed, and the emperor himselfslain, either by traitors or by the enemy. Hereafter we shall see theRomans paying the just penalty for the example that they had set tothe surrounding nations. They had taught them that conquest should bea people's chief aim, that the great use of strength was to crusha neighbour; and it was not long before Egypt and the other Easternprovinces suffered under the same treatment. So little had defeatbeen expected that the philosopher Plotinus had left his studies inAlexandria to join the army, in hopes of gaining for himself an insightinto the Eastern philosophy that was so much talked of in Egypt. Afterthe rout of the army he with difficulty escaped to Antioch, and thencehe removed to Rome, where he taught the new platonism to scholars of allnations, including Serapion, the celebrated rhetorician, and Eustochius, the physician, from Alexandria. 

[Illustration: 151. Jpg SYMBOL OF EGYPT]

Philip, who is accused by the historians of being the author ofGordian's death, succeeded him on the throne in 244; but he is onlyknown in the history of Egypt by his Alexandrian coins, which we findwith the dates of each of the seven years of his reign, and these seemto prove that for one year he had been associated with Gordian in thepurple. In the reign of Decius, which began in 249, the Christians ofEgypt were again harassed by the zeal with which the laws againsttheir religion were put in force. The persecution began by theirfellow-citizens informing against them; but in the next year it wasfollowed up by the prefect Ćmilianus; and several Christians weresummoned before the magistrate and put to death. Many fled for safetyto the desert and to Mount Sinai, where they fell into a danger of adifferent kind; they were taken prisoners by the Saracens and carriedaway as slaves. Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, himself fled fromthe storm, and was then banished to the village of Cephro in the desert. But his flight was not without some scandal to the Church, as there werenot a few who thought that he was called upon by his rank at least toawait, if not to court, the pains of martyrdom. Indeed, the persecutionwas less remarkable for the sufferings of the Christians than for thenumbers who failed in their courage, and renounced Christianity underthe threats of the magistrate. Dionysius, the bishop, who had shown nocourage himself, was willing to pardon their weakness, and after fitproof of sorrow again to receive them as brethren. But his humanityoffended the zeal of many whose distance from the danger had saved themfrom temptation; and it was found necessary to summon a council at Rometo settle the dispute. In this assembly the moderate party prevailed;and some who refused to receive back those who had once fallen away fromthe faith were themselves turned out of the Church. 

Dionysius had succeeded Heraclas in the bishopric, having beforesucceeded him as head of the catechetical school. He was the author ofseveral works, written in defence of the trinitarian opinions, on theone hand against the Egyptian Gnostics, who said that there were eight, and even thirty, persons in the Godhead, and, on the other hand, againstthe Syrian bishop, Paul of Samosata, on the Euphrates, who said thatJesus was a man, and that the Word and Holy Spirit were not persons, butattributes, of God. 

But while Dionysius was thus engaged in a controversy with such oppositeopinions, Egypt and Libya were giving birth to a new view of thetrinity. Sabellius, Bishop of Ptolemais, near Cyrene, was putting forththe opinion that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were only three namesfor the one God, and that the creator of the world had himself appearedupon earth in the form of Jesus. Against this opinion Dionysius againengaged in controversy, arguing against Sabellius that Jesus was not thecreator, but the first of created beings. 

The Christians were thus each generation changing more and more, sometimes leaning towards Greek polytheism and sometimes towardsEgyptian mysticism. As in each quarrel the most mysterious opinionswere thought the most sacred, each generation added new mysteries toits religion; and the progress was rapid, from a practical piety, to aprofession of opinions which they did not pretend to understand. 

During the reigns of Gallus, of Ćmilius Ćmilianus, and of Valerian (A. D. 251-260), the Alexandrians coined money in the name of each emperor assoon as the news reached Egypt that he had made Italy acknowledge histitle. Gallus and his son reigned two years and four months; Ćmilianus, who rebelled in Pannonia, reigned three months; and Valerian reignedabout six years. 

Egypt, as a trading country, now suffered severely from the wantof order and quiet government; and in particular since the reignof Alexander Severus it had been kept in a fever by rebellions, persecutions, and this unceasing change of rulers. Change brings thefear of change; and this fear checks trade, throws the labourer out ofemployment, and leaves the poor of the cities without wages and withoutfood. Famine is followed by disease; and Egypt and Alexandria werevisited in the reign of Gallus by a dreadful plague, one of thosescourges that force themselves on the notice of the historian. It wasprobably the same disease that in a less frightful form had been notuncommon in that country and in the lower parts of Syria. The physicianAretćus describes it under the name of ulcers on the tonsils. It seemsby the letters of Bishop Dionysius that in Alexandria the population hadso much fallen off that the inhabitants between the ages of fourteenand eighty were not more than those between forty and seventy had beenformerly, as appeared by old records then existing. The misery that thecity had suffered may be measured by its lessened numbers. 

During these latter years the eastern half of the empire was chieflyguarded by Odenathus of Palmyra, the brave and faithful ally of Rome, under whose wise rule his country for a short time held a rank among theempires of the world, which it never could have gained but for an unionof many favourable circumstances. The city and little state of Palmyrais situated about midway between the cities of Damascus and Babylon. Separated from the rest of the world, between the Roman and the Parthianempires, Palmyra had long kept its freedom, while each of those greatrival powers rather courted its friendship than aimed at conquering it. But, as the cause of Rome grew weaker, Odenathus wisely threw his weightinto the lighter scale; and latterly, without aiming at conquest, hefound himself almost the sovereign of those provinces of the Romanempire which were in danger of being overrun by the Persians. Valerianhimself was conquered, taken prisoner, and put to death by Sapor, Kingof Persia; and Gallienus, his son, who was idling away his life indisgraceful pleasures in the West, wisely gave the title of emperor toOdenathus, and declared him his colleague on the throne. 

[Illustration: 155. Jpg A HAREM WINDOW]

No sooner was Valerian taken prisoner than every province of the Romanempire, feeling the sword powerless in the weak hands of Gallienus, declared its own general emperor; and when Macrianus, who had beenleft in command in Syria, gathered together the scattered forces of theEastern army, and made himself emperor of the East, the Egyptians ownedhim as their sovereign. As Macrianus found his age too great for theactivity required of a rebel emperor, he made his two sons, Macrianus, junior, and Quietus, his colleagues; and we find their names on thecoins of Alexandria, dated the first and second years of their reign. But Macrianus was defeated by Dominitianus at the head of a part of thearmy of Aureolus, who had made himself emperor in Illyricum, and he losthis life, together with one of his sons, while the other soon afterwardsmet with the same fate from Odenathus. 

After this, Egypt was governed for a short time in the name ofGallienus; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a rebel emperor forthemselves. The Roman republic, says the historian, was often indanger from the headstrong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civilityforgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or evena pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the stateinto the greatest danger, and make it necessary to call out the troopsto put down the riots. Thus, one day, one of the prefect's slaves wasbeaten by the soldiers, for saying that his shoes were better thantheirs. On this a riotous crowd gathered round the house of Ćmilianus tocomplain of the conduct of his soldiers. He was attacked with stones andsuch weapons as are usually within the reach of a mob. He had no choicebut to call out the troops, who, when they had quieted the city and wereintoxicated with their success, saluted him with the title of emperor;and hatred of Gallienus made the rest of the Egyptian army agree totheir choice. 

This was in the year 265. The new emperor called himself Alexander, andwas even thought to deserve the name. He governed Egypt during his shortreign with great vigour. He led his army through the Thebaid, and droveback the barbarians with a courage and activity which had latterly beenuncommon in the Egyptian army. Alexandria then sent no tribute to Rome. "Well! cannot we live without Egyptian linen?" was the forced joke ofGallienus, when the Romans were in alarm at the loss of the usual supplyof grain. But Ćmilianus was soon beaten by Theodotus, the general ofGallienus, who besieged him in the strong quarter of Alexandria calledthe Bruchium, and then took him prisoner and strangled him. 

During this siege the ministers of Christianity were able to lessen someof the horrors of war by persuading the besiegers to allow the uselessmouths to quit the blockaded fortress. Eusebius, afterwards Bishop ofLaodicea, was without the trenches trying to lessen the cruelties of thesiege; and Anatolius, the Christian peripatetic, was within the walls, endeavouring to persuade the rebels to surrender. Gallienus in gratitudeto his general would have granted him the honour of a proconsulartriumph, to dazzle the eyes of the Alexandrians; but the policy ofAugustus was not wholly forgotten, and the emperor was reminded bythe priests that it was unlawful for the consular fasces to enterAlexandria. 

The late Emperor Valerian had begun his reign with mild treatment ofthe Christians; but he was overpersuaded by the Alexandrians. He thenallowed the power of the magistrate to be used, in order to check theChristian religion. But in this weakness of the empire Gallienus couldno longer with safety allow the Christians to be persecuted for theirreligion. Both their numbers and their station made it dangerous totreat them as enemies; and the emperor ordered all persecution to bestopped. The imperial rescript for that purpose was even addressed to"Dionysius, Pinna, Demetrius, and the other bishops;" it grants themfull indulgence in the exercise of their religion, and by its veryaddress almost acknowledges their rank in the state. By this edict ofGallienus the Christians were put on a better footing than at any timesince their numbers brought them under the notice of the magistrate. 

[Illustration: 158b. Jpg EGYPTIAN SLAVE]

 From the painting by Siefčrt

When the bishop Dionysius returned to Alexandria, he found the placesadly ruined by the late siege. The middle of the city was a vast waste. It was easier, he says, to go from one end of Egypt to the other than tocross the main street which divided the Bruchium from the western endof Alexandria. The place was still marked with all the horrors of lastweek's battle. Then, as usual, disease and famine followed upon war. Nota house was without a funeral. Death was everywhere to be seen in itsmost ghastly form. Bodies were left un-buried in the streets to be eatenby the dogs. Men ran away from their sickening friends in fear. As thesun set they felt in doubt whether they should be alive to see itrise in the morning. Cowards hid their alarms in noisy amusements andlaughter. Not a few in very despair rushed into riot and vice. But theChristians clung to one another in brotherly love; they visited thesick; they laid out and buried their dead; and many of them therebycaught the disease themselves, and died as martyrs to the strength oftheir faith and love. 

As long as Odenathus lived, the victories of the Palmyrenes were alwaysover the enemies of Rome; but on his assassination, together with hisson Herodes, though the armies of Palmyra were still led to battlewith equal courage, its counsels were no longer guided with the samemoderation. 

[Illustraton: 159. Jpg COINS OF ZENOBIA]

Zenobia, the widow of Odenathus, seized the command of the army forherself and her infant sons, Herennius and Timolaus; and her masculinecourage and stern virtues well qualified her for the bold task that shehad undertaken. She threw off the friendship of Rome, and routed thearmies which Gallienus sent against her; and, claiming to be descendedfrom Cleopatra, she marched upon Egypt, in 268 A. D. , to seize the throneof her ancestors, and to add that kingdom to Syria and Asia Minor, whichshe already possessed. 

Zenobia's army was led by her general, Zabda, who was joined by anEgyptian named Timogenes; and, with seventy thousand Palmyrenes, Syrians, and other barbarians, they routed the Roman army of fiftythousand Egyptians under Probatus. The unfortunate Roman general put anend to his own life; but nevertheless the Palmyrenes were unsuccessful, and Egypt followed the example of Rome, and took the oaths to Claudius. For three years the coins of Alexandria bear the name of that emperor. 

On the death of Claudius, his brother Quintillus assumed the purple inEurope (A. D. 270); and though he only reigned for seventeen days theAlexandrian mint found time to engrave new dies and to issue coinedmoney in his name. 

On the death of Claudius, also, the Palmyrenes renewed their attacksupon Egypt, and this second time with success. The whole kingdomacknowledged Zenobia as their queen; and in the fourth and fifth yearsof her reign in Palmyra we find her name on the Alexandrian coins. TheGreeks, who had been masters of Egypt for six hundred years, either intheir own name or in that of the Roman emperors, were then for the firsttime governed by an Asiatic. Palmyra in the desert was then ornamentedwith the spoils of Egypt; and travellers yet admire the remains of eightlarge columns of red porphyry, each thirty feet high, which stood infront of the two gates to the great temple. They speak for themselves, and tell their own history. From their material and form and size wemust suppose that these columns were quarried between Thebes and the RedSea, were cut into shape by Egyptian workmen under the guidance of Greekartists in the service of the Roman emperors; and were thence carriedaway by the Syrian queen to the oasis-city in the desert betweenDamascus and Babylon. 

[Illustration: 161. Jpg COIN OF ATHENODORUS]

Zenobia was a handsome woman of a dark complexion, with an aquilinenose, quick, piercing eyes, and a masculine voice. She had thecommanding qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced herdescent, and she was without her vices. While Syriac was her nativetongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to havetaught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, andcould speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studiedand written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of thePersian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp. Withthese qualities, followed by a success in arms which they seemed todeserve, the world could not help remarking, that while Gallienus waswasting his time with fiddlers and players, in idleness that would havedisgraced a woman, Zenobia was governing her half of the empire like aman. 

Zenobia made Antioch and Palmyra the capitals of her empire, and Egyptbecame for the time a province of Syria. Her religion like her languagewas Syriac. The name of her husband, Odenathus, means sacred to thegoddess Adoneth, and that of her son, Vaballathus, means sacred to thegoddess Baaleth. But as her troops were many of them Saracens or Arabs, a people nearly the same as the Blemmyes, who already formed part of thepeople of Upper Egypt, this conquest gave a new rank to that part ofthe population; and had the further result, important in after years, of causing them to be less quiet in their slavery to the Greeks ofAlexandria. 

But the sceptre of Rome had lately been grasped by the firmer hand ofAurelian, and the reign of Zenobia drew to a close. Aurelian at firstgranted her the title of his colleague in the empire, and we findAlexandrian coins with her head on one side and his on the other. Buthe lost no time in leading his forces into Syria, and, after routingZenobia's army in one or two battles, he took her prisoner at Emessa. He then led her to Rome, where, after being made the ornament of histriumph, she was allowed to spend the rest of her days in quiet, havingreigned for four years in Palmyra, though only for a few months inEgypt. 

On the defeat of Zenobia it would seem that Egypt and Syria werestill left under the government of one of her sons, with the title ofcolleague of Aurelian. The Alexandrian coins are then dated in the firstyear of Aurelian and the fourth of Vaballathus, or, according to theGreek translation of this name, of Athenodorus, who counted his yearsfrom the death of Odenathus. 

The young Herodes, who had been killed with his father Odenathus, wasnot the son of Zenobia, but of a former wife, and Zenobia alwaysacted towards him with the unkindness unfortunately too common in astepmother. She had claimed the throne for her infant sons, Herenniusand Timolaus; and we are left in doubt by the historians aboutVaballathus; Vopiscus, who calls him the son of Zenobia, does not tellus who was his father. We know but little of him beyond his coins; butfrom these we learn that, after reigning one year with Aurelian, heaimed at reigning alone, took the title of Augustus, and dropped thename of Aurelian from his coins. This step was very likely the cause ofhis overthrow and death, which happened in the year 271. 

On the overthrow of Zenobia's family, Egypt, which had been so fruitfulin rebels, submitted to the Emperor Aurelian, but it was only for a fewmonths. The Greeks of Alexandria, now lessened in numbers, were found tobe no longer masters of the kingdom. Former rebellions in Egypt hadbeen caused by the two Roman legions and the Greek mercenaries sometimesclaiming the right to appoint an emperor to the Roman world; butZenobia's conquest had raised the Egyptian and Arab population intheir own opinion, and they were no longer willing to be governed by anAlexandrian or European master. In 272 A. D. They set up Firmus, a nativeof Seleucia, who took the title of emperor; and, resting his poweron that part of the population that had been treated as slavesor barbarians for six hundred years, he aimed at the conquest ofAlexandria. 

Firmus was a man of great size and bodily strength, and, of course, barbarian manners. He had gained great riches by trade with India; andhad a paper trade so profitable that he used to boast that he could feedan army on papyrus and glue. His house was furnished with glass windows, a luxury then but little known, and the squares of glass were fastenedinto the frames by means of bitumen. His chief strength was in the Arabsor Blemmyes of Upper Egypt, and in the Saracens who had lately beenfighting against Rome under the standard of Zenobia. Firmus fixed hisgovernment at Koptos and Ptolemais, and held all Upper Egypt; but heeither never conquered Alexandria, or did not hold it for many months, as for every year that he reigned in the Thebaid we find Alexandriancoins bearing the name of Aurelian. Firmus was at last conquered byAurelian in person, who took him prisoner, and had him tortured and thenput to death. During these troubles Rome had been thrown into alarm atthe thoughts of losing the usual supply of Egyptian grain, as since thereign of Elagabalus the Roman granaries had never held more than waswanted for the year; but Aurelian hastened to send word to the Romanpeople that the country was again quiet, and that the yearly supplies, which had been delayed by the wickedness of Firmus, would soon arrive. Had Firmus raised the Roman legions in rebellion, he would have beenhonoured with the title of a rebel emperor; but, as his power rested onthe Egyptians and Arabs, Aurelian only boasted that he had rid the worldof a robber. 

[Illustration: 164. Jpg STREET VENDORS IN METAL WARE]

Another rebel emperor about this time was Domitius Domitiamis; but wehave no certain knowledge of the year in which he rebelled, nor, indeed, without the help of the coins should we know in what province of thewhole Roman empire he had assumed the purple. The historian only tellsus that in the reign of Aurelian the general Domitianus was put todeath for aiming at a change. We learn, however, from the coins that hereigned for part of a first and a second year in Egypt; but the subjectof his reign is not without its difficulties, as we find Alexandriancoins of Domitianus with Latin inscriptions, and dated in the third yearof his reign. The Latin language had not at this time been used on thecoins of Alexandria; and he could not have held Alexandria for anyone whole year, as the series of Aurelian's coins is not broken. It ispossible that the Latin coins of Domitianus may belong to a second andlater usurper of the same name. 

Aurelian had reigned in Rome from the death of Claudius; and, notwithstanding the four rebels to whom we have given the title ofsovereigns of Egypt, money was coined in Alexandria in his name duringeach of those years. His coinage, however, reminds us of the troubledand fallen state of the country; and from this time forward copper, or, rather, brass, is the only metal used. 

Aurelian left Probus in the command of the Egyptian army, and thatgeneral's skill and activity found full employment in driving back thebarbarians who pressed upon the province on each of the three sides onwhich it was open to attack. 

[Illustration: 165. Jpg COIN OF DOMITIANUS WITH LATIN INSCRIPTION]

His first battles were against the Africans and Marmaridć, who werein arms on the side of Cyrene, and he next took the field against thePalmyrenes and Saracens, who still claimed Egypt in the name of thefamily of Zenobia. He employed the leisure of his soldiers in manyuseful works; in repairing bridges, temples, and porticoes, and moreparticularly in widening the trenches and keeping open the canals, andin such other works as were of use in raising and forwarding the yearlysupply of grain to Rome. Aurelian increased the amount of the Egyptiantribute, which was paid in glass, paper, linen, hemp, and grain; thelatter he increased by one-twelfth part, and he placed a larger numberof ships on the voyage to make the supply certain. 

The Christians were well treated during this reign, and their patriarchNero so far took courage as to build the Church of St. Mary inAlexandria. This was probably the first church that was built in Egyptfor the public service of Christianity, which for two hundred years hadbeen preached in private rooms, and very often in secret. The servicewas in Greek, as, indeed, it was in all parts of Egypt: for it doesnot appear that Christian prayers were publicly read in the Egyptianlanguage before the quarrel between the two churches made the Koptsunwilling to use Greek prayers. The liturgy there read was probably verynearly the same as that afterwards known as the _Liturgy of St. Mark_. This is among the oldest of the Christian liturgies, and it shows itscountry by the prayer that the waters of the river may rise to theirjust measure, and that rain may be sent from heaven to the countriesthat need it. 

We learn from the historians that eight months were allowed to passbetween the death of Aurelian and the choice of a successor; and duringthis time the power rested in the hands of his widow. The sway of awoman was never openly acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians andEgyptians were used to female rule, and from contemporary coins we learnthat in Egypt the government was carried on in the name of the EmpressSeverina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year ofhis reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventhyears. But after Tacitus was chosen emperor by his colleagues of theRoman senate, and during his short reign of six months (A. D. 276), hisauthority was obeyed by the Egyptian legions under Probus, as is fullyproved by the Alexandrian coins bearing his name, all dated in the firstyear of his reign. 

[Illustration: 167. Jpg COIN OF SEVERINA]

On the death of Tacitus, his brother Florian hoped to succeed to theimperial power, and was acknowledged in the same year by the senate andtroops of Rome. But when the news reached Egypt it was at once felt bythe legions that Probus, both by his own personal qualities and by thehigh state of discipline of the army under his command, and by hissuccess against the Egyptian rebels, had a better claim to the purplethan any other general. At first the opinion ran round the camp in awhisper, and at last the army spoke the general wish aloud; theysnatched a purple cloak from a statue in one of the temples to throwover him, they placed him on an earthen mound as a tribunal, and againsthis will saluted him with the title of emperor. The choice of theEgyptian legions was soon approved of by Asia Minor, Syria, and Italy;Florian was put to death, and Probus shortly afterwards marched intoGaul and Germany, to quiet those provinces. 

After a year or two, Probus was recalled into Egypt by hearing that theBlemmyes had risen in arms, and that Upper Egypt was again independentof the Roman power. Not only Koptos, which had for centuries been anArab city, but even Ptolemais, the Greek capital of the Thebaid, was nowpeopled by those barbarians, and they had to be reconquered by Probusas foreign cities, and kept in obedience by Roman garrisons; and on hisreturn to Rome he thought his victories over the Blemmyes of Upper Egyptnot unworthy of a triumph. 

By these unceasing wars, the Egyptian legions had lately been broughtinto a high state of discipline, and, confident in their strength, andin the success with which they had made their late general emperor ofthe Roman world, they now attempted to raise up a rival to him in theperson of their present general Saturninus. Saturninus had been madegeneral of the Eastern frontier by Aurelian, who had given him strictorders never to enter Egypt. "The Egyptians, " says the historian, meaning, however, the Alexandrians, "are boastful, vain, spiteful, licentious, fond of change, clever in making songs and epigrams againsttheir rulers, and much given to soothsaying and augury. " Aurelian wellknew that the loyalty of a successful general was not to be trusted inEgypt, and during his lifetime Saturninus never entered that province. But after his death, when Probus was called away to the other parts ofthe empire, the government of Egypt was added to the other duties ofSaturninus; and no sooner was he seen there, at the head of an army thatseemed strong enough to enforce his wishes, than the fickle Alexandrianssaluted him with the title of emperor and Augustus. But Saturninus wasa wise man, and shunned the dangerous honour; he had hitherto foughtalways for his country; he had saved the provinces of Spain, Gaul, andAfrica from the enemy or from rebellion; and he knew the value of hisrank and character too well to fling it away for a bauble. To escapefrom further difficulties he withdrew from Egypt, and moved hisheadquarters into Palestine. But the treasonable cheers of theAlexandrians could neither be forgotten by himself nor by his troops;he had withstood the calls of ambition, but he yielded at last to hisfears; he became a rebel for fear of being thought one, and he declaredhimself emperor as the safest mode of escaping punishment. But hewas soon afterwards defeated and strangled, against the will of theforgiving Probus. 

On the death of Probus, in A. D. 283, the empire fell to Carus and hissons, Numerianus and Carinus, whose names are found on the Alexandriancoins, but whose short reigns have left no other trace in Egypt. 

[Illustration: 169. Jpg COIN OF TRAJAN'S SECOND LEGION]

At this time also we find upon the coins the name of Trajan's secondEgyptian legion, which was at all times stationed in Egypt, and which, acting upon an authority that was usually granted to the Roman legionsin the various provinces, coined money of several kinds for their ownpay. 

The reign of Diocletian, beginning in A. D. 285, was one of suffering tothe Egyptians; and in the fourth year the people rose against the Romangovernment, and gave the title of emperor to Achilleus, their leaderin the rebellion. Galerius, the Roman general, led an army against therebels, and marched through the whole of the Thebaid; but, though theEgyptians were routed whenever they were bold enough to meet the legionsin battle, yet the rebellion was not very easily crushed. The Romanswere scarcely obeyed beyond the spot on which their army was encamped. In the fourth year of the rebellion, A. D. 292, Diocletian came to Egypt, and the cities of Koptos and Busiris were besieged by the emperor inperson, and wholly destroyed after a regular siege. 

When Diocletian reached the southern limits of Egypt he was able tojudge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to holdany part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there wasless than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He thereforemade a new treaty with the Nobatć, as the people between the first andsecond cataracts were now called. He gave up to them the whole of LowerEthiopia, or the province called Nubia. The valley for seventy milesabove Syęnę, which bore the name of the Dodecaschonos, had been held byAugustus and his successors, and this was now given up to the originalinhabitants. Diocletian strengthened the fortifications on the isleof Elephantine, to guard what was thenceforth the uttermost point ofdefence, and agreed to pay to the Nobatae and Blemmyes a yearly sum ofgold on the latter promising no longer to harass Upper Egypt with theirmarauding inroads, and on the former promising to forbid the Blemmyesfrom doing so. What remains of the Roman wall built against the inroadsof these troublesome neighbours runs along the edge of the cultivatedland on the east side of the river for some distance to the north of thecataract. But so much was the strength of the Greek party lessened, andso deeply rooted among the Egyptians was their hatred of their rulersand the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke, that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, andDiocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital. Such wasthe strength of the rebels that the city could not be taken withouta regular siege. Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and wall, andturned aside the canals that supplied the citizens with water. After atedious siege of eight months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm in297, and Achilleus was put to death. A large part of the city was burntat the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have thereended, but for Diocletian's humane interpretation of an accident. Thehorse on which he sat stumbled as he entered the city with his troops, and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven thathe should stop the pillage of the city; and the citizens in gratitudeerected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed somuch. This statue has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken inthe place where it stood. The lofty column in the centre of the templeof Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey's Pillar, * once held astatue on the top, and on the base it still bears the inscription ofthe grateful citizens, "To the most honoured emperor, the saviour ofAlexandria, the unconquerable Diocletian. "

 * See Volume X. , page 317. 

This rebellion had lasted more than nine years, and the Egyptians seemednever in want of money for the purposes of the war. Diocletian wasstruck with their riches, and he ordered a careful search to be madethrough Egypt for all writings on alchemy, an art which the Egyptiansstudied together with magic and astrology. These books he ordered to beburnt, under a belief that they were the great sources of the riches bywhich his own power had been resisted. Want and misery no doubt causedthis rebellion, but the rebellion certainly caused more want and misery. The navigation of the Nile was stopped, the canals were no longer keptcleared, the fields were badly tilled, trade and manufactures wereruined. Since the rebellions against the Persians, Egypt had neversuffered so much. It had been sadly changed by the troubles of the lastsixty years, during which it had been six times in arms against Rome;and when the rebellion was put down by Diocletian, it was no longerthe same country that it had been under the Antonines. The framework ofsociety had been shaken, the Greeks had lessened in numbers, and stillmore in weight. The fall of the Ptolemies, and the conquest by Rome, didnot make so great a change. The bright days of Egypt as a Greekkingdom began with the building of Alexandria, and they ended withthe rebellions against Gallienus, Aurelian and Diocletian. The nativeEgyptians, both Kopts and Arabs, now rise into more notice, as the Greekcivilisation sinks around them. And soon the upper classes among theKopts, to avoid the duty of maintaining a family of children in suchtroubled times, rush by thousands into monasteries and convents, andfurther lessen the population by their religious vows of celibacy. Inthe twelfth year of the reign, that in which Alexandria rebelled andthe siege was begun, the Egyptian coinage for the most part ceased. Henceforth, though money was often coined in Alexandria as in everyother great city of the empire, the inscriptions were usually in Latin, and the designs the same as those on the coins of Rome. In taking leaveof this long and valuable series of coins with dates, which has beenour guide in the chronology of these reigns, we must not forget toacknowledge how much we owe to the labours of the learned Zoega. Inhis _Numi Ćgypti Imperatorii_, the mere descriptions, almost without aremark, speak the very words of history. 

The reign of Diocletian is chiefly remarkable for the new law which wasthen made against the Christians, and for the cruel severity with whichit was put into force. The issuing of this edict in 304 A. D. , which wasto root out Christianity from the world, took place in the twentiethyear of the reign, according to the Alexandrians, or in the nineteenthyear after the emperor's first installation as consul, as years werereckoned in the other parts of the empire. The churches, which sincethe reign of Gallienus had been everywhere rising, were ordered to bedestroyed and the Bibles to be burnt, while banishment, slavery, anddeath were the punishments threatened against those who obstinatelyclung to their religion. In no province of the empire was thepersecution more severe than in Egypt; and many Christians fled toSyria, where the law, though the same, was more mildly carried intoexecution. But the Christians were too numerous to fly and too fewto resist. The ecclesiastical writers present us with a sad tale oftortures and of death borne by those who refused to renounce theirfaith, --a tale which is only made less sad by the doubt how farthe writers' feelings may have misled their judgment, and made themoverstate the numbers. 

But we may safely rely upon the account which Eusebius gives us of whathe himself saw in Egypt. Many were put to death on the same day, somebeheaded and some burnt. The executioners were tired, and the hearts ofthe pagan judges melted by the unflinching firmness of the Christians. Many who were eminent for wealth, rank, and learning chose to lay downtheir lives rather than throw a few grains of wheat upon the altar, orcomply with any ceremony that was required of them as a religious test. The judges begged them to think of their wives and children, and pointedout that they were the cause of their own death; but the Christians wereusually firm, and were beheaded for the refusal to take the test. Among the most celebrated of the Egyptian martyrs were Peter, Bishop ofAlexandria, with Faustus, Dius, and Ammonius, presbyters under him;the learned Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, Hesychius, the editor of theSeptuagint, and the Bishops Pachomius and Theodorus; though the pagansmust have been still more surprised at Philoromus, the receiver-generalof the taxes at Alexandria. This man, after the prefect of Egypt andthe general of the troops, was perhaps the highest Roman officer in theprovince. He sat in public as a judge in Alexandria, surrounded by aguard of soldiers, daily deciding all causes relating to the taxes ofEgypt. He was accused of no crime but that of being a Christian, whichhe was earnestly entreated to deny, and was at liberty indirectly todisprove by joining in some pagan sacrifice. The Bishops of Alexandriaand Thmuis may have been strengthened under their trials by their rankin the church, by having themselves urged others to do their duty in thesame case, but the receiver-general of the taxes could have had nothingto encourage him but the strength of his faith and a noble scorn offalsehood; he was reproached or ridiculed by all around him, but herefused to deny his religion, and was beheaded as a common criminal. 

The ready ministers of this persecution were Culeianus, the prefect ofthe Thebaid, and Hierocles, the prefect of Alexandria. The latterwas peculiarly well chosen for the task; he added the zeal of thetheologian to the ready obedience of the soldier. He had written againstthe Christians a work named _Philalethes_ (the lover of truth), which wenow know only in the answer by Eusebius of Cćsarea. In this he denouncedthe apostles as impostors, and the Christian miracles as trifling; and, comparing them with the pretended miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, he pronounced the latter more numerous, more important, and betterauthenticated than the former by the evangelists; and he ridiculedthe Christians for calling Jesus a god, while the pagans did not raiseApollonius higher than a man beloved by the gods. 

This persecution under Diocletian was one of the most severe that theChristians ever underwent from the Romans. It did not, however, whollystop the religious services, nor break up the regular government of theChurch. In the catechetical school, Pierius, whom we have before spokenof as a man of learning, was succeeded by Theognostus and then bySerapion, whose name reminds us that the Egyptian party was gainingweight in the Alexandrian church. It can hardly have been for hissuperior learning, it may have been because his opinions were becomingmore popular than those of the Greeks, that a professor with an Egyptianname was placed at the head of the catechetical school. Serapion wassucceeded by Peter, who afterwards gained the bishopric of Alexandriaand a martyr's crown. But these men were little known beyond theirlecture-room. In the twentieth year of the reign, on the death of Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria, who lost his life as a martyr, the presbytersof the church met to choose a successor. Among their number was Arius, whose name afterwards became so famous in ecclesiastical history, andwho had already, even before he was ordained a priest, offended many bythe bold manner in which he stated his religious opinions. But upon him, if we may believe a partial historian, the majority of votes fell inthe choice of a patriarch of Alexandria, and had he not himself modestlygiven way to the more ambitious Alexander, he might perhaps have beensaved from the treatment which he afterwards suffered from his rival. 

When, in the year 305, Diocletian and his colleague, Valerius Maximian, resigned the purple, Egypt with the rest of the East was given toGalerius, who had also as Cćsar been named Maximian on his Egyptiancoins, while Constantius Chlorus ruled the West. Galerius in 307 grantedsome slight indulgence to the Christians without wholly stoppingthe persecution. But all favour was again withdrawn from them by hissuccessor Maximin, who had indeed misgoverned Egypt for some years, under the title of Cćsar, before the rank of Augustus was granted tohim. He encouraged private informers, he set townsman against townsman;and, as the wishes of the emperor are quickly understood by all underhim, those who wished for his favour courted it by giving him an excusefor his cruelties. The cities sent up petitions to him, begging that theChristians might not be allowed to have churches within their walls. Thehistory of these reigns indeed is little more than the history of thepersecutions; and when the Alexandrian astronomers, dropping the era ofAugustus, began to date from the first year of Diocletian, the Christianwriters in the same way dated from the Era of the Martyrs. 

