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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The book-writers at this time sometimes illuminated their more valuable
parchments with gold and silver letters and sometimes employed painters
to ornament them with small paintings. The beautiful copy of the work
of Dioscorides on Plants in the library at Vienna was made in this reign
for the Princess Juliana of Constantinople. In one painting the figure
of science or invention is holding up a plant, while on one side of her
is the painter drawing it on his canvas, and on the other side is the
author describing it in his book. Other paintings are of the plants and
animals mentioned in the book. A copy of the Book of Genesis, also in
the library at Vienna, is of the same class and date. A large part of it
is written in gold and silver; and it has eighty-eight small paintings
of various historical subjects. In these the story is well told, though
the drawing and perspective are bad and the figures crowded. But
these Alexandrian paintings are better than those made in Rome or
Constantinople at this time.

With the spread of Christianity theatrical representations had been
gradually going out of use. The Greek tragedies, as we see in the works
of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, those models of pure taste in
poetry, are founded on the pagan mythology; and in many of them the gods
are made to walk and talk upon the stage. Hence they of necessity fell
under the ban of the clergy. As the Christians became more powerful the
several cities of the empire had one by one discontinued these
popular spectacles, and horse-races usually took their place. But the
Alexandrians were the last people to give up a favourite amusement;
and by the end of this reign Alexandria was the only city in the empire
where tragic and comic actors and Eastern dancers were to be seen in the
theatre.

The tower or lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the work of days more
prosperous than these, had latterly been sadly neglected with the other
buildings of the country. For more than seven hundred years, the
pilot on approaching this flat shore after dark had pointed out to his
shipmate what seemed a star on the horizon, and comforted him with the
promise of a safe entrance into the haven, and told him of Alexander's
tower. But the waves breaking against its foot had long since carried
away the outworks, and laid bare the foundations; the wall was
undermined and its fall seemed close at hand. The care of Anastasius,
however, surrounded it again with piles and buttresses; and this
monument of wisdom and science, which deserved to last for ever, was
for a little while longer saved from ruin. An epigram in the Anthology
informs us that Ammonius was the name of the builder who performed this
good work, and to him and to Neptune the grateful sailors then raised
their 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 this
task became every year more difficult, as the Greek population of his
Egyptian and Asiatic provinces fell off in numbers. For some years after
the division of the empire under the sons of Constantine, Antioch in
Syria had been the capital from which Alexandria received the emperor's
commands. The two cities became very closely united; and now that the
Greeks were deserting Antioch, a part of the Syrian church began to
adopt the more superstitious creed of Egypt. Severus, Bishop of Antioch,
was successful in persuading a large party in the Syrian church to deny
the humanity of Christ, and to style Mary the mother of God. But the
chief power in Antioch rested with the opposite party. They answered
his arguments by threats of violence, and he had to leave the city for
safety. He fled to Alexandria, and with him began the friendship between
the two churches which lasted for several centuries. In Alexandria he
was received with the honour due to his religious zeal. But though
in Antioch his opinions had been too Egyptian for the Syrians, in
Alexandria they were too Syrian for the Egyptians. The Egyptians, who
said that Jesus had been crucified and died only in appearance, always
denied that his body was liable to corruption. Severus, however, argued
that it was liable to corruption before the resurrection; and this led
him into a new controversy, in which Timotheus, the Alexandrian bishop,
took part against his own more superstitious flock, and sided with
his friend, the Bishop of Antioch. Severus has left us, in the Syriac
language, the baptismal service as performed in Egypt. The priest
breathes three times into the basin to make the water holy, he makes
three crosses on the child's forehead, he adjures the demons of
wickedness to quit him, he again makes three crosses on his forehead
with oil, he again blows three times into the water in the form of a
cross, he anoints his whole body with oil, and then plunges him in the
water. Many other natives of Syria soon followed Severus to Alexandria;
so many indeed that as Greek literature decayed in that city, Syriac
literature rose. Many Syrians also came to study the religious life in
the monasteries of Egypt, and after some time the books in the library
of the monastery at Mount Nit-ria were found to be half Arabic and half
Syriac.

