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S. Rappoport - History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12)

S >> S. Rappoport >> History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12)



HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B.C. to the Present Time


By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; Member of the Ecole
Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist and
Philologist

VOL. XI.

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS, LONDON


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[Illustration: Cover]

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

Dam at Aswan


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THE ROMAN, CHRISTIAN, AND ARABIC PERIODS


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

_Augustus remodels the government of Egypt--A new calendar
introduced--Egypt surveyed--Dissension between Jews and Greeks at
Alexandria--Strabo's visit--The Egyptian religion at Rome--Wise
administration of Tiberius--The rise of the Therapeutae--Lake
Maeris destroyed--The origin of Chemistry--The fable of the
Phoenix--Christianity introduced--Fiscal reforms under Galba--Vespasian
in Egypt--Fall of Jerusalem--The Nile Canal restored--Hadrian's voyage
up the Nile--Death of Antinous--Christians and Gnostics--Astrology and
Astronomy--Roman roads in Egypt--Commerce and Sports--The Growth
of Christianity--Severus visits Egypt--The massacre of the
Alexandrians--Ammonius Saccas and the Alexandrian Platonists--The
School of Origen--Rise of Controversy--Decline of Commerce--Zenobia
in Syria--Growing importance of the Arabs--Revolt and recapture of
Alexandria--Persecution of the Christians under Diocletian--Introduction
of the Manichean heresy._

_Constantine the Great converted--Privileges of the clergy--Dogmatic
disputes--Council of Nicaea and the first Nicene Creed--Athanasian
and Arian controversies--Founding of Constantinople--Decline
of Alexandria--Imperial appointments in the Church--Religious
riots--Triumphs of Athanasius--Persecution by Bishop George of
Cappadocia--Early mission work--Development of the monastic
system--Text of the Bible--The monks and military service--Saracenic
encroachments--Theodosius overthrows Paganism--Destruction of the Great
Library--Pagan and Christian literature--Story of Hypatia--The Arabs
defeat the Romans--The Koptic New Testament--Egypt separated from
Rome--The Council of Chalcedon--Paganism restored in Upper Egypt--The
Henoticon--The writings of Hierocles--Relations with Persia--Inroads of
the Arabs--Justinian's fiscal reforms--Coinage restored--The Persians
enter Egypt. The Life of Muhammed--Amr conquers Egypt--The legend of
Omar and the Great Library--The founding of Fostat--The Christians
taxed--Muhammedan oppression in Egypt--The Ommayad and Abbasid
dynasties--Caliph Harun er-Rashid--Turkish bodyguards--Rise of the
Tulunite Dynasty--Office of Prince of Princes--Reign of Muhammed
el-Ikshid--War with Byzantium--Fatimite Caliphs--The Ismailians and
Mahdism--Reign of Mustanssir--Turkish Rapacity--End of the Fatimite
Rule._


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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 statues
of Antony, of which there were more than fifty ornamenting the various
public buildings of the city, to be broken to pieces; and it is said
he had the meanness to receive a bribe of one thousand talents from
Archibus, a friend of Cleopatra, that the queen's statues might be
left standing. It seems to have been part of his kingcraft to give the
offices of greatest trust to men of low birth, who were at the same time
well aware that they owed their employments to their seeming want of
ambition. Thus the government of Egypt, the greatest and richest of the
provinces, was given to Cornelius Gallus.