It can be no matter of surprise to us that, in a persecution whichthreatened all classes of society, there should have been many who, whenthey were accused of being Christians, wanted the courage to undergothe pains of martyrdom, and escaped the punishment by joining in a pagansacrifice. When the storm was blown over, these men again asked to bereceived into the Church, and their conduct gave rise to the verysame quarrel that had divided the Christians in the reign of Decius. Meletius, a bishop of the Thebaid, was at the head of the party whowould make no allowance for the weakness of their brethren, and whorefused to grant to the repentant the forgiveness that they asked for. He had himself borne the same trials without bending, he had beensent as a criminal to work in the Egyptian mines, and had returned toAlexandria from his banishment, proud of his sufferings and furiousagainst those who had escaped through cowardice. But the larger part ofthe bishops were of a more forgiving nature; they could not all boast ofthe same constancy, and the repentant Christians were re-admittedinto communion with the faithful, while the followers of Meletius werebranded with the name of heretics. 

In Alexandria, Meletius soon found another and, as it proved, a morememorable occasion for the display of his zeal. He has the unenviablehonour of being the author of the great Arian quarrel, by accusing ofheresy Arius, at that time a presbyter of the church of Baucala nearAlexandria, and by calling upon Alexander, the bishop, to inquire intohis belief, and to condemn it if found unsound. Arius frankly and openlyacknowledged his opinions: he thought Jesus a created being, and wouldspeak of him in no higher terms than those used in the New Testamentand Apostles' Creed, and defended his opinions by an appeal to theScriptures. But he soon found that his defence was thought weak, and, without waiting to be condemned, he withdrew before the storm toPalestine, where he remained till summoned before the council of Nicćain the coming reign. 

It was during these reigns of trouble, about which history is sadlysilent, when Greek learning was sinking, and after the country hadbeen for a year or two in the power of the Syrians, that the worship ofMithra was brought into Alexandria, where superstitious ceremonies andphilosophical subtleties were equally welcome. Mithra was the Persiangod of the sun; and in the system of two gods, one good and the otherwicked, he was the god of goodness. 

[Illustration: 179. Jpg SYMBOL OF MITHRA]

The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero inPhrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing itin sacrifice to the god. In a deserted part of Alexandria, called theMithrium, his rites were celebrated among ruins and rubbish; and hisignorant followers were as ignorantly accused of there slaying theirfellow-citizens on his altars. 

It was about the same time that the eastern doctrine of Manicheism wassaid to have been brought into Egypt by Papus, and Thomas or Hernias. This sect, if sect it may be called, owed its origin to a certainMajus Mani, banished from Persia under the Sassanides; this Mani wasa talented man, highly civilised through his studies and voyages indistant lands. In his exile he conceived the idea of putting himselfforward as the reformer of the religions of all the peoples he hadvisited, and of reducing them all to one universal religion. Banished bythe Christians, to whom he represented himself as the divinely inspiredapostle of Jesus, in whom the Comforter had appeared, he returned toPersia, taking with him a book of the Gospels adorned by extraordinarypaintings. Here he obtained at first the favour of the king and thepeople, till finally, after many changes of fortune, he was pursued bythe magi, and convicted in a solemn disputation of falsifying religion;he was condemned to the terrible punishment of being flayed alive, afterwhich his skin was to be stuffed and hung up over the gates of theroyal city. His teaching consisted in a mixture of Persian andChristian-Gnostic views; its middle final point was the dualism of goodand evil which rules in the world and in the human breast. 

According to Mani's creed, there were originally two principles, God inHis kingdom of light, and the demon with his kingdom of darkness, andthese two principles existed independently of each other. The powersof evil fell into strife with each other, until, hurled away by theirinward confusion, they reached the outermost edge of their own kingdom, and from there beheld the kingdom of light in all its glory. Now theyceased their strife among themselves and united to do battle to thekingdom of light. To meet them, God created the "original man" who, armed with the five pure elements, light, fire, air, water, and earth, advanced to meet the hostile powers. He was defeated, though finallysaved; but a part of his light had thus made its way into the realm ofdarkness. In order gradually to regain this light, God caused the motherof life to create the visible world, in which that light lies hidden asa living power or world-soul awaiting its deliverance from the bonds ofmatter. In order to accomplish this redemption, two new beings of lightproceed from God, viz. : Christ and the Holy Ghost, of whom the former, Christus Mithras, has his abode in the sun and moon, the latter in theether diffused around the entire world. Both attract the powers of lightwhich have sunk into the material world in order to lead them back, finally, into the everlasting realm of light. To oppose them, however, the demons created a new being, viz. : man, after the example of the"original man, " and united in him the clearest light and the darknesspeculiar to themselves, in order that the great strife might be renewedin his breast, and so man became the point of union of all the forces inthe universe, the microcosm in which two principles ever strive for themastery. Through the enticements of the material and the illusionsof the demon, the soul of light was held in bondage in spite of itsindwelling capacity for freedom, so that in heathenism and Judaism the"son of everlasting light, " as the soul of the universe, was chainedto matter. In order to accomplish this work of redemption more quickly, Christ finally leaves his throne at God's right hand, and appearson earth, truly in human form, but only with an apparent body; hissuffering and death on the cross are but illusions for the multitude, although historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbolof the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression ofthe suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in theplant-world), of the great physical _weltschmerz_. Christ, through histeaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light, so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceedsfrom rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachingswere conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospelswere disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter promised by Christto accomplish the victory. In his writings only is the pure truthpreserved. Finally there will be a complete separation of the light fromthe darkness, and then the powers of darkness will fall upon each otheragain. 

The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly thesame opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen eitherfrom a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself. The Jewsalone proclaimed that God created good and God created evil. But we knowof few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though manyhave been reproached as such; their doctrine is now known only in theworks written against it. Of all heresies among the Christians this isthe one most denounced by the ecclesiastical writers, and most severelythreatened by the laws when the law makers became Christian; and ofall the accusations of the angry controversialists this was the mostreproachful. We might almost think that the numerous fathers who havewritten against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when theenemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcelyanswered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view wouldlead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, musthave felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since menhave run into such wild opinions to explain it. 

Another heresy, which for a time made even as much noise as the last, was that of Hieracas of Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for twothousand years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the deadinto mummies, to embalm them against the day of resurrection, a customwhich had been usually practised by the Christians, this native Egyptianventured to teach that nothing but the soul would rise from the dead, and that we must look forward to only a spiritual resurrection. Hieracaswas a man of some learning, and, much to the vexation of those whoopposed his arguments, he could repeat nearly the whole Bible by heart. 

The Bishop Hesychius, the martyr in the late persecution, was one ofthe learned men of the time. He had published a new edition of theSeptuagint Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. This editionwas valued and chiefly used in Egypt, while that by Lucianus, who suffered in the same persecution, was read in Asia Minor fromConstantinople to Antioch, and the older edition by Origen remained inuse in Palestine. But such was the credit of Alexandria, as the chiefseat of Christian learning, that distant churches sent there forcopies of the Scriptures, foreign translations were mostly made fromAlexandrian copies, and the greater number of Christians even now readthe Bible according to the edition by Hesychius. We must, however, fearthat these editors were by no means judicious in their labours. 

[Illustration: 184. Jpg DOME PALM OF UPPER EGYPT]

From the text itself we can learn that the early copiers of the Biblethought those manuscripts most valuable which were most full. Many agloss and marginal note got written into the text. Their devotionalfeelings blinded their critical judgment; and they never ventured to putaside a modern addition as spurious. This mistaken view of theirduty had of old guided the Hebrew copiers in Jerusalem; and though inAlexandria a juster criticism had been applied to the copies of Homer, it was not thought proper to use the same good sense when making copiesof the Bible. So strong was the habit of grafting the additions intothe text that the Greek translation became more copious than the Hebreworiginal, as the Latin soon afterwards became more copious than theGreek. 

It was about this time, at least after Theodotion's translation ofDaniel had received the sanction of the Alexandrian church, and when theteachers of Christianity found willing hearers in every city of Egypt, that the Bible was translated into the language of the country. We havenow parts of several Koptic versions. They are translated closely, andnearly word by word from the Greek; and, being meant for a people amongwhom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in fiveis Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric versions may have been translatedfrom the edition by Hesychius; but the Koptic version seems older, andits value to the Biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, withthe quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition ofthe sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in thecelebrated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used afterwardsin Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished inthose countries. 

The Emperor Maximin died at Tarsus in A. D. 313, after being defeated byLicinius, who like himself had been raised to the rank of Augustus byGalerius, and to whom the empire of Egypt and the East then fell, while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West. Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength ofhis colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased withhis power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his armyin Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted ofone hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and threehundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He wasdefeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life shouldbe spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promisewas forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once moregoverned by a single emperor. The growing strength of his colleague andrival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, andLicinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, todefend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred andfifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred andfifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated nearAdrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, hesurrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgottenand Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by asingle emperor. 

CHAPTER II. --THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD IN EGYPT

_The Ascendency of the new religion: The Arian controversies: TheZenith of monasticism: The final struggle of Paganism: The decline ofAlexandria. _

Coming under the Roman sway, the Greek world underwent, not onlypolitically but also intellectually, a complete change. As theRoman conquest had worn away all political differences and nationaldivergences, and, by uniting the various races under the rule of theempire was bringing to its consummation the work begun by the Macedonianconqueror, it could not fail to influence the train of thought. On theone hand the political and ideal structure of Greek life was crumblingand bringing down the support and guiding principle supplied by theduties of citizenship and the devotion to the commonwealth. Man wasthrown upon himself to find the principles of conduct. The customarymorality and religion had been shaken in their foundations. Thebelief in the old gods and the old religion was undermined. Philosophyendeavoured to occupy the place left vacant by the gradual decay of thenational religion. The individual, seeking for support and spiritualguidance, found it, or at least imagined he had found it, in philosophy. The conduct of life became the fundamental problem, and philosophyassumed a practical aspect. It aimed at finding a complete art ofliving. It had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more arival of and opposed to religion. Such were the tendencies of the Stoicand Epicurean schools. The Roman rule was greatly favourable to sucha development of thought. The Romans were a practical nation, had noconception of nor appreciation for purely theoretical problems, anddemanded practical lessons and philosophical investigations which wouldserve as a guide for life. Thus the political tendency of the timetowards practical wisdom had imparted a new direction to philosophicalthought. Yet, as time went on, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction seizedthe ancient world in the midst of all the glories of the Roman rule. This huge empire could offer to the peoples, which it had weldedinto one mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their nationalindependence; it offered them no inner worth nor outer fortune. Therewas a complete discord running through the entire civilisation of theGrćco-Roman world. The social condition of the empire had brought withit extreme contrasts in the daily life. The contrasts had become morepronounced. Abundance and luxury existed side by side with miseryand starvation. Millions were excluded from the very necessaries ofexistence. With the sense of injustice and revolt against theexisting inequality of the state of society, the hope for some futurecompensation arose. The millions excluded from the worldly possessionsturned longingly to a better world. The thoughts of man were turnedto something beyond terrestrial life, to heaven instead of earth. Philosophy, too, had failed to give complete satisfaction. Man hadrealised his utter inability to find knowledge in himself by hisunaided efforts. He despaired to arrive at it without the help of sometranscendental power and its kind assistance. Salvation was not to befound in man's own nature, but in a world beyond that of the senses. Philosophy could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of itsethical ideal of life, could not secure for him the promised happiness. Philosophy, therefore, turned to religion for help. At Alexandria, where, in the active work of its museum, all treasures of Grecianculture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowdedtogether in the great throng of the commercial metropolis to seek ascientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed withinthem. The cosmopolitan spirit and broad-mindedness which had broughtnations together under the Egyptian government, which had gatheredscholars from all parts in the library and the museum, was favourablealso to the fusion and reconciliation in the evolution of thought. 

If Alexandria was the birthplace of that intellectual movement which hasbeen described, this was not only the result of the prevailing spirit ofthe age, but was due to the influence of ideas; salvation could only befound in the reconciliation of ideas. The geographical centre of thismovement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria. After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticismand literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-placeof philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had becomeeasier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging todistinct social groups met on the banks of the Nile. Not only goods andproducts of the soil were exchanged, but also ideas and thoughts. Themental horizon was widened, comparisons ensued, and new ideas weresuggested and formed. This mixture of ideas necessarily created acomplex spirit where two currents of thought, of critical scepticism andsuperstitious credulity, mixed and mingled. Another powerful factor wasthe close contact in which Occidentalism or Greek culture found itselfwith Orientalism. Here it was where the Greek and Oriental spirit mixedand mingled, producing doctrines and religious systems containing germsof tradition and science, of inspiration and reflection. Images andformulas, method and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined. Thebrilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety ofintelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated andvivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour. Onthe other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which ischaracterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious, would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not beenaided by Greek science. It was the latter that arranged and explainedthe Oriental traditions, loosed their tongues, and produced thosereligious doctrines and philosophical systems which culminated inGnosticism, Neo-Platonism, the Judaism of Philo, and the Polytheism ofJulian the Apostate. 

It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards thesupernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greecewith her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave riseto the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during thefirst centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific colours. Hence the religious spiritin philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system thatare the characteristic features. "East and West, " says Baldwin, * "metat Alexandria. " The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures, and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East foundthemselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partlyby Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion andphilosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrinesconsequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnessesof an attempt at combining both. 

 * Baldwin: Dictionary of Philosophy. 

These efforts naturally came from two sides. On the one hand, the Jewstried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, inwhich Greek culture predominated. On the other hand, thinkers whosemain impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate theirdoctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Easternnations had brought with them. From whichever side the consequences beviewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purelyphilosophical, purely religious, or purely theological. 

The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the Eastand West in 323, after ten years' joint government with Licinius, isremarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion andphilosophy of the empire by the emperor's embracing the Christianfaith. His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the unitedsovereignty the Christians were at once released from every punishmentand disability on account of their religion, which was then more thantolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every minister of the Church was released from the burden ofcivil and military duties. Whether the emperor's conversion arose fromeducation, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means ofknowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was thereligion of a most important class of his subjects, and the EgyptianChristians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the GreekChristians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun todesignate the Jewish. 

The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy thana religious sect. Before Alexander's conquest the Greek settlersat Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples andsacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smittenwith the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in thetemples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from theEgyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conqueredEgyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridiculethe respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheismamong the Greeks had been further shaken by the platonists; andChristianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and theEgyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian churchhad already spread into every city of the province, and had a regularepiscopal government. Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, thebishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as thearchdeacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joinswith himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first amongequals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into theelections, and latterly the Church had become more monarchical. Therewas a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad infaith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them inhonour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition. 

This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which thendivided the Christians, which set church against church and bishopagainst bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union, the fearof the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine asa divine person; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians toarrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor waswilling to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, hewas able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutualtoleration and forbearance. The followers of early religions helddifferent opinions, but distinguished themselves apart only by outwardmodes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans, and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence fromcertain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religionof repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by whichhis disciples wrere to be known was their love to one another. Afterhis death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinionsin religion, and towards the end of the third century they proposed todistinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to theworld, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions; for asyet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gaverise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the morespeculative and mystical. 

At about this time the chief controversy was as to whether Christ wasof the _same_, or of _similar_ substance with God the Father, this beingthe dispute which divided Christendom for centuries. This dispute andothers not quite so metaphysical were brought to the ears of the emperorby Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, the presbyter. The bishophad been enquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latterhad argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the_consubstantiality_ of the Father and the Son. The emperor's letterto the theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was everbrought before a Christian monarch, is addressed to Alexander and Arius, and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, whichit is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for theunderstanding, only breed ill-will, and should be kept by each man inhis own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized allEgypt; and lastly he orders the bishop not to question the priest asto his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return ananswer. But this wise letter had no weight with the Alexandrian divines. The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; thecivil government of the country was clogged; and Constantine, afterhaving once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops tosettle the Christian faith for the future. Nicća in Bithynia was chosenas the spot most convenient for Eastern Christendom to meet in; and twohundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there metin council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, andLibya, with one or two from Western Europe. 

At this synod, held in the year 325, Athanasius, a young deacon in theAlexandrian church, came for the first time into notice as the championof Alexander against Arius, who was then placed upon his trial. All theauthority, eloquence, and charity of the emperor were needed to quellthe tumultuous passions of the assembly. It ended its stormy labours byvoting what was called the Homoousian doctrine, that Jesus was of onesubstance with God. They put forth to the world the celebrated creed, named, from the city in which they met, the Nicene creed, and theyexcommunicated Arius and his followers, who were then all banished bythe emperor. The meeting had afterwards less difficulty in coming toan agreement about the true time of Easter, and in excommunicating theJews; and all except the Egyptians returned home with a wish that thequarrel should be forgotten and forgiven. 

This first attempt among the Christians at settling the true faith byputting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing thosethat disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties. These in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and languageof the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief;and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he haddecided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptiansagainst the friends of his own Greek government in Alexandria. 

After a reasonable delay, Arius addressed to the emperor a letter eitherof explanation or apology, asserting his full belief in Christianity, explaining his faith by using the words of the Apostles' Creed, andbegging to be re-admitted into the Church. The emperor, either from areadiness to forgive, or from a change of policy, or from an ignoranceof the theological controversy, was satisfied with the apology, andthereupon wrote a mild conciliatory letter to Athanasius, who had inthe meantime been made Bishop of Alexandria, expressing his wishthat forgiveness should at all times be offered to the repentant, andordering him to re-admit Arius to his rank in the Church. But the youngAthanasius, who had gained his favour with the Egyptian clergy, and hadbeen raised to his high seat by his zeal shown against Arius, refusedto obey the commands of the emperor, alleging that it was unlawfulto re-admit into the Church anybody who had once been excommunicated. Constantine could hardly be expected to listen to this excuse, orto overlook this direct refusal to obey his orders. The rebelliousAthanasius was ordered into the emperor's presence at Constantinople, and soon afterwards, in 335, called before a council of bishops at Tyre, where he was deposed and banished. At the same council, in the thirtiethyear of this reign, Arius was re-admitted into communion with theChurch, and after a few months he was allowed to return to Alexandria, to the indignation of the popular party in that city, while Athanasiusremained in banishment during the rest of the reign, as a punishment forhis disobedience. 

This practice of judging and condemning opinions gave power in theChurch to men who would otherwise have been least entitled to weight andinfluence. Athanasius rose to his high rank over the heads of the elderpresbyters by his fitness for the harsher duties then required of anarchbishop. Theological opinions became the watchwords of two contendingparties; religion lost much of its empire over the heart; and themild spirit of Christianity gave way to angry quarrels and cruelpersecutions. 

Another remarkable event of this reign was the foundation of the newcity of Constantinople, to which the emperor removed the seat of hisgovernment. Rome lost much by the building of the new capital, althoughthe emperors had for some time past ceased to live in Italy; butAlexandria lost the rank which it had long held as the centre of Greeklearning and Greek thought, and it felt a blow from which Rome was savedby the difference of language. The patriarch of Alexandria was no longerthe head of Greek Christendom. That rank was granted to the bishop ofthe imperial city; many of the philosophers who hung round the palaceat Constantinople would otherwise have studied and taught in the museum;and the Greeks, by whose superiority Egypt had so long been kept insubjection, gradually became the weaker party. In the opinion of thehistorian, as in the map of the geographer, Alexandria had formerly beena Greek state on the borders of Egypt; but since the rebellion in thereign of Diocletian it was becoming more and more an Egyptian city; andthose who in religion and politics thought and felt as Egyptians soonformed the larger half of the Alexandrians. The climate of Egypt washardly fitted for the Greek race. Their numbers never could have beenkept up by births alone, and they now began to lessen as the attractionto newcomers ceased. The pure Greek names henceforth become less common;and among the monks and writers we now meet with those named after theold gods of the country. 

[Illustration: 199. Jpg THE ISLAND OF RHODHA]

Constantine removed an obelisk from Egypt for the ornament of his newcity, and he brought down another from Heliopolis to Alexandria; but hedied before the second left the country, and it was afterwards takenby his son to Rome. These obelisks were covered with hieroglyphics, as usual, and we have a translation said to be made from the latter byHermapion, an Egyptian priest. In order to take away its pagan characterfrom the religious ceremony with which the yearly rise of the Nile wrascelebrated in Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from thetemple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches; and nothwithstandingthe gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and theclergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow as a Christianfestival. 

The pagan philosophers under Constantine had but few pupils and metwith but little encouragement. Alypius of Alexandria and his friendIamblichus, however, still taught the philosophy of Ammoniusand Plotinus. The only writings by Alypius now remaining are his_Introduction to Music_; in which he explains the notation of thefifteen modes or tones in their respective kinds of diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic. His signs are said to be Pythagorean. They are in pairs, of which one is thought to represent the note struck on the lyre, andthe other the tone of the voice to be sung thereto. They thus implyaccord or harmony. The same signs are found in some manuscripts writtenover the syllables of ancient poems; and thereby scholars, learned atonce in the Greek language, in the art of deciphering signs, and in thescience of music, now chant the odes of Pindar in strains not dissimilarto modern cathedral psalmody. 

Sopator succeeded Iamblichus as professor of platonism in Alexandria, with the proud title of successor to Plato, For some time he enjoyed thefriendship of Constantine; but, when religion made a quarrel betweenthe friends, the philosopher was put to death by the emperor. The paganaccount of the quarrel was that, when Constantine had killed his son, heapplied to Sopator to be purified from his guilt; and when the platonistanswered that he knew of no ceremony that could absolve a man from sucha crime, the emperor applied to the Christians for baptism. Thisstory may not be true, and the ecclesiastical historian remarks thatConstantine had professed Christianity several years before the murderof his son; but then, as after his conversion he had got Sopator toconsecrate his new city with a variety of pagan ceremonies, he may inthe same way have asked him to absolve him from the guilt of murder. 

On the death of Constantine, in 337, his three sons, without entirelydismembering the empire, divided the provinces of the Roman world intothree shares. Constantine II. , the eldest son, who succeeded to thethrone of his father in Constantinople, and Constans, the youngest, who dwelt in Rome, divided Europe between them; while Constantius, the second son, held Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, of whichpossessions Antioch on the Orontes was at that time the capital. ThusAlexandria was doomed to a further fall. When governed by Rome it hadstill been the first of Greek cities; afterwards, when the seat of theempire was fixed at Constantinople, it became the second; but on thisdivision of the Roman world, when the seat of government came stillnearer to Egypt, and Antioch rose as the capital of the East, Alexandriafell to be the third among Greek cities. Egypt quietly received itspolitical orders from Antioch. Its opinions also in some cases followedthose of the capital, and it is curious to remark that the Alexandrianwriters, when dating by the era of the creation, were now willing toconsider the world ten years less old than they used, because it was sothought at Antioch. But it was not so with their religious opinions, and as long as Antioch and its emperor undertook to govern the Egyptianchurch there was little peace in the province. 

The three emperors did not take the same side in the quarrel which underthe name of religion was then unsettling the obedience of the Egyptians, and even in some degree troubling the rest of the empire. Constantiusheld the Arian opinions of Syria; but Constantine II. And Constansopenly gave their countenance to the party of the rebellious Athanasius, who under their favour ventured to return to Alexandria, where, afteran absence of two years and four months, he was received in the warmestmanner by his admiring flock. But on the death of Constantine II. , who was shortly afterwards killed in battle by his brother Constans, Constantius felt himself more master of his own kingdom; he deposedAthanasius, and summoned a council of bishops at Antioch to elect a newpatriarch of Alexandria. Christian bishops, though they had latterlyowed their ordination to the authority of their equals, had alwaysreceived their bishoprics by the choice of their presbyters or of theirflocks; and though they were glad to receive the support of the emperor, they were not willing to acknowledge him as their head. Hence, when thecouncil at Antioch first elected Eusebius of Ćmisa into the bishopric ofAlexandria, he chose to refuse the honour which they had only a doubtfulright to bestow, rather than to venture into the city in the face of hispopular rival. The council then elected Gregory, whose greater courageand ambition led him to accept the office. 

The council of Antioch then made some changes in the creed. A few yearslater, a second council met in the same place, and drew up a creed morenear to what we now call the Athanasian; but it was firmly rejected bythe Egyptian and Roman churches. Gregory was no sooner elected to thebishopric than he issued his commands as bishop, though, if he hadthe courage, he had not at the time the power to enter Alexandria. But Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian troops, was soon afterwardsordered by the emperor to place him on his episcopal throne; and he ledhim into the city, surrounded by the spears of five thousand soldiers, and followed by the small body of Alexandrians that after this invasionof their acknowledged rights still called themselves Arians. Gregoryentered Alexandria in the evening, meaning to take his seat in thechurch on the next day; but the people in their zeal did not waitquietly for the dreaded morning. They ran at once to the church, andpassed the night there with Athanasius in the greatest anxiety. Inthe morning, when Gregory arrived at the church, accompanied with thetroops, he found the doors barricaded and the building full of men andwomen, denouncing the sacrilege, and threatening resistance. But thegeneral gave orders that the church should be stormed, and the newbishop carried in by force of arms; and Athanasius, seeing that allresistance was useless, ordered the deacons to give out a psalm, andthey all marched out at the opposite door singing. After these acts ofviolence on the part of the troops, and of resistance on the part of thepeople, the whole city was thrown into an uproar, and the prefect washardly strong enough to carry on the government; the regular supply ofgrain for the poor citizens of Alexandria, and for Constantinople, wasstopped; and the blame of the whole thrown upon Athanasius. He was asecond time obliged to leave Egypt, and he fled to Rome, where he waswarmly received by the Emperor Constans and the Roman bishop. But thezeal of the Athanasian party would not allow Gregory to keep possessionof the church which he had gained only by force; they soon afterwardsset fire to it and burned it to the ground, choosing that there shouldbe no church at all rather than that it should be in the hands of theArians; and the Arian clergy and bishops, though supported by the favourof the emperor and the troops of the prefect, were everywhere throughoutEgypt driven from their churches and monasteries. During this quarrel itseems to have been felt by both parties that the choice of the people, or at least of the clergy, was necessary to make a bishop, and thatGregory had very little claim to that rank in Alexandria. Julius, theBishop of Rome, warmly espoused the cause of Athanasius, and he wrote aletter to the Alexandrian church, praising their zeal for their bishop, and ordering them to re-admit him to his former rank, from which hehad been deposed by the council of Antioch, but to which he had beenrestored by the Western bishops. Athanasius was also warmly supportedby Constans, the emperor of the West, who at the same time wrote to hisbrother Constantius, begging him to replace the Alexandrian bishop, and making the additional threat that if he would not reinstate him heshould be made to do so by force of arms. 

Constantius, after taking the advice of his own bishops, thought itwisest to yield to the wishes or rather the commands of his brotherConstans, and he wrote to Athanasius, calling him into his presencein Constantinople. But the rebellious bishop was not willing to trusthimself within the reach of his offended sovereign; and it was not tillafter a second and a third letter, pressing him to come and promisinghim his safety, that he ventured within the limits of the Easternempire. Strong in his high character for learning, firmness, andpolitical skill, carrying with him the allegiance of the Egyptiannation, which was yielded to him much rather than to the emperor, andbacked by the threats of Constans, Athanasius was at least a matchfor Constantius. At Constantinople the emperor and his subject, theAlexandrian bishop, made a formal treaty, by which it was agreedthat, if Constantius would allow the Homoousian clergy throughout hisdominions to return to their churches, Athanasius would in the sameway throughout Egypt restore the Arian clergy; and upon this agreementAthanasius himself returned to Alexandria. 

Among the followers of Athanasius was that important mixed race withwhom the Egyptian civilisation chiefly rested, a race that may be calledKoptic, but half Greek and half Egyptian in their language and religionas in their forefathers. But in feelings they were wholly opposed to theGreeks of Alexandria. Never since the last Nectanebo was conquered bythe Persians, eight hundred years earlier, did the Egyptians seem sonear to throwing off the foreign yoke and rising again as an independentnation. But the Greeks, who had taught them so much, had not taught themthe arts of war; and the nation remained enslaved to those who couldwield the sword. The return of Athanasius, however, was only the signalfor a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept in aconstant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor were the Arians his onlyenemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearingmanners, and more particularly by his following in the steps ofAlexander, the late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers forthe office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops ofAlexandria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rankby the emperor's adoption of their religion. Meletius headed a strongparty of bishops, priests, and deacons in opposing the new claims of thearchiepiscopal see of Alexandria. His followers differed in no point ofdoctrine from the Athanasian party, but as they sided with the Ariansthey were usually called heretics. 

By this time the statesmen and magistrates had gained a clear view ofthe change which had come over the political state of the empire, firstby the spread of Christianity, and secondly by the emperor's embracingit. By supporting Christianity the emperors gave rank in the state toan organised and well-trained body, which immediately found itself inpossession of all the civil power. A bishopric, which a few years beforewas a post of danger, was now a place of great profit, and secured toits possessor every worldly advantage of wealth, honour, and power. An archbishop in the capital, obeyed by a bishop in every city, withnumerous priests and deacons under them, was usually of more weight thanthe prefect. While Athanasius was at the height of his popularityin Egypt, and was supported by the Emperor of the West, the EmperorConstantius was very far from being his master. But on the death ofConstans, when Constantius became sovereign of the whole empire, he oncemore tried to make Alexandria and the Egyptian church obedient tohis wishes. He was, however, still doubtful how far it was prudent tomeasure his strength against that of the bishop, and he chose ratherto begin privately with threats before using his power openly. He firstwrote word to Athanasius, as if in answer to a request from the bishop, that he was at liberty, if he wished, to visit Italy; but he sent theletter by the hands of the notary Diogenes, who added, by word ofmouth, that the permission was meant for a command, and that it was theemperor's pleasure that he should immediately quit his bishopric and theprovince. But this underhand conduct of the emperor only showed his ownweakness. Athanasius steadily refused to obey any unwritten orders, andheld his bishopric for upwards of two years longer, before Constantiusfelt strong enough to enforce his wishes. Towards the end of that time, Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian army, to whom this delicate taskwas entrusted, gathered together from other parts of the province abody of five thousand chosen men, and with these he marched quietly intoAlexandria, to overawe, if possible, the rebellious bishop. He gaveout no reason for his conduct; but the Arians, who were in the secret, openly boasted that it would soon be their turn to possess the churches. Syrianus then sent for Athanasius, and in the presence of Maximus theprefect again delivered to him the command of Constantius, that heshould quit Egypt and retire into banishment, and he threatened to carrythis command into execution by the help of the troops if he met with anyresistance. Athanasius, without refusing to obey, begged to be shown theemperor's orders in writing; but this reasonable request was refused. Hethen entreated them even to give him, in their own handwriting, an orderfor his banishment; but this was also refused, and the citizens, who were made acquainted with the emperor's wishes and the bishop'sfirmness, waited in dreadful anxiety to see whether the prefect and thegeneral would venture to enforce their orders. The presbytery of thechurch and the corporation of the city went up to Syrianus in solemnprocession to beg him either to show a written authority for thebanishment of their bishop, or to write to Constantinople to learn theemperor's pleasure. To this request Syrianus at last yielded, and gavehis word to the friends of Athanasius that he would take no furthersteps till the return of the messengers which he then sent toConstantinople. 

But Syrianus had before received his orders, which were, if possible, tofrighten Athanasius into obedience, and, if that could not be done, thento employ force, but not to expose the emperor's written commands to thedanger of being successfully resisted. He therefore only waited for anopportunity of carrying them into effect; and at midnight, on the ninthof February, A. D. 356, twenty-three days after the promise had beengiven, Syrianus, at the head of his troops, armed for the assault, surrounded the church where Athanasius and a crowded assembly were atprayers. The doors were forcibly and suddenly broken open, the armedsoldiers rushed forward to seize the bishop, and numbers of his faithfulfriends were slain in their efforts to save him. Athanasius, however, escaped in the tumult; but though the general was unsuccessful, thebodies of the slain and the arms of the soldiers found scattered throughthe church in the morning were full proofs of his unholy attempt. Thefriends of the bishop drew up and signed a public declaration describingthe outrage, and Syrianus sent to Constantinople a counter-protestdeclaring that there had been no disturbance in the city. 

Athanasius, with nearly the whole of the nation for his friends, easilyescaped the vengeance of the emperor; and, withdrawing for a third timefrom public life, he passed the remainder of this reign in concealment. He did not, however, neglect the interests of his flock. He encouragedthem with his letters, and even privately visited his friends inAlexandria. As the greater part of the population was eager to befriendhim, he was there able to hide himself for six years. Disregardingthe scandal that might arise from it, he lived in the house of a youngwoman, who concealed him in her chamber, and waited on him with untiringzeal. She was then in the flower of her youth, only twenty years of age;and fifty years afterwards, in the reign of Theodosius II. , when thename of the archbishop ranked with those of the apostles, this womanused to boast among the monks of Alexandria that in her youth she hadfor six years concealed the great Athanasius. 

