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)

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Soon after this we find the political division of Egypt slightly
altered. It is then divided into eight governments; the Upper Thebaid
with 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 under
a general; Arcadia, or the remainder of the Heptanomis, under a general;
AEgyptiaca, or the western half of the Delta, under an Augustalian
prefect; the first Augustan government, or the rest of the Delta, under
a _Corrector_; and the second Augustan government, from Bubastis to the
Red Sea, under a general. We also meet with several military stations
named after the late emperors: a Maximianopolis and a Dioclesianopolis
in the Upper Thebaid; a Theodosianopolis in the Lower Thebaid, and a
second Theodosianopolis in Arcadia. But it is not easy to determine what
villages were meant by these high-sounding names, which were perhaps
only used in official documents.

The empire of the East was gradually sinking in power during this long
and quiet reign of Theodosius II.; but the empire of the West was being
hurried to its fall by the revolt of the barbarians in every one of its
widespread provinces. Henceforth in the weakness of the two countries
Egypt and Rome are wholly separated. After having influenced one another
in politics, in literature, and in religion for seven centuries, they
were now as little known to one another as they were before the day when
Fabius arrived at Alexandria on an embassy from the senate to Ptolemy
Philadelphus.

Theological and political quarrels, under the name of the Homoousian
and Arian controversy, had nearly separated Egypt from the rest of the
empire during the reigns of Constantius and Valens, but they had been
healed by the wisdom of the first Theodosius, who governed Egypt by
means of a popular bishop; and the policy which he so wisely began
was continued by his successors through weakness. But in the reign of
Marcian (450--457) the old quarrel again broke out, and, though it was
under 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 had
succeeded his uncle, so on his death the bishopric fell to Dioscorus,
a relation of his own, a man of equal religious violence and of less
learning, who differed from him only in the points of doctrine about
which he should quarrel with his fellow-Christians. About the same
time Eutyches, a priest of Constantinople, had been condemned by his
superiors and expelled from the Church for denying the two natures of
Christ, and for maintaining that he was truly God, and in no respect
a man. This was the opinion of the Egyptian church, and therefore
Dioscorus, the Bishop of Alexandria, who had no right whatever to meddle
in the quarrels at Constantinople, yet, acting on the forgotten rule
that each bishop's power extended over all Christendom, undertook of
his own authority to absolve Eutyches from his excommunication, and in
return to excommunicate the Bishop of Constantinople who had condemned
him. To settle this quarrel, a general council was summoned at
Chalcedon; and there six hundred and thirty-two bishops met and
condemned the faith of Eutyches, and further explained the Nicene creed,
to which Eutyches and the Egyptians always appealed. They excommunicated
Eutyches and his patron Dioscorus, who were banished by the emperor; and
they elected Proterius to the then vacant bishopric of Alexandria.

In thus condemning the faith of Eutyches, the Greeks were
excommunicating the whole of Egypt. The Egyptian belief in the one
nature of Christ, which soon afterwards took the name of the Jacobite
faith from one of its popular supporters, might perhaps be distinguished
by the microscopic eye of the controversialist from the faith of
Eutyches; but they equally fell under the condemnation of the council of
Chalcedon. Egypt was no longer divided in its religious opinions. There
had been a party who, though Egyptian in blood, held the Arian and
half-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 the
soil; and their religious opinions had by this time fitted themselves
to the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence the decrees of
the council of Chalcedon were rejected by the whole of Egypt; and the
quarrel between the Chalcedonian and Jacobite party, like the former
quarrel between the Athanasians and the Arians, was little more than
another name for the unwillingness of the Egyptians to be governed by
Constantinople.

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

But this was the signal for a revolt of the Egyptians, who overpowered
the cohort with darts and stones; and the magistrates were driven to
save their lives in the celebrated temple of Serapis. But they found no
safety there; the mob surrounded the building and set fire to it, and
burned alive the Greek magistrates and friends of the new bishop; and
the city remained in the power of the rebellious Egyptians. When the
news of this rising reached Constantinople the emperor sent to Egypt a
further force of two thousand men, who stormed Alexandria and sacked it
like a conquered city, and established Proterius in the bishopric. As a
punishment upon the city for its rebellion, the prefect stopped for some
time the public games and the allowance of grain to the citizens, and
only restored them after the return to peace and good order.