Before the fall of the republic the senate had given the command of the
provinces to members of their own body only; and therefore Augustus, not
wishing to alter the law, obtained from the senate for himself all those
governments which he meant to give to men of lower rank. By this legal
fiction, these equestrian prefects were answerable for their conduct to
nobody but the emperor on a petition, and they could not be sued at law
before the senate for their misdeeds. But he made an exception in the
case of Egypt. While on the one hand in that province he gave to the
prefect's edicts the force of law, on the other he allowed him to be
cited before the senate, though appointed by himself. The power thus
given to the senate they never ventured to use, and the prefect of Egypt
was never punished or removed but by the emperor. Under the prefect was
the chief justice of the province, who heard himself, or by deputy, all
causes except those which were reserved for the decision of the emperor
in person. These last were decided by a second judge, or in modern
language a chancellor, as they were too numerous and too trifling to be
taken to Rome. Under these judges were numerous freedmen of the emperor,
and clerks entrusted with affairs of greater and less weight. Of the
native magistrates the chief were the keeper of the records, the police
judge, the prefect of the night, and the _Exegetes_, or interpreter of
the Egyptian law, who was allowed to wear a purple robe like a Roman
magistrate. But these Egyptian magistrates were never treated as
citizens; they were barbarians, little better than slaves, and only
raised to the rank of the emperor's freedmen.

Augustus showed not a little jealousy in the rest of the laws by which
his new province was to be governed. While other conquered cities
usually had a senate or municipal form of government granted to them,
no city in Egypt was allowed that privilege, which, by teaching the
citizens the art of governing themselves and the advantages of union,
might have made them less at the mercy of their masters. He not only
gave 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 Egypt
without leave from himself; and centuries later, when the weakness of
the country had led the emperors to soften some of the other stern laws
of Augustus, this was still strictly enforced.

Among other changes then brought in by the Romans was the use of a fixed
year in all civil reckonings. The Egyptians, for all the common purposes
of life, called the day of the heliacal rising of the dogstar, about our
18th of July, their new year's day, and the husbandman marked it with
religious ceremonies as the time when the Nile began to overflow; while
for all civil purposes, and dates of kings' reigns, they used a year of
three hundred and sixty-five days, which, of course, had a movable
new year's day. But by the orders of Augustus all public deeds were
henceforth dated by the new year of three hundred and sixty-five days
and a quarter, which was named, after Julius Caesar, the Julian year. The
years from B.C. 24 were made to begin on the 29th of August, the day
on which the movable new year's day then happened to fall, and were
numbered from the year following the last of Cleopatra, as from the
first year of the reign of Augustus. But notwithstanding the many
advantages of the Julian year, which was used throughout Europe for
sixteen centuries, till its faultiness was pointed out by Pope Gregory
XIII., the Egyptian astronomers and mathematicians distrusted it from
the first, and chose to stick to their old year, in which there could
be no mistake about its length. Thus there were at the same time three
years and three new year's days in use in Egypt: one about the 18th
of July, used by the common people; one on the 29th of August, used by
order of the emperor; and one movable, used by the astronomers.

By the conquest of Egypt, Augustus was also able to extend another of
the plans of his late uncle. Julius Caesar, whose powerful mind found all
sciences within its grasp, had ordered a survey to be taken of the whole
of the Roman provinces, and the length of all the roads to be measured
for the use of the tax-gatherers and of the army; and Augustus was
now able to add Egypt to the survey. Polyclitus was employed on this
southern portion of the empire; and, after thirty-two years from its
beginning by Julius, the measurement of nearly the whole known world was
finished and reported to the senate.

At Alexandria Augustus was visited by Herod, who hastened to beg of
him those portions of his kingdom which Antony had given to Cleopatra.
Augustus received him as a friend; gave him back the territory which
Antony had taken from him, and added the province of Samaria and the
free cities on the coast. He also gave to him the body of four hundred
Gauls, who formed part of the Egyptian army and had been Cleopatra's
bodyguard. He thus removed from Alexandria the last remains of the
Gallic mercenaries, of whom the Ptolemies had usually had a troop in
their 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 other
ornaments on the sarcophagus of the Macedonian. But he would take no
pains to please either the Alexandrians or Egyptians; he despised them
both. When asked if he would not like to see the Alexandrian monarchs
lying in their mummy-cases in the same tomb, he answered: "No, I came to
see the king, not dead men," His contempt for Cleopatra and her father
made him forget the great qualities of Ptolemy Soter. So when he was
at Memphis he refused to humour the national prejudice of two thousand
years' 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 copied
Cambyses. The Egyptians always found the treatment of the sacred bull a
foretaste of what they were themselves to receive from their sovereigns.