Justin, the new emperor, again lighted up in Alexandria the flames
of discord which had been allowed to slumber since the publication of
Zeno's peace-making edict. But in the choice of the bishop he was not
able to command without a struggle. In the second year of his reign, on
the death of Timotheus, the two parties again found themselves nearly
equal in strength; and Alexandria was for several years kept almost in a
state of civil war between those who thought that the body of Jesus had
been liable to corruption, and those who thought it incorruptible. The
former chose Gaianas, whom his adversaries called a Manichean; and the
latter Theodosius, a Jacobite, who had the support of the prefect; and
each 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 were
chiefly Arabs from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. To make an end of
these attacks, and to engage their attention in another quarter, was the
natural wish of the statesmen of Constantinople; and for this purpose
Anastasius had sent an embassy to the Homeritae on the southern coast
of Arabia, to persuade them to attack their northern neighbours. The
Homeritae held the strip of coast now called Hadramout. They were
enriched, though hardly civilised, by being the channel along which
much of the Eastern trade passed from India to the Nile, to avoid the
difficult navigation of the ocean. They were Jewish Arabs, who had
little in common with the Arabs of Yemen, but had frequent intercourse
with Abyssinia and the merchants of the Red Sea. Part of the trade of
Solomon and the Tyrians was probably to their coast. To this distant and
little tribe the Emperor of Constantinople now sent a second pressing
embassy. Julianus, the ambassador, went up the Nile from Alexandria,
and then crossed the Red Sea, or Indian Sea as it was also called, to
Arabia. He was favourably received by the Homeritae. Arethas, the king,
gave him an audience in grand barbaric state. He was standing in a
chariot drawn by four elephants; he wore no clothing but a cloth of gold
around his loins; his arms were laden with costly armlets and bracelets;
he held a shield and two spears in his hands, and his nobles stood
around him armed, and singing to his honour. When the ambassador
delivered the emperor's letter, Arethas kissed the seal, and then kissed
Julianus himself. He accepted the gifts which Justin had sent, and
promised 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 between
the two Alexandrian bishops by summoning them both to Constantinople,
and then sending them into banishment. But this had no effect in healing
the divisions in the Egyptian church; and for the next half-century the
two parties ranged themselves, in their theological or rather political
quarrel, under the names of their former bishops, and called themselves
Gaianites and Theodosians. Nor did the measures of Justinian tend to
lessen the breach between Egypt and Constantinople. He appointed Paul to
the bishopric, and required the Egyptians to receive the decrees of the
council of Chalcedon.

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

When Justinian heard that the Jacobites were masters of Egypt he
appointed Apollinarius to the joint office of prefect and patriarch of
Alexandria, and sent him with a large force to take possession of his
bishopric. Apollinarius marched into Alexandria in full military dress
at the head of his troops; but when he entered the church he laid aside
his arms, and putting on the patriarchal robes began to celebrate the
rites of his religion. The Alexandrians were by no means overawed by the
force with which he had entered the city; they pelted him with a shower
of stones from every corner of the church, and he was forced to withdraw
from the building in order to save his life. But three days afterwards
the bells were rung through the city, and the people were summoned to
meet in the church on the following Sunday, to hear the emperor's letter
read. When Sunday came the whole city flocked to hear and to disobey
Justinian's orders. Apollinarius began his address by threatening his
hearers that, if they continued obstinate in their opinions, their
children should be made orphans and their widows given up to the
soldiery; and he was as before stopped with a shower of stones. But this
time he was prepared for the attack; this Christian bishop had placed
his troops in ambush round the church, and on a signal given they
rushed out on his unarmed flock, and by his orders the crowds within and
without the church were put to rout by the sword, the soldiers waded
up to their knees in blood, and the city and whole country yielded its
obedience for the time to bishops who held the Greek faith.

Henceforth the Melchite or royalist patriarchs, who were appointed by
the emperor and had the authority of civil prefects, and were supported
by the power of the military prefect, are scarcely mentioned by the
historian of the Koptic church. They were too much engaged in civil
affairs to act the part of ministers of religion. They collected their
revenues principally in grain, and carried on a large export trade,
transporting their stores to those parts of Europe where they would
bring the best price. On one occasion we hear of a small fleet belonging
to the church of Alexandria, consisting of thirteen ships of about
thirty tons burden each, and bearing ten thousand bushels of grain,
being overtaken by a storm on the coast of Italy. The princely income
of the later patriarchs, raised from the churches of all Egypt under the
name of the offerings of the pious, sometimes amounted to two thousand
pounds of gold, or four hundred thousand dollars. But while these
Melchite or royalist bishops were enjoying the ecclesiastical revenues,
and administering the civil affairs of the diocese and of the great
monasteries, there was a second bishop who held the Jacobite faith, and
who, having been elected by the people according to the ancient forms of
the Church, equally bore the title of patriarch, and administered in
his more humble path to the spiritual wants of his flock. The Jacobite
bishop was always a monk. At his ordination he was declared to be
elected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks,
and all the people of Lower Egypt; and prayers were offered up through
the intercession of the Mother of God, and of the glorious Apostle
Mark. The two churches no longer used the same prayer-book. The Melchite
church continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read in
Alexandria from time immemorial, was called the liturgy of St. Mark,
altered however to declare that the Son was of the same substance with
the Father. But the Koptic church made use of the newer liturgies
by their own champions, Bishop Cyril, Basil of Caesarae, and Gregory
Nazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Koptic language, and
more clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches the
Koptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed from
the teachings of the New Testament; but then the Koptic bishop alone
had any moral power to lead the minds of his flock towards piety and
religion. Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politic
enough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they would
perhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, the
Koptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greater
evils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes to
the condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabic
subjects of Persia.