But though the general was not wholly successful, yet the Athanasianparty was for the time crushed. Sebastianus, the new prefect, was sentinto Egypt with orders to seize Athanasius dead or alive, wherever heshould be found within the province; and under his protection the Arianparty in Alexandria again ventured to meet in public, and proceededto choose a bishop. They elected to this high position the celebratedGeorge of Cappadocia, a man who, while he equalled his more popularrival in learning and in ambition, fell far behind him in coolness ofjudgment, and in that political skill which is as much wanted in theguidance of a religious party as in the government of an empire. 

George was born at Epiphania in Cilicia, and was the son of a clothier, but his ambition led him into the Church, as being at that time thefairest field for the display of talent; and he rose from one stationto another till he reached the high post of Bishop of Alexandria. Thefickle, irritable Alexandrians needed no such firebrand to light up theflames of discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that heheld his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of thearmy against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, heopened his doors to informers of the worst description; anybody whostood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemyto the emperor. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house-tax onAlexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Greatin building the city; and he made the imperial government more unpopularthan it had ever been since Augustus landed in Egypt. He used the armyas the means of terrifying the Homoousians into an acknowledgment of theArian opinions. He banished fifteen bishops to the Great Oasis, besides others of lower rank. He beat, tortured, and put to death; thepersecution was more cruel than any suffered from the pagans, exceptperhaps that in the reign of Diocletian; and thirty Egyptian bishops aresaid to have lost their lives while George was patriarch of Alexandria. Most of these accusations, however, are from the pens of his enemies. Atthis time the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea were becominga little more known to Alexandria. Meropius, travelling in the reign ofConstantine for curiosity and the sake of knowledge, had visited Auxum, the capital of the Hexumito, in Abyssinia. His companion Frumentiusundertook to convert the people to Christianity and persuade themto trade with Egypt; and, as he found them willing to listen to hisarguments, he came home to Alexandria to tell of his success and askfor support. Athanasius readily entered into a plan for spreading theblessings of Christianity and the power of the Alexandrian church. Toincrease the missionary's weight he consecrated him a bishop, and senthim back to Auxum to continue his good work. His progress, however, wassomewhat checked by sectarian jealousy; for, when Athanasius was deposedby Constantius, Frumentius was recalled to receive again his orders andhis opinions from the new patriarch. Constantius also sent an embassy tothe Homeritse on the opposite coast of Arabia, under Theophilus, a monkand deacon in the Church. The Homerito were of Jewish blood though ofgentile faith, and were readily converted, if not to Christianity, atleast to friendship with the emperor. After consecrating their churches, Theophilus crossed over to the African coast, to the Hexumito, to carryon the work which Frumentius had begun. There he was equally successfulin the object of his embassy. Both in trade and in religion theHexumito, who were also of Jewish blood, were eager to be connected withthe Europeans, from whom they were cut off by Arabs of a wilder race. Hefound also a little to the south of Auxum a settlement of Syrians, whowere said to have been placed there by Alexander the Great. These tribesspoke the language called Ethiopie, a dialect of Arabic which was notused in the country which we have hitherto called Ethiopia. 

[Illustration: 213. Jpg TEMPLE OF ABU SIMBEL IN NUBIA]

The Ethiopie version of the Bible was about this time made for theiruse. It was translated out of the Greek from the Alexandrian copies, as the Greek version was held in such value that it was not thoughtnecessary to look to the Hebrew original of the Old Testament. But thesewell-meant efforts did little at the time towards making the HexumitćChristians. Distance and the Blemmyes checked their intercourse withAlexandria. It was not till two hundred years later that they could besaid in the slightest sense to be converted to Christianity. 

Though the origin of monastic life has sometimes been claimed for theEssenes on the shores of the Dead Sea, yet it was in Egypt that it wasframed into a system, and became the model for the Christian world. Ittook its rise in the serious and gloomy views of religion which alwaysformed part of the Egyptian polytheism, and which the Greeks remarked asvery unlike their own gay and tasteful modes of worship, and which werereadily engrafted by the Egyptian converts into their own Christianbelief. In the reigns of Constantine and his sons, hundreds ofChristians, both men and women, quitting the pleasures and trials ofthe busy world, withdrew one by one into the Egyptian desert, where thesands are as boundless as the ocean, where the sunshine is less cheerfulthan darkness, to spend their lonely days and watchful nights inreligious meditation and in prayer. They were led by a gloomy viewof their duty towards God, and by a want of fellow-feeling for theirneighbour; and they seemed to think that pain and misery in this worldwould save them from punishment hereafter. The lives of many of theseFathers of the Desert were written by the Christians who lived at thesame time; but a full account of the miracles which were said to havebeen worked in their favour, or by their means, would now only callforth a smile of pity, or perhaps even of ridicule. 

"Prosperity and peace, " says Gibbon, "introduced the distinction of thevulgar and the ascetic Christians. The loose and imperfect practiceof religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince ormagistrate, soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, andimplicit faith, with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit oftheir interest, and the indulgence of their passions; but the ascetics, who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspiredby the severe enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal and God asa tyrant. They seriously renounced the business and the pleasures of theage; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage, chastised theirbody, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, asthe price of eternal happiness. The ascetics fled from a profane anddegenerate world to perpetual solitude, or religious society. Like thefirst Christians of Jerusalem, they resigned the use, or the property, of their temporal possessions; established regular communities of thesame sex and a similar disposition, and assumed the names of hermits, monks, or anchorites, expressive of their lonely retreat in a naturalor artificial desert. They soon acquired the respect of the world, whichthey despised, and the loudest applause was bestowed on this divinephilosophy, which surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, thelaborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The monks might indeed contendwith the Stoics in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and of death;the Pythagorean silence and submission were revived in their servilediscipline; and they disdained, as firmly as the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society. But the votaries of thisdivine philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to thedesert; and they restored the devout and contemplative life, whichhad been instituted by the Essenians, in Palestine and Egypt. Thephilosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a solitarypeople who dwelt among the palm trees near the Dead Sea; who subsistedwithout money, who were propagated without women, and who derived fromthe disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntaryassociates. Antony, an illiterate youth of the lower part of The-baid, distributed his patrimony, deserted his family and native home, andexecuted his monastic penance with original and intrepid fanaticism. After a long and painful novitiate among the tombs and in a ruinedtower, he boldly advanced into the desert three days' journey to theeastward of the Nile; discovered a lonely spot, which possessed theadvantages of shade and water, and fixed his last residence on MountColzim near the Red Sea, where an ancient monastery still preserves thename and memory of the saint. The curious devotion of the Christianspursued him to the desert; and, when he was obliged to appear atAlexandria, in the face of mankind, he supported his fame withdiscretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendship of Athanasius, whosedoctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declineda respectful invitation from the Emperor Constantine. The venerablepatriarch (for Antony attained the age of 105 years) beheld the numerousprogeny which had been formed by his example and his lessons. Theprolific colonies of monks multiplied on the sands of Libya, upon therocks of the Thebaid, and in the cities of the Nile. To the south ofAlexandria, the mountain and adjacent desert of Nitria were peopled byfive thousand anchorites; and the traveller may still investigate theruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted in that barren soil bythe disciples of Antony. In the Upper Thebaid, the vacant island ofTabenna was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen hundred of his brethren. That holy abbot successively founded nine monasteries of men and oneof women; and the festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty thousandreligious persons, who followed his angelic rules of discipline. The stately and populous city of Oxyrrhynchos, the seat of Christianorthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices, and even theramparts, to pious and charitable uses, and the bishop, who might preachin twelve churches, computed ten thousand females and twenty thousandmales of the monastic profession. "

The monks borrowed many of their customs from the old Egyptian priests, such as shaving the head; and Athanasius in his charge to them ordersthem not to adopt the tonsure on the head, nor to shave the beard. Heforbids their employing magic or incantations to assist their prayers. He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whosestrength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it. But heorders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe, as being an immodest act. The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews, had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the Sabbath as wellas the Lord's day; but latterly the line between the two religions hadbeen growing wider, and Athanasius orders the monks not to keep holy theJewish Sabbath. After a few years their religious duties were clearlylaid down for them in several well-drawn codes. 

One of the earliest of these ascetics was Amnion, who on the morning ofhis marriage is said to have persuaded his young wife of the superiorholiness of a single life, and to have agreed with her that they shoulddevote themselves apart to the honour of God in the desert. But, in thusavoiding the pleasures, the duties, and the temptations of the world, Amnion lost many of the virtues and even the decencies of society; henever washed himself, or changed his garments, because he thought itwrong for a religious man even to see himself undressed; and when he hadoccasion to cross a canal, his biographer tells us that attendant angelscarried him over the water in their arms, lest, while keeping his vows, he should be troubled by wet clothes. 

In the religious controversies, whether pagan or Christian, Rome hadoften looked to Egypt for its opinions; Constans, when wanting copiesof the Greek Scriptures for Rome, had lately sent to Alexandria, andhad received the approved text from Athanasius. The two countries heldnearly the same opinions and had the same dislike of the Greeks; sowhen Jerome visited Egypt he found the Church holding, he said, the trueRoman faith as taught by the apostles. Under Didymus, who was then thehead of the catechetical school, Jerome pursued his studies, havingthe same religious opinions with the Egyptian, and the same disliketo Arianism. But no dread of heresy stopped Jerome in his search forknowledge and for books. He obtained copies of the whole of Origen'sworks, and read them with the greatest admiration. It is true that hefinds fault with many of his opinions; but no admirer of Origen couldspeak in higher terms of praise of his virtues and his learning, ofthe qualities of his head and of his heart, than Jerome uses while hetimidly pretends to think that he has done wrong in reading his works. 

At this time--the end of the eleventh century after the building of thecity--the emperor himself did not refuse to mark on his Roman coins the_happy renewal of the years_ by the old Egyptian astrological fable ofthe return of the phoenix. 

From the treatise of Julius Fermicus against the pagan superstitions, itwould seem that the sacred animals of the Egyptians were no longer keptin the several cities in which they used to be worshipped, and that manyof the old gods had been gradually dropped from the mythology, which wasthen chiefly confined to the worship of Isis and Osiris. The great weekof the year was the feast of Isis, when the priests joined the goddessin her grief for the loss of the good Osiris, who had been killedthrough jealousy by the wicked Typhon. The priests shaved their heads, beat their breasts, tore the skin off their arms, and opened up the oldwounds of former years, in grief for the death of Osiris, and in honourof the widowed Isis. The river Nile was also still worshipped for theblessings which it scatters along its banks, but we hear no more ofAmon-Ra, Chem, Horus, Aroëris, and the other gods of the Thebaid, whoseworship ceased with the fall of that part of the country. 

[Illustration: 220. Jpg COIN OF CONSTANTIUS]

But great changes often take place with very little improvement; thefall of idolatry only made way for the rise of magic and astrology. Abydos in Upper Egypt had latterly gained great renown for the temple ofBîsű, whose oracle was much consulted, not only by the Egyptians but byGreek strangers, and by others who sent their questions in writing. Some of these letters on parchment had been taken from the temple byinformers, and carried to the emperor, whose ears were never deaf to acharge against the pagans. On this accusation numbers of all ranks weredragged out of Egypt, to be tried and punished in Syria, with tortureand forfeiture of goods. Such indeed was the nation's belief in theseoracles and prophecies that it gave to the priests a greater power thanit was safe to trust them with. By prophesying that a man was to be anemperor, they could make him a traitor, and perhaps raise a village inrebellion. As the devotedness of their followers made it dangerous forthe magistrates to punish the mischief-makers, they had no choice but topunish those who consulted them. Without forbidding the divine oracle toanswer, they forbade anybody to question it. Parnasius, who had beena prefect of Egypt, a man of spotless character, was banished for thusillegally seeking a knowledge of the future; and Demetrius Cythras, anaged philosopher, was put to the rack on a charge of having sacrificedto the god, and only released because he persisted through his torturesin asserting that he sacrificed in gratitude and not from a wish thus tolearn his future fate. 

In the falling state of the empire the towns and villages of Egypt foundtheir rulers too weak either to guard them or to tyrannise over them, and they sometimes formed themselves into small societies, and tookmeans for their own defence. The law had so far allowed this as in somecases to grant a corporate constitution to a city. But in other cases acity kept in its pay a courtier or government servant powerful enough toguard it against the extortions of the provincial tax-gatherer, or wouldput itself under the patronage of a neighbour rich enough and strongenough to guard it. This, however, could not be allowed, even if notused as the means of throwing off the authority of the provincialgovernment; and accordingly at this time we begin to find laws againstthe new crime of _patronage_. These associations gave a place of refugeto criminals, they stopped the worshipper in his way to the temple, andthe tax-gatherer in collecting the tribute. But new laws have littleweight when there is no power to enforce them, and the orders fromConstantinople were little heeded in Upper Egypt. 

But this _patronage_ which the emperor wished to put down was weakcompared to that of the bishops and clergy, which the law allowed andeven upheld, and which was the great check to the tyranny of the civilgovernor. While the emperor at a distance gave orders through hisprefect, the people looked up to the bishop as their head; and hence thepower of each was checked by the other. The emperors had not yet madethe terrors of religion a tool in the hands of the magistrate; nor hadthey yet learned from the pontifex and augurs of pagan Rome the secretthat civil power is never so strong as when based on that of theChurch. 

On the death of Constantius, in 361, Julian was at once acknowledged asemperor, and the Roman world was again, but for the last time, governedby a pagan. The Christians had been in power for fifty-five years underConstantine and his sons, during which time the pagans had been madeto feel that their enemies had got the upper hand of them. But on theaccession of Julian their places were again changed; and the Egyptiansamong others crowded to Constantinople to complain of injustice done bythe Christian prefect and bishop, and to pray for a redress of wrongs. They were, however, sadly disappointed in their emperor; he put them offwith an unfeeling joke; he ordered them to meet him at Chalcedon on theother side of the straits of Constantinople, and, instead of followingthem according to his promise, he gave orders that no vessel shouldbring an Egyptian from Chalcedon to the capital; and the Egyptians, after wasting their time and money, returned home in despair. But thoughtheir complaints were laughed at, they were not overlooked, and theauthor of their grievances was punished; Artemius, the prefect of Egypt, was summoned to Chalcedon, and not being able to disprove the crimeslaid to his charge by the Alexandrians, he paid his life as the forfeitfor his mis-government during the last reign. 

While Artemius was on his trial the pagans of Alexandria remained quiet, and in daily fear of his return to power, for after their treatmentat Chalcedon they by no means felt sure of what would be the emperor'spolicy in matters of religion; but they no sooner heard of the death ofArtemius than they took it as a sign that they had full leave to revengethemselves on the Christians. The mob rose first against the BishopGeorge, who had lately been careless or wanton enough publicly todeclare his regret that any of their temples should be allowed to stand;and they seized him in the streets and trampled him to death. They nextslew Dracontius, the prefect of the Alexandrian mint, whom they accusedof overturning a pagan altar within that building. Their anger was thenturned against Diodorus, who was employed in building a church on awaste spot of ground that had once been sacred to the worship of Mithra, but had since been given by the Emperor Constantius to the Christians. In clearing the ground, the workmen had turned up a number of humanbones that had been buried there in former ages, and these had beenbrought forward by the Christians in reproach against the pagans as somany proofs of human sacrifices. In his Christian zeal, Diodorus alsohad wounded at the same time their pride and superstition by cutting offthe single lock from the heads of the young Egyptians. This lock hadin the time of Ramses been the mark of youthful royalty; under thePtolemies the mark of high rank; but was now common to all. Diodorustreated it as an offence against his religion. For this he was attackedand killed, with George and Dracontius. The mob carried the bodies ofthe three murdered men upon camels to the side of the lake, and thereburned them, and threw the ashes into the water, for fear, as they said, that a church should be built over their remains, as had been sometimesdone, even at that early date, over the bodies of martyrs. 

[Illustration: 225. Jpg A YOUNG EGYPTIAN WEARING THE ROYAL LOCK]

When the news of this outrage against the laws was brought to thephilosophical emperor, he contented himself with threatening by animperial edict that if the offence were repeated, he would visit it withsevere punishment. But in every act of Julian we trace the scholarand the lover of learning. George had employed his wealth in gettingtogether a large library, rich in historians, rhetoricians, andphilosophers of all sects; and, on the murder of the bishop, Julianwrote letter after letter to Alexandria, to beg the prefect andhis friend Porphyrius to save these books, and send them to him inCappadocia. He promised freedom to the librarian if he gave them up, andtorture if he hid them; and further begged that no books in favour ofChristianity should be destroyed, lest other and better books should belost with them. 

There is too much reason to believe that the friends of Athanasiuswere not displeased at the murder of the Bishop George and their Arianfellow-Christians; at any rate they made no effort to save them, and thesame mob that had put to death George as an enemy to paganism now joinedhis rival, Athanasius, in a triumphal entry into the city, when, withthe other Egyptian bishops, he was allowed to return from banishment. Athanasius could brook no rival to his power; the civil force of thecity was completely overpowered by his party, and the Arian clergy wereforced to hide themselves, as the only means of saving their lives. But, while thus in danger from their enemies, the Arians pro-hooded to electa successor to their murdered bishop, and they chose Lucius to that postof honour, but of danger. Athanasius, however, in reality and openlyfilled the office of bishop; and he summoned a synod at Alexandria, atwhich he re-admitted into the church Lucifer and Eusebius, two bishopswho had been banished to the Thebaid, and he again decreed that thethree persons in the Trinity were of one substance. 

Though the Emperor Julian thought that George, the late bishop, haddeserved all that he suffered, as having been zealous in favour ofChristianity, and forward in putting down paganism and in closingthe temples, yet he was still more opposed to Athanasius. That ablechurchman held his power as a rebel by the help of the Egyptian mob, against the wishes of the Greeks of Alexandria and against the orders ofthe late emperor; and Julian made an edict, ordering that he should bedriven out of the city within twenty-four hours of the command reachingAlexandria. The prefect of Egypt was at first unable, or unwilling, toenforce these orders against the wish of the inhabitants; and Athanasiuswas not driven into banishment till Julian wrote word that, if therebellious bishop were to be found in any part of Egypt after a day thennamed, he would fine the prefect and the officers under him one hundredpounds weight of gold. Thus Athanasius was for the fourth time banishedfrom Alexandria. 

Though the Christians were out of favour with the emperor, and neverwere employed in any office of trust, yet they were too numerous for himto venture on a persecution. But Julian allowed them to be ill-treatedby his prefects, and took no notice of their complaints. He made a law, forbidding any Christians being educated in pagan literature, believingthat ignorance would stop the spread of their religion. In the churchesof Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, this was felt as a heavy grievance;but it was less thought of in Egypt. Science and learning were lesscultivated by the Christians in Alexandria since the overthrow of theArian party; and a little later, to charge a writer with Grascizing wasthe same as saying that he wanted orthodoxy. 

Julian was a warm friend to learning and philosophy among the pagans. He recalled to Alexandria the physician Zeno, who in the last reign hadfled from the Georgian faction, as the Christians were then called. Hefounded in the same city a college for music, and ordered the PrefectEcdicius to look out for some young men of skill in that science, particularly from among the pupils of Dioscorus; and he allotted thema maintenance from the treasury, with rewards for the most skilful. AtCanopus, a pagan philosopher, Antoninus, the son of Eustathius, takingadvantage of the turn in public opinion, and copying the Christian monksof the The-baid, drew round him a crowd of followers by his self-denialand painful torture of the body. The Alexandrians flocked in crowds tohis dwelling; and such was his character for holiness that his death, inthe beginning of the reign of Theodosius, was thought by the Egyptiansto be the cause of the overthrow of paganism. 

But Egyptian paganism, which had slumbered for fifty years under theChristian emperors, was not again to be awaked to its former life. Though the wars between the several cities for the honour of their gods, the bull, the crocodile, or the fish, had never ceased, all reverencefor those gods was dead. The sacred animals, in particular the bullsApis and Mnevis, were again waited upon by their priests as of old; butit was a vain attempt. Not only was the Egyptian religion overthrown, but the Thebaid, the country of that religion, was fallen too low tobe raised again. The people of Upper Egypt had lost all heart, not morefrom the tyranny of the Roman government in the north than from theattacks and settlement of the Arabs in the south. All changes in thecountry, whether for the better or the worse, were laid to the chargeof these latter unwelcome neighbours; and when the inquiring travellerasked to be shown the crocodile, the river-horse, and the other animalsfor which Egypt had once been noted, he was told with a sigh that theywere seldom to be seen in the Delta since the Thebaid had been peopledwith the Blemmyes. Falsehood, the usual vice of slaves, had taken a deephold on the Egyptian character. A denial of their wealth was the meansby which they usually tried to save it from the Roman tax-gatherer; andan Egyptian was ashamed of himself as a coward if he could not showa back covered with stripes gained in the attempt to save his money. Peculiarities of character often descend unchanged in a nation for manycenturies; and, after fourteen hundred years of the same slavery, thesame stripes from the lash of the tax-gatherer still used to be theboast of the Egyptian peasant. Cyrene was already a desert; the onlycities of note in Upper Egypt were Koptos, Hermopolis, and Antinoopolis;but Alexandria was still the queen of cities, though the large quartercalled the Bruchium had not been rebuilt; and the Serapeum, with itslibrary of seven hundred thousand volumes, was, after the capitol ofRome, the chief building in the world. 

This temple of Serapis was situated on a rising ground at the west endof the city, and, though not built like a fortification, was sometimescalled the citadel of Alexandria. It was entered by two roads; that onone side was a slope for carriages, and on the other a grand flight of ahundred steps from the street, with each step wider than that belowit. At the top of this flight of steps was a portico, in the form of acircular roof, upheld by four columns. 

[Illustration: 231. Jpg AN EGYPTIAN WATER-CARRIER]

Through this was the entrance into the great courtyard, in the middleof which stood the roofless hall or temple, surrounded by columns andporticoes, inside and out. In some of the inner porticoes were thebookcases for the library which made Alexandria the very temple ofscience and learning, while other porticoes were dedicated to theservice of the ancient religion. The roofs were ornamented with gilding, the capitals of the columns were of copper gilt, and the walls werecovered with paintings. In the middle of the inner area stood one loftycolumn, which could be seen by all the country round, and even fromships some distance out at sea. The great statue of Serapis, which hadbeen made under the Ptolemies, having perhaps marble feet, but for therest built of wood, clothed with drapery, and glittering with gold andsilver, stood in one of the covered chambers, which had a small windowso contrived as to let the sun's rays kiss the lips of the statue on theappointed occasions. This was one of the tricks employed in the sacredmysteries, to dazzle the worshipper by the sudden blaze of light whichon the proper occasions was let into the dark room. The temple itself, with its fountain, its two obelisks, and its gilt ornaments, has longsince been destroyed; and the column in the centre, under the name ofPompey's Pillar, alone remains to mark the spot where it stood, and isone of the few works of Greek art which in size and strength vie withthe old Egyptian monuments. 

The reign of Julian, instead of raising paganism to its former strength, had only shown that its life was spent; and under Jovian (A. D. 363--364)the Christians were again brought into power. A Christian emperor, however, would have been but little welcome to the Egyptians if, likeConstantius, and even Constantine in his latter years, he had leanedto the Arian party; but Jovian soon showed his attachment to the Nicenecreed, and he re-appointed Athanasius to the bishopric of Alexandria. But though Athanasius regained his rank, yet the Arian bishop Luciuswas not deposed. Each party in Alexandria had its own bishop; those whothought that the Son was of the same substance with the Father looked upto Athanasius, while those who gave to Jesus the lower rank of being ofa similar substance to the Creator obeyed Lucius. 

This curious metaphysical proposition was not, however, the only causeof the quarrel which divided Egypt into such angry parties. The creedswere made use of as the watchwords in a political struggle. Blood, language, and geographical boundaries divided the parties; and religiousopinions seldom cross these unchanging and inflexible lines. 

Every Egyptian believed in the Nicene creed and the incorruptibilityof the body of Jesus, and hated the Alexandrian Greeks; while the morerefined Greeks were as united in explaining away the Nicene creed bythe doctrine of the two natures of Christ, and in despising the ignorantEgyptians. Christianity, which speaks so forcibly to the poor, theunlearned, and the slave, had educated the Egyptian population, had raised them in their own eyes; and, as the popular party gainedstrength, the Arians lost ground in Alexandria. At the same time theGreeks were falling off: in learning and in science, and in all thosearts of civilisation which had given them the superiority. Like othergreat political changes, this may not have been understood at the time;but in less than a hundred years it was found that the Egyptians were nolonger the slaves, nor the Greeks the masters. 

On the death of Jovian, when Valentinian divided the Roman empire withhis brother, he took Italy and the West for his own kingdom, and gave toValens Egypt and the Eastern provinces, in which Greek was the languageof the government. Each emperor adopted the religion of his capital;Valentinian held the Nicene faith, and Valens the Arian faith; andunhappy Egypt was the only part of the empire whose religion differedfrom that of its rulers. Had the creeds marked the limits of thetwo empires, Egypt would have belonged to Rome; but, as geographicalboundaries and language form yet stronger ties, Egypt was given toConstantinople, or rather to Antioch, the nearer of the two Easterncapitals. 

By Valens, Athanasius was forced for the fifth time to fly fromAlexandria, to avoid the displeasure which his disobedience again drewdown upon him. But his flock again rose in rebellion in favour of theirpopular bishop; and the emperor was either persuaded or frightenedinto allowing him to return to his bishopric, where he spent the fewremaining years of his life in peace. Athanasius died at an advancedage, leaving a name more famous than that of any one of the emperorsunder whom he lived. He taught the Christian world that there was apower greater than that of kings, namely the Church. He was often beatenin the struggle, but every victory over him was followed by the defeatof the civil power; he was five times banished, but five times hereturned in triumph. The temporal power of the Church was in itsinfancy; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it wasweak compared to what it became in after ages; but, when the Emperorof Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king ofEngland was whipped at Becket's tomb, we only witness the full-grownstrength of the infant power that was being reared by the Bishop ofAlexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chieflyagainst the Arians. The Athanasian creed seems to have been so namedonly because it was thought to contain his opinions, as it is known tobe by a later author. 

On the death of Athanasius, the Homoousian party chose Peter as hissuccessor in the bishopric, overlooking Lucius, the Arian bishop, whoseelection had been approved by the emperors Julian, Jovian, and Valens. But as the Egyptian church had lost its great champion, the emperorventured to re-assert his authority. He sent Peter to prison, andordered all the churches to be given up to the Arians, threatening withbanishment from Egypt whoever disobeyed his edict. The persecutionwhich the Homoousian party throughout Upper Egypt then suffered from theArians equalled, says the ecclesiastical historian, anything that theyhad before suffered from the pagans. Every monastery in Egypt was brokenopen by Lucius at the head of an armed force, and the cruelty ofthe bishop surpassed that of the soldiers. The breaking open of themonasteries seems to have been for the purpose of making the inmatesbear their share in the military service of the state, rather thanfor any religious reasons. When Constantine embraced Christianity, heimmediately recognised all the religious scruples of its professors;and not only bishops and presbyters but all laymen who had entered themonastic orders were freed from the duty of serving in the army. Butunder the growing dislike of military service, and the difficulty offinding soldiers, when to escape from the army many called themselvesChristian monks, this excuse could no longer be listened to, and Valensmade a law that monastic vows should not save a man from enlistment. But this law was not easily carried into force in the monasteries onthe borders of the desert, which were often well-built and well-guardedfortresses; and on Mount Nitria, in particular, many monks losttheir lives in their resistance to the troops that were sent to fetchrecruits. 

[Illustration: 237. Jpg REMAINS OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE TEMPLE OFLUXOR]

The monastic institutions of Egypt had already reached theirfull growth. They were acknowledged by the laws of the empire asecclesiastical corporations, and allowed to hold property; and by a newlaw of this reign, if a monk or nun died without a will or any knownkindred, the property went to the monastery as heir at law. One of themost celebrated of these monasteries was on Tabenna, where Pachomiushad gathered round him thirteen hundred followers, who owned him as thefounder of their order, and gave him credit for the gift of prophecy. His disciples in the other monasteries of Upper Egypt amounted to sixthousand more. Anuph was at the head of another order of monks, and heboasted that he could by prayer obtain from heaven whatever he wished. Hor was at the head of another monastery, where, though wholly unableto read or write, he spent his life in singing psalms, and, as hisfollowers and perhaps he himself believed, in working miracles. Sera-pion was at the head of a thousand monks in the Ar-sinoďte nome, who raised their food by their own labour, and shared it with theirpoorer neighbours. Near Nitria, a place in the Mareotic nome which gaveits name to the nitre springs, there were as many as fifty cells; butthose who aimed at greater solitude and severer mortification withdrewfarther into the desert, to Scetis in the same nome, a spot alreadysanctified by the trials and triumphs of St. Anthony. Here, in amonastery surrounded by the sands, by the side of a lake whose watersare Salter than the brine of the ocean, with no grass or trees to restthe aching eye, where the dazzling sky is seldom relieved with acloud, where the breezes are too often laden with dry dust, these monkscultivated a gloomy religion, with hearts painfully attuned to thescenery around them. Here dwelt Moses, who in his youth had been aremarkable sinner, and in his old age became even more remarkable as asaint. It was said that for six years he spent every night in prayer, without once closing his eyes in sleep; and that one night, when hiscell was attacked by four robbers, he carried them all off at once onhis back to the neighbouring monastery to be punished, because he wouldhimself hurt no man. Benjamin also dwelt at Scetis; he consecrated oilto heal the diseases of those who washed with it, and during the eightmonths that he was himself dying of a dropsy, he touched for theirdiseases all who came to the door of his cell to be healed. Hellascarried fire in his bosom without burning his clothes. Elias spentseventy years in solitude on the borders of the Arabian desert nearAntinoopolis. Apelles was a blacksmith near Achoris; he was temptedby the devil in the form of a beautiful woman, but he scorched thetempter's face with a red-hot iron. Dorotheus, who though a Theban hadsettled near Alexandria, mortified his flesh by trying to live withoutsleep. He never willingly lay down to rest, nor indeed ever slept tillthe weakness of the body sunk under the efforts of the spirit. Paul, who dwelt at Pherma, repeated three hundred prayers every day, and keptthree hundred pebbles in a bag to help him in his reckoning. He was thefriend of Anthony, and when dying begged to be wrapt in the cloak givenhim by that holy monk, who had himself received it as a present fromAthanasius. His friends and admirers claimed for Paul the honour ofbeing the first Christian hermit, and they maintained their improbableopinion by asserting that he had been a monk for ninety-seven years, andthat he had retired to the desert at the age of sixteen, when the Churchwas persecuted in the reign of Valerian. All Egypt believed that themonks were the especial favourites of Heaven, that they worked miracles, and that divine wisdom flowed from their lips without the help orhindrance of human learning. They were all Homoousians, believingthat the Son was of one substance with the Father; some as trinitariansholding the opinions of Athanasius; some as Sabellians believing thatJesus was the creator of the world, and that his body therefore was notliable to corruption; some as anthropomorphites believing God was ofhuman form like Jesus; but all warmly attached to the Mcene creed, denying the two natures of Christ, and hating the Arian Greeks ofAlexandria and the other cities. Gregory of Nazianzum remarks that Egyptwas the most Christ-loving of countries, and adds with true simplicitythat, wonderful to say, after having so lately worshipped bulls, goats, and crocodiles, it was now teaching the world the worship of the Trinityin the truest form. 

The pagans, who were now no longer able to worship publicly as theychose, took care to proclaim their opinions indirectly in such ways asthe law could not reach. In the hippodrome, which was the noisiest ofthe places where the people met in public, they made a profession oftheir faith by the choice of which horses they bet on; and Christiansand pagans alike showed their zeal for religion by hooting and clappingof hands. Prayers and superstitious ceremonies were used on bothsides to add to the horses' speed; and the monk Hilarion, the pupil ofAnthony, gained no little credit for sprinkling holy water on the horsesof his party, and thus enabling Christianity to outrun paganism in thehippodrome at Gaza. 

During these reigns of weakness and misgovernment, it was no doubt acruel policy rather than humanity that led the tax-gatherers to collectthe tribute in kind. More could be squeezed out of a ruined people bytaking what they had to give than by requiring it to be paid in coppercoin. Hence Valons made a law that no tribute throughout the empireshould be taken in money; and he laid a new land-tax upon Egypt, to theamount of a soldier's clothing for every thirty acres. 

The Saracens* had for some time past been encroaching on the Easternfrontiers of the empire, and had only been kept back by treaties whichproved the weakness of the Romans, as the armies of Constantinople werestill called, and which encouraged the barbarians in their attacks. 

 * The name _Saraceni_ was given by the Greeks and Romans to the nomadic Arabs who lived on the borders of the desert. During the Middle Ages, the Muhammedans, coming from apparently the same localities, were also called Saracens. 