The Greeks of Alexandria, who had for some time past very unwillingly
yielded to the Jews the right of citizenship, now urged upon Augustus
that it should no longer be granted. Augustus, however, had received
great services from the Jews, and at once refused the prayer; and he set
up in Alexandria an inscription granting to the Jews the full privileges
of Macedonians, which they claimed and had hitherto enjoyed under
the Ptolemies. They were allowed their own magistrates and courts
of justice, with the free exercise of their own religion; and soon
afterwards, when their high priest died, they were allowed as usual
to choose his successor. The Greek Jews of Alexandria were indeed very
important, both from their numbers and their learning; they spread over
Syria and Asia Minor: they had a synagogue in Jerusalem in common with
the Jews of Cyrene and Libya; and we find that one of the chief teachers
of Christianity after the apostles was Apollos, the Alexandrian, who
preached the new religion in Ephesus, in Corinth, and in Crete.

On his return to Rome, Augustus carried with him the whole of the royal
treasure; and though perhaps there might have been less gold and silver
than usual in the palace of the Ptolemies, still it was so large a sum
that when, upon the establishment of peace over all the world, the rate
of interest upon loans fell in Rome, and the price of land rose, the
change was thought to have been caused by the money from Alexandria.
At the same time were carried away the valuable jewels, furniture, and
ornaments, which had been handed down from father to son, with the
crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. These were drawn in waggons through the
streets of Rome in triumph; and with them were shown in chains to the
wondering crowd Alexander Helius and Cleopatra Selene, the children of
Cleopatra and Antony.

Augustus threatened a severe punishment to the Alexandrians in the
building of a new capital. Only four miles from the Canopic or eastern
gate of Alexandria he laid out the plan of his new city of Meopolis, on
the spot where he had routed Mark Antony's forces. Here he began
several large temples, and removed to them the public sacrifices and the
priesthood from the temples of Alexandria. But the work was carried
no farther, and soon abandoned; and the only change made by it in
Alexandria was that the temple of Serapis and the other temples were for
a time deserted.

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

Cornelius Gallus, the prefect of Egypt, seems either to have
misunderstood, or soon forgotten, the terms of his appointment. He set
up statues of himself in the cities of Egypt, and, copying the kings
of the country, he carved his name and deeds upon the pyramids. On this
Augustus recalled him, and he killed himself to avoid punishment. The
emperor's wish to check the tyranny of the prefects and tax-gatherers
was strongly marked in the case of the champion fighting-cock. The
Alexandrians bred these birds with great care, and eagerly watched their
battles in the theatre. A powerful cock, that had hitherto slain all
its rivals and always strutted over the table unconquered, had gained a
great name in the city; and this bird, Eros, a tax-gatherer, roasted
and ate. Augustus, on hearing of this insult to the people, sent for the
man, and, on his owning what he had done, ordered him to be crucified.
Three legions and nine cohorts were found force enough to keep this
great kingdom in quiet obedience to their new masters; and when
Heroopolis revolted, and afterwards when a rebellion broke out in the
Thebaid against the Roman tax-gatherers, these risings were easily
crushed. The spirit of the nation, both of the Greeks and Egyptians,
seems to have been wholly broken; and Petronius, who succeeded
Cornelius Gallus, found no difficulty in putting down a rising of the
Alexandrians.

The canals, through which the overflowing waters of the Nile were
carried to the more distant fields, were, of course, each year more or
less blocked up by the same mud which made the fields fruitful; and the
clearing of these canals was one of the greatest boons that the monarch
could bestow upon the tillers of the soil. This had often been neglected
by the less powerful and less prudent kings of Egypt, in whose reigns
the husbandman believed that Heaven in its displeasure withheld part
of the wished-for overflow; but Petronius employed the leisure of his
soldiers on this wise and benevolent work. In order better to understand
the rise of the Nile, to fix the amount of the land-tax, and more fairly
to regulate the overflow through the canals, the Nilometer on the Island
of Elephantine was at this time made.