The Christianity of the Egyptians was mostly superstition; and as it
spread over the land it embraced the whole nation within its pale, not
so much by purifying the pagan opinions as by lowering itself to their
level, and fitting itself to their corporeal notions of the Creator.
This was in a large measure induced by the custom of using the old
temples for Christian churches; the form of worship was in part guided
by the form of the building, and even the old traditions were engrafted
on the new religion. Thus the traveller Antonius, after visiting the
remarkable places in the Holy Land, came to Egypt to search for the
chariots of the Egyptians who pursued Moses, petrified into rocks at the
bottom of the Red Sea, and for the footsteps left in the sands by the
infant Jesus while he dwelt in Egypt with his parents. At Memphis he
enquired why one of the doors in the great temple of Phtah, then used
as a church, was always closed, and he was told that it had been rudely
shut against the infant Jesus five hundred years before, and mortal
strength had never since been able to open it.

The records of the empire declared that the first Caesars had kept six
hundred and forty-five thousand men under arms to guard Italy, Africa,
Spain, and Egypt, a number perhaps much larger than the truth; but
Justinian could with difficulty maintain one hundred and fifty thousand
ill-disciplined troops, a force far from large enough to hold even those
provinces that remained to him. During the latter half of his reign
the eastern frontier of this falling empire was sorely harassed by the
Persians under their king Chosroes. They overran Syria, defeated the
army of the empire in a pitched battle, and then took Antioch. By these
defeats the military roads were stopped; Egypt was cut off from the rest
of the empire and could be reached from the capital only by sea. Hence
the emperor was driven to a change in his religious policy. He gave over
the persecution of the Jacobite opinions, and even went so far in one
of his decrees as to call the body of Jesus incorruptible, as he thought
that these were the only means of keeping the allegiance of his subjects
or the friendship of his Arab neighbours, all of whom, as far as they
were Christians, held the Jacobite view of the Nicene creed, and denied
the two natures of Christ.

As the forces of Constantinople were driven back by the victorious
armies of the Persians, the emperors had lost, among other fortresses,
the capital of Arabia Nabataae, that curious rocky fastness that well
deserved the name of Petra, and which had been garrisoned by Romans
from the reign of Trajan till that of Valens. On this loss it became
necessary to fortify a new frontier post on the Egyptian side of the
Elanitic Gulf. Justinian then built the fortified monastery near Mount
Sinai, to guard the only pass by which Egypt could be entered without
the help of a fleet; and when it was found to be commanded by one of the
higher points of the mountain he beheaded the engineer who built it, and
remedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortress
on the higher ground. This monastery was held by the Egyptians, and
maintained out of the Egyptian taxes. When the Egyptians were formerly
masters of their own country, before the Persian and Greek conquests,
they were governed by a race of priests, and the temples were their only
fortresses.

[Illustration: 302.jpg FORTRESS NEAR MOUNT SINAI]

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

Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the
islands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands of
uneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate to
the world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought their
highly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond the
Ganges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans had
formerly 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 were
Roman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many
centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately
turned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung up
between the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitae of Abyssinia
on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritae who dwelt in
Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The
Homeritae had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indian
trade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountains
from India to the country of the Hexumitae.

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

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

Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to
these nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae,
to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the
Hexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an
embassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in his
object, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram's son. Nonnosus landed
at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen
days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it
had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile
between Egypt and Meroe. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild
elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. After
delivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed the
Red Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritae, a grandson of that Arethas
to whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the natural
difficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes through
which he had to pass, Nonnosus performed his task successfully, and on
his return home wrote a history of his embassies.