On the death of their king, the command over the Saracens fell totheir Queen Masvia, who broke the last treaty, laid waste Palestine andPhoenicia with her armies, conquered or gained over the Arabs of Petra, and pressed upon the Egyptians at the head of the Red Sea. On this, Valens renewed the truce, but on terms still more favourable to theinvaders. Many of the Saracens were Christians, and by an article of thetreaty they were to have a bishop granted them for their church, andfor this purpose they sent Moses to Alexandria to be ordained. Butthe Saracens sided with the Egyptians, in religion as well as policy, against the Arian Greeks. Hence Moses refused to be ordained by Lucius, the patriarch of Alexandria, and chose rather to receive his appointmentfrom some of the Homoousian bishops who were living in banishment in theThebaid. After this advance of the barbarians the interesting cityof Petra, which since the time of Trajan had been in the power or thefriendship of Rome or Constantinople, was lost to the civilised world. This rocky fastness, which was ornamented with temples, a triumphalarch, and a theatre, and had been a bishop's see, was henceforthclosed against all travellers; it had no place in the map till it wasdiscovered by Burckhardt in our own days without a human being dwellingin it, with oleanders and tamarisks choking up its entrance throughthe cliff, and with brambles trailing their branches over the rock-hewntemples. 

[Illustration: 243. Jpg TEMPLE COURTYARD, MEDINET ABU]

The reign of Theodosius, which extended from 379 to 395, is remarkablefor the blow then given to paganism. The old religion had been sinkingeven before Christianity had become the religion of the emperors; it hadbeen discouraged by Constantine, who had closed many of the temples; butTheodosius made a law in the first year of his reign that the wholeof the empire should be Christian, and should receive the trinitarianfaith. He soon afterwards ordered that Sunday should be kept holy, andforbade all work and law-proceedings on that day; and he sent Cynegius, the prefect of the palace, into Egypt, to see these laws carried intoeffect in that province. 

The wishes of the emperor were ably followed up by Theophilus, Bishop ofAlexandria. He cleansed the temple of Mithra, and overthrew the statuesin the celebrated temple of Serapis, which seemed the very citadel ofpaganism. He also exposed to public ridicule the mystic ornaments andstatues which a large part of his fellow-citizens still regarded assacred. It was not, however, to be supposed that this could be peaceablyborne by a people so irritable as the Alexandrians. The students in theschools of philosophy put themselves at the head of the mob to stop thework of destruction, and to revenge themselves upon their assailants, and several battles were fought in the streets between the pagansand the Christians, in which both parties lost many lives; but as theChristians were supported by the power of the prefect, the pagans wererouted, and many whose rank would have made them objects of punishmentwere forced to fly from Alexandria. 

No sooner had the troops under the command of the prefect put down thepagan opposition than the work of destruction was again carried forwardby the zeal of the bishop. The temples were broken open, their ornamentsdestroyed, and the statues of the gods melted for the use of theAlexandrian church. One statue of an Egyptian god was alone saved fromthe wreck, and was set up in mockery of those who had worshipped it;and this ridicule of their religion was a cause of greater anger to thepagans than even the destruction of the other statues. The great statueof Serapis, which was made of wood covered with plates of metal, wasknocked to pieces by the axes of the soldiers. The head and limbs werebroken off, and the wooden trunk was burnt in the amphitheatre amidthe shouts and jeers of the bystanders. A conjectured fragment of thisstatue is now in the British Museum. 

In the plunder of the temple of Serapis, the great library of morethan seven hundred thousand volumes was wholly broken up and scattered. Orosius, the Spaniard, who visited Alexandria in the next reign, may betrusted when he says that he saw in the temple the empty shelves, which, within the memory of men then living, had been plundered of the booksthat had formerly been got together after the library of the Bruchiumwas burnt by Julius Cćsar. In a work of such lawless plunder, carriedon by ignorant zealots, many of these monuments of pagan genius andlearning must have been wilfully or accidentally destroyed, though thelarger number may have been carried off by the Christians for the otherpublic and private libraries of the city. How many other libraries thiscity of science may have possessed we are not told, but there were nodoubt many. Had Alexandria during the next two centuries given birth topoets and orators, their works, the offspring of native genius, mightperhaps have been written without the help of libraries; but the laboursof the mathematicians and grammarians prove that the city was still wellfurnished with books, beside those on the Christian controversies. 

When the Christians were persecuted by the pagans, none but men ofunblemished lives and unusual strength of mind stood to their religionin the day of trial, and suffered the penalties of the law; the weak, the ignorant, and the vicious readily joined in the superstitionsrequired of them, and, embracing the religion of the stronger party, easily escaped punishment. So it was when the pagans of Alexandria werepersecuted by Theophilus; the chief sufferers were the men of learning, in whose minds paganism was a pure deism, and who saw nothing butignorance and superstition on the side of their oppressors; who thoughttheir worship of the Trinity only a new form of polytheism, and jokinglydeclared that they were not arithmeticians enough to understand it. Olympius, who was the priest of Serapis when the temple was sacked, andas such the head of the pagans of Alexandria, was a man in everyrespect the opposite of the Bishop Theophilus. He was of a frank, opencountenance and agreeable manners; and though his age might have allowedhim to speak among his followers in the tone of command, he chose ratherin his moral lessons to use the mild persuasion of an equal; and fewhearts were so hardened as not to be led into the paths of duty by hisexhortations. Whereas the furious monks, says the indignant pagan, weremen only in form, but swine in manners. Whoever put on a black coat, andwas not ashamed to be seen with dirty linen, gained a tyrannical powerover the minds of the mob, from their belief in his holiness; and thesemen attacked the temples of the gods as a propitiation for their ownenormous sins. Thus each party reproached the other, and often unjustly. Among other religious frauds and pretended miracles of which the paganpriests were accused, was that of having an iron statue of Serapishanging in the air in a chamber of the temple, by means of a loadstonefixed in the ceiling. The natural difficulties shield them from thischarge, but other accusations are not so easily rebutted. 

After this attack upon the pagans, their religion was no longer openlytaught in Alexandria. Some of the more zealous professors withdrewfrom the capital to Canopus, about ten miles distant, where the ancientpriestly learning was still taught, unpersecuted because unnoticed; andthere, under the pretence of studying hieroglyphics, a school was openedfor teaching magic and other forbidden rites. When the pagan worshipceased throughout Egypt, the temples were very much used as churches, and in some cases received in their ample courtyard a smaller church ofGreek architecture, as in that of Medinet Abu. In other cases Christianornaments were added to the old walls, as in the rock temple of Kneph, opposite to Abu Simbel, where the figure of the Saviour with a gloryround his head has been painted on the ceiling. The Christians, in orderto remove from before their eyes the memorials of the old superstition, covered up the sculpture on the walls with mud from the Nile and whiteplaster. This coating we now take away, at a time when the idolatrousfigures are no longer dangerous to religion, and we find the sculptureand painting fresh as when covered up fourteen hundred years ago. 

[Illustration: 248. Jpg CHRISTIAN PICTURE AT ABU SIMBE]

It would be unreasonable to suppose that the Egyptians, upon embracingChristianity, at once threw off all of their pagan rites. Among othercustoms that they still clung to, was that of making mummies of thebodies of the dead. St. Anthony had tried to dissuade the Christianconverts from that practice; not because the mummy-cases were coveredwith pagan inscriptions, but he boldly asserted, what a very littlereading would have disproved, that every mode of treating a dead body, beside burial, was forbidden in the Bible. St. Augustine, on the otherhand, well understanding that the immortality of the soul without thebody was little likely to be understood or valued by the ignorant, praises the Egyptians for that very practice, and says that they werethe only Christians who really believed in the resurrection from thedead. The tapers burnt before the altars were from the earliest timesused to light up the splendours of the Egyptian altars, in the darknessof their temples, and had been burnt in still greater numbers in theyearly festival of the candles. The playful custom of giving awaysugared cakes and sweetmeats on the twenty-fifth day of Tybi, ourtwentieth of January, was then changed to be kept fourteen days earlier, and it still marks the Feast of Epiphany or Twelfth-night. The divisionof the people into clergy and laity, which was unknown to Greeks andRomans, was introduced into Christianity in the fourth century by theEgyptians. While the rest of Christendom were clothed in woollen, linen, the common dress of the Egyptians, was universally adopted by the clergyas more becoming to the purity of their manners. At the same time theclergy copied the Egyptian priests in the custom of shaving the crown ofthe head bald. 

The new law in favour of trinitarian Christianity was enforced with asgreat strictness against the Arians as against the pagans. The bishopsand priests of that party wrere everywhere turned out of their churches, which were then given up to the Homoousians. Theodosius summoned acouncil of one hundred and fifty bishops at Constantinople, to re-enactthe Nicene creed; and in the future religious rebellions of theEgyptians they always quoted against the Greeks this council ofConstantinople, with that of Nicasa, as the foundation of their faith. By this religious policy, Theodosius did much to delay the fall of theempire. He won the friendship of his Egyptian subjects, as well as oftheir Saracen neighbours, all of whom, as far as they were Christian, held to the Nicene creed. Egypt became the safest of his provinces; and, when his armies had been recruited with so many barbarians that theycould no longer be trusted, these new levies wrere marched into Egyptunder the command of Hormisdas, and an equal number of Egyptians weredrafted out of the army of Egypt, and led into Thessaly. 

When the season came for the overflow of the Nile, in the first summerafter the destruction of the temples, the waters happened to rise moreslowly than usual; and the Egyptians laid the blame upon the Christianemperor, who had forbidden their sacrificing the usual offerings inhonour of the river-god. 

[Illustration: 250. Jpg MANFALOOT, SHOWING THE HEIGHT OF THE NILE INSUMMER]

The alarm for the loss of their crops carried more weight in thereligious controversy than any arguments that could be brought againstpagan sacrifices; and the anger of the people soon threatened a seriousrebellion. Evagrius the prefect, being disturbed for the peace of thecountry, sent to Constantinople for orders; but the emperor remainedfirm; he would make no change in the law against paganism, and the fearsof the Egyptians and Alexandrians were soon put an end to by a mostplenteous overflow. 

Since the time of Athanasius, and the overthrow of the Arian party inAlexandria, the learning of that city was wholly in the hands of thepagans, and was chiefly mathematical. Diophantus of Alexandria is theearliest writer on algebra whose works are now remaining to us, and hasgiven his name to the Diophantine problems. Pappus wrote a descriptionof the world, and a commentary on Ptolemy's _Almagest_, beside a workon geometry, published under the name of his _Mathematical Collections_. Theon, a professor in the museum, wrote on the smaller astrolabe--theinstrument then used to measure the star orbits--and on the rise of theNile, a subject always of interest to the mathematicians of Egypt, fromits importance to the husbandman. From Theon's astronomical observationswe learn that the Alexandrian astronomers still made use of the oldEgyptian movable year of three hundred and sixty-five days only, andwithout a leap-year. Paul the Alexandrian astrologer, on the other hand, uses the Julian year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and he dates from the era of Diocletian. His rules for telling the dayof the week from the day of the month, and for telling on what day ofthe week each year began, teach us that our present mode of dividingtime was used in Egypt. Horapollo, the grammarian, was also then ateacher in the schools of Alexandria. He wrote in the Koptic language awork in explanation of the old hieroglyphics, which has gained a noticefar beyond its deserts, because it is the only work on the subject thathas come down to us. 

The only Christian writings of this time, that we know of, are thepaschal letters of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, which were muchpraised by Jerome, and by him translated into Latin. They are full ofbitter reproaches against Origen and his writings, and they charge himwith having treated Jesus more cruelly than Pilate or the Jews had done. John, the famous monk of the Thebaid, was no writer, though believed tohave the gift of prophecy. He was said to have foretold the victoryof Theodosius over the rebel Maximus; and, when the emperor had gottogether his troops to march against Eugenius, another rebel whohad seized the passes of the Julian Alps, he sent his trusty eunuchEutropius to fetch the holy Egyptian, or at least to learn from him whatwould be the event of the war. John refused to go to Europe, but hetold the messenger that Theodosius would conquer the rebel, and soonafterwards die; both of which came to pass as might easily have beenguessed. 

On the death of Theodosius, in 395, the Roman empire was again divided. Arcadius, his elder son, ruled Egypt and the East, while Honorius, theyounger, held the West; and the reins of government at once passedfrom the ablest to the weakest hands. But the change was little feltin Egypt, which continued to be governed by the patriarch Theophilus, without the name but with very nearly the power of a prefect. He wasa bold and wicked man, but as his religious opinions were for theHomoousians as against the Arians, and his political feelings were forthe Egyptians as against the Greeks, he rallied to his government thechief strength of the province. As the pagans and Arians of Alexandriawere no longer worthy of his enmity, he fanned into a flame a newquarrel which was then breaking out in the Egyptian church. The monksof Upper Egypt, who were mostly ignorant and unlettered men, wereanthropomorphites, or believers that God was in outward shape like aman. They quoted from the Jewish Scriptures that he made man in his ownimage, in support of their opinion. They held that he was of a strictlyhuman form, like Jesus, which to them seemed fully asserted in theNicene creed. In this opinion they were opposed by those who were bettereducated, and it suited the policy of Theophilus to side with the moreignorant and larger party. He branded with the name of Origenists thosewho argued that God was without form, and who quoted the writings ofOrigen in support of their opinion. This naturally led to a disputeabout Origen's orthodoxy; and that admirable writer, who had beenpraised by all parties for two hundred years, and who had been quoted asauthority as much by Athanasius as by the Arians, was declared to be aheretic by a council of bishops. The writings of Origen were accordinglyforbidden to be read, because they contradicted the anthropomorphiteopinions. 

The quarrel between the Origenists and the anthropomorphites did not endin words. A proposition in theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was nobetter cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis orthe crocodile; but a change of religion had not changed the nationalcharacter. The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked theenemy in their own monasteries; he marched to Mount Nitria at the headof a strong body of soldiers, and, enrolling under his banners theanthropomorphite monks, attacked Dioscorus and the Origenists, set fireto their monasteries, and laid waste the place. 

Theophilus next quarrelled with Peter, the chief of the Alexandrianpresbyters, whom he accused of admitting to the sacraments of thechurch a woman who had not renounced the Manichean heresy; and he thenquarrelled with Isidorus, who had the charge of the poor of the church, because he bore witness that Peter had the orders of Theophilus himselffor what he did. 

In this century there was a general digging up of the bodies of themost celebrated Christians of former ages, to heal the diseases andstrengthen the faith of the living; and Constantinople, which as thecapital of the empire had been ornamented by the spoils of its subjectprovinces, had latterly been enriching its churches with the remains ofnumerous Christian saints. The tombs of Egypt, crowded with mummies thathad lain there for centuries, could of course furnish relics more easilythan most countries, and in this reign Constantinople received fromAlexandria a quantity of bones which were supposed to be those of themartyrs slain in the pagan persecutions. The archbishop John Chrysostomreceived them gratefully, and, though himself smarting under thereproach that he was not orthodox enough for the superstitiousEgyptians, he thanks God that Egypt, which sent forth its grain to feedits hungry neighbours, could also send the bodies of so many martyrs tosanctify their churches. 

We have traced the fall of the Greek party in Alexandria, in thevictories over the Arians during the religious quarrels of the lasthundred years; and in the laws we now read the city's loss of wealthand power. The corporation of Alexandria was no longer able to bear theexpense of cleansing the river and keeping open the canals; and fourhundred _solidi_--about twelve hundred dollars--were each year set apartfrom the custom-house duties of the city for that useful work. 

The arrival of new settlers in Alexandria had been very much checked bythe less prosperous state of the country since the reign of Diocletian. We still find, however, that many of the men of note were not born inEgypt. Paulus, the physician, was a native of Ćgina. He has left a workon diseases and their remedies. The chief man of learning was Synesius, a platonic philosopher whom the patriarch Theophilus persuaded to jointhe Christians. As a platonist he naturally leaned towards many ofthe doctrines of the popular religion, but he could not believe in aresurrection; and it was not till after Theophilus had ordained himBishop of Ptolemais near Cyrene that he acknowledged the truth of thatdoctrine. Nor would he then put away or disown his wife, as thecustom of the Church required; indeed, he accepted the bishopric veryunwillingly. He was as fond of playful sport as he was of books, andvery much disliked business. He has left a volume of writings, which hassaved the names of two prefects of Cyrene; the one Anysius, underwhose good discipline even the barbarians of Hungary behaved like Romanlegionaries, and the other Poonius, who cultivated science in thisbarren spot. To encourage Pasonius in his praiseworthy studies he madehim a present of an astrolabe, to measure the distances of the starsand planets, an instrument which was constructed under the guidance ofHypatia. 

Trade and industry were checked by the unsettled state of the country, and misery and famine were spreading over the land. The African tribesof Mazices and Auxoriani, leaving the desert in hope of plunder, overranthe province of Libya, and laid waste a large part of the Delta. Thebarbarians and the sands of the desert were alike encroaching on thecultivated fields. Nature seemed changed. The valley of the Nile wasgrowing narrower. Even within the valley the retreating wraters leftbehind them harvests less rich, and fever more putrid. The quarries wereno longer worth working for their building stone. The mines yielded nomore gold. 

On the death of Arcadius, his son Theodosius was only eight years old, but he was quietly acknowledged as Emperor of the East in 408, and heleft the government of Egypt, as heretofore, very much in the hands ofthe patriarch. In the fifth year of his reign Theophilus died; and, asmight be supposed, a successor was not appointed without a struggle forthe double honour of Bishop of Alexandria and Governor of Egypt. 

[Illustration: 257. Jpg QUARRIES AT TOORAH ON THE NILE]

The remains of the Greek and Arian party proposed Timotheus, anarchdeacon in the church; but the Egyptian party were united in favourof Cyril, a young man of learning and talent, who had the advantage ofbeing the nephew of the late bishop. Whatever were the forms by whichthe election should have been governed, it was in reality settled by abattle between the two parties in the streets; and though Abundantius, the military prefect, gave the weight of his name, if not the strengthof his cohort, to the party of Timotheus, yet his rival conquered, -and Cyril was carried into the cathedral with a pomp more like a pagantriumph than the modest ordination of a bishop. 

Cyril was not less tyrannical in his bishopric than his uncle hadbeen before him. His first care was to put a stop to all heresy inAlexandria, and his second to banish the Jews. The theatre was the spotin which the riots between Jews and Christians usually began, and theSabbath was the time, as being the day on which the Jews chiefly crowdedin to see the dancing. On one occasion the quarrel in the theatre ranso high that the prefect with his cohort was scarcely able to keep themfrom blows; and the Christians reproached the Jews with plotting to burndown the churches. But the Christians were themselves guilty of the verycrimes of which they accused their enemies. The next morning, as soonas it was light, Cyril headed the mob in their attacks upon the Jewishsynagogues; they broke them open and plundered them, and in one daydrove every Jew out of the city. No Jew had been allowed to live inAlexandria or any other city without paying a poll-tax, for leaveto worship his God according to the manner of his forefathers; butreligious zeal is stronger than the love of money; the Jews were drivenout, and the tax lost to the city. 

[Illustration: 258b. Jpg Street and Mosque of Mahdjiar]

Orestes, the prefect of Alexandria, had before wished to check the powerof the bishop; and he in vain tried to save the Jews from oppression, and the state from the loss of so many good citizens. But it was uselessto quarrel with the patriarch, who was supported by the religiouszeal of the whole population. The monks of Mount Nitria and of theneighbourhood burned with a holy zeal to fight for Cyril, as they hadbefore fought for Theophilus; and when they heard that a jealousy hadsprung up between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, more thanfive hundred of them marched into Alexandria to avenge the affrontedbishop. They met the prefect Orestes as he was passing through thestreets in his open chariot, and began reproaching him with being apagan and a Greek. Orestes answered that he was a Christian, and he hadbeen baptised at Constantinople. But this only cleared him of the lessercharge, he was certainly a Greek; and one of these Egyptian monks takingup a stone threw it at his head, and the blow covered his face withblood. They then fled from the guards and people who came up to help thewounded prefect; but Ammonius, who threw the stone, was taken and putto death with torture. The grateful bishop buried him in the church withmuch pomp; he declared him to be a martyr and a saint, and gave himthe name of St. Thaumasius. But the Christians were ashamed of thenew martyr: and the bishop, who could not withstand the ridicule, soonafterwards withdrew from him the title. 

Bad as was this behaviour of the bishop and his friends, the mostdisgraceful tale still remains to be told. The beautiful and learnedHypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, was at that timethe ornament of Alexandria and the pride of the pagans. She taughtphilosophy publicly in the platonic school which had been founded byAmmonius, and which boasted of Plotinus as its pupil. She was as modestas she wras graceful, eloquent, and learned; and though, being a pagan, she belonged to neither of the rival Christian parties, yet, as shehad more hearers among the Greek friends of the prefect than among theignorant followers of the bishop, she became an object of jealousy withthe Homoousian party. A body of these Christians, says the orthodoxhistorian, attacked this admirable woman in the street; they draggedher from her chariot, and hurried her off into the church named Cćsar'stemple, and there stripped her and murdered her with some broken tiles. She had written commentaries on the mathematical works of Diophantus, and on the conic sections of Apollonius. The story of her life has beenrelated in the nineteenth century by Charles Kingsley in the novel whichbears her name. 

Arianism took refuge from the Egyptians within the camps of the Greeksoldiers. One church was dedicated to the honour of St. George, the latebishop, within the lofty towers of the citadel of Babylon, which wasthe strongest fortress in Egypt; and a second in the city of Ptolemais, where a garrison was stationed to collect the toll of the Thebaid. St. George became a favourite saint with the Greeks in Egypt, and in thosespots where the Greek soldiers were masters of the churches this Arianand unpopular bishop was often painted on the walls riding triumphantlyon horseback and slaying the dragon of Athanasian error. On the otherhand, in Alexandria, where his rival's politics and opinions held theupper hand, the monastery of St. Athanasius was built in the most publicspot in the city, probably that formerly held by the Soma or royalburial-place; and in Thebes a cathedral church was dedicated to St. Athanasius within the great courtyard of Medinet-Abu, where thesmall and paltry Greek columns are in strange contrast to the grandarchitecture of Ramses III. Which surrounds them. 

In former reigns the Alexandrians had been in the habit of sendingembassies to Constantinople to complain of tyranny or misgovernment, andto beg for a redress of grievances, when they thought that justice couldbe there obtained when it was refused in Alexandria. But this practicewas stopped by Theodosius, who made a law that the Alexandrians shouldnever send an embassy to Constantinople, unless it were agreed to by adecree of the town council, and had the approbation of the prefect. Theweak and idle emperor would allow no appeal from the tyranny of his owngovernor. 

We may pass over the banishment of John Chrysostom, Bishop ofConstantinople, as having less to do with the history of Egypt, though, as in the cases of Arius and Nestorius, the chief mover of the attackupon him was a bishop of Alexandria, who accused him of heresy, becausehe did not come up to the Egyptian standard of orthodoxy. But among thebishops who were deposed with Chrysostom was Palladius of Galatia, whowas sent a prisoner to Syęnę. As soon as he was released from his bonds, instead of being cast down by his misfortunes, he proposed to takeadvantage of the place of his banishment, and he set forward on histravels through Ethiopia for India, in search of the wisdom of theBrahmins. He arrived in safety at Adule, the port on the Red Sea inlatitude 15°, now known as Zula, where he made acquaintance with Moses, the bishop of that city, and persuaded him to join him in his distantand difficult voyage. 

From Adule the two set sail in one of the vessels employed in the Indiantrade; but they were unable to accomplish their purpose, and Palladiusreturned to Egypt worn out with heat and fatigue, having scarcelytouched the shores of India. On his return through Thebes he met witha traveller who had lately returned from the same journey, and whoconsoled him under his disappointment by recounting his own failure inthe same undertaking. His new friend had himself been a merchant in theIndian trade, but had given up business because he was not successful init; and, having taken a priest as his companion, had set out on thesame voyage in search of Eastern wisdom. They had sailed to Adule onthe Abyssinian shore, and then travelled to Auxum, the capital of thatcountry. From that coast they set sail for the Indian ocean, and reacheda coast which they thought was Taprobane or Ceylon. But there they weretaken prisoners, and, after spending six years in slavery, and learningbut little of the philosophy that they were in search of, were glad totake the first opportunity of escaping and returning to Egypt. Palladiushad travelled in Egypt before he was sent there into banishment, andhe had spent many years in examining the monasteries of the Thebaid andtheir rules, and he has left a history of the lives of many of thoseholy men and woman, addressed to his friend Lausus. 

When Nestorius was deposed from the bishopric of Constantinople forrefusing to use the words "Mother of God" as the title of Jesus'mother, and for falling short in other points of what was then thoughtorthodoxy, he was banished to Hibe in the Great Oasis. While he wasliving there, the Great Oasis was overrun by the Blemmyes, the Romangarrison was defeated, and those that resisted were put to the sword. The Blemmyes pillaged the place and then withdrew; and, being themselvesat war with the Mazices, another tribe of Arabs, they kindly sent theirprisoners to the Thebaid, lest they should fall into the hands ofthe latter. Nestorius then went to Panopolis to show himself to thegovernor, lest he should be accused of running away from his place ofbanishment, and soon afterwards he died of the sufferings brought on bythese forced and painful journeys through the desert. 

About the same time Egypt was visited by Cassianus, a monk of Gaul, inorder to study the monastic institutions of the Thebaid. In his work onthat subject he has described at length the way of life and the severerules of the Egyptian monks, and has recommended them to the imitationof his countrymen. But the natives of Italy and the West do not seemto have been contented with copying the Theban monks at a distance. Suchwas the fame of the Egyptian monasteries that many zealots from Italyflocked there, to place themselves under the severe discipline of thoseholy men. As these Latin monks did not understand either Koptic orGreek, they found some difficulty in regulating their lives with thewished-for exactness; and the rules of Pachomius, of Theodorus, and ofOresiesis, the most celebrated of the founders, were actually sent toJerome at Rome, to be by him translated into Latin for the use of thesesettlers in the Thebaid. These Latin monks made St. Peter a popularsaint in some parts of Egypt; and in the temple of Asseboua, in Nubia, when the Christians plastered over the figure of one of the old gods, they painted in its place the Apostle Peter holding the key in his hand. 

[Illustration: 264. Jpg RAMSES II. AND ST. PETER]

They did not alter the rest of the sculpture; so that Ramses II. Isthere now seen presenting his offering to the Christian saint. The mixedgroup gives us proof of the nation's decline in art rather than of itsimprovement in religion. 

Among the monks of Egypt there were also some men of learning andindustry, who in their cells in the desert had made at least threetranslations of the New Testament into the three dialects of the Kopticlanguage; namely, the Sahidic of Upper Egypt, the Bashmuric of theBashmour province of the eastern half of the Delta, and the Kopticproper of Memphis and the western half of the Delta. To these wereafterwards added the Acts of the council of Nicća, the lives of thesaints and martyrs, the writings of many of the Christian fathers, therituals of the Koptic church, and various treatises on religion. 

Other monks were as busy in making copies of the Greek manuscriptsof the Old and New Testament; and, as each copy must have needed thepainful labour of months, and often years, their industry and zeal musthave been great. Most of these manuscripts were on papyrus, or on amanufactured papyrus which might be called paper, and have long sincebeen lost; but the three most ancient copies on parchment which are thepride of the Vatican, the Paris library, and the British Museum, are thework of the Alexandrian penmen. 

Copies of the Bible were also made in Alexandria for sale in westernEurope; and all our oldest manuscripts show their origin by the Egyptianform of spelling in some of the words. The Beza manuscript at Cambridge, and the Clermont manuscript at Paris, which have Greek on one side ofthe page and Latin on the other, were written in Alexandria. The Latinis that more ancient version which was in use before the time of Jerome, and which he corrected, to form what is now called the Latin Vulgate. This old version was made by changing each Greek word into itscorresponding Latin word, with very little regard to the differentcharacters of the two languages. It was no doubt made by an AlexandrianGreek, who had a very slight knowledge of Latin. 

Already the papyrus on which books were written was, for the most part, a manufactured article and might claim the name of paper. In the time ofPliny in the first century the sheets had been made in the old way; theslips of the plant laid one across the other had been held together bytheir own sticky sap without the help of glue. In the reign of Aurelian, in the third century, if not earlier, glue had been largely used in themanufacture; and it is probable that at this time, in the fifth century, the manufactured article almost deserved the name of paper. But thismanufactured papyrus was much weaker and less lasting than that madeafter the old and more simple fashion. No books written upon it remainto us. At a later period, the stronger fibre of flax was used in themanufacture, but the date of this improvement is also unknown, becauseat first the paper so made, like that made from the papyrus fibre, wasalso too weak to last. It was doubtless an Alexandrian improvement. Flax was an Egyptian plant; paper-making was an Egyptian trade; andTheophilus, a Roman writer on manufactures, when speaking of paper madefrom flax, clearly points to its Alexandrian origin, by giving it thename of Greek parchment. Between the papyrus of the third century, andthe strong paper of the eleventh century, no books remain to us butthose written on parchment. 

The monks of Mount Sinai suffered much during these reigns of weaknessfrom the marauding attacks of the Arabs. These men had no strongmonastery; but hundreds of them lived apart in single cells in theside of the mountains round the valley of Feiran, at the foot of MountSerbal, and they had nothing to protect them but their poverty. They were not protected by Egypt, and they made treaties with theneighbouring Arabs, like an independent republic, of which the town ofFeiran was the capital. The Arabs, from the Jordan to the Red Sea, made robbery the employment of their lives, and they added much to thevoluntary sufferings of the monks. 

[Illustration: 267. Jpg THE PAPYRUS PLANT]

Nilus, a monk who had left his family in Egypt, to spend his life inprayer and study on the spot where Moses was appointed the legislatorof Israel, describes these attacks upon his brethren, and he boasts overthe Israelites that, notwithstanding their sufferings, the monks spenttheir whole lives cheerfully in those very deserts which God's chosenpeople could not even pass through without murmuring. Nilus has leftsome letters and exhortations. It was then, probably, that the numerousinscriptions were made on the rocks at the foot of Mount Serbal, and onthe path towards its sacred peak, which have given to one spot the nameof Mokatteb, or the valley of writing. A few of these inscriptions arein the Greek language. 

The Egyptian physicians had of old always formed a part of thepriesthood, and they seem to have done much the same after the spreadof Christianity. We find some monks named _Parabalani_, who ownedthe Bishop of Alexandria as their head, and who united the offices ofphysician and nurse in waiting on the sick and dying. As they professedpoverty they were maintained by the state and had other privileges; andhence it was a place much sought after, and even by the wealthy. But tolessen this abuse it was ordered by an imperial rescript that none butpoor people who had been rate-payers should be _Parabalani_; and theirnumber was limited, first to five hundred, but afterwards, at therequest of the bishop, to six hundred. A second charitable institutionin Alexandria had the care of strangers and the poor, and was alsomanaged by one of the priests. 

Alexandria was fast sinking in wealth and population, and several newlaws were now made to lessen its difficulties. One was to add a hundredand ten bushels of grain to the daily alimony of the city, the supply onwhich the riotous citizens were fed in idleness. By a second and a thirdlaw the five chief men in the corporation, and every man that had filleda civic office for thirty years, were freed from all bodily punishment, and only to be fined when convicted of a crime. Theodosius built alarge church in Alexandria, which was called after his name; and theprovincial judges were told in a letter to the prefect that, if theywished to earn the emperor's praise, they must not only restore thosebuildings which were falling through age and neglect but must also buildnew ones. 

Though the pagan philosophy had been much discouraged at Alexandria bythe destruction of the temples and the cessation of the sacrifices, yetthe philosophers were still allowed to teach in the schools. Syrianuswas at the head of the Platonists, and he wrote largely on the Orphic, Pythagorean, and Platonic doctrines. In his Commentary on Aristotle'sMetaphysics he aims at showing how a Pythagorean or a Platonist wouldsuccessfully answer Aristotle's objections. He seems to look upon thewritings of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus as the true fountains ofPlatonic wisdom, quite as much as the works of the great philosopherwho gave his name to the sect. Syrianus afterwards removed to Athens, totake charge of the Platonic school in that city, and Athens became thechief seat of Alexandrian Platonism. 

Olympiodorus was at the same time undertaking the task of forming aPeripatetic school in Alexandria, in opposition to the new Platonism, and he has left some of the fruits of his labour in his Commentaries onAristotle. But the Peripatetic philosophy was no longer attractive tothe pagans, though after the fall of the catechetical school it hada strong following of Christian disciples. Olympiodorus also wrotea history, but it has long since been lost, with other works of asecond-rate merit. He was a native of the Thebaid, and travelled overhis country. He described the Great Oasis as still a highly cultivatedspot, where the husbandman watered his fields every third day in summer, and every fifth day in winter, from wells of two and three hundred feetin depth, and thereby raised two crops of barley, and often three ofmillet, in a year. Olympiodorus also travelled beyond Syęnę into Nubia, with some danger from the Blemmyes, but he was not able to see theemerald mines, which were worked on Mount Smaragdus in the Arabiandesert between Koptos and Berenice, and which seem to have been thechief object of his journey. 