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

The people now called the Nubians, living on both sides of the cataract
of Syene, declared themselves of the true Egyptian race by their
religious practices. They had an old custom of going each year to the
temple of Isis on the isle of Elephantine, and of carrying away one
of the statues with them and returning it to the temple when they had
consulted it. But as they were now being driven out of the province,
they bargained with Maximums for permission to visit the temple each
year without hindrance from the Roman guards. The treaty was written on
papyrus and nailed up in this temple. But friendship in the desert, says
the 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 their
hostages, who had not yet been carried out of the Thebaid, and overran
the 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 of
Upper Egypt; and about seventy years after the law of Thedosius L, by
which paganism was supposed to be crushed, the religion of Isis and
Serapis was again openly professed in the Thebaid, where it had perhaps
always been cultivated in secret. A certain master of the robes in one
of the Egyptian temple came at this time to the temple of Isis in the
island of Philae, and his votive inscription there declares that he was
the son of Pachomius, a prophet, and successor by direct descent from a
yet more famous Pachomius, a prophet, who we may easily believe was the
Christian prophet who gathered together so many followers in the island
of Tabenna, near Thebes, and there founded an order of Christian monks.
These Christians now all returned to their paganism. Nearly all the
remains of Christian architecture which we meet with in the The-baid
were built during the hundred and sixty years between the defeat of the
Nubians 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. We
find an inscription in bad Greek, in the great temple at Talmis, now
the village of Kalabshe, which was probably written about this time.
A conqueror of the name of Silco there declares that he is king of the
Nubians and all the Ethiopians; that in the upper part of his kingdom he
is called Mars, and in the lower part Lion; that he is as great as any
king of his day; that he has defeated the Blemmyes in battle again and
again; and that he has made himself master of the country between
Talmis and Primis. While such were the neighbours and inhabitants of
the Thebaid, the fields were only half-tilled, and the desert was
encroaching 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, those
records which the living no longer valued.

On the death of the Emperor Marcian, the Alexandrians, taking advantage
of the absence of the military prefect Dionysius, who was then fighting
against the Nubades in Upper Egypt, renewed their attack upon the Bishop
Proterius, and deposed him from his office. To fill his place they made
choice of a monk named Timotheus AElurus, who held the Jacobite faith,
and, having among them two deposed bishops, they got them to ordain him
Bishop of Alexandria, and then led him by force of arms into the great
church which had formerly been called Caesar's temple. Upon hearing
of the rebellion, the prefect returned in haste to Alexandria; but
his approach was only the signal for greater violence, and the enraged
people murdered Proterius in the baptistery, and hung up his body at the
Tetrapylon in mockery. This was not a rebellion of the mob. Timotheus
was supported by the men of chief rank in the city; the _Honorati_ who
had borne state offices, the _Politici_ who had borne civic offices,
and the _Navicularii_, or contractors for the freight of the Egyptian
tribute, were all opposed to the emperor's claim to appoint the officer
whose duties were much more those of prefect of the city than patriarch
of Egypt. With such an opposition as this, the emperor would do nothing
without the greatest caution, for he was in danger of losing Egypt
altogether. But so much were the minds of all men then engrossed in
ecclesiastical matters that this political struggle wholly took the form
of a dispute in controversial divinity, and the emperor wrote a
letter to the chief bishops in Christendom to ask their advice in
his difficulty. These theologians were too busily engaged in their
controversies to take any notice of the danger of Egypt's revolting from
the empire and joining the Persians; so they strongly advised Leo not to
depart from the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, or to acknowledge
as Bishop of Alexandria a man who denied the two natures of Christ.
Accordingly, the emperor again risked breaking the slender ties by
which he held Egypt; he banished the popular bishop, and forced the
Alexandrians to receive in his place one who held the Chalcedonian
faith.