[Illustration: 011.jpg THE NILOMETER AT ELEPHANTINE]

It was under AElius Gallus, the third prefect, that Egypt was visited by
Strabo, the most careful and judicious of all the ancient travellers. He
had come to study mathematics, astronomy, and geography in the museum,
under the successors of Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus. He
accompanied the prefect in a march to Syene (Aswan), the border town,
and he has left us a valuable account of the state of the country at
that time. Alexandria was the chief object that engaged his attention.
Its two harbours held more ships than were to be seen in any other port
in the world, and its export trade was thought greater than that of all
Italy. The docks on each side of the causeway, and the ship canal, from
the harbour of Eunostus to the Mareotic Lake, were full of bustle and
activity. The palace or citadel on the promontory of Lochias on one side
of the great harbour was as striking an object as the lighthouse on the
other. The temples and palaces covered a space of ground equal to more
than one-fourth part of the city, and the suburbs reached even beyond
the Mareotic Lake. Among the chief buildings were the Soma, which held
the bodies of Alexander and of the Ptolemies; the court of justice;
the museum of philosophy, which had been rebuilt since the burning by
Caesar's soldiers; the exchange, crowded with merchants, the temple of
Neptune, and Mark Antony's fortress, called the Timonium, on a point of
land which jutted into the harbour; the Caesarium, or new palace; and the
great temple of Serapis, which was on the western side of the city, and
was the largest and most ornamented of all these buildings. Farther off
was the beautiful gymnasium for wrestlers and boxers, with its porticoes
of a stadium in length, where the citizens used to meet in public
assembly. From the top of the temple of Pan, which rose like a
sugar-loaf in the middle of the city, and was mounted by a winding
staircase, the whole of this remarkable capital might be seen spread
out before the eye. On the east of the city was the circus, for
chariot races, and on the west lay the public gardens and pale green
palm-groves, and the Necropolis ornamenting the roadside with tombs for
miles along the seashore. Other tombs were in the catacombs underground
on the same side of the city. The banks of the Mareotic Lake were
fringed with vineyards, which bore the famed wine of the same name,
and which formed a pleasant contrast with the burning whiteness of the
desert beyond. The canal from the lake to the Nile marked its course
through 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 the
capital of the Ptolemies. Heliopolis, the ancient seat of Egyptian
learning, had never been wholly repaired since its siege by Cambyses,
and was then almost a deserted city. Its schools were empty, its
teachers silent; but the houses in which Plato and his friend Eudoxus
were said to have dwelt and studied were pointed out to the traveller,
to warm his love of knowledge and encourage him in the pursuit of
virtue. Memphis was the second city in Egypt, while Thebes and Abydos,
the former capitals, had fallen to the size and rank of villages. At
Memphis Strabo saw the bull-fights in the circus, and was allowed to
look at the bull Apis through a window of his stable. At Crocodilopolis
he saw the sacred crocodile caught on the banks of the lake and fed
with cakes and wine. Ptolemais, which was at first only an encampment of
Greek soldiers, had risen under the sovereigns to whom it owed its name
to be the largest city in the Thebaid, and scarcely less than Memphis.
It was built wholly by the Greeks, and, like Alexandria, it was under
Greek laws, while the other cities in Egypt were under Egyptian laws and
magistrates. It was situated between Panopolis and Abydos; but, while
the temples of Thebes, which were built so many centuries earlier, are
still standing in awful grandeur, scarcely a trace of this Greek city
can be found in the villages of El Menshieh and Girgeh (Cerkasoros),
which now stand on the spot. Strabo and the Roman generals did not
forget to visit the broken colossal statue of Amenhothes, near Thebes,
which sent forth its musical sounds every morning, as the sun, rising
over the Arabian hills, first shone upon its face; but this inquiring
traveller could not make up his mind whether the music came from the
statue, or the base, or the people around it. He ended his tour with
watching the sunshine at the bottom of the astronomical well at Syene,
which, on the longest day, is exactly under the sun's northern edge, and
with admiring the skill of the boatmen who shot down the cataracts in
their wicker boats, for the amusement of the Roman generals.