The advantage gained to the Hexumitae by their invasion of the Homeritae
was soon lost, probably as soon as their forces were withdrawn. The
trade through the country of the Homeritae was again stopped; and such
was the difficulty of navigation from the incense coast of Africa to the
mouths of the Indus, that the loss was severely felt at Auxum. Elesbaes
therefore undertook to repeat the punishment which had been before
inflicted on his less civilised neighbours, and again to open the trade
to the merchants from the Nile. It was while he was preparing his forces
for this invasion that Cosmas, the Alexandrian traveller, passed through
Adule; and he copied for the King of Auxum the inscription above spoken
of, which recorded the victories of his predecessor over the enemies he
was himself preparing to attack.

The invasion by Elesbaes, or Elesthaeus as he is also named, was
immediately successful. The Homeritae were conquered, their ruler was
overthrown; and, to secure their future obedience, the conqueror
set over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king.
Esimaphaeus was chosen for that post; and his first duty was to convert
his new subjects to Christianity. Political reasons as well as religious
zeal would urge him to this undertaking, to make the conquered bear the
badge of the conqueror. For this purpose he engaged the assistance of
Gregentius, a bishop, who was to employ his learning and eloquence in
the cause. Accordingly, in the palace of Threlletum, in the presence of
their new king, a public dispute was held between the Christian bishop
and Herban, a learned Jew. Gregentius has left us an account of the
controversy, in which he was wholly successful, being helped, perhaps,
by the threats and promises of the king. The arguments used were not
quite the same as they would be now. The bishop explained the Trinity as
the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Mind or Father, and resting on
the Word or Son, which was then the orthodox view of this mysterious
doctrine. On the other hand, the Jew quoted the Old Testament to show
that the Lord their God was one Lord. It is related that suddenly the
Jews present were struck blind. Their sight, however, was restored to
them on the bishop's praying for them; and they were then all thereby
converted 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 Homeritae. A rebellion
soon broke out against him, and he was deposed. Elesbaas, King of Auxum,
again sent an army to recall the Homeritae to their obedience, but this
time the army joined in the revolt; and Elesbae then made peace with
the enemy, in hopes of thus gaining the advantages which he was unable
to grasp by force of arms. From a Greek inscription on a monument at
Auxum we learn the name of AEizanas, another king of that country, who
also called himself, either truly or boastfully, king of the opposite
coast. He set up the monument to record his victories over the Bougoto,
a people who dwelt between Auxum and Egypt, and he styles himself the
invincible Mars, king of kings, King of the Hexumito, of the Ethiopians,
of the Saboans, and of the Homerito. These kings of the Hexumito
ornamented 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 empire
save as a means of enriching the prefect and the tax-gatherers; it
yielded very little tribute to Constantinople beyond the supply of
grain, and that by no means regularly. To remedy these abuses Justinian
made a new law for the government of the province, with a view of
bringing about a thorough reform. By this edict the districts of
Menelaites and Mareotis, to the west of Alexandria, were separated from
the rest of Egypt, and they were given to the prefect of Libya, whose
seat of government was at Parotonium, because his province was too poor
to pay the troops required to guard it. The several governments of Upper
Egypt, of Lower Egypt, of Alexandria, and of the troops were then given
to one prefect. The two cohorts, the Augustalian and the Ducal, into
which the two Boman legions had gradually dwindled, were henceforth to
be united under the name of the Augustalian Cohort, which was to contain
six hundred men, who were to secure the obedience and put down any
rebellion of the Egyptian and barbarian soldiers. The somewhat high
pay and privileges of this favoured troop were to be increased; and, to
secure its loyalty and to keep out Egyptians, nobody was to be admitted
into it till his fitness had been inquired into by the emperor's
examiners. The first duty of the cohort was to collect the supply of
grain for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships; and as
for the supply which was promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrates
were 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 the
end of August, or within four months after the harvest, and the supply
for Alexandria not more than a month later. The prefect was made
answerable for the full collection, and whatever was wanting of that
quantity was to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rate
of one solidus for three artabo of grain, or about three dollars for
fifteen bushels; while in order to help the collection, the export of
grain from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except in
small quantities. The grain required for Alexandria and Constantinople,
to be distributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eight
hundred thousand artabo, or four millions of bushels, and the cost
of collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about three
hundred thousand dollars. The prefect was ordered to assist the
collectors at the head of his cohort, and if he gave credit for the
taxes which he was to collect he was to bear the loss himself. If the
archbishop interfered, to give credit and screen an unhappy Egyptian,
then he was to bear the loss, and if his property was not enough the
property of the Church was to make it good; but if any other bishop gave
credit, not only was his property to bear the loss, but he was himself
to be deposed from his bishopric; and lastly, if any riot or rebellion
should arise to cause the loss of the Egyptian tribute, the tribunes
of the Augustalian Cohort were to be punished with forfeiture of all
property, and the cohort was to be removed to a station beyond the
Danube.

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