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 his
father Zeno, the son-in-law of the elder Leo. Zeno gave himself up at
once to debauchery and vice, while the empire was harassed on all sides
by the barbarians, and the provinces were roused into rebellion by the
cruelty 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 himself
emperor, made himself master of Constantinople without a battle, and
drove Zeno into banishment in the third year of his reign.

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

As soon as Zeno was again master of the empire, he re-established the
creed of the council of Chalcedon, and drove away the Jacobite bishops
from their bishoprics. Death, however, removed Timotheus AElurus before
the emperor's orders were put in force in Alexandria, and the Egyptians
then chose Peter Mongus as his successor, in direct opposition to the
orders from Constantinople. But the emperor was resolved not to be
beaten; the bishopric of Alexandria was so much a civil office that to
have given up the appointment to the Egyptians would have been to allow
the people to govern themselves; so he banished Peter, and recalled to
the head of the Church Timotheus Salophaciolus, who had been living at
Canopus 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 the
appointment. They sent John, a priest of their own faith and dean of the
church of John the Baptist, as their ambassador to Constantinople, not
to remonstrate against the late acts of the emperor, but to beg that on
future occasions the Alexandrians might be allowed the old privilege of
choosing their own bishop. The Emperor Zeno seems to have seen through
the ambassador's earnestness, and he first bound him by an oath not to
accept the bishopric if he should even be himself chosen to it, and
he then sent him back with the promise that the Alexandrians should
be allowed to choose their own patriarch on the next vacancy. But
unfortunately John's ambition was too strong for his oath, and on the
death of Timotheus, which happened soon afterwards, he spent a large
sum of money in bribes among the clergy and chief men of the city, and
thereby got himself chosen patriarch. On this, the emperor seems to have
thought only of punishing John, and he at once gave up the struggle with
the Egyptians. Believing that, of the two patriarchs who had been chosen
by the people, Peter Mongus, who was living in banishment, would be
found more dutiful than John, who was on the episcopal throne, he
banished John and recalled Peter; and the latter agreed to the terms of
an imperial edict which Zeno then put forth, to heal the disputes in
the Egyptian church, and to recall the province to obedience. This
celebrated peace-making edict, usually called the Henoticon, is
addressed to the clergy and laity of Alexandria, Egypt, Libya, and the
Pentapolis, and is an agreement between the emperor and the bishops who
countersigned it, that neither party should ever mention the decrees of
the council of Chalcedon, which were the great stumbling-block with the
Egyptians.

[Illustration: 285.jpg STREET SPRINKLER AT ALEXANDRIA]

But in all other points the Henoticon is little short of a surrender to
the people of the right to choose their own creed; it styles Mary the
mother of God, and allows that the decrees of the council of Nicaea and
Constantinople contain all that is important of the true faith. John,
when banished by Zeno, like many of the former deposed bishops, fled to
Rome for comfort and for help. There he met with the usual support; and
Felix, Bishop of Rome, wrote to Constantinople, remonstrating with Zeno
for dismissing the patriarch. But this was only a small part of the
emperor's want of success in his attempt at peace-making; for the crafty
Peter, who had gained the bishopric by subscribing to the peace-making
edict, was no sooner safely seated on his episcopal throne than he
denounced the council of Chalcedon and its decrees as heretical, and
drove out of their monasteries all those who still adhered to that
faith. Nephalius, one of these monks, wrote to the emperor at
Constantinople in complaint, and Zeno sent Cosmas to the bishop to
threaten him with his imperial displeasure, and to try to re-establish
peace in the Church. But the arguments of Cosmas were wholly
unsuccessful; and Zeno then sent an increase of force to Arsenius, the
military prefect, who settled the quarrel for the time by sending back
the most rebellious of the Alexandrians as prisoners to Constantinople.