Proclus came to Alexandria about the end of this reign, and studiedmany years under Olympiodorus, but not to the neglect of the platonicphilosophy, of which he afterwards became such a distinguished ornamentand support. The other Alexandrians under whom Proclus studied wereHero, the mathematician, a devout and religious pagan, Leonas, therhetorician, who introduced him to all the chief men of learning, andOrion, the grammarian, who boasted of his descent from the race ofTheban priests. Thus the pagans still held up their heads in theschools. Nor were the ceremonies of their religion, though unlawful, wholly stopped. In the twenty-eighth year of this reign, when the peoplewere assembled in a theatre at Alexandria to celebrate the midnightfestival of the Nile, a sacrifice which had been forbidden byConstantine and the council of Nicsea, the building fell beneath theweight of the crowd, and upwards of five hundred persons were killed bythe fall. 

[Illustration: 271. Jpg ARABS RESTING IN THE DESERT]

It will be of some interest to review here the machinery of officers anddeputies, civil as well as military, by which Egypt was governed underthe successors of Constantine. The whole of the Eastern empire wasplaced under two prefects, the pretorian prefect of the East and thepretorian prefect of Illyricum, who, living at Constantinople, likemodern secretaries of state, made edicts for the government of theprovinces and heard the appeals. Under the prefect of the East werefifteen consular provinces, together with Egypt, which was not anylonger under one prefect. There was no consular governor in Egyptbetween the prefect at Constantinople and the six prefects of thesmaller provinces. These provinces were Upper Libya or Cyrene, LowerLibya or the Oasis, the Thebaid, Ćgyptiaca or the western part of theDelta, Augustanica or the eastern part of the Delta, and the Heptanomis, now named Arcadia, after the late emperor. Each of these was underan Augustal prefect, attended by a _Princeps, a Cornicula-rius, an Adjutor_, and others, and was assisted in civil matters by a_Commentariensis_, a corresponding secretary, a secretary _ab actis_, with a crowd of _numerarii_ or clerks. 

The military government was under a count with two dukes, with a numberof legions, cohorts, troops, and wedges of cavalry, stationed in aboutfifty cities, which, if they had looked as well in the field as they doupon paper, would have made Theodosius II. As powerful as Augustus. Butthe number of Greek and Roman troops was small. The rest were barbarianswho held their own lives at small price, and the lives of the unhappyEgyptians at still less. The Greeks were only a part of the fifthMacedonian legion, and Trajan's second legion, which were stationed atMemphis, at Parembole, and at Apollinopolis; while from the names ofthe other cohorts we learn that they were Franks, Portuguese, Germans, Quadri, Spaniards, Britons, Moors, Vandals, Gauls, Sarmati, Assyrians, Galatians, Africans, Numid-ians, and others of less known and moreremote places. Egypt itself furnished the Egyptian legion, part of whichwas in Mesopotamia, Diocletian's third legion of Thebans, the firstMaximinian legion of Thebans which was stationed in Thrace, Constantine'ssecond Flavian legion of Thebans, Valens' second Felix legion ofThebans, and the Julian Alexandrian legion, stationed in Thrace. Besidethese, there were several bodies of native militia, from Abydos, Syęnę, and other cities, which were not formed into legions. The Egyptiancavalry were a first and second Egyptian troop, several bodies of nativearchers mounted, three troops on dromedaries, and a body of Diocletian'sthird legion promoted to the cavalry. These Egyptian troops were chieflyArab settlers in the Thebaid, for the Kopts had long since lost the useof arms. The Kopts were weak enough to be trampled on; but the Arabswere worth bribing by admission into the legions. The taxes of theprovince were collected by a number of counts of the sacred largesses, who wrere under the orders of an officer of the same title atConstantinople, and were helped by a body of counts of the exports andimports, prefects of the treasury and of the mints, with an armyof clerks of all titles and all ranks. From this government theAlexandrians were exempt, living under their own military prefect andcorporation, and, instead of paying any taxes beyond the custom-houseduties at the port, they received a bounty in grain out of the taxes ofEgypt. 

Soon after this we find the political division of Egypt slightlyaltered. It is then divided into eight governments; the Upper Thebaidwith eleven cities under a duke; the Lower Thebaid with ten cities, including the Great Oasis and part of the Heptanomis, under a general;Upper Libya or Cyrene under a general; Lower Libya or Parastonium undera general; Arcadia, or the remainder of the Heptanomis, under a general;Ćgyptiaca, or the western half of the Delta, under an Augustalianprefect; the first Augustan government, or the rest of the Delta, undera _Corrector_; and the second Augustan government, from Bubastis to theRed Sea, under a general. We also meet with several military stationsnamed after the late emperors: a Maximianopolis and a Dioclesianopolisin the Upper Thebaid; a Theodosianopolis in the Lower Thebaid, and asecond Theodosianopolis in Arcadia. But it is not easy to determine whatvillages were meant by these high-sounding names, which were perhapsonly used in official documents. 

The empire of the East was gradually sinking in power during this longand quiet reign of Theodosius II. ; but the empire of the West was beinghurried to its fall by the revolt of the barbarians in every one of itswidespread provinces. Henceforth in the weakness of the two countriesEgypt and Rome are wholly separated. After having influenced one anotherin politics, in literature, and in religion for seven centuries, theywere now as little known to one another as they were before the day whenFabius arrived at Alexandria on an embassy from the senate to PtolemyPhiladelphus. 

Theological and political quarrels, under the name of the Homoousianand Arian controversy, had nearly separated Egypt from the rest of theempire during the reigns of Constantius and Valens, but they had beenhealed by the wisdom of the first Theodosius, who governed Egypt bymeans of a popular bishop; and the policy which he so wisely beganwas continued by his successors through weakness. But in the reign ofMarcian (450--457) the old quarrel again broke out, and, though it wasunder a new name, it again took the form of a religious controversy. Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, died in the last reign; and as he hadsucceeded his uncle, so on his death the bishopric fell to Dioscorus, a relation of his own, a man of equal religious violence and of lesslearning, who differed from him only in the points of doctrine aboutwhich he should quarrel with his fellow-Christians. About the sametime Eutyches, a priest of Constantinople, had been condemned by hissuperiors and expelled from the Church for denying the two natures ofChrist, and for maintaining that he was truly God, and in no respecta man. This was the opinion of the Egyptian church, and thereforeDioscorus, the Bishop of Alexandria, who had no right whatever to meddlein the quarrels at Constantinople, yet, acting on the forgotten rulethat each bishop's power extended over all Christendom, undertook ofhis own authority to absolve Eutyches from his excommunication, and inreturn to excommunicate the Bishop of Constantinople who had condemnedhim. To settle this quarrel, a general council was summoned atChalcedon; and there six hundred and thirty-two bishops met andcondemned the faith of Eutyches, and further explained the Nicene creed, to which Eutyches and the Egyptians always appealed. They excommunicatedEutyches and his patron Dioscorus, who were banished by the emperor; andthey elected Proterius to the then vacant bishopric of Alexandria. 

In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks wereexcommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the onenature of Christ, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobitefaith from one of its popular supporters, might perhaps be distinguishedby the microscopic eye of the controversialist from the faith ofEutyches; but they equally fell under the condemnation of the council ofChalcedon. Egypt was no longer divided in its religious opinions. Therehad been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian andhalf-Arian opinions of the Greeks, but that party had ceased to exist. Their religion had pulled one way and their political feelings another;the latter were found the stronger, as being more closely rooted to thesoil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselvesto the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence the decrees ofthe council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and thequarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the formerquarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more thananother name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed byConstantinople. 

Proterius, the new bishop, entered Alexandria supported by the prefectFloras at the head of the troops. 

But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpoweredthe cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven tosave their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis. But they found nosafety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, andburned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; andthe city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians. When thenews of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt afurther force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked itlike a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric. As apunishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for sometime the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, andonly restored them after the return to peace and good order. 

In the weak state of the empire, the Blemmyes, and Nubades, or Nobatć, had latterly been renewing their inroads upon Upper Egypt; theyhad overpowered the Romans, as the Greek and barbarian troops ofConstantinople were always called, and had carried off a large bootyand a number of prisoners. Maximinus, the imperial general, then led hisforces against them; he defeated them, and made them beg for peace. The barbarians then proposed, as the terms of their surrender, never toenter Egypt while Maximinus commanded the troops in the Thebaid; but theconqueror was not contented with such an unsatisfactory submission, and would make no treaty with them till they had released the Romanprisoners without ransom, paid for the booty that they had taken, andgiven a number of the nobles as hostages. On this Maximums agreed to atruce of a hundred years. 

The people now called the Nubians, living on both sides of the cataractof Syęnę, declared themselves of the true Egyptian race by theirreligious practices. They had an old custom of going each year to thetemple of Isis on the isle of Elephantine, and of carrying away oneof the statues with them and returning it to the temple when they hadconsulted it. But as they were now being driven out of the province, they bargained with Maximums for permission to visit the temple eachyear without hindrance from the Roman guards. The treaty was written onpapyrus and nailed up in this temple. But friendship in the desert, saysthe proverb, is as weak and wavering as the shade of the acacia tree;this truce was no sooner agreed upon than Maximinus fell ill and died;and the Nubades at once broke the treaty, regained by force theirhostages, who had not yet been carried out of the Thebaid, and overranthe province as they had done before their defeat. 

[Illustration: 279. Jpg ISIS AS THE DOG-STAR]

By this success of the Nubians, Christianity was largely driven out ofUpper Egypt; and about seventy years after the law of Thedosius L, bywhich paganism was supposed to be crushed, the religion of Isis andSerapis was again openly professed in the Thebaid, where it had perhapsalways been cultivated in secret. A certain master of the robes in oneof the Egyptian temple came at this time to the temple of Isis in theisland of Philć, and his votive inscription there declares that he wasthe son of Pachomius, a prophet, and successor by direct descent from ayet more famous Pachomius, a prophet, who we may easily believe was theChristian prophet who gathered together so many followers in the islandof Tabenna, near Thebes, and there founded an order of Christian monks. These Christians now all returned to their paganism. Nearly all theremains of Christian architecture which we meet with in the The-baidwere built during the hundred and sixty years between the defeat of theNubians by Diocletian, and their victories in the reign of Marcian. 

The Nubians were far more civilised than their neighbours, the Blemmyes, whom they were usually able to drive back into their native deserts. Wefind an inscription in bad Greek, in the great temple at Talmis, nowthe village of Kalabshe, which was probably written about this time. A conqueror of the name of Silco there declares that he is king of theNubians and all the Ethiopians; that in the upper part of his kingdom heis called Mars, and in the lower part Lion; that he is as great as anyking of his day; that he has defeated the Blemmyes in battle again andagain; and that he has made himself master of the country betweenTalmis and Primis. While such were the neighbours and inhabitants ofthe Thebaid, the fields were only half-tilled, and the desert wasencroaching on the paths of man. The sand was filling up the temples, covering the overthrown statues, and blocking up the doors to the tombs;but it was at the same time saving, to be dug out in after ages, thoserecords which the living no longer valued. 

On the death of the Emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, taking advantageof the absence of the military prefect Dionysius, who was then fightingagainst the Nubades in Upper Egypt, renewed their attack upon the BishopProterius, and deposed him from his office. To fill his place they madechoice of a monk named Timotheus Ćlurus, who held the Jacobite faith, and, having among them two deposed bishops, they got them to ordain himBishop of Alexandria, and then led him by force of arms into the greatchurch which had formerly been called Caesar's temple. Upon hearingof the rebellion, the prefect returned in haste to Alexandria; buthis approach was only the signal for greater violence, and the enragedpeople murdered Proterius in the baptistery, and hung up his body at theTetrapylon in mockery. This was not a rebellion of the mob. Timotheuswas supported by the men of chief rank in the city; the _Honorati_ whohad borne state offices, the _Politici_ who had borne civic offices, and the _Navicularii_, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptiantribute, were all opposed to the emperor's claim to appoint the officerwhose duties were much more those of prefect of the city than patriarchof Egypt. With such an opposition as this, the emperor would do nothingwithout the greatest caution, for he was in danger of losing Egyptaltogether. But so much were the minds of all men then engrossed inecclesiastical matters that this political struggle wholly took the formof a dispute in controversial divinity, and the emperor wrote aletter to the chief bishops in Christendom to ask their advice inhis difficulty. These theologians were too busily engaged in theircontroversies to take any notice of the danger of Egypt's revolting fromthe empire and joining the Persians; so they strongly advised Leo not todepart from the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, or to acknowledgeas Bishop of Alexandria a man who denied the two natures of Christ. Accordingly, the emperor again risked breaking the slender ties bywhich he held Egypt; he banished the popular bishop, and forced theAlexandrians to receive in his place one who held the Chalcedonianfaith. 

On the death of Leo, he was succeeded by his grandson, Leo the Younger, who died in 473, after a reign of one year, and was succeeded by hisfather Zeno, the son-in-law of the elder Leo. Zeno gave himself up atonce to debauchery and vice, while the empire was harassed on all sidesby the barbarians, and the provinces were roused into rebellion by thecruelty of the prefects. The rebels at last found a head in Basilicus, the brother-in-law of Leo. He declared himself of the Jacobite faith, which was the faith of the barbarian enemies, of the barbarian troops, and of the barbarian allies of the empire, and, proclaiming himselfemperor, made himself master of Constantinople without a battle, anddrove Zeno into banishment in the third year of his reign. 

The first step of Basilicus was to recall from banishment TimotheusĆlurus, the late Bishop of Alexandria, and to restore him to thebishopric (A. D. 477). He then addressed to him and the other recalledbishops a circular letter, in which he repeals the decrees of thecouncil of Chalcedon, and re-establishes the Nicene creed, declaringthat Jesus was of one substance with the Father, and that Mary was themother of God. The march of Timotheus to the seat of his own government, from Constantinople whither he had been summoned, was more like thatof a conqueror than of a preacher of peace. He deposed some bishops andrestored others, and, as the decrees of the council of Chalcedon werethe particular objects of his hatred, he restored to the city of Ephesusthe patriarchal power which that synod had taken away from it. Basilicusreigned for about two years, when he was defeated and put to death byZeno, who regained the throne. 

As soon as Zeno was again master of the empire, he re-established thecreed of the council of Chalcedon, and drove away the Jacobite bishopsfrom their bishoprics. Death, however, removed Timotheus Ćlurus beforethe emperor's orders were put in force in Alexandria, and the Egyptiansthen chose Peter Mongus as his successor, in direct opposition to theorders from Constantinople. But the emperor was resolved not to bebeaten; the bishopric of Alexandria was so much a civil office that tohave given up the appointment to the Egyptians would have been to allowthe people to govern themselves; so he banished Peter, and recalled tothe head of the Church Timotheus Salophaciolus, who had been living atCanopus ever since his loss of the bishopric. 

But, as the patriarch of Alexandria enjoyed the ecclesiastical revenues, and was still in appearance a teacher of religion, the Alexandrians, in recollection of the former rights of the Church, still claimed theappointment. They sent John, a priest of their own faith and dean of thechurch of John the Baptist, as their ambassador to Constantinople, notto remonstrate against the late acts of the emperor, but to beg that onfuture occasions the Alexandrians might be allowed the old privilege ofchoosing their own bishop. The Emperor Zeno seems to have seen throughthe ambassador's earnestness, and he first bound him by an oath not toaccept the bishopric if he should even be himself chosen to it, andhe then sent him back with the promise that the Alexandrians shouldbe allowed to choose their own patriarch on the next vacancy. Butunfortunately John's ambition was too strong for his oath, and on thedeath of Timotheus, which happened soon afterwards, he spent a largesum of money in bribes among the clergy and chief men of the city, andthereby got himself chosen patriarch. On this, the emperor seems to havethought only of punishing John, and he at once gave up the struggle withthe Egyptians. Believing that, of the two patriarchs who had been chosenby the people, Peter Mongus, who was living in banishment, would befound more dutiful than John, who was on the episcopal throne, hebanished John and recalled Peter; and the latter agreed to the terms ofan imperial edict which Zeno then put forth, to heal the disputes inthe Egyptian church, and to recall the province to obedience. Thiscelebrated peace-making edict, usually called the Henoticon, isaddressed to the clergy and laity of Alexandria, Egypt, Libya, and thePentapolis, and is an agreement between the emperor and the bishops whocountersigned it, that neither party should ever mention the decrees ofthe council of Chalcedon, which were the great stumbling-block with theEgyptians. 

[Illustration: 285. Jpg STREET SPRINKLER AT ALEXANDRIA]

But in all other points the Henoticon is little short of a surrender tothe people of the right to choose their own creed; it styles Mary themother of God, and allows that the decrees of the council of Nicća andConstantinople contain all that is important of the true faith. John, when banished by Zeno, like many of the former deposed bishops, fled toRome for comfort and for help. There he met with the usual support; andFelix, Bishop of Rome, wrote to Constantinople, remonstrating with Zenofor dismissing the patriarch. But this was only a small part of theemperor's want of success in his attempt at peace-making; for the craftyPeter, who had gained the bishopric by subscribing to the peace-makingedict, was no sooner safely seated on his episcopal throne than hedenounced the council of Chalcedon and its decrees as heretical, anddrove out of their monasteries all those who still adhered to thatfaith. Nephalius, one of these monks, wrote to the emperor atConstantinople in complaint, and Zeno sent Cosmas to the bishop tothreaten him with his imperial displeasure, and to try to re-establishpeace in the Church. But the arguments of Cosmas were whollyunsuccessful; and Zeno then sent an increase of force to Arsenius, themilitary prefect, who settled the quarrel for the time by sending backthe most rebellious of the Alexandrians as prisoners to Constantinople. 

Soon after this dispute Peter Mongus died, and fortunately he wassucceeded in the bishopric by a peacemaker. Athanasius, the new bishop, very unlike his great predecessor of the same name, did his best to healthe angry disputes in the Church, and to reconcile the Egyptians to theimperial government. 

Hierocles, the Alexandrian, was at this time teaching philosophy in hisnative city, where his zeal and eloquence in favour of Platonism drewupon him the anger of the Christians and the notice of the government. 

He was sent to Constantinople to be punished for not believing inChristianity, for it does not appear that, like the former Hierocles, he ever wrote against it. There he bore a public scourging from hisChristian torturers, with a courage equal to that formerly shown bytheir forefathers when tortured by his. When some of the blood fromhis shoulders flew into his hand, he held it out in scorn to the judge, saying with Ulysses, "Cyclops, since human flesh has been thy food, nowtaste this wine. " After his punishment he was banished, but was soonallowed to return to Alexandria, and there he again taught openly asbefore. Paganism never wears so fair a dress as in the writings ofHierocles; his commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans isfull of the loftiest and purest morality, and not less agreeable are thefragments that remain of his writings on our duties, and his beautifulchapter on the pleasures of a married life. In the Facetić of Hierocleswe have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from thewreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning;the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone willnot make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer isalways called a man of learning. 

Ćtius, the Alexandrian physician, has left a large work containinga full account of the state of Egyptian medicine at this time. Hedescribes the diseases and their remedies, quoting the recipes ofnumerous authors, from the King Nechepsus, Galen, Hippocrates, andHioscorides, down to Archbishop Cyril. He is not wholly free fromsuperstition, as when making use of a green jasper set in a ring; but heobserves that the patients recovered as soon when the stone was plainas when a dragon was engraved upon it according to the recommendation ofNechepsus. In Nile water he finds every virtue, and does not forget darkpaint for the ladies' eyebrows, and Cleopatra-wash for the face. 

Anastasius, the next emperor, succeeding in 491, followed the wisepolicy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter years of his reign, and he strictly adhered to the terms of the peace-making edict. Thefour patriarchs of Alexandria who were chosen during this reign, John, a second John, Dioscorus, and Timotheus, were all of the Jacobite faith;and the Egyptians readily believed that the emperor was of the sameopinion. When called upon by the quarrelling theologians, he wouldneither reject nor receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, andby this wise conduct he governed Egypt without any religious rebellionduring a long reign. 

The election of Dioscorus, however, the third patriarch of thisreign, was not brought about peaceably. He was the cousin of a formerpatriarch, Timotheus Ćlurus, which, if we view the bishopric as a civiloffice, might be a reason for the emperor's wishing him to have theappointment. But it was no good reason with the Alexandrians, whodeclared that he had not been chosen according to the canons of theapostles; and the magistrates of the city were forced to employ thetroops to lead him in safety to his throne. After the first ceremony, hewent, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark's Church, andthere the clergy robed him in the patriarchal state robes. The grandprocession then moved through the streets to the church of St. John, where the new bishop went through the communion service. But the citywas much disturbed during the whole day, and in the riot Theodosius, theson of Calliopus, a man of Augustalian rank, was killed by the mob. TheAlexandrians treated the affair as murder, and punished with death thosewho were thought guilty; but the emperor looked upon it as a rebellionof the citizens, and the bishop was obliged to go on an embassy toConstantinople to appease his just anger. 

Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Egyptians by hismoderation, pardoned their ingratitude when they offended; but he wasthe last Byzantine emperor who governed Egypt with wisdom, and the lastwho failed to enforce the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. It maywell be doubted whether any wise conduct on the part of the rulerscould have healed the quarrel between the two countries, and made theEgyptians forget the wrongs that they had suffered from the Greeks. 

In the tenth year of the reign of Anastasius, A. D. 501, the Persians, after overrunning a large part of Syria and defeating the Romangenerals, passed Pelusium and entered Egypt. The army of Kobadeslaid waste the whole of the Delta up to the very walls of Alexandria. Eustatius, the military prefect, led out his forces against the invadersand fought many battles with doubtful success; but as the capital wassafe the Persians were at last obliged to retire, leaving the peopleruined as much by the loss of a harvest as by the sword. Alexandriasuffered severely from famine and the diseases which followed inits train; and history has gratefully recorded the name of Urbib, aChristian Jew of great wealth, who relieved the starving poor of thatcity with his bounty. Three hundred persons were crushed to death in thechurch of Arcadius on Easter Sunday in the press of the crowd to receivehis alms. As war brought on disease and famine, they also brought onrebellion. The people of Alexandria, in want of grain and oil, roseagainst the magistrates, and many lives were lost in the attempt toquell the riots. 

In the early part of this history we have seen ambitious bishops quicklydisposed of by banishment to the Great Oasis; and again, as the countrybecame more desolate, criminals were sufficiently separated from therest of the empire by being sent to Thebes. Alexandria was then the lastplace in the world in which a pretender to the throne would be allowedto live. But Egypt was now ruined; and Anastasius began his reign bybanishing, to the fallen Alexandria, Longinus, the brother of the lateking, and he had him ordained a presbyter, to mark him as unfit for thethrone. 

Julianus, who was during a part of this reign the prefect of Egypt, wasalso a poet, and he has left us a number of short epigrams thatform part of the volume of Greek Anthology which was published atConstantinople soon after this time. Christodorus of Thebes was anotherpoet who joined with Julianus in praising the Emperor Anastasius. Healso removed to Constantinople, the seat of patronage; and the fifthbook of the Greek Anthology contains his epigrams on the winners in thehorse-race in that city and on the statues which stood around the publicgymnasium. 

[Illustration: 291. Jpg ILLUSTRATIONS FROM COPY OF DIOSCORIDE]

The poet's song, like the traveller's tale, often related the wondersof the river Nile. The overflowing waters first manured the fields, andthen watered the crops, and lastly carried the grain to market; and onewriter in the Anthology, to describe the country life in Egypt, tellsthe story of a sailor, who, to avoid the dangers of the ocean, turnedhusbandman, and was then shipwrecked in his own meadows. 

The book-writers at this time sometimes illuminated their more valuableparchments with gold and silver letters and sometimes employed paintersto ornament them with small paintings. The beautiful copy of the workof Dioscorides on Plants in the library at Vienna was made in this reignfor the Princess Juliana of Constantinople. In one painting the figureof science or invention is holding up a plant, while on one side of heris the painter drawing it on his canvas, and on the other side is theauthor describing it in his book. Other paintings are of the plants andanimals mentioned in the book. A copy of the Book of Genesis, also inthe library at Vienna, is of the same class and date. A large part of itis written in gold and silver; and it has eighty-eight small paintingsof various historical subjects. In these the story is well told, thoughthe drawing and perspective are bad and the figures crowded. Butthese Alexandrian paintings are better than those made in Rome orConstantinople at this time. 

With the spread of Christianity theatrical representations had beengradually going out of use. The Greek tragedies, as we see in the worksof Ćschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, those models of pure taste inpoetry, are founded on the pagan mythology; and in many of them the godsare made to walk and talk upon the stage. Hence they of necessity fellunder the ban of the clergy. As the Christians became more powerful theseveral cities of the empire had one by one discontinued thesepopular spectacles, and horse-races usually took their place. But theAlexandrians were the last people to give up a favourite amusement;and by the end of this reign Alexandria was the only city in the empirewhere tragic and comic actors and Eastern dancers were to be seen in thetheatre. 

The tower or lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the work of days moreprosperous than these, had latterly been sadly neglected with the otherbuildings of the country. For more than seven hundred years, thepilot on approaching this flat shore after dark had pointed out to hisshipmate what seemed a star on the horizon, and comforted him with thepromise of a safe entrance into the haven, and told him of Alexander'stower. But the waves breaking against its foot had long since carriedaway the outworks, and laid bare the foundations; the wall wasundermined and its fall seemed close at hand. The care of Anastasius, however, surrounded it again with piles and buttresses; and thismonument of wisdom and science, which deserved to last for ever, wasfor a little while longer saved from ruin. An epigram in the Anthologyinforms us that Ammonius was the name of the builder who performed thisgood work, and to him and to Neptune the grateful sailors then raisedtheir hands in prayer and praise. 

In 518 Justin I. Succeeded Anastasius on the throne of Constantinople, and in the task of defending the empire against the Persians. And thistask became every year more difficult, as the Greek population of hisEgyptian and Asiatic provinces fell off in numbers. For some years afterthe division of the empire under the sons of Constantine, Antioch inSyria had been the capital from which Alexandria received the emperor'scommands. The two cities became very closely united; and now that theGreeks were deserting Antioch, a part of the Syrian church began toadopt the more superstitious creed of Egypt. Severus, Bishop of Antioch, was successful in persuading a large party in the Syrian church to denythe humanity of Christ, and to style Mary the mother of God. But thechief power in Antioch rested with the opposite party. They answeredhis arguments by threats of violence, and he had to leave the city forsafety. He fled to Alexandria, and with him began the friendship betweenthe two churches which lasted for several centuries. In Alexandria hewas received with the honour due to his religious zeal. But thoughin Antioch his opinions had been too Egyptian for the Syrians, inAlexandria they were too Syrian for the Egyptians. The Egyptians, whosaid that Jesus had been crucified and died only in appearance, alwaysdenied that his body was liable to corruption. Severus, however, arguedthat it was liable to corruption before the resurrection; and this ledhim into a new controversy, in which Timotheus, the Alexandrian bishop, took part against his own more superstitious flock, and sided withhis friend, the Bishop of Antioch. Severus has left us, in the Syriaclanguage, the baptismal service as performed in Egypt. The priestbreathes three times into the basin to make the water holy, he makesthree crosses on the child's forehead, he adjures the demons ofwickedness to quit him, he again makes three crosses on his foreheadwith oil, he again blows three times into the water in the form of across, he anoints his whole body with oil, and then plunges him in thewater. Many other natives of Syria soon followed Severus to Alexandria;so many indeed that as Greek literature decayed in that city, Syriacliterature rose. Many Syrians also came to study the religious life inthe monasteries of Egypt, and after some time the books in the libraryof the monastery at Mount Nit-ria were found to be half Arabic and halfSyriac. 

Justin, the new emperor, again lighted up in Alexandria the flamesof discord which had been allowed to slumber since the publication ofZeno's peace-making edict. But in the choice of the bishop he was notable to command without a struggle. In the second year of his reign, onthe death of Timotheus, the two parties again found themselves nearlyequal in strength; and Alexandria was for several years kept almost in astate of civil war between those who thought that the body of Jesus hadbeen liable to corruption, and those who thought it incorruptible. Theformer chose Gaianas, whom his adversaries called a Manichean; and thelatter Theodosius, a Jacobite, who had the support of the prefect; andeach of these in his turn was able to drive his rival out of Alexandria. 

Those Persian forces which in the last reign overran the Delta werechiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. To make an end ofthese attacks, and to engage their attention in another quarter, was thenatural wish of the statesmen of Constantinople; and for this purposeAnastasius had sent an embassy to the Homeritć on the southern coastof Arabia, to persuade them to attack their northern neighbours. TheHomeritć held the strip of coast now called Hadramout. They wereenriched, though hardly civilised, by being the channel along whichmuch of the Eastern trade passed from India to the Nile, to avoid thedifficult navigation of the ocean. They were Jewish Arabs, who hadlittle in common with the Arabs of Yemen, but had frequent intercoursewith Abyssinia and the merchants of the Red Sea. Part of the trade ofSolomon and the Tyrians was probably to their coast. To this distant andlittle tribe the Emperor of Constantinople now sent a second pressingembassy. Julianus, the ambassador, went up the Nile from Alexandria, and then crossed the Red Sea, or Indian Sea as it was also called, toArabia. He was favourably received by the Homeritć. Arethas, the king, gave him an audience in grand barbaric state. He was standing in achariot drawn by four elephants; he wore no clothing but a cloth of goldaround his loins; his arms were laden with costly armlets and bracelets;he held a shield and two spears in his hands, and his nobles stoodaround him armed, and singing to his honour. When the ambassadordelivered the emperor's letter, Arethas kissed the seal, and then kissedJulianus himself. He accepted the gifts which Justin had sent, andpromised to move his forces northward against the Persians as requested, and also to keep the route open for the trade to Alexandria. 

Justinian, the successor of Justin in 527, settled the quarrel betweenthe two Alexandrian bishops by summoning them both to Constantinople, and then sending them into banishment. But this had no effect in healingthe divisions in the Egyptian church; and for the next half-century thetwo parties ranged themselves, in their theological or rather politicalquarrel, under the names of their former bishops, and called themselvesGaianites and Theodosians. Nor did the measures of Justinian tend tolessen the breach between Egypt and Constantinople. He appointed Paul tothe bishopric, and required the Egyptians to receive the decrees of thecouncil of Chalcedon. 

After two years Paul was displaced either by the emperor or by hisflock; and Zoilus was then seated on the episcopal throne by the helpof the imperial forces. He maintained his dangerous post for about sixyears, when the Alexandrians rose in open rebellion, overpowered thetroops, and forced him to seek safety in flight; and the Jacobite partythen turned out all the bishops who held the Greek faith. 

When Justinian heard that the Jacobites were masters of Egypt heappointed Apollinarius to the joint office of prefect and patriarch ofAlexandria, and sent him with a large force to take possession of hisbishopric. Apollinarius marched into Alexandria in full military dressat the head of his troops; but when he entered the church he laid asidehis arms, and putting on the patriarchal robes began to celebrate therites of his religion. The Alexandrians were by no means overawed by theforce with which he had entered the city; they pelted him with a showerof stones from every corner of the church, and he was forced to withdrawfrom the building in order to save his life. But three days afterwardsthe bells were rung through the city, and the people were summoned tomeet in the church on the following Sunday, to hear the emperor's letterread. When Sunday came the whole city flocked to hear and to disobeyJustinian's orders. Apollinarius began his address by threatening hishearers that, if they continued obstinate in their opinions, theirchildren should be made orphans and their widows given up to thesoldiery; and he was as before stopped with a shower of stones. But thistime he was prepared for the attack; this Christian bishop had placedhis troops in ambush round the church, and on a signal given theyrushed out on his unarmed flock, and by his orders the crowds within andwithout the church were put to rout by the sword, the soldiers wadedup to their knees in blood, and the city and whole country yielded itsobedience for the time to bishops who held the Greek faith. 

Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were appointed bythe emperor and had the authority of civil prefects, and were supportedby the power of the military prefect, are scarcely mentioned by thehistorian of the Koptic church. They were too much engaged in civilaffairs to act the part of ministers of religion. They collected theirrevenues principally in grain, and carried on a large export trade, transporting their stores to those parts of Europe where they wouldbring the best price. On one occasion we hear of a small fleet belongingto the church of Alexandria, consisting of thirteen ships of aboutthirty tons burden each, and bearing ten thousand bushels of grain, being overtaken by a storm on the coast of Italy. The princely incomeof the later patriarchs, raised from the churches of all Egypt under thename of the offerings of the pious, sometimes amounted to two thousandpounds of gold, or four hundred thousand dollars. But while theseMelchite or royalist bishops were enjoying the ecclesiastical revenues, and administering the civil affairs of the diocese and of the greatmonasteries, there was a second bishop who held the Jacobite faith, andwho, having been elected by the people according to the ancient forms ofthe Church, equally bore the title of patriarch, and administered inhis more humble path to the spiritual wants of his flock. The Jacobitebishop was always a monk. At his ordination he was declared to beelected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks, and all the people of Lower Egypt; and prayers were offered up throughthe intercession of the Mother of God, and of the glorious ApostleMark. The two churches no longer used the same prayer-book. The Melchitechurch continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read inAlexandria from time immemorial, was called the liturgy of St. Mark, altered however to declare that the Son was of the same substance withthe Father. But the Koptic church made use of the newer liturgiesby their own champions, Bishop Cyril, Basil of Cćsarć, and GregoryNazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Koptic language, andmore clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches theKoptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed fromthe teachings of the New Testament; but then the Koptic bishop alonehad any moral power to lead the minds of his flock towards piety andreligion. Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politicenough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they wouldperhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, theKoptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greaterevils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes tothe condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabicsubjects of Persia. 