In the earlier periods of Egyptian history Ethiopia was peopled, or, at
least, governed, by a race of men, whom, as they spoke the same language
and worshipped the same gods as their neighbours of Upper Egypt, we must
call the Kopts. But the Arabs, under the name of Troglodyte, and other
tribes, 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 the
population of the city of Koptos were Arabs; they were the camel-drivers
and carriers for the Theban merchants in the trade across the desert.
Some of the conquests of Ramses had been over that nation in southern
Ethiopia, and the Arab power must have further risen after the defeat of
the Ethiopians by Euergetes I. Ethiopia in the time of Augustus was held
by Arabs; a race who thought peace a state of disgraceful idleness,
and war the only employment worthy of men; and who made frequent hasty
inroads 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 were
proverbial while the Nile swarmed with crocodiles, "They did as the dogs
do, they drank and ran away;" and the Romans found it necessary to place
a body of troops near the cataracts of Syene to stop their marching
northward and laying waste the Thebaid. While the larger part of the
Roman legions was withdrawn into Arabia on an unsuccessful quest for
treasure, a body of thirty thousand of these men, whom we may call
either Arabs, from their blood and language, or Ethiopians, from their
country, marched northward into Egypt, and overpowered the three
Roman cohorts at Elephantine, Syene, and Philas. Badly armed and badly
trained, they were led on by the generals of Candace, Queen of Napata,
to the fourth cataract. They were, however, easily driven back when
Gallus led against them an army of ten thousand men, and drove them to
Ethiopian Pselchis, now remaining as the modern village of Dakkeh. There
he defeated them again, and took the city by storm. From Pselchis he
marched across the Nubian desert two hundred and fifty miles to Premnis,
on the northerly bend of the river, and then made himself master of
Napata, the capital. A guard was at the moment left in the country to
check 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 but
little from this hasty inroad; but some of the tribes must have been
very far from the barbarians that, from their ignorance of the arts
of war, the Romans judged them to be. Those nearest to the Egyptian
frontiers, the Troglodyte and Blemmyes, were unsettled, wandering, and
plundering; but the inhabitants of Meroe were of a more civilised race.
The Jews had settled in southern Ethiopia in large numbers, and for
a long time; Solomon's trade had made them acquainted with Adule and
Auxum; some of them were employed in the highest offices, and must have
brought with them the arts of civilised life. A few years later (Acts
VIII. 27) we meet with a Jewish eunuch, the treasurer of Queen Candace,
travelling with some pomp from Ethiopia to the religious festivals at
Jerusalem. The Egyptian coins of Augustus and his successors are all
Greek; the conquest of the country by the Romans made no change in its
language. Though the chief part of the population spoke Koptic, it was
still a Greek province of the Roman empire; the decrees of the prefects
of Alexandria and of the upper provinces were written in Greek; and
every Roman traveller, who, like a schoolboy, has scratched his name
upon the foot of the musical statue of Amenhothes, to let the world know
the extent of his travels, has helped to prove that the Roman government
of the country was carried on in the Greek language. The coins often
bear the eagle and thunderbolt on one side, while on the other is the
emperor's head, with his name and titles; and, after a few years, they
are all dated with the year of the emperor's reign. In the earliest he
is styled a Son of God, in imitation of the Egyptian title of Son of the
Sun. After Egypt lost its liberty, we no longer find any gold coinage in
the country; that metal, with everything else that was most costly, was
carried away to pay the Roman tribute. This was chiefly taken in money,
except, indeed, the tax on grain, which the Egyptian kings had always
received in kind, and which was still gathered in the same way, and
each year shipped to Rome, to be distributed among the idle poor of
that 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. About
one hundred and twenty small vessels sailed every year to India from
MyosHormos, which was now the chief port on the Red Sea.

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