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

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

He was sent to Constantinople to be punished for not believing in
Christianity, for it does not appear that, like the former Hierocles,
he ever wrote against it. There he bore a public scourging from his
Christian torturers, with a courage equal to that formerly shown by
their forefathers when tortured by his. When some of the blood from
his 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, now
taste this wine." After his punishment he was banished, but was soon
allowed to return to Alexandria, and there he again taught openly as
before. Paganism never wears so fair a dress as in the writings of
Hierocles; his commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans is
full of the loftiest and purest morality, and not less agreeable are the
fragments that remain of his writings on our duties, and his beautiful
chapter on the pleasures of a married life. In the Facetiae of Hierocles
we have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the
wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning;
the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will
not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is
always called a man of learning.

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

Anastasius, the next emperor, succeeding in 491, followed the wise
policy which Zeno had entered upon in the latter years of his reign,
and he strictly adhered to the terms of the peace-making edict. The
four 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 same
opinion. When called upon by the quarrelling theologians, he would
neither reject nor receive the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and
by this wise conduct he governed Egypt without any religious rebellion
during a long reign.

The election of Dioscorus, however, the third patriarch of this
reign, was not brought about peaceably. He was the cousin of a former
patriarch, Timotheus AElurus, which, if we view the bishopric as a civil
office, might be a reason for the emperor's wishing him to have the
appointment. But it was no good reason with the Alexandrians, who
declared that he had not been chosen according to the canons of the
apostles; and the magistrates of the city were forced to employ the
troops to lead him in safety to his throne. After the first ceremony, he
went, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark's Church, and
there the clergy robed him in the patriarchal state robes. The grand
procession then moved through the streets to the church of St. John,
where the new bishop went through the communion service. But the city
was much disturbed during the whole day, and in the riot Theodosius, the
son of Calliopus, a man of Augustalian rank, was killed by the mob. The
Alexandrians treated the affair as murder, and punished with death those
who were thought guilty; but the emperor looked upon it as a rebellion
of the citizens, and the bishop was obliged to go on an embassy to
Constantinople to appease his just anger.

Anastasius, who had deserved the obedience of the Egyptians by his
moderation, pardoned their ingratitude when they offended; but he was
the last Byzantine emperor who governed Egypt with wisdom, and the last
who failed to enforce the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. It may
well be doubted whether any wise conduct on the part of the rulers
could have healed the quarrel between the two countries, and made the
Egyptians 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 Roman
generals, passed Pelusium and entered Egypt. The army of Kobades
laid waste the whole of the Delta up to the very walls of Alexandria.
Eustatius, the military prefect, led out his forces against the invaders
and fought many battles with doubtful success; but as the capital was
safe the Persians were at last obliged to retire, leaving the people
ruined as much by the loss of a harvest as by the sword. Alexandria
suffered severely from famine and the diseases which followed in
its train; and history has gratefully recorded the name of Urbib, a
Christian Jew of great wealth, who relieved the starving poor of that
city with his bounty. Three hundred persons were crushed to death in the
church of Arcadius on Easter Sunday in the press of the crowd to receive
his alms. As war brought on disease and famine, they also brought on
rebellion. The people of Alexandria, in want of grain and oil, rose
against the magistrates, and many lives were lost in the attempt to
quell the riots.

In the early part of this history we have seen ambitious bishops quickly
disposed of by banishment to the Great Oasis; and again, as the country
became more desolate, criminals were sufficiently separated from the
rest of the empire by being sent to Thebes. Alexandria was then the last
place in the world in which a pretender to the throne would be allowed
to live. But Egypt was now ruined; and Anastasius began his reign by
banishing, to the fallen Alexandria, Longinus, the brother of the late
king, and he had him ordained a presbyter, to mark him as unfit for the
throne.

Julianus, who was during a part of this reign the prefect of Egypt, was
also a poet, and he has left us a number of short epigrams that
form part of the volume of Greek Anthology which was published at
Constantinople soon after this time. Christodorus of Thebes was another
poet who joined with Julianus in praising the Emperor Anastasius. He
also removed to Constantinople, the seat of patronage; and the fifth
book of the Greek Anthology contains his epigrams on the winners in the
horse-race in that city and on the statues which stood around the public
gymnasium.

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

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

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