The Christianity of the Egyptians was mostly superstition; and as itspread over the land it embraced the whole nation within its pale, notso much by purifying the pagan opinions as by lowering itself to theirlevel, and fitting itself to their corporeal notions of the Creator. This was in a large measure induced by the custom of using the oldtemples for Christian churches; the form of worship was in part guidedby the form of the building, and even the old traditions were engraftedon the new religion. Thus the traveller Antonius, after visiting theremarkable places in the Holy Land, came to Egypt to search for thechariots of the Egyptians who pursued Moses, petrified into rocks at thebottom of the Red Sea, and for the footsteps left in the sands by theinfant Jesus while he dwelt in Egypt with his parents. At Memphis heenquired why one of the doors in the great temple of Phtah, then usedas a church, was always closed, and he was told that it had been rudelyshut against the infant Jesus five hundred years before, and mortalstrength had never since been able to open it. 

The records of the empire declared that the first Cćsars had kept sixhundred and forty-five thousand men under arms to guard Italy, Africa, Spain, and Egypt, a number perhaps much larger than the truth; butJustinian could with difficulty maintain one hundred and fifty thousandill-disciplined troops, a force far from large enough to hold even thoseprovinces that remained to him. During the latter half of his reignthe eastern frontier of this falling empire was sorely harassed by thePersians under their king Chosroes. They overran Syria, defeated thearmy of the empire in a pitched battle, and then took Antioch. By thesedefeats the military roads were stopped; Egypt was cut off from the restof the empire and could be reached from the capital only by sea. Hencethe emperor was driven to a change in his religious policy. He gave overthe persecution of the Jacobite opinions, and even went so far in oneof his decrees as to call the body of Jesus incorruptible, as he thoughtthat these were the only means of keeping the allegiance of his subjectsor the friendship of his Arab neighbours, all of whom, as far as theywere Christians, held the Jacobite view of the Nicene creed, and deniedthe two natures of Christ. 

As the forces of Constantinople were driven back by the victoriousarmies of the Persians, the emperors had lost, among other fortresses, the capital of Arabia Nabatać, that curious rocky fastness that welldeserved the name of Petra, and which had been garrisoned by Romansfrom the reign of Trajan till that of Valens. On this loss it becamenecessary to fortify a new frontier post on the Egyptian side of theElanitic Gulf. Justinian then built the fortified monastery near MountSinai, to guard the only pass by which Egypt could be entered withoutthe help of a fleet; and when it was found to be commanded by one of thehigher points of the mountain he beheaded the engineer who built it, andremedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortresson the higher ground. This monastery was held by the Egyptians, andmaintained out of the Egyptian taxes. When the Egyptians were formerlymasters of their own country, before the Persian and Greek conquests, they were governed by a race of priests, and the temples were their onlyfortresses. 

[Illustration: 302. Jpg FORTRESS NEAR MOUNT SINAI]

The temples of Thebes were the citadels of the capital, and the templesof Elephantine guarded the frontier. So now, when the military prefectis too weak to make himself obeyed, the emperor tries to govern throughmeans of the Christian priesthood; and when it is necessary for theEgyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery andgarrisons it with monks. 

Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through theislands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands ofuneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate tothe world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought theirhighly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond theGanges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans hadformerly thought a product of Arabia. At Ceylon was a Christian church, with a priest and a deacon, frequented by the Christians from Persia, while the natives of the place were pagans. The coins there used wereRoman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so manycenturies carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was latelyturned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung upbetween the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitć of Abyssiniaon the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritć who dwelt inArabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. TheHomeritć had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indiantrade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountainsfrom India to the country of the Hexumitae. 

Immediately after these murders the Hexumitć found the trade injured, and they took up arms to keep the passage open for the merchants. Hadadtheir king crossed the Red Sea and conquered his enemies; he put todeath Damianus, the King of the Homeritse, and made a new treatywith the Emperor of Constantinople. The Hexumitć promised to becomeChristians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptise them, and to ordain their preachers; and Justinian sent John, a man of pietyand high character, the dean of the church of St. John, who returnedwith the ambassadors and became bishop of the Hexumitae. 

It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad, King of theHexumitae, which was recorded on the monument of Adule, at the foot ofthe inscription set up eight centuries earlier by Ptolemy Euergetes. Themonument is a throne of white marble. The conqueror, whose name hadbeen broken away before the inscription was copied, there boasts thathe crossed over the Red Sea and made the Arabians and Sabaaans pay himtribute. On his own continent he defeated the tribes to the north ofhim, and opened the passage from his own country to Egypt; he alsomarched eastward, and conquered the tribes on the African incense coast;and lastly, he crossed the Astaborus to the snowy mountains in whichthat branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between thatstream and the Astapus. This valuable inscription, which tells us ofsnowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a merchant ofAlexandria, who passed through Adule on his way to India. 

Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies tothese nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae, to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to theHexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent anembassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in hisobject, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram's son. Nonnosus landedat Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteendays to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; ithad gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nilebetween Egypt and Meroë. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wildelephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. Afterdelivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed theRed Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritć, a grandson of that Arethasto whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the naturaldifficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes throughwhich he had to pass, Nonnosus performed his task successfully, and onhis return home wrote a history of his embassies. 

The advantage gained to the Hexumitć by their invasion of the Homeritćwas soon lost, probably as soon as their forces were withdrawn. Thetrade through the country of the Homeritae was again stopped; and suchwas the difficulty of navigation from the incense coast of Africa to themouths of the Indus, that the loss was severely felt at Auxum. Elesbćstherefore undertook to repeat the punishment which had been beforeinflicted on his less civilised neighbours, and again to open the tradeto the merchants from the Nile. It was while he was preparing his forcesfor this invasion that Cosmas, the Alexandrian traveller, passed throughAdule; and he copied for the King of Auxum the inscription above spokenof, which recorded the victories of his predecessor over the enemies hewas himself preparing to attack. 

The invasion by Elesbćs, or Elesthćus as he is also named, wasimmediately successful. The Homeritć were conquered, their ruler wasoverthrown; and, to secure their future obedience, the conquerorset over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king. Esimaphćus was chosen for that post; and his first duty was to converthis new subjects to Christianity. Political reasons as well as religiouszeal would urge him to this undertaking, to make the conquered bear thebadge of the conqueror. For this purpose he engaged the assistance ofGregentius, a bishop, who was to employ his learning and eloquence inthe cause. Accordingly, in the palace of Threlletum, in the presence oftheir new king, a public dispute was held between the Christian bishopand Herban, a learned Jew. Gregentius has left us an account of thecontroversy, in which he was wholly successful, being helped, perhaps, by the threats and promises of the king. The arguments used were notquite the same as they would be now. The bishop explained the Trinity asthe Holy Spirit proceeding from the Mind or Father, and resting onthe Word or Son, which was then the orthodox view of this mysteriousdoctrine. On the other hand, the Jew quoted the Old Testament to showthat the Lord their God was one Lord. It is related that suddenly theJews present were struck blind. Their sight, however, was restored tothem on the bishop's praying for them; and they were then all therebyconverted and baptised on the spot. The king stood godfather to Herban, and rewarded him with a high office under his government. 

[Illustration: 307. Jpg PYRAMID OF MEDUM]

Esimaphasus did not long remain King of the Homeritć. A rebellionsoon broke out against him, and he was deposed. Elesbaas, King of Auxum, again sent an army to recall the Homeritć to their obedience, but thistime the army joined in the revolt; and Elesbć then made peace withthe enemy, in hopes of thus gaining the advantages which he was unableto grasp by force of arms. From a Greek inscription on a monument atAuxum we learn the name of Ćizanas, another king of that country, whoalso called himself, either truly or boastfully, king of the oppositecoast. He set up the monument to record his victories over the Bougoto, a people who dwelt between Auxum and Egypt, and he styles himself theinvincible Mars, king of kings, King of the Hexumito, of the Ethiopians, of the Saboans, and of the Homerito. These kings of the Hexumitoornamented the city of Auxum with several beautiful and lofty obelisks, each made of a single block of granite like those in Egypt. 

Egypt in its mismanaged state seemed to be of little value to the empiresave as a means of enriching the prefect and the tax-gatherers; ityielded very little tribute to Constantinople beyond the supply ofgrain, and that by no means regularly. To remedy these abuses Justinianmade a new law for the government of the province, with a view ofbringing about a thorough reform. By this edict the districts ofMenelaites and Mareotis, to the west of Alexandria, were separated fromthe rest of Egypt, and they were given to the prefect of Libya, whoseseat of government was at Parotonium, because his province was too poorto pay the troops required to guard it. The several governments of UpperEgypt, of Lower Egypt, of Alexandria, and of the troops were then givento one prefect. The two cohorts, the Augustalian and the Ducal, intowhich the two Boman legions had gradually dwindled, were henceforth tobe united under the name of the Augustalian Cohort, which was to containsix hundred men, who were to secure the obedience and put down anyrebellion of the Egyptian and barbarian soldiers. The somewhat highpay and privileges of this favoured troop were to be increased; and, tosecure its loyalty and to keep out Egyptians, nobody was to be admittedinto it till his fitness had been inquired into by the emperor'sexaminers. The first duty of the cohort was to collect the supply ofgrain for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships; and asfor the supply which was promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrateswere to collect it at their own risk, and by means of their own cohort. The grain for Constantinople was required to be in that city before theend of August, or within four months after the harvest, and the supplyfor Alexandria not more than a month later. The prefect was madeanswerable for the full collection, and whatever was wanting of thatquantity was to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rateof one solidus for three artabo of grain, or about three dollars forfifteen bushels; while in order to help the collection, the export ofgrain from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except insmall quantities. The grain required for Alexandria and Constantinople, to be distributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eighthundred thousand artabo, or four millions of bushels, and the costof collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about threehundred thousand dollars. The prefect was ordered to assist thecollectors at the head of his cohort, and if he gave credit for thetaxes which he was to collect he was to bear the loss himself. If thearchbishop interfered, to give credit and screen an unhappy Egyptian, then he was to bear the loss, and if his property was not enough theproperty of the Church was to make it good; but if any other bishop gavecredit, not only was his property to bear the loss, but he was himselfto be deposed from his bishopric; and lastly, if any riot or rebellionshould arise to cause the loss of the Egyptian tribute, the tribunesof the Augustalian Cohort were to be punished with forfeiture of allproperty, and the cohort was to be removed to a station beyond theDanube. 

Such was the new law which Justinian, the great Roman lawgiver, proposedfor the future government of Egypt. The Egyptians were treated asslaves, whose duty was to raise grain for the use of their masters atConstantinople, and their taskmasters at Alexandria. They did not evenreceive from the government the usual benefit of protection from theirenemies, and they felt bound to the emperor by no tie either of loveor interest. The imperial orders wrere very little obeyed beyond thoseplaces where the troops were encamped; the Arabs were each year pressingcloser upon the valley of the Nile, and helping the sands of the desertto defeat the labours of the disheartened husbandmen; and the Greeklanguage, which had hitherto followed and marked the route of commercefrom Alexandria to Syęnę, and to the island of Socotra, was now butseldom heard in Upper Egypt. The Alexandrians were sorely harassed byHaephasstus, a lawyer, who had risen by court favour to the chief postin the city. He made monopolies in his own favour of all the necessariesof life, and secured his ill-gotten gains by ready loans of part ofit to Justinian. His zeal for the emperor was at the cost of theAlexandrians, and to save the public granaries he lessened the supplyof grain which the citizens looked for as a right. The city was sinkingfast; and the citizens could ill bear this loss, for its population, though lessened, was still too large for the fallen state of Egypt. 

The grain of the merchants was shipped from Alexandria to the chiefports of Europe, between Constantinople in the east and Cornwall in thewest. Britain had been left by the Romans, as too remote for them tohold in their weakened condition; and the native Britons were thenstruggling against their Saxon invaders, as in a distant corner of theworld, beyond the knowledge of the historian. But to that remote countrythe Alexandrian merchants sailed every year with grain to purchase tin, enlightening the natives, while they only meant to enrich themselves. Under the most favourable circumstances they sometimes performed thevoyage in twenty days. The wheat was sold in Cornwall at the price of abushel for a piece of silver, perhaps worth about twenty cents, or forthe same weight of tin, as the tin and the silver were nearly of equalworth. This was the longest of the ancient voyages, being longer thanthat from the Red Sea to the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean; andit had been regularly performed for at least eight centuries withoutever teaching the British to venture so far from their native shores. 

The suffering and riotous citizens made Alexandria a very unpleasantplace of abode for the prefect and magistrates. They therefore builtpalaces and baths for their own use, at the public cost, at Taposiris, about a day's journey to the west of the city, at a spot yet markedby the remains of thirty-six marble columns, and a lofty tower, onceperhaps a lighthouse. At the same time it became necessary to fortifythe public granaries against the rebellious mob. The grain was broughtfrom the Nile by barges on a canal to the village of Chaereum, andthence to a part of Alexandria named Phialć, or _The Basins_, where thepublic granaries stood. In all riots and rebellions this place had beena natural point of attack; and often had the starving mob brokenopen these buildings, and seized the grain that was on its way toConstantinople. But Justinian surrounded them with a strong wallagainst such attacks for the future, and at the same time he rebuilt theaqueduct that had been destroyed in one of the sieges of the city. 

In civil suits at law an appeal had always been allowed from the prefectof the province to the emperor, or rather to the prefect of the Eastat Constantinople; but as this was of course expensive, it was foundnecessary to forbid it when the sum of money in dispute was small. Justinian forbade all Egyptian appeals for sums less than ten poundsweight of gold, or about two thousand five hundred dollars; for smallersums the judgment of the prefect was to be final, lest the expenseshould swallow up the amount in dispute. 

In this reign the Alexandrians, for the first time within the recordsof history, felt the shock of an earthquake. Their naturalists had veryfairly supposed that the loose alluvial nature of the soil of the Deltawas the reason why earthquakes were unknown in Lower Egypt, and believedthat it would always save them from a misfortune which often overthrewcities in other countries. Pliny thought that Egypt had been always freefrom earthquakes. But this shock was felt by everybody in the city;and Agathias, the Byzantine historian, who, after reading law in theuniversity of Beirut, was finishing his studies at Alexandria, says thatit was strong enough to make the inhabitants all run into the street forfear the houses should fall upon them. 

The reign of Justinian is remarkable for another blow then given topaganism throughout the empire, or at least through those parts of theempire where the emperor's laws were obeyed. 

[Illustration: 313. Jpg A MODERN HOUSE IN THE DELTA AT ROSETTA]

Under Justinian the pagan schools were again and from that time forwardclosed. Isidorus the platonist and Salustius the Cynic were among thelearned men of greatest note who then withdrew from Alexandria. Isidorushad been chosen by Marinus as his successor in the platonic chair atAthens, to fill the high post of the platonic successor; but he had leftthe Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pupil of Proclus, and had removedto Alexandria. Salustius the Cynic was a Syrian, who had removed withIsidorus from Athens to Alexandria. He was virtuous in his morals thoughjocular in his manners, and as ready in his witty attacks upon thespeculative opinions of his brother philosophers as upon the vices ofthe Alexandrians. These learned men, with Damascius and others fromAthens, were kindly received by the Persians, who soon afterwards, whenthey made a treaty of peace with Justinian, generously bargained thatthese men, the last teachers of paganism, should be allowed to returnhome, and pass the rest of their days in quiet. 

After the flight of the pagan philosophers, but little learning was leftin Alexandria. One of the most remarkable men in this age of ignorancewas Cosmas, an Alexandrian merchant, who wished that the world shouldnot only be enriched but enlightened by his travels. After making manyvoyages through Ethiopia to India for the sake of gain, he gave up tradeand became a monk and an author. When he writes as a traveller about theChristian churches of India and Ceylon, and the inscriptions which hecopied at Adule in Abyssinia, everything that he tells us is valuable;but when he reasons as a monk, the case is sadly changed. He is of thedogmatical school which forbids all inquiry as heretical. He fightsthe battle which has been so often fought before and since, and is evenstill fought so resolutely, the battle of religious ignorance againstscientific knowledge. He sets the words of the Bible against the resultsof science; he denies that the world is a sphere, and quotes the OldTestament against the pagan astronomers, to show that it is a plane, covered by the firmament as by a roof, above which he places the kingdomof heaven. His work is named _Christian Topography_, and he is himselfusually called Cosmas Indicopleustes, from the country which he visited. 

During the latter years of the government of Apollinarius, such washis unpopularity as a spiritual bishop that both the rival parties, theGaianites and the Theodosians, had been building places of worship forthemselves, and the more zealous Jacobites had quietly left the churchesto Apollinarius and the Royalists. But on the death of an archdeaconthey again came to blows with the bishop; and a monk had his beard tornoff his chin by the Gaianites in the streets of Alexandria. The emperorwas obliged to interfere, and he sent the Abbot Photinus to Egypt to putdown this rebellion, and heal the quarrel in the Church. Apollinariusdied soon afterwards, and Justinian then appointed John to the jointoffice of prefect of the city and patriarch of the Church. The newarchbishop was accused of being a Manichean; but this seems to meannothing but that he was too much of the Egyptian party, and that, though he was the imperial patriarch, and not acknowledged by the Kopticchurch, yet his opinions were disliked by the Greeks. On his death, which happened in about three years, they chose Peter, who held theJacobite or Egyptian opinions, and whose name is not mentioned in theGreek lists of the patriarchs. Peter's death occurred in the same yearas that of the emperor. 

Under Justinian we again find some small traces of a national coinage inEgypt. Ever since the reign of Diocletian, the old Egyptian coinage hadbeen stopped, and the Alexandrians had used money of the same weight, and with the same Latin inscriptions, as the rest of the empire. Butunder Justinian, though the inscriptions on the coins are still Latin, they have the name of the city in Greek letters. Like the coins ofConstantinople, they have a cross, the emblem of Christianity; but whilethe other coins of the empire have the Greek numeral letters, E, I, K, A, or M, to denote the value, meaning 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40, the coinsof Alexandria have the letters 1 B for 12, showing that they were on adifferent system of weights from those of Constantinople. On these thehead of the emperor is in profile. But later in his reign the style waschanged, the coins were made larger, and the head of the emperor had afront face. On these larger coins the numeral letters are [A r] for 33. We thus learn that the Alexandrians at this time paid and receivedmoney rather by weight than by tale, and avoided all depreciation of thecurrency. As the early coins marked 12 had become lighter by wear, thosewhich were meant to be of about three times their value were marked 33. 

During the period from 566 to 602 Justin II. Reigned twelve years, Tiberius reigned four years, and Mauricius, his son-in-law, twenty; andunder these sovereigns the empire gained a little rest from its enemiesby a rebellion among the Persians, which at last overthrew their kingChosroes. He fled to Mauricius for help, and was by him restored to histhrone, after which the two kingdoms remained at peace to the end of hisreign. 

[Illustration: 316. Jpg COINS OF JUSTINIAN]

The Emperor Mauricius was murdered by Phocas, who, in 602, succeededhim on the throne of Constantinople. No sooner did the news of his deathreach Persia than Chosroes, the son of Hormuz, who had married Maria, the daughter of Mauricius, declared the treaty with the Romans at anend, and moved his forces against the new emperor, the murderer of hisfather-in-law. During the whole of his reign Constantinople was kept ina state of alarm and almost of siege by the Persians; and the crimes andmisfortunes of Phocas alike prepared his subjects for a revolt. In theseventh year Alexandria rebelled in favour of the young Heraclius, sonof the late prefect of Cyrene; and the patriarch of Egypt was slainin the struggle. Soon afterwards Heraclius entered the port ofConstantinople with his fleet, and Phocas was put to death after anunfortunate reign of eight years, in which he had lost every province ofthe empire. 

During the first three years of the reign of Heraclius, Theodoras wasBishop of Alexandria; but upon his death the wishes of the Alexandriansso strongly pointed to John, the son of the prefect of Cyprus, thatthe emperor, yielding to their request, appointed him to the bishopric. Alexandria was not a place in which a good man could enjoy the pleasuresof power without feeling the weight of its duties. It was then sufferingunder all those evils which usually befall the capital of a sinkingstate. It had lost much of its trade, and its poorer citizens no longerreceived a free supply of grain. The unsettled state of the countrywas starving the larger cities, and the population of Alexandria wassuffering from want of employment. The civil magistrates had removedtheir palace to a distance. But the new bishop seemed formed for theseunfortunate times, and, though appointed by the emperor, he was in everyrespect worthy of the free choice of the citizens. He was foremost inevery work of benevolence and charity. The five years of his governmentwere spent in lightening the sufferings of the people, and he gained thetruly Christian name of John the Almsgiver. Beside his private acts ofkindness he established throughout the city hospitals for the sick andalmshouses for the poor and for strangers, and as many as seven lying-inhospitals for poor women. John was not less active in outrooting allthat he thought heresy. 

The first years of the reign of Heraclius are chiefly marked by thesuccesses of the Persians. While Chosroes, their king, was himselfattacking Constantinople, one general was besieging Jerusalem and asecond overrunning Lower Egypt. Crowds fled before the invading armyto Alexandria as a place of safety, and the famine increased as theprovince of the prefect grew narrower and the population more crowded. To add to the distress the Nile rose to a less height than usual; theseasons seemed to assist the enemy in the destruction of Egypt. Thepatriarch John, who had been sending money, grain, and Egyptian workmento assist in the pious work of rebuilding the church of Jerusalem whichthe Persians had destroyed, immediately found all his means needed, andfar from enough, for the poor of Alexandria. On his appointment to thebishopric he found in its treasury eight thousand pounds of gold; hehad in the course of five years received ten thousand more from theofferings of the pious, as his princely ecclesiastical revenue wasnamed; but this large sum of four million dollars had all been spentin deeds of generosity or charity, and the bishop had no resource butborrowing to relieve the misery with which he was surrounded. In thefifth year the unbelievers were masters of Jerusalem, and in the eighththey entered Alexandria, and soon held all the Delta; and in thatyear the grain which had hitherto been given to the citizens ofConstantinople was sold to them at a small price, and before the end ofthe year the supply from Egypt was wholly stopped. 

When the Persians entered Egypt, the patrician Nicetas, having noforces with which he could withstand their advance, and knowing that nosuccour was to be looked for from Constantinople, and finding that theAlexandrians were unwilling to support him, fled with the patriarch Johnthe Almsgiver to Cyprus, and left the province to the enemy. As Johndenied that the Son of God had suffered on the cross, his opinions wouldseem not to have been very unlike those of the Egyptians; but as he wasappointed to the bishopric by the emperor, though at the request of thepeople, he is not counted among the patriarchs of the Koptic church;and one of the first acts of the Persians was to appoint Benjamin, aJacobite priest, who already performed the spiritual office of Bishop ofAlexandria, to the public exercise of that duty, and to the enjoyment ofthe civil dignity and revenues. 

The troops with which Chosroes conquered and held Egypt were no doubt inpart Syrians and Arabs, people with whom the fellahs or labouring classof Egyptians were closely allied in blood and feelings. Hence arose thereadiness with which the whole country yielded when the Roman forceswere defeated. But hence also arose the weakness of the Persians, andtheir speedy loss of this conquest when the Arabs rebelled. Their rule, however, in Egypt was not quite unmarked in the history of these darkages. 

At this time Thomas, a Syrian bishop, came to Alexandria to correct theSyriac version of the New Testament, which had been made about a centurybefore by Philoxenus. He compared the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles withthe Greek manuscripts in the monastery of St. Anthony in the capital;and we still possess the fruits of his learned labour, in which healtered the ancient text to make it agree with the newer Alexandrianmanuscripts. From his copy the Philoxenian version is now printed. ASyriac manuscript of the New Testament written by Alexandrian penmenin the sixth year of Heraclius, is now to be seen in the library of theAugustan friars in Rome. At the same time another Syrian scholar, Paulof Tela, in Mesopotamia, was busy in the Alexandrian monastery ofSt. Zacchćus in translating the Old Testament into Syriac, from theSeptuagint Greek; and he closes his labours with begging the reader topray for the soul of his friend Thomas. Such was now the reputation ofthe Alexandrian edition of the Bible, that these scholars preferred itboth to the original Hebrew of the Old and to the earlier manuscriptsof the New Testament. Among other works of this time were the medicalwritings of Aaron the physician of Alexandria, formerly written inSyriac, and afterwards much valued by the Arabs. The Syrian monks innumbers settled in the monastery of Mount Nitria; and in that secludedspot there remained a colony of these monks for several centuries, kept up by the occasional arrival of newcomers from the churches on theeastern side of the Euphrates. 

For ten years the Egyptians were governed by the Persians, and hada patriarch of their own religion and of their own choice; and thebuilding of the Persian palace in Alexandria proves how quietly theylived under their new masters. But Heraclius was not idle under hismisfortunes. The Persians had been weakened by the great revolt of theArabs, who had formed their chief strength on the side of Constantinopleand Egypt; and Heraclius, leading his forces bravely against Chosroes, drove him back from Syria and became in his turn the invader, and hethen recovered Egypt. The Jacobite patriarch Benjamin fled with thePersians; and Heraclius appointed George to the bishopric, which wasdeclared to have been empty since John the Almsgiver fled to Cyprus. 

The revolt of the Arabs, which overthrew the power of the Persians intheir western provinces and for a time restored Egypt to Constantinople, was the foundation of the mighty empire of the caliphs; and the Hegira, or flight of Muhammed, from which the Arabic historians count theirlunar years, took place in 622, the twelfth year of Heraclius. Thevigour of the Arab arms rapidly broke the Persian yoke, and the Moslemsthen overran every province in the neighbourhood. This was soon feltby the Romans, who found the Arabs, even in the third year of theirfreedom, a more formidable enemy than the Persians whom they hadoverthrown; and, after a short struggle of only two years, Heracliuswas forced to pay a tribute to the Moslems for their forbearance innot conquering Egypt. For eight years he was willing to purchase aninglorious peace by paying tribute to the caliph; but when his treasurefailed him and the payment was discontinued, the Arabs marched againstthe nearest provinces of the empire, offering to the inhabitants theirchoice of either paying tribute or receiving the Muhammedan religion;and they then began on their western frontier that rapid career ofconquest which they had already begun on the eastern frontier againsttheir late masters, the Persians. 

[Illustration: 322. Jpg TAILPIECE]

CHAPTER III. --EGYPT DURING THE MUHAMMEDAN PERIOD

_The Rise of Muhammedanism: The Arabic Conquest of Egypt: The Ommayadand Abbasid Dynasties. _

The course of history now follows the somewhat uneventful periodwhich introduced Arabian rule into the valley of the Nile. It is onlynecessary to remind the reader of the striking incidents in the life ofMuhammed. He was born at Mecca, in Arabia, in July, 571, and spent hisearliest years in the desert. At the age of twelve he travelled with acaravan to Syria, and probably on this occasion first came into contactwith the Jews and Christians. After a few youthful adventures, hispoetic and religious feelings were awakened by study. He gave himselfup to profound meditation upon both the Jewish and Christian ideals, andsubsequently beholding the archangel Gabriel in a vision, he proclaimedhimself as a prophet of God. After preaching his doctrine for threeyears, and gaining a few converts (the first of whom was his wife, Khadija), the people of Mecca rose against him and he was forced toflee from the city in 614. New visions and subsequent conversions ofinfluential Arabs strengthened his cause, especially in Medina, whitherMuhammed was forced to flee a second time from Mecca in 622, this secondflight being known as the Hegira, from which dates the Muhammedan era. In the next year, at Medina, he built his first mosque and marriedAyesha, and in 624 was compelled to defend his pretensions by an appealto arms. He was at first successful, and thereupon appointed Friday asa day of public worship, and, being embittered against the Jews, orderedthat the attitude of prayer should no longer be towards Jerusalem, buttowards his birthplace, Mecca. In 625 the Muhammedans were defeated bythe Meccans, but one tribe after another submitted to him, and after aseries of victories Muhammed prepared, in 629, for further conquestsin Syria, but he died in 632 before they could be accomplished. Hissuccessors were known as caliphs, but from the very first his disciplesquarrelled about the leadership, some affirming the rights of Ali, who had married Muhammed's daughter, Fatima, and others supportingthe claims of Abu Bekr, his father-in-law. There was also a religiousquarrel concerning certain oral traditions relating to the Koran, orthe Muhammedan sacred scriptures. Those who accepted the tradition wereknown as Sunnites, and those who rejected it as Shiites, the latterbeing the supporters of Ali, both sects, however, being known as Moslemsor Islamites. Omar, a Sunnite, obtained the leadership in 634, andproceeded to carry out the prophet's ambitious schemes of conquest. He subdued successively Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia, and in 639directed operations against Egypt. The general in charge of thisexpedition was Amr, who led four thousand men against Pelusium, whichsurrendered after a siege of thirty days. This easy victory was crownedby the capture of Alexandria. Amr entered the city on December 22, 640, and he seems to have been surprised at his own success. He immediatelywrote to the caliph a letter in which he says:

"I have conquered the town of the West, and I cannot recount all itcontains within its walls. It contains four thousand baths and twelvethousand venders of green vegetables, four thousand Jews who paytribute, and four thousand musicians and mountebanks. "

Amr was anxious to conciliate and gain the affection of the new subjectshe had added to the caliph's empire, and during his short stay inAlexandria received them with kindness and personally heard and attendedto their demands. It is commonly believed that in this period theAlexandrian Library was dismantled; but, as we have already seen, thebooks had been destroyed by the zeal of contending Christians. The storythat attributes the destruction of this world-famous institution tothe Arabian conquerors is so much a part of history, and has been sogenerally accepted as correct, that the traditional version should begiven here. 

Among the inhabitants of Alexandria whom Amr had so well received, saysthe monkish chronicler, was one John the Grammarian, a learnedGreek, disciple of the Jacobite sect, who had been imprisoned by itspersecutors. Since his disgrace, he had given himself up entirely tostudy, and was one of the most assiduous readers in the famous library. With the change of masters he believed the rich treasure would bespeedily dispersed, and he wished to obtain a portion of it himself. So, profiting by the special kindness Amr had shown him, and the pleasure heappeared to take in his conversation, he ventured to ask for the gift ofseveral of the philosophic books whose removal would put an end to hislearned researches. 

At first Amr granted this request without hesitation, but in hisgratitude John the Grammarian expatiated so unwisely on the extremerarity of the manuscripts and their inestimable value, that Amr, onreflection, feared he had overstepped his power in granting the learnedman's request. "I will refer the matter to the caliph, " he said, and thereupon wrote immediately to Omar and asked the caliph forhis commands concerning the disposition of the whole of the preciouscontents of the library. 

The caliph's answer came quickly. "If, " he wrote, "the books containonly what is in the book of God (the Koran), it is enough for us, andthese books are useless. If they contain anything contrary to the holybook, they are pernicious. In any case, burn them. "

[Illustration: 327. Jpg COIN OF OMAR]

Amr wished to organise his new government, and, having left a sufficientgarrison in Alexandria, he gave orders to the rest of his army to leavethe camp in the town and to occupy the interior of Egypt. "Where shallwe pitch our new camp?" the soldiers asked each other, and the answercame from all parts, "Round the general's tent. " The army, in fact, did camp on the banks of the Nile, in the vicinity of the modern Cairo, where Amr had ordered his tent to be left; and round this tent, whichhad become the centre of reunion, the soldiers built temporary hutswhich were soon changed into solid, permanent habitations. Spacioushouses were built for the leaders, and palaces for the generals, andthis collection of buildings soon became an important military town, with strongly marked Muhammedan characteristics. It was called Fostât(tent) in memory of the event, otherwise unimportant, which was theorigin of its creation. Amr determined to make his new town the capitalof Egypt; whilst still preserving the name of Fostât, he added that ofMisr, --a title always borne by the capital of Egypt, and which Memphishad hitherto preserved in spite of the rivalry of Alexandria. 

Fostât was then surrounded by fortifications, and Amr took up hisresidence there, forming various establishments and giving himself upentirely to the organisation of the vast province whose government thecaliph had entrusted to him. The personal tax, which was the only one, had been determined in a fixed manner by the treaty of submission hehad concluded with the Kopts; and an unimportant ground rent on landedproperty was added in favour of the holy towns of Mecca and Medina, aswell as to defray some expenses of local administration. 

[Illustration: 329. Jpg OLD CAIRO (FOSTAT)]

Egypt was entirely divided into provincial districts, all of whichhad their own governor and administrators taken from among the Koptsthemselves. The lands which had belonged to the imperial government ofConstantinople, and those of the Greeks who had abandoned Egypt or beenkilled in the war against the Mussulmans, were either declared to be theproperty of the new government or given out again as fiefs or rewardsto the chief officers of the army. All these lands were leased to theKoptic farmers, and the respective rights of the new proprietorsor tenant farmers and of the peasant proprietors were determined bydecisive and invariable rules. Thus the agricultural population enjoyedunder the Mussulmans a security and ease which replaced the tyrannicalannoyances and arbitrary exactions of the Christian agents of thetreasury of Constantinople; for, in fact, little by little, there haddisappeared under these Greek agents the sound principles of the oldadministration that had been established by the wise kings of ancientEgypt, and which the Ptolemies had scrupulously preserved, as did alsothe first governors under the Cćsars. 

After all these improvements in the internal administration, thegovernor turned his attention to the question of justice, which untilthat moment had been subject to the decision of financial agents, orof the soldiers of the Greek government. Amr now created permanent andregular tribunals composed of honourable, independent, and enlightenedmen, who enjoyed public respect and esteem. To Amr dates back the firstof those _divans_, chosen from the élite of the population, as suretiesof the fairness of the _cadis_, which received appeals from firstjudgments to confirm them, or, in the case of wrongful decisions, toalter them. The decrees of the Arab judges had force only for thoseMussulmans who formed a part of the occupying army. Whenever a Kopticinhabitant was a party in an action, the Koptic authorities had theright to intervene, and the parties were judged by their equals in raceand religion. 

One striking act of justice succeeded in winning for Amr the hearts ofall. Despite the terror inspired by the religious persecutions whichHeraclius had carried on with so much energy, one man, the Kopticpatriarch Benjamin, had bravely kept his faith intact. He belongedto the Jacobite sect and abandoned none of its dogmas, and in theirintolerance the all-powerful Melchites did not hesitate to choose him astheir chief victim. Benjamin was dispossessed of his patriarchal throne, his liberty and life were threatened, and he only succeeded in savingboth by taking flight. He lived thus forgotten in the various refugesthat the desert monasteries afforded him, while Heraclius replaced himby an ardent supporter of the opinions favoured at court. The whole ofEgypt was then divided into two churches separated from each other by animplacable hatred. At the head of the Melchites was the new patriarch, who was followed by a few priests and a small number of partisans whowere more attached to him by fear than by faith. The Jacobites, on theother hand, comprised the immense majority of the population, who lookedupon the patriarch as an intruder chosen by the emperor. The churchstill acknowledged as its real head Benjamin, the patriarch who had beenfor thirteen years a wanderer, and whose return was ardently desired. This wish found public expression as soon as the downfall of theimperial power in Egypt permitted its free manifestation. Amr listenedto the supplications that were addressed to him, and, turning out theusurper in his turn, recalled Benjamin from his long exile and replacedhim on the patriarchal throne. 

But even here Amr's protection of the Koptic religion did not end. He opened the door of his Mussulman town, and allowed them to livein Fostât and to build churches there in the midst of the Mussulmansoldiers, even when Islamism was still without a temple in the city, ora consecrated place worthy of the religion of the conquerors. 

Amr at length resolved to build in his new capital a magnificent mosquein imitation of the one at Mecca. Designs were speedily drawn up, thelocation of the new temple being, according to Arab authors, that of anancient pyre consecrated by the Persians, and which had been in ruinssince the time of the Ptolemies. 

[Illustration: 333. Jpg A MODERN KOPT]

The monuments of Memphis had often been pillaged by Greek and Romanemperors, and now they were once again despoiled to furnish the mosqueof Amr with the beautiful colonnades of marble and porphyry which adornthe walls, and on which, the Arab historians assure us, the whole Koranwas written in letters of gold. 

Omar died in 644, and under his successor, Othman, the Arabian conquestswere extended in Northern Africa. Othman dying in 656, the claims of Aliwere warmly supported, but not universally recognised, many looking toMuawia as an acceptable candidate for the caliphate. This was especiallythe view of the Syrian Muham-medans, and in 661 Muawia I. Was electedcaliph. He promptly transferred the capital from Medina to Damascus, andbecame in fact the founder of a dynasty known as the Ommayads, the newcaliph being a descendant of the famous Arabian chieftain Ommayad. Egyptacknowledged the new authority and remained quiet and submissive. Itfurnished Abd el-Malik, who became caliph in 685, not only with richsubsidies and abundant provisions, but also with part of his troops. 

The attachment of the Egyptians to their new masters was chiefly owingto the gentleness and wisdom of Abd el-Aziz ibn Merwan, who administeredthe country after Amr was put to death in 689. He visited all theprovinces of Egypt, and, arriving at Alexandria, he ordered thebuilding of a bridge over the canal, recognising the importance of thiscommunication between the town and country. 

Benefiting by the religious liberty that Mussulman sovereignship hadsecured them, the Kopts no longer attended to the quarrels of theirmasters. They only occupied themselves in maintaining the quietpeaceful-ness they had obtained by regular payment of their taxes, andby supplying men and commodities when occasion demanded it. During thereign of Abd el-Malik in Egypt the only remarkable event there was theelection, in 688, of the Jacobite Isaac as patriarch of Alexandria. TheKoptic clergy give him no other claim to historical remembrance thanthe formulating of a decree ordaining "that the patriarch can only beinaugurated on a Sunday. "

[Illustration: 335. Jpg MOSQUE OF AMR]

Isaac was succeeded by Simon the Syrian, whom the Koptic church looksupon as a saint, and for whom is claimed the power of reviving the dead. He nevertheless died from the effects of poison given him at the altarby some jealous rival. Arab historians relate how deputies came to Simonfrom India to ask for a bishop and some priests. The patriarch refusedto comply with this request, but Abd el-Aziz, thinking that thisrelation with India might prove politically useful, gave the order toother and more docile priests. 

The patriarchal seat was empty for three years after the death of Simon. The Kopts next appointed a patriarch named Alexander, who held theoffice for a little over twenty years. The Koptic writers who recountthe history of this patriarch mention their discontent with the governorAbd el-Aziz. The monks and other members of the clergy had grown verynumerous in Egypt and claimed to be exempt from taxation. Abd el-Aziz, whose yearly tax was fixed, thought it unjust that the poorest classesof the people should be made to pay while the priests, the bishop, and the patriarch, all possessing abundance, should be privileged byexemption. He therefore had a census made of all the monks and puton them a tax of one dinar (about $2. 53), while he exacted from thepatriarch an annual payment of three thousand dinars, or about $7, 600. This act of justice was the cause of many complaints among the clergy, but they were soon suppressed and were without result. 

[Illustration: 337a. Jpg COIN OF ABU BEKR]

After more than twenty years of a prosperous government of Egypt, Abdel-Aziz ibn Merwan died at Fostât in the year 708 (a. H. 86) at the verytime when, with many fresh plans for the future, he had completed thebuilding of a large and magnificent palace called ed-Dar el-mudahaba(the golden house), and a quarter of the town called Suk el-hammam (thepigeon market). The Caliph Abd el-Malik felt deeply the loss of thisbrother, whose qualities he highly appreciated and whom he had appointedas his successor. 

He now named as his heir to the caliphate Walid, his eldest son, andreplaced Abd el-Aziz in the government of Egypt with his second son, Abd Allah ibn Abd el-Malik. The Kopts hoped to obtain from the newgovernor the repeal of the act that exacted yearly tribute from theclergy, but Abd Allah did not think it fair to grant this unjustdiscrimination against the poorer classes of the Egyptians. Those monkswho have written the history of the patriarchs have therefore paintedAbd Allah in even blacker colours than they did his predecessor. Forthe rest, Abd Allah only held the reins of government in Egypt until thedeath of his father, which occurred a few months later. 

[Illustration: 337b. Jpg COIN OF OTHMAN]

Suleiman succeeded his brother Walid I. The new caliph vigorously putinto execution all the plans his brother had formed for the propagationof the religion of the Prophet. In the first year of his reign heconquered Tabaristan and Georgia, and sent his brother Maslama to layfresh siege to Constantinople. On his accession to the throne Suleimanplaced the government of Egypt in the hands of Assama ibn Yazid, withthe title of agent-general of finances. 

The Koptic clerical historians, according to their usual habit, portraythis governor as still worse than his predecessors, but in this casethe Mussulman authorities are in agreement in accusing him of the mostiniquitous extortions and most barbarous massacres. The gravest reproachthey bring against him is that, calling all the monks together, he toldthem that not only did he intend to maintain the old regulations of Abdel-Aziz, by which they had to pay an annual tax of one dinar ($2. 53), but also that they would be obliged to receive yearly from his agents aniron ring bearing their name and the date of the financial transaction, for which ring they were to make personal contribution. He forcedthe wearing of this ring continually, and the hand found without thisstrange form of receipt was to be cut off. Several monks who endeavouredto evade this strict order were pitilessly mutilated, while a number ofthem, rebelling against the payment of the tax, retired into convents, thinking they could safely defraud the treasury. Assama, however, senthis soldiers to search these retreats, and all the monks found withoutrings were beheaded or put to death by the bastinado. 

[Illustration: 338. Jpg COIN OF MALIK]

Careful about all that related to the Egyptian revenues, Assamacommanded the keeping up of the various Nilometers, which still servedto regulate the assessment of the ground tax. In the year 718 he learnedthat the Nilometer established at Helwan, a little below Fostât, hadfallen in, and hastened to report the fact to the caliph. By the ordersof this prince the ruined Nilometer was abandoned, and a new one builtat the meridional point of the island now called Rhodha, just betweenFostât and Gizeh. 

[Illustration: 339. Jpg CITADEL OF CAIRO (FOSTAT). ]

But of all the financial transactions of Assama, the one that vexed mostthe inhabitants of Egypt, and which brought down on him the most violentand implacable hatred, was the ordinance by which all ascending ordescending the Nile were obliged to provide themselves with a passportbearing a tax. This exorbitant claim was carried out with an abusiveand arbitrary sternness. A poor widow, the Oriental writers say, wastravelling up the Nile with her son, having with her a correct passport, the payment of which had taken nearly all she possessed. The young man, while stretched along the boat to drink of the river's water, was seizedby a crocodile and swallowed, together with the passport he carriedin his breast. The treasury officers insisted that the wretched widowshould take a fresh one; and to obtain payment for it she sold all shehad, even to the very clothes she wore. Such intolerable exactionsand excesses ended by thoroughly rousing the indignant Egyptians. Themalcontents assembled, and a general revolt would have been the resultbut for the news of the death of the Caliph Suleiman (717), which gavebirth to the hope that justice might be obtained from his successor. 

The next caliph was Omar II. , a grandson of Merwan I. , who had beennominated as his successor by Suleiman. In his reign the Muhammedanswere repulsed from Constantinople, and the political movement beganwhich finally established the Abbasid dynasty at Baghdad. Omar dyingin the year 720, Yazid II. , a son of Abd el-Malik, succeeded to thecaliphate, and reigned for four years, history being for the most partsilent as to the general condition of Egypt under these two caliphs. It is recorded that in the year 720, one of Yazid's brothers, by nameMuhammed ibn Abd el-Malik, ruled over Egypt. The Kopts complained of hisrule, and declared that during the whole reign of Yazid ibn Abd el-Malikthe Christians were persecuted, crosses overthrown, and churchesdestroyed. 

[Illustration: 341. Jpg A CROCODILE USED AS A TALISMAN]

Yazid was succeeded, in 724 A. D. , by his brother Hisham, surnamedAbu'l-Walid, the fourth son of Abd el-Malik to occupy the throne ofIslam, who, having been appointed by his brother as his successor, tookpossession of the throne on the very day of his death. Muhammed wasreplaced in Egypt by his cousin, Hassan ibn Yusuf, who only held officefor three years, resigning voluntarily in the year 730 a. D. , or 108 ofthe Hegira. The Caliph Hisham replaced him by Hafs ibn Walid, who wasdeposed a year later, and in the year 109 of the Hegira the caliphappointed in his place Abd el-Malik ibn Rifa, who had already governedEgypt during the caliphate of Walid I. Hisham made many changes inthe governorship of Egypt, and amid a succession of rulers appointedHandhala to the post. He had already been governor of Egypt under YazidII. He administered the province for another six years, and, accordingto the Christian historians of the East, pursued the same course ofintolerance and tyranny that he had adopted when he governed Egypt forthe first time under Yazid. 

The Caliph Hisham enjoined Handhala to be gentle with his subjects andto treat the Christians with kindness, but far from conforming withthese wise and kindly intentions, he overwhelmed them with vexations andtyrannous acts. He doubled the taxes by a general census, subjecting notonly men but also their animals to an impost. The receipts for thenew duty had to be stamped with the impression of a lion, and everyChristian found without one of these documents was deprived of one ofhis hands. 

In the year 746 (a. H. 124), on being informed of these abuses, thecaliph deprived him of the government of Egypt, and, giving him theadministration of Mauritania, appointed as his successor Hafs ibn Walid, who, according to some accounts, had previously governed Egypt forsixteen years, and who had left pleasanter recollections behind him. Hafs, however, now only held office for a year. 

Nothing of political importance happened in Egypt under the long reignof Hisham, the only events noticed by the Christian historians beingthose which relate solely to their ecclesiastical history. The 108thyear of the Hegira saw the death of Alexander, the forty-third KopticPatriarch of Alexandria. Since the conquest of Egypt by Omar, for aperiod of about twenty-four years, the patriarchate had been in thehands of the Jacobites; all the bishops in Egypt belonged to that sect, and they had established Jacobite bishops even in Nubia, which they hadconverted to their religion. The orthodox Christians elected Kosmas astheir patriarch. At that time the heretics had taken possession of allthe churches in Egypt, and the patriarch only retained that of Mar-Saba, or the Holy Sabbath. Kosmas, by his solicitations, obtained fromHisham an order to his financial administrator in Egypt, Abd Allah ibnes-Sakari, to see that all the churches were returned to the sect towhich they belonged. 

After occupying the patriarchal throne for only fifteen months, Kosmas died. In the 109th year of the Hegira (a. D. 727-28) Kosmas wassucceeded by the patriarch Theodore. He occupied the seat for elevenyears. His patriarchate was a period of peace and quiet for the churchof Alexandria, and caused a temporary cessation of the quarrels betweenthe Melchites and the Jacobites. A vacancy of six years followed hisdeath until, in the year 127 of the Hegira (749 a. D. ), Ibn Khalil waspromoted to the office of patriarch, and held his seat for twenty-threeyears. 

Walid II. Succeeded to the caliphate in the year 749. One of his firstacts was to take the government of Egypt from Hafs, in spite of thekindness of his rule, the wisdom and moderation of which had gainedfor him the affection of all the provinces which he governed. He wasreplaced by Isa ibn Abi Atta, who soon created a universal discontent, as his administrative measures were oppressive. 

In the year 750 the Ommayads were supplanted by the Abbasids, whotransferred the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. The first Abbasidcaliph was Abu'l-Abbas, who claimed descent from Abbas, the uncle ofMuhammed. The caliph Merwan II. , the last of the Ommayads, in his flightfrom his enemies came to Egypt and sent troops from Fostât to holdAlexandria. He was now pursued to his death by the Abbasid general Salihibn Ali, who took possession of Postât for the new dynasty in 750. Thechange from the Ommayad to the Abbasid caliphs was effected with littledifficulty, and Egypt continued to be a province of the caliphate andwas ruled by governors who were mostly Arabs or members of the Abbasidfamily. 

Abu'l-Abbas, after being inaugurated, began his rule by recalling allthe provincial governors, whom he replaced by his kinsmen and partisans. He entrusted the government of Egypt to his paternal uncle, Salih ibnAli, who had obtained the province for him. Salih, however, did not rulein person, but was represented by Abu Aun Abd el-Malik ibn Yazid, whomhe appointed vice-governor. The duties of patriarch of Alexandria werethen performed by Michel, commonly called Khail by the Kopts. Thispatriarch was of the Jacobite sect and the forty-fifth successor of St. Mark: he held the office about three years. He in turn was succeeded bythe patriarch Myna, a native of Semennud (the ancient Sebennytus). 

In the year 754 Abu'l-Abbas died at the age of thirty-two, afterreigning four years, eight months, and twenty-six days, the Arabianhistorians being always very precise in recording the duration of thereign of the caliphs. He was the first of the caliphs to appoint avizier, the Ommayad caliphs employing only secretaries during theiradministration. The successor of Abu'l-Abbas was his brother AbuJafar, surnamed El-Man-sur. Three years after his accession he took thegovernment of Egypt from his uncle, and in less than seven years Egyptpassed successively through the hands of six different governors. Thesechanges were instigated by the mistrustful disposition of the caliph, who saw in every man a traitor and conspirator, dismissing on theslightest provocation his most devoted adherents, some of whom were evenput to death by his orders. His last choice, Yazid ibn Hatim, governedEgypt for eight years, and the caliph bestowed the title of Princeof Egypt (Emir Misri) upon him, which title was also borne by hissuccessors. 

These continual changes in the government of Egypt had not furtheredthe prosperity and well-being of the inhabitants. Each ruler, certainof speedy dismissal, busied himself with his personal affairs to thedetriment of the country, anxious only to amass by every possiblemeans sufficient money to compensate him for his inevitable deposition. Moreover, each governor increased the taxation levied by hispredecessor. Such was the greed and rapacity of these governors thatevery industry was continually subjected to increased taxation; theworking bricklayer, the vender of vegetables, the camel-driver, thegravedigger, all callings, even that of mendicant, were taxed, and thelower classes were reduced to eating dog's flesh and human remains. Atthe moment when Egypt, unable to support such oppression longer, was onthe verge of insurrection, the welcome tidings of the death of El-Mansurarrived. 

Muhammed el-Mahdi, son of El-Mansur, succeeded his father and was thethird caliph of the house of Abbas. He was at Baghdad when his fatherexpired near Mecca, but, despite his absence, was immediately proclaimedcaliph. El-Mahdi betrayed in his deeds that same fickleness whichhad signalised the caliphate of his father, El-Mansur. He appointeda different governor of Egypt nearly every year. These many changesresulted probably from the political views held by the caliph, orperhaps he already perceived the tendency shown by each of his provincesto separate itself from the centre of Islamism. Perhaps also he alreadyforesaw those divisions which destroyed the empire about half a centurylater. Thus his prudence sought, in allowing but a short period of powerto each governor, to prevent their strengthening themselves sufficientlyin their provinces to become independent. 

Egypt remained calm and subdued under these constant changes ofgovernment. Syria and the neighbouring provinces followed suit, and theCaliph el-Mahdi profited by this peaceful state of things to attack theEmperor of the Greeks. His second son, Harun, undertook the continuationof this war, and the young prince displayed such talent and braverythat he gained brilliant victories, and returned to Baghdad after havingcaptured several cities from the Greeks, overthrown their generals, and forced Constantinople to pay an annual tribute of seventy thousanddinars (about $180, 000). The Caliph el-Mahdi rewarded Harun by solemnlynaming him the future successor of his eldest son, Musa el-Hadi, whom hehad just definitely declared his heir to the throne. Shortly after thisdecision, el-Mahdi died, in the year 785, having reigned ten years andtwo months. 

Musa el-Hadi, his eldest son, succeeded him, being the fourth caliphof the race of Abbasids. On ascending the throne, he withdrew thegovernment of Egypt from Fadl ibn Salih, appointing in his place Ali ibnSuleiman, also a descendant of Abbas. El-Hadi plotted against the claimsof Harun to the succession, but he died before his plans had matured, and Harun became caliph in the year 786. 

The reign of Harun er-Rashid was the most brilliant epoch of the empireof Islamism, and his glory penetrated from the far East to the westerncountries of Europe, where his name is still celebrated. 

[Illustration: 347. Jpg DOOR OF AN ARABIAN HOUSE. ]

Harun seems to have been as reluctant as his father and grandfather werebefore him to leave a province too long in the hands of a governor, andhe even surpassed them in his precautionary measures. In the year 171of the Hegira, he recalled Ali ibn Suleiman, and gave the government ofEgypt to Musa ibn Isa, a descendant of the Caliph Ali. 

Thereafter the governors were changed on an average of once a year, and their financial duties were separately administered. Musa ibn Isa, however, held the appointment of Governor of Egypt on three separateoccasions, and of his third period Said ibn Batrik tells the followinganecdote:

"While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt, " he relates, "hesent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as agift. The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violentlyin love with her. Suddenly, however, the favourite was laid prostrateby a malady which the court physicians could neither cure nor evendiagnose. The girl insisted that, being Egyptian, only an Egyptianphysician could cure her. The caliph instantly ordered his brother tosend post haste the most skilful doctor in Egypt. This proved to be theMelchite patriarch, for in those days Koptic priests practised medicineand cultivated other sciences. The patriarch set out for Baghdad, restored the favourite to health, and in reward received from thecaliph an imperial diploma, which restored to the orthodox Christiansor Melchites all those privileges of which they had been deprived by theJacobite heretics since their union with the conqueror Amr ibn el-Asi. "

If this story be true, one cannot but perceive the plot skilfully laidand carried out by the powerful clergy, to whom any means, even thesending of a concubine to the caliph, seemed legitimate to procure therestoration of their supremacy and the humiliation of their adversaries. 

[Illustration: 349. Jpg A VEILED BEAUTY]

The year 204 of the Hegira was memorable for the death of the ImanMuhammed ibn Idris, surnamed esh-Shafi. This celebrated doctor was thefounder of one of the four orthodox sects which recognised the Moslemreligion, and whose followers take the name "Shafites" from their chief. The Iman esh-Shafi died at Fostât when but forty-three years old. Hisdogmas are more especially followed in Egypt, where his sect is stillrepresented and presided over by one of the four Imans at the head ofthe famous Mosque Jam el-Azar, or mosque of flowers. 

The distance of Egypt from Baghdad, the caliph's capital, was the causeof the neglect of many of his commands, and upon more than one occasionwas his authority slighted. Thus it happened that for more than fiveyears the government of Egypt was in the hands of Abd Allah ibn es-Sari, whom the soldiers elected, but whose appointment was never confirmed bythe caliph. Abd Allah ibn Tahir, the son of the successful general, had, in the year a. H. 210, settled at Belbeys in Egypt. With a large numberof partisans, he assumed almost regal privileges. In 211 a. H. Heproceeded to Fostât and there dismissed Abd Allah ibn es-Sari andreplaced him by Ayad ibn Ibrahim, whom he also dismissed the followingyear, giving the governorship to Isa ibn Yazid, surnamed el-Jalud. Inthe year 213, the Caliph el-Mamun ordered Abd Allah ibn Tahir to retire, and confided the government of Egypt and also that of Syria to his ownbrother el-Mutasim, third son of the Caliph Ilarun er-Rashid. 

In the year 218 of the Hegira (a. D. 833), Muhammed el-Mutasim succeededhis brother el-Mamun. He was the first caliph who brought the name ofGod into his surname. On ascending the throne, he assumed the titleel-Mutasim b'lllah, that is "strengthened by God, " and his example wasfollowed by all his successors. 

From the commencement of this reign, el-Mutasim b'lllah was forced todefend himself against insurgents and aspirants to the caliphate. Inthe year 219 of the Hegira, Kindi, the Governor of Egypt, died, and thecaliph named his son, Mudhaffar ibn Kindi, as his successor. Mudhaffaribn Kindi, dying the following year, was succeeded by Musa, son ofAbu'l-Abbas, surnamed esh-Shirbani by some writers, esh-Shami (theSyrian) by others. In the year 224 Musa was recalled and his placetaken by Malik, surnamed by some el-Hindi (the Indian), by others ibnel-Kindi. A year later the caliph dismissed Malik, and sent Ashas toEgypt in his place. This was the last governor appointed by el-Mutasimb'lllah, for the caliph died of fever in the year 227 of the Hegira. 

Oriental historians have noticed that the numeral eight affected thiscaliph in a singular manner. Between himself and Abbas, the head of hishouse, there were eight generations; he was born in the month of Shaban, the eighth month of the Mussulman year; he was the eighth Abbasidiancaliph, and ascended the throne in the year 218, aged thirty-eight yearsand eight months; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days, and died in the forty-eighth year of his age, leaving eight sons andeight daughters. He fought in eight battles, and on his death eightmillion dinars and eighty thousand dirhems were discovered in hisprivate treasury. It is this singular coincidence which gave him thename Mutamma. 

[Illustration: 351. Jpg TOMB OF A SHEIKH]

But a sadder fatality exercised its influence over the Caliph Mutamma, for from him dates the beginning of the decadence of his dynasty, andto him its first cause may be ascribed. The fact is, Mutasim wasuneducated, without ability, and lacking in moral principles; he wasunable even to write. Endowed with remarkable strength and musclesof iron, he was able, so Arab historians relate, to lift and carryexceptionally heavy weights; to this strength was added indomitablecourage and love of warfare, fine weapons, horses, and warriors. Thistaste led him, even before the death of his father, to organise a pickedcorps, for which he selected the finest, handsomest, and strongest ofthe young Turkish slaves taken in war, or sent as tribute to the caliph. 

The vast nation, sometimes called Turks, sometimes Tatars, wasdistributed, according to all Oriental geographers, over all thecountries of Northern Asia, from the river Jihun or Oxus to Kathay orChina. That the Turks and the Arabs, both bent upon a persistentpolicy of conquest, should come into more or less hostile contactwas inevitable. The struggle was a long one, and during the numerousengagements many prisoners were taken on both sides. Those Turks whofell into the hands of the Arabs were sent to the different provincesof their domain, where they became slaves of the chief emirs and of thecaliphs themselves, where, finding favour in the eyes of the caliphs, they were soon transferred to their personal retinue. The distrust whichthe caliphs felt for the emirs of their court, whose claims they wereonly able to appease by making vassals of them, caused them to committhe grave error of confiding in these alien slaves, who, barbaricand illiterate as they were, now living in the midst of princes, soonacquired a knowledge of Muhammedanism, the sciences, and, above all, thepolitics of the country. 

It was not long before they were able to fill the most responsiblepositions, and, given their freedom by the caliphs, were employed by thegovernment according to their abilities. Not only were they given thechief positions at court, but the government of the principal provinceswas entrusted to them. They repaid these favours later by the blackestingratitude, especially when the formation of a Turkish guard broughta number of their own countrymen under their influence. Ever anxious toaugment his own body-guard, and finding the number of Turks he annuallyreceived as tribute insufficient, el-Mutasim purchased a great manyfor the purpose of training them for that particular service. But theseyouths speedily abused the confidence shown them by the caliph, who, perceiving that their insolence was daily growing more insupportable tothe inhabitants of Baghdad, resolved to leave the capital, rebuild theancient city of Samarrah and again make it the seat of the empire. 

At this time the captain of the caliph's guard was one Tulun, afreedman, whom fate would seem to have reduced to servitude for thepurpose of showing that a slave might found a dynasty destined to ruleover Egypt and Syria. Tulun belonged to the Toghus-ghur, one of thetwenty-four tribes composing the population of Turkestan. His familydwelt near Lake Lop, in Little Bukhara. He was taken prisoner in battleby Nuh ibn Assad es-Samami, then in command at Bukhara. This prince, who was subject to the Caliph Mamun, paid an annual tribute of slaves, Turkish horses, and other valuables. In the year 815 a. D. , Tulun wasamong the slaves sent as tribute to the caliph, who, attracted by hisbearing, enrolled him in his own body-guard. 

Before long he had so gained the caliph's confidence that Mamun gave himhis freedom and the command of the guard, at the same time appointinghim Emir es-sitri, prince of the veil or curtain. This post, which was amark of the greatest esteem, comprised the charge of the personal safetyof the sovereign, by continually keeping watch without the curtain orrich drapery which hung before the private apartments, and admitting noone without a special order. Tulun spent twenty years at the court ofel-Mamun and of his successor, Mutasim, and became the father of severalchildren, one of which, Ahmed ibn Tulun, * known later as Abu l'Abbas, was the founder of the Tulunide dynasty in Egypt and Syria. 

 * Ahmed ibn Tulun was, according to some historians, born at Baghdad in the year 220 of the Hegira, in the third year of the reign of el-Mutasim b' Illah. Others claim Samarrah as his birthplace. His mother, a young Turkish slave, was named Kassimeh, or some say, Hachimeh. Some historians have denied that Ahmed was the son of Tulun, one of them, Suyuti, in a manuscript belonging to Marcel, quotes Abu Asakar in confirmation of this assertion, who pretends he was told by an old Egyptian that Ahmed was the son of a Turk named Mahdi and of Kassimeh, the slave of Tulun. Suyuti adds that Tulun adopted the child on account of his good qualities, but this statement is unsupported and seems contradicted by subsequent events. 

Before Ahmed ibn Tulun had reached an age to take part in politicalaffairs, two caliphs succeeded Mutasim b'lllah. The first was his sonHarun abu Jafar, who, upon his accession, assumed the surname el-Wathikb'lllah (trusting in God). Wathik carried on the traditional policy ofcontinually changing the governors of the provinces, and, dying in theyear 847, was succeeded by his half-brother Mutawakkil. In the followingyear the new caliph confided the government of Egypt to Anbasa, butdismissed him a few months later in favour of his own son el-Muntasiribn el-Mutawakkil, whom two years afterwards the caliph named as hissuccessor to the throne. El-Muntasir was to be immediately succeeded byhis two younger brothers, el-Mutazz b'lllah and el-Mujib b'lllah. 

Mutawakkil then proceeded to divide his kingdom, giving Africa andall his Eastern possessions, from the frontier of Egypt to the easternboundary of his states, to his eldest son. His second son, el-Mutazz, received Khorassan, Tabaristan, Persia, Armenia, and Aderbaijan as hisportion, and to el-Mujib, his third son, he gave Damascus, Hemessa, thebasin of the Jordan, and Palestine. 

These measures, by which the caliph hoped to satisfy the ambitionsof his sons, did not have the desired effect. Despite the immenseconcessions he had received, el-Muntasir, anxious to commence his ruleover the whole of the Islam empire, secretly conspired against hisfather and meditated taking his life. Finding that in Egypt he was toofar from the scene of his intrigues, he deputed the government of thatcountry to Yazid ibn Abd Allah, and returned to his father's court toencourage the malcontents and weave fresh plots. His evil schemes soonbegan to bear fruit, for, in the year 244 of the Hegira, his agentsstirred up the Turkish soldiery at Damascus to insurrection on theground of deferred payment. Whereupon the caliph paid them the arrears, and left Damascus to retire to Samarrah. 

[Illustration: 356. Jpg THE MOSQUE OF IBN TULUN, CAIRO. ]

At length, in the year 861 (a. H. 247), Mutawakkil discovered thescarcely concealed treachery of his son, and reproved him publicly. Some days later the caliph was murdered at night by the captain of hisTurkish Guard, and Muntasir, who is commonly supposed to haveinstigated the crime, was immediately proclaimed as his successor in thegovernment. 

The most important event in Egypt during the reign of Mutawakkil was thefalling in of the Nilometer at Fostât. This disaster, was the result ofan earthquake of considerable violence, which was felt throughoutSyria. The caliph ordered the reconstruction of the Nilometer, which wasaccomplished the same year, and the Nilometer of the Island of Rhodhawas then called Magaz el-jedid, or the New Nilometer. 

After reigning scarcely a year, Muntasir himself succumbed, mostprobably to poison, and his cousin Ahmed was elected to the caliphate bythe Turkish soldiery, with the title of Mustain. During his brief reignthe Moslems were defeated by the Byzantines at Awasia, and in 866 theTurkish soldiers revolted against the caliph and elected his brotherMutazz in his place. Mustain was, however, allowed to retire to Ma'szit. He was permitted to take an attendant with him, and his choice fell uponAhmed, the son of Tulun, already mentioned. Ahmed served the dethronedprince truly, and had no part in the subsequent murder of this unhappyman. 

In the meantime the mother of Ahmed had married the influential GeneralBaik-Bey, and when the latter was given the rulership of Egypt in theyear 868 a. D. (254 a. H. ), he sent his stepson as proxy, according tothe custom of the time. On the 23d Ramadhan 254 (15th September, 868), Ahmed ibn Tulun arrived at Fostât. He encountered great difficulties, and discovered that at Alexandria and also in other districts there wereindependent emirs, who were not directly under the ruler. Soon after hisarrival an insurrection broke out in Upper Egypt. Ahmed showed himselfborn to the place; he crushed the uprising and also suppressed a secondrevolt that was threatening. By degrees he cleverly undermined the powerof his colleagues, and made his own position in Fostât secure. 

When Muaffik was nominated commander-in-chief of the West by his brotherMustamid (elected caliph in 870), Ahmed managed to secure the good-willof the vizier of the caliph and thus to obtain the command in Egypt. He kept the regent in Baghdad in a state of complacency, occasionallysending him tribute; but, as wars with the Sinds began to trouble thecaliphate, he did not think it worth while to trouble himself furtherabout Baghdad, and decided to keep his money for himself. Muaffikwas not the man to stand this, and prepared to attack Ahmed, but thedisastrous results of the last war had not yet passed away. When thearmy intended for Egypt was camping in Mesopotamia, there was not enoughmoney to pay the troops, and the undertaking had to be deferred. 

Ahmed had a free hand over the enormous produce of Egypt. The compulsorylabour of the industrious Kopt brought in a yearly income of fourmillion gold dinars ($10, 120, 000), and yet these people felt themselvesbetter off than formerly on account of the greater order and peace thatexisted under his energetic government. It cannot be denied that Ahmedin the course of years became much more extravagant and luxurious, but he used his large means in some measure for the betterment of thecountry. He gave large sums not only for the erection of palaces andbarracks, but also for hospitals and educational advancement. To thisday is to be seen the mosque of Ibn Tulun, built by him in the newerpart of Fostât, --a district which was later annexed to the town ofCairo. 

[Illustration: 359. Jpg SANCTUARY OF THE MOSQUE OF IBN TULUN]

The numerous wars in which Muaffik was involved gave Ahmed theopportunity of extending his power beyond the boundaries of Egypt. Theruler of the caliphate of Damascus died in the year 897, and soon afterAhmed marched into Syria, and, with the exception of Antioch, whichhad to be taken by force, the whole country fell into the hands ofthe mighty emir. The commanders of isolated districts did not feelthemselves encouraged to offer any resistance, for they had no feelingof faithfulness for the government, nor had they any hope of assistancefrom Baghdad. 

The triumphant march of Tulun was hindered in the year 879 by bad newsfrom Fostât. One of his sons, El-Abbas, had quarrelled with his father, and had marched to Barca, with troops which he led afterwards todisaster, and had taken with him money to the amount of 1, 000, 000 dinars($2, 530, 000). He thought himself safe from his enraged father there, but the latter quickly returned to Fostât, and the news of the amplepreparations which he was hastening for the subjection of his rebelson caused El-Abbas to place himself still farther out of his reach. Hesuddenly attacked the state of Ibrahim II. (the Aghlabite), and causedserious trouble with his soldiery in the eastern districts of Tripolis. The neighbouring Berbers gave Ibrahim their assistance, and Abbas wasdefeated and retreated to Barca in 880. He remained there some timeuntil an army sent by Ahmed annihilated his troops and he himself wastaken prisoner. 

The rebellion of his son was the turning-point in Ahmed's career: Lulu, his general in Mesopotamia, deserted him for Muaffik, and an endeavourto conquer Mecca was frustrated by the unexpected resistance of numbersof newly arrived pilgrims. Ahmed now caused the report to be spread thatMuaffik was a conspirator against the representatives of the Prophet, thus depriving him of his dignity. 

[Illustration: 361. Jpg THE MOSQUE OF IBN TULUN]

The emir had also besieged in vain at Tarsus his former generalJasman, who had become presumptuous on account of his victory over theByzantines. He would eventually have made up for this defeat, butan illness overcame him while encamped before Tarsus. He obeyed hisdoctor's orders as little as the caliph's, and his malady, aggravatedby improper diet, caused his death in his fifty-first year at Fostât in884, whither he had withdrawn. He left seventeen sons, --enough to assurea dynasty of a hundred years. Khumarawaih, who inherited the kingdom, had not many of his father's characteristics. He was a good-natured, pleasure-loving young man, barely twenty years old, and with a markeddistaste for war. He did, however, notwithstanding his peace-lovingproclivities, fight the caliph's forces near Damascus, and defeat them, never having seen a battle before. The emir fled from the scene in apanic. 

When Muatadid became caliph in 892, he offered his daughter Katr en-Neda(Dewdrop) in marriage to the caliph's son. The Arabic historians relatethat Khuma-rawaih was fearful of assassination, and had his couchguarded by a trained lion, but he was finally put to death (a. H. 282), according to some accounts by women, and according to others by hiseunuchs. The death of Khu-marawaih was the virtual downfall of theTulunid dynasty. 

The officers of the army then at first made Gaish Abu'l-Asakir (one ofKhumarawaih's sons) emir; but, when this fourteen-year-old boy seemedincapable of anything but stupid jokes, they put his brother Harun onthe throne. Every commanding officer, however, did as he liked. Rajib, the commander of the army of defence, declared himself on the side ofthe caliph, and the Syrian emirs gave themselves up to his general, Muhammed ibn Suleiman, without any resistance. At the close of the yearhe was before Fostât, and at the same time a fleet appeared at Damietta. A quarrel arose amongst Harun's body-guard, in which the unlucky princewas killed (904). His uncle Shaiban, a worthy son of Ahmed, made a laststand, but was obliged to give in to the superior force. 

Muhammed behaved with his Turks in the most outrageous way in Fostât:the plundering was unrestrained, and that part of Fostât which Ahmedhad built was almost entirely destroyed. The adherents of the reigningfamily were grossly maltreated, many of them killed, and others sent toBaghdad. The governors changed in rapid succession; disorder, want, andwretchedness existed throughout the entire country west of the caliph'skingdom. At this period the provinces of the empire had already falleninto the hands of the numerous minor princes, who, presuming on thecaliph's weakness, had declared themselves independent sovereigns. Nothing remained to the Abbasids but Baghdad, a few neighbouringprovinces, and Egypt. 

Under the Caliphs Muktadir, Kahir, and Rahdi, Egypt had an almostconstant change of governors. One of them, Abu Bekr Muhammed, ultimatelybecame the founder of a new dynasty, --the Ikshidite, --destined to ruleover Egypt and Syria. Abu Bekr Muhammed was the son of Takadj, thengovernor of Damascus. His father had been chief emir at the court of theTulunid princes, and, after the fall of this dynasty, remained in Egypt, where he occupied a post under the government. Intrigues, however, drovehim to Syria, whither his partisans followed him. He first entered thearmy of the caliph, and, capturing the town of Ramleh, was given thegovernorship of Damascus as reward. His son Abu Bekr Muhammed did not goto Egypt to fulfil the duties with which he had been invested, and onlyretained the title for one month. He was subsequently reinstated, and this time repaired thither. But Ahmed ibn Kighlagh, who was thengoverning Egypt, refused to retire and was only defeated after severalengagements, when he and his followers proceeded to Barca in Africa. 

In the year 328 of the Hegira, the caliph Radhi bestowed the honour ofEmir el-Umara (Prince of Princes) upon Muhammed ibn Raik. This officer, discontented with the government of Palestine, led an army into Syriaand expelled Badra, the lieutenant of Muhammed el-Ikshid. The latterleft Egypt at once, entrusting the government of that country to hisbrother, el-Hassan, and brought his forces to Faramah, where the troopsof Muhammed ibn Raik were already stationed. Thanks to the mediationof several emirs, matters were concluded peacefully, and Muhammedel-Ikhshid returned to Fostât. Upon his arrival, however, he learnt thatMuhammed ibn Raik had again left Damascus and was preparing to marchupon Egypt. 

This intelligence obliged Muhammed el-Ikshid to return at once to Syria. He encountered the advance-guard of the enemy and promptly led theattack; his right wing was scattered, but the centre, commandedby himself, remained firm, and Muhammed ibn Raik retreated towardsDamascus. Husain, brother of el-Ikshid, lost his life in the combat. Despite the enmity between them, Muhammed ibn Raik sent his own sonto el-Ikshid, charged with messages of condolence for the loss he hadsustained and bearing proposals of peace. Muhammed el-Ikshid receivedthe son of his enemy with much respect, and invested him with a mantleof honour. He then consented to cede Damascus, in consideration of anannual tribute of 140, 000 pieces of gold, and the restoration of allthat portion of Palestine between Ramleh and the frontiers of Egypt. After having concluded all the arrangements relative to this treaty, Muhammed el-Ikshid returned to Egypt in the year 329 of the Hegira. 

[Illustration: 365. Jpg COIN OF ABU BEKR. ]

The Caliph Rahdi died in the same year (940 a. D. ). He was thirtyyears of age, and had reigned six years, ten months, and ten days. Hisbrother, Abu Ishak Ibrahim, succeeded him, and was henceforth known bythe name of Muttaki. A year later Muhammed el-Ikshid was acknowledgedPrince of Egypt by the new caliph. Shortly after, he learnt that hisformer enemy, Muhammed ibn Raik had been killed by the Hamdanites;he thereupon seized the opportunity to recover those provinces he hadgranted him, and, marching into Syria, captured Damascus and all thepossessions he had relinquished upon the conclusion of their treaty. Feeling now that his position was secure, he caused his son Kasim to berecognised by the emirs and the entire army as his successor. 

The year 332 of the Hegira was a disastrous one in Baghdad. The officeof Prince of Princes, bestowed according to the caprice of the Turkishofficers upon any of their leaders, was now become a position superioreven to that of caliph. It was held at this time by a Turk named Turun, who so oppressed the caliph Muttaki that the latter was forced to flyfrom his capital and retire to Mosul. He then besought help from theHamdanites, who immediately rallied their forces and, accompanied by thecaliph, marched upon Baghdad. They were, however, completely routed byTurun and obliged V to retreat. Muttaki showed his gratitude to the twoprinces by conferring a mantle of honour upon them, which, for sometime past, had been the only gift that Islam sovereigns had been able tobestow. 

Leaving Mosul, the caliph proceeded to Rakkah, and there was invited byTurun to return to Baghdad. Seeing that his adherents, the Hamdanites, were greatly discouraged by their recent reverses, Muttaki resolved toaccept the offer. When Muhammed el-Ikshid heard this, he hastened toRakkah and offered the caliph refuge in Egypt. But the caliph refused, agreeing, however, as Muhammed el-Ikshid promised to supply him with thenecessary funds, not to return to Baghdad and place himself in the powerof Turun. In spite of his promise, when Turun, fearing that the caliphhad found powerful friends, came to him, and, casting himself beforeMuttaki, paid him all the homage due to an Islam sovereign, he allowedhimself to be overruled, and accompanied Turun back to Baghdad. Hardlyhad the unfortunate caliph set foot in his capital when he was murdered, after reigning four years and eleven months. Turun now proclaimedAbd Allah Abu'l Kasim, son of Muttaki, caliph, who, after a short anduneventful reign, was succeeded by his uncle, Abu'l Kasim el-Fadhl, who was the last of the Abbasid caliphs whom Egypt acknowledged assuzerains. 

After Muttaki's return to Baghdad, Muhammed el-Ikshid remained for sometime in Damascus, and then set out for Egypt. His return was signalisedby the war with Saif ed-Dowlah, Prince of Hamdan. The campaign was ofvarying success: After a disastrous battle, in which the Egyptians lostfour thousand men as prisoners, Muhammed el-Ikshid left Egypt witha numerous army and arrived at Maarrah. Saif ed-Dowlah determined todecide the war with one desperate effort, and first secured thesafety of his treasure, his baggage, and his harem by sending them toMesopotamia. Then he marched upon el-Ikshid, who had taken his positionat Kinesrin. 

Muhammed divided his forces into two corps, placing in the vanguard allthose who carried lances; he himself was in the rear with ten thousandpicked men. Saif ed-Dowlah charged the vanguard and routed it, but therear stood firm; this resistance saved el-Ikshid from total defeat. Thetwo armies separated after a somewhat indecisive engagement, andSaif ed-Dowlah, who could claim no advantage save the capture of hisadversaries' baggage, went on to Maubej, where he destroyed the bridge, and, entering Mesopotamia, proceeded towards Rakkah; but Muhammedel-Ikshid was already stationed there, and the hostile armies, separatedonly by the Euphrates, faced one another for several days. 

Negotiations were then opened, and peace was concluded. The conditionswere that Hemessa, Aleppo, and Mesopotamia should belong to Saifed-Dowlah, and all the country from Hemessa to the frontiers of Egyptremain in the possession of Muhammed el-Ikshid. A trench was dug betweenDjouchna and Lebouah, in those places where there were no naturalboundaries, to mark the separation of the two states. To ratify thissolemn peace, Saif ed-Dowlah married the daughter of Muhammed el-Ikshid;then each prince returned to his own province. The treaty was, however, almost immediately set aside by the Hamdanites, and el-Ikshid, forced toretrace his steps, defeated them in several engagements and seized thetown of Aleppo. 

Thus we see that the year 334 of the Hegira (a. D. 946) was fullof important events, to which was soon added the death of Muhammedel-Ikshid. He died at Damascus, in the last month of the year(Dhu'l-Kada), aged sixty, and had reigned eleven years, three months, and two days. He was buried at Jerusalem. Muhammed el-Ikshid was a manpossessing many excellent talents, and chiefly renowned as an admirablesoldier. Brave, without being rash, quick to calculate his chances, hewas able always to seize the advantage. On the other hand, however, he was so distrustful and timid in the privacy of his palace that heorganised a guard of eight thousand armed slaves, one thousand ofwhom kept constant watch. He never spent the entire night in the sameapartment or tent, and no one was ever permitted to know the place wherehe slept. 

We are told that this prince could muster four hundred thousand men;although historians do not definitely specify the boundaries of hisempire, which, of course, varied from time to time, we may neverthelessbelieve that his kingdom, as that of his predecessors, the Tulunites, extended over Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as far as theEuphrates, and even included a large portion of Arabia. The Christiansof the East charge him with supporting his immense army at theirexpense, and persecuting and taxing them to such an extent that theywere forced to sell many possessions belonging to their Church beforethey could pay the required sums. 

But, if we may credit a contemporary historian more worthy of belief, these expenses were covered by the treasure Muhammed el-Ikshid himselfdiscovered. In fact, el-Massudi, who died at Cairo in the year 346 ofthe Hegira, relates that el-Ikshid, knowing much treasure to be buriedthere, was greatly interested in the excavation of the subterraneoustombs of the ancient Egyptian kings. "The prince" he adds, "wasfortunate enough to come across a portion of those tombs, consisting ofvast rooms magnificently decorated. There he found marvellously wroughtfigures of old and young men, women, and children, having eyes ofprecious stones and faces of gold and silver. "

Muhammed el-Ikshid was succeeded by his son, Abu'l Kasim Muhammed, surnamed Ungur. The prince being only an infant, Kafur, the favouriteminister of the late caliph, was appointed regent. This Kafur was ablack slave purchased by el-Ikshid for the trifling sum of twenty piecesof gold. He was intelligent, zealous, and faithful, and soon won theconfidence of his master. Nobility of race in the East appertains onlyto the descendants of the Prophet, but merit, which may be found inprince and subject alike, often secures the highest positions, and eventhe throne itself for those of the humblest origin. Such was the fateof Kafur. He showed taste for the sciences, and encouraged scholars;he loaded the poets with benefits, and they sang his praises withoutmeasure so long as he continued his favours, but satirised him withequal vigour as soon as his munificence diminished. Invested withsupreme authority, Kafur served the young prince with a devotion andfidelity worthy of the highest praise. His first step was to dismiss AbuBekr Muhammed, the receiver of the Egyptian tributes, against whom hehad received well-merited complaints. In his place he appointed a nativeof Mardin, also called Muhammed, of whose honesty and kindliness he waswell aware. He then took his pupil to Egypt, which country they reachedin the month of Safar in the year 335 of the Hegira. 

Saif ed-Dowlah, hearing of the death of Muhammed el-Ikshid, and thedeparture of Ungur, deemed this a favourable opportunity to despoil hisbrother-in-law; he therefore marched upon Damascus, which he captured;but the faithful Kafur promptly arrived upon the scene with a powerfularmy, and, routing Saif ed-Dowlah, who had advanced as far as Ramleh, drove him back to Rakkah, and relieved Damascus. The remainder of thereign of Ungur passed peacefully, thanks to the watchfulness and wisegovernment of Kafur. 

In the year 345 of the Hegira, the King of Nubia invaded the Egyptianterritories, advancing to Syene, which he pillaged and laid waste. Kafur at once despatched his forces overland and along the Nile, andsimultaneously ordered a detachment embarking from the Red Sea toproceed along the southern coast, attack the enemy in the rear andcompletely cut off their retreat. The Nubians, thus surprised on allsides, were defeated and forced to retreat, leaving the fortress of Rym, now known as Ibrim, and situated fifty miles from Syęnę, in the hands ofthe Egyptians. No other events of note took place during the lifetime ofUngur, who, having reigned fourteen years and ten days, died in the year349 of the Hegira, leaving his brother Ali, surnamed Abu'l-Hasan, as hissuccessor. 

[Illustration: 371. Jpg MOSQUE TOMB NEAR SYENE]

The reign of Abu'l-Hasan Ali, the second son of Muhammed el-Ikshid, lasted but five years. His name, as that of his brother Ungur (AbuHurr), is but little known in history. Kafur was also regent during thereign of Abu'l-Hasan Ali. 

In the year 352 of the Hegira, Egypt was stricken with a disastrousfamine. The rise of the Nile, which the previous year had been butfifteen cubits, was this year even less, and suddenly the waters fellwithout irrigating the country. Egypt and the dependent provinces werethus afflicted for nine consecutive years. During this time, whilstthe people were agitated by fear for the future, a rupture took placebetween Abu'l-Hasan Ali and Kafur. This internal disturbance was soonfollowed by war; and in the year 354 the Greeks of Constantinople, led by the Emperor Nicepherous Phocas, advanced into Syria. They tookAleppo, then in the possession of the Hamdanites, and, encounteringSaif ed-Dowlah, overthrew him also. The governor of Damascus, Dalimel-Ukazly, and ten thousand men came to the rescue of the Hamdanites, but Phocas beat a retreat on hearing of his approach. 

Abu'l-Hasan Ali died in the year 355 of the Hegira. The regentKafur then ascended the throne, assuming the surname el-Ikshid. Heacknowledged the paramount authority of the Abbasid caliph, Muti, andthat potentate recognised his supreme power in the kingdom of Egypt. During the reign of Kafur, which only lasted two years and four months, the greater portion of Said was seized by the Fatimites, alreadymasters of Fayum and Alexandria, and the conquerors were on the point ofencroaching still farther, when Kafur died in the year 357 a. H. Ahmed, surnamed Abu'l Fawaris, the son of Abu'l-Hasan Ali, and consequentlygrandson of Mu-hammed el-Ikshid, succeeded Kafur. 

The prince was only eleven years old, and therefore incapable ofproperly controlling Egypt, Syria, and his other domains. Husain, oneof his relatives, invaded Syria, but in his turn driven back by theKarmates, returned to Egypt and strove to depose Ahmed. These divisionsin the reigning family severed the ties which united the provinces ofthe Egyptian kingdom. To terminate the disturbances, the emirs resolvedto seek the protection of the Fatimites. The latter, anxious to securethe long-coveted prize, gladly rendered assistance, and Husain wasforced to return to Syria, where he took possession of Damascus, and theunfortunate Ahmed lost the throne of Egypt. 

With him perished the Ikshid dynasty, which, more ephemeral even thanthat of the Tulunid, flourished only thirty-four years and twenty-fourdays. 

The period upon which this history is now about to enter is of more thanusual interest, for it leads immediately to the centuries during whichthe Arabic forces came into contact with the forces of Western Europe. The town and the coast of Mauritania were then ruled by the Fatimites, a dynasty independent of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. The Fatimitesbelonged to the tribes of Koramah, who dwelt in the mountains situatednear the town of Fez in the extreme west of Africa. In the year 269 ofthe Hegira, they began to extend their sway in the western regions ofAfrica, pursuing their conquests farther east. The Fatimite caliph ObaidAllah and his son Abu'l Kasim cherished designs not only upon Egypt, but even aimed at the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate, these plansbeing so far successful as to leave the Fatimites in secure possessionof Alexandria, and more or less in power in Fayum. 

The Fatimite caliphs had lofty and pretentious claims to the allegianceof the Moslem world. They traced their descent from Fatima, a daughterof the Prophet, whom Muhammed himself regarded as one of the fourperfect women. At the age of fifteen she married Ali, of whom she wasthe only wife, and the partisans of Ali, as we have seen, disputed withOmar the right to the leadership of Islam upon the Prophet's death. Critics are not wanting who dispute the family origin of Obaid Allah, but his claim appears to have been unhesitatingly admitted by his ownimmediate followers. The Fatimite successes in the Mediterranean gavethem a substantial basis of political power, and doubtless this outwardand material success was more important to them than their claim to botha physical and mythical descent from the founder of their religion. 

Some accounts trace the descent of Obaid from Abd Allah ibn Maimunel-Kaddah, the founder of the Ismailian sect, of which the Carmathianswere a branch. The Ismailians may be best regarded as one of the severalsects of Shiites, who originally were simply the partisans of Aliagainst Omar, but by degrees they became identified as the upholders ofthe Koran against the validity of the oral tradition, and when, later, the whole of Persia espoused the cause of Ali, the Shiite beliefbecame tinged with all kinds of mysticism. The Ismailians believed, forinstance, in the coming of a Messiah, to whom they gave the name Mahdi, and who would one day appear on earth to establish the reign of justice, and revenge the wrongs done to the family of Ali. The Ismailiansregarded Obaid himself as the Mahdi, and they also believed inincarnations of the "universal soul, " which in former ages had appearedas the Hebrew Prophets, but which to the Muhammedan manifested itself asimans. The iman is properly the leader of public worship, but it is notso much an office as a seership with mystical attributes. The Muhammedanimans so far have numbered eleven, the twelfth, and greatest (El-Mahdi), being yet to come. The Ismailians also introduced mysticism into theinterpretation of the Koran, and even taught that its moral preceptswere not to be taken in a literal sense. Thus the Fatimite caliphsfounded their authority upon a combination of political power andsuperstition. 

Abu'l Kasim, who ruled at Alexandria, was succeeded in 945 by his son, El-Mansur. Under his reign the Fatimites were attacked by Abu Yazid, aBerber, who gathered around him the Sunnites, and the revolutionariessucceeded in taking the Fatimite capital Kairwan. El-Mansur, however, soon defeated Abu Yazid in a decisive battle and rebuilt a new city, Mansuria, on the site of the modern Cairo, to commemorate the event. Dying in 953, he was succeeded by Muiz ad-Din. 

Muiz came to the throne just at the time when dissensions as to thesuccession were undermining the Ikshid dynasty. Seizing the opportunityin the year 969, Muiz equipped a large and well-armed force, with aformidable body of cavalry, the whole under the command of Abu'l-HusainGohar el-Kaid, a native of Greece and a slave of his father El-Mansur. This general, on his arrival near Alexandria, received a deputation fromthe inhabitants of Fostât charged to negotiate a treaty. Their overtureswere favourably entertained, and the conquest of the country seemedprobable without bloodshed. But while the conditions were beingratified, the Ikshidites prevailed on the people to revoke their offer, and the ambassadors, on their return, were themselves compelled to seeksafety in flight. 

Gohar el-Kaid incurred no delay in pushing his troops forward. He forcedthe passage of the Nile a few miles south of El-Gizeh at the head of histroops, and the Ikshidites suffered a disastrous defeat. To the honourof the African general, it is related that the inhabitants of Fostâtwere pardoned and the city was peaceably occupied. The submission of therest of Egypt to Muiz was secured by this victory. In the year 359 a. H. Syria was also added to his domains, but shortly after was overrun bythe Carmathians. The troops of Muiz met with several reverses, Damascuswas taken, and those lawless freebooters, joined by the Ikshidites, advanced to Ain Shems. In the meanwhile, Gohar had fortified Cairo (thenew capital which he had founded immediately north of Fostât) and takenevery precaution to repel the invaders; a bloody battle was fought inthe year 361 before the city walls, without any decisive result. Later, however, Gohar obtained a victory over the enemy which proved to be adecisive one. 

Muiz subsequently removed his court to his new kingdom. In Ramadhan 362, he entered Cairo, bringing with him the bodies of his three predecessorsand vast treasure. Muiz reigned about two years in Egypt, dying in theyear 365 a. H. He is described as a warlike and ambitious prince, but, notwithstanding, he was especially distinguished for justice and wasfond of learning. He showed great favour to the Christians, especiallyto Severus, Bishop of El-Ashmunein, and the patriarch Ephrem; and underhis orders, and with his assistance, the church of the Mu'allakah, in Old Misr, was rebuilt. He executed many useful works (among othersrendering navigable the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which is stillcalled the canal of Muiz), and occupied himself in embellishing Cairo. Gohar, when he founded that city, built the great mosque named El-Azhar, the university of Egypt, which to this day is crowded with students fromall parts of the Moslem world. 

Aziz Abu-Mansur Nizar, on coming to the throne of his father, immediately despatched an expedition against the Turkish chiefEl-Eftekeen, who had taken Damascus a short time previously. Gohar againcommanded the army, and pressed the siege of that city so vigorouslythat the enemy called to their aid the Carmathians. Before this unitedarmy he was forced to retire slowly to Ascalon, where he prepared tostand a siege; but, being reduced to great straits, he purchased hisliberty with a large sum of money. On his return from this disastrouscampaign, Aziz took command in person, and, meeting the enemy at Ramleh, was victorious after a bloody battle; while El-Eftekeen, being betrayedinto his hands, was with Arab magnanimity received with honour andconfidence, and ended his days in Egypt in affluence. Aziz followed hisfather's example of liberality. It is even said that he appointed a Jewhis vizier in Syria, and a Christian to the same post in Egypt. Theseacts, however, nearly cost him his life, and a popular tumult obligedhim to disgrace both these officers. After a reign of twenty-one yearsof great internal prosperity, he died (a. H. 386) in a bath at Bilbeis, while preparing an expedition against the Greeks who were ravaginghis possessions in Syria. Aziz was distinguished for moderation andmildness, but his son and successor rendered himself notorious for veryopposite qualities. 

Hakim Abu Ali Mansur commenced his reign, according to Moslemhistorians, with much wisdom, but afterwards acquired a reputation forimpiety, cruelty, and unreasoning extravagance, by which he has beenrendered odious to posterity. He is said to have had at the same time"courage and boldness, cowardice and timorousness, a love for learningand vindictiveness towards the learned, an inclination to righteousnessand a disposition to slay the righteous. " He also arrogated to himselfdivinity, and commanded his subjects to rise at the mention of his namein the congregational prayers, an edict which was obeyed even in theholy cities, Mecca and Medina. He is most famous in connection with theDruses, a sect which he founded and which still holds him in venerationand believes in his future return to the earth. He had made himselfobnoxious to all classes of his subjects when, in the year 397 a. H. , henearly lost his throne by foreign invasion. 

[Illustration: 379. Jpg MOSQUE OF HAKIM]

Hisham, surnamed Abu-Rekweh, a descendant of the house of Ommaya inSpain, took the province of Barca with a considerable force and subduedUpper Egypt. The caliph, aware of his danger, immediately collectedhis troops from every quarter of the kingdom, and marched against theinvaders, whom, after severe fighting, he defeated and put to flight. Hisham himself was taken prisoner, paraded in Cairo with everyaggravation of cruelty, and put to death. Hakim having thus by vigorousmeasures averted this danger, Egypt continued to groan under his tyrannyuntil the year 411 a. H. , when he fell by domestic treachery. His sisterSitt el-Mulk had, in common with the rest of his subjects, incurred hisdispleasure; and, being fearful for her life, she secretly and by nightconcerted measures with the emir Saif ed-Dowlah, chief of the guard, who very readily agreed to her plans. Ten slaves, bribed by five hundreddinars each ($1, 260), having received their instructions, went forth onthe appointed day to the desert tract southward of Cairo, where Hakim, unattended, was in the habit of riding, and waylaid him near the villageof Helwan, where they put him to death. 

Within a week Hakim's son Ali had been raised to the caliphate withthe title of Dhahir, at the command of Sitt el-Mulk. As Dhahir was onlyeighteen years old, and in no way educated for the government, Sittel-Mulk took the reins of government, and was soon looked upon as theinstigator of Hakim's death. This suspicion was strengthened by thefact that his sister had the heir to the throne--who was at that timegovernor of Aleppo--murdered, and also the chief who had conspired withher in assassinating Hakim. She survived her brother for about fouryears, but the actual ruler was the Vizier Ali el-Jar jar. 

Dhahir's reign offers many points of interest. Peace and contentmentreigned in the interior, and Syria continued to be the chief point ofinterest to the Egyptian politics. Both Lulu and his son Mansur, whoreceived princely titles from Hakim, recognised the suzerainty of theFatimites. Later on a disagreement arose between Lulu's son and Dhahir. One of the former's slaves conspired against his master, and gave Aleppointo the hands of the Fatimites, whose governor maintained himself theretill 1023. In this year, however, Aleppo fell into the power of the BenuKilab, who defended the town with great success against Romanus in1030. Not till Dhahir's successor came to the throne in 1036 was Alepporeconquered by the Fatimites, but only to fall, after a few years, againinto the hands of a Kilabite, whom the caliph was obliged to acknowledgeas governor until he of his own free will exchanged the city for severalother towns in Syria; but even then the strife about the possession ofAleppo was not yet at an end. 

Mustanssir ascended the throne at the age of four years. His mother, although black and once a slave, had great influence in the choice ofthe viziers and other officials, and even when the caliph became of age, he showed very few signs of independence. His reign, which lasted sixtyyears, offers a constant alternation of success and defeat. At one timehis dominion was limited to the capital Cairo, at another time he wasrecognised as lord of Africa, Sicily, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and even ofthe Abbassid capital, Baghdad. A few days later his dominion was againon the point of being extinguished. The murder of a Turk by the negroesled to a war between the Turkish mercenaries and the blacks who formedthe caliph's body-guard. The latter were joined by many of the otherslaves, but the Turks were supported by the Ketama Berbers and some ofthe Bedouin tribes, and also the Hamdanite Nasir ed-Dowlah, who hadlong been in the Egyptian service. The blacks, although supported by thecaliph's mother, were completely defeated, and the caliph was forced toacknowledge the authority of Nasir ed-Dowlah. He thereupon threatenedto abdicate, but when he learned that his palace with all its treasureswould then be given up to plunder, he refrained from fulfilling histhreat. The power of the Hamdanites and the Turks increased withevery victory over the negroes, who finally could no longer maintainthemselves at all in Upper Egypt. The caliph was treated with contempt, and had to give up his numerous treasures, one by one, to satisfy theavarice of his troops. Even the graves of his ancestors were at lastrobbed of all they contained, and when, at last, everything had beenransacked, even his library, which was one of the largest and finest, was not spared. The best manuscripts were dispersed, some went toAfrica, others were destroyed, many were damaged or purposely mutilatedby the Sunnites, simply because they had been written by the Shiites;still others were burnt by the Turks as worthless material, and theleather bands which held them made into sandals. 

[Illustration: 383. Jpg MUSTANSSIR'S GATE AT CAIRO]

Meanwhile war between Mustanssir and Nasir ed-Dowlah continued to bewaged in Egypt and Syria, until at last the latter became master ofCairo and deprived the caliph once more completely of his independence. 

Soon after, a conspiracy with Ildeghiz, a Turkish general, at its head, was formed against Nasir ed-Dowlah, and he, together with his relationsand followers, was brutally murdered. Ildeghiz behaved in the same wayas his predecessor had-done towards the caliph, and the latter appealedto Bedr el-Jemali for help. Bedr proceeded to Acre with his best Syriantroops, landed in the neighbourhood of Damietta and proceeded towardsthe capital, which he entered without difficulty (January, 1075). He wasappointed general and first vizier, so that he now held both the highestmilitary and civil authority. 

In order to strengthen his position, he had all the commanders of thetroops and the highest officials murdered at a ball. Under his rule, peace and order were at last restored to Egypt, and the income of thestate was increased under his excellent government. 

Bedr remained at his post till his death, and his son El-Afdhal wasappointed by Mustanssir to succeed him. Upon the death of Mustanssir(1094), his successor El-Mustali Abu'l Kasim retained El-Afdhal inoffice. He was afterwards murdered under Emir (December, 1121) because, according to some, he was not a zealous enough Shiite, but, accordingto others, because the caliph wished to gain possession of the enormoustreasures of the vizier and to be absolutely independent. Emir wasalso murdered (October 7, 1130), and was succeeded by his cousin, whoascended the throne under the name of Hafiz, and appointed a son ofEl-Afdhal as vizier, who, just as his father had done, soon became thereal ruler, and did not even allow the caliph's name to be mentioned inthe prayers; whereupon he also was murdered at the caliph's instigation. After other viziers had met with a similar fate, and amongst them a sonof the caliph himself, at last Hafiz ruled alone. His son and successor, Dhafir (1149-1150), also frequently changed his viziers because theyone and all wished to obtain too much influence. The last vizier, Abbas, murdered the caliph (March-April, 1154), and placed El-Faiz, thefive-year-old son of the dead caliph, on the throne, but the child diedin his eleventh year (July, 1160). Salih, then vizier, raised Adid, adescendant of Alhagiz, to the caliphate and gave him his daughter towife, for which reason he was murdered at the desire of the harem. Hisson Adil maintained himself for a short time, and then El-Dhargham andShawir fought for the post; as the former gained the victory, Shawirfled to Syria, called Nureddin to his aid, and their army, under Shirkuhand Saladin, put an end in 1171 to the rule of the Fatimites. 

END OF VOL. XI.