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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)




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

[Illustration: 057.jpg MALTESE COIN]

The first five years of this reign, the _quinquennium Neronis_, while
the emperor was under the tutorship of the philosopher Seneca, became in
Rome proverbial for good government, and on the coinage we see marks of
Egypt being equally well treated. In the third year we see on a coin the
queen sitting on a throne with the word _agreement_, as if to praise
the young emperor's good feeling in following the advice of his mother
Agrippina. On another the emperor is styled the young good genius, and
he is represented by the sacred basilisk crowned with the double crown
of Egypt. The new prefect, Balbillus, was an Asiatic Greek, and no doubt
received his Roman names of Tiberius Claudius on being made a freedman
of the late emperor. He governed the country mildly and justly; and
the grateful inhabitants declared that under him the Nile was more than
usually bountiful, and that its waters always rose to their just height.
But in the latter part of the reign the Egyptians smarted severely under
that cruel principle of a despotic monarchy that every prefect, every
sub-prefect, and even every deputy tax-gatherer, might be equally
despotic 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 a
ship with the word _emperor-bearer_, being that in which he then sailed
into Greece, or in which the Alexandrians thought that he would visit
their city. But if they had really hoped for his visit as a pleasure,
they must have thought it a danger escaped when they learned his
character; they must have been undeceived when the prefect Caecinna
Tuscus was punished with banishment for venturing to bathe in the bath
which was meant for the emperor's use if he had come on his projected
visit.

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

[Illustration: 059.jpg COIN OF NERO]

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

He was succeeded at the museum by his pupil Dionysius, who had the
charge of the library till the reign of Trajan. Dionysius was also
employed by the prefect as a secretary of state, or, in the language of
the day, secretary to the embassies, epistles, and answers. He was the
author of the _Periegesis_, and aimed at the rank of a poet by writing
a treatise on geography in heroic verse. From this work he is named
Dionysius Periegetes. While careful to remind us that his birthplace
Alexandria was a Macedonian city, he gives due honour to Egypt and the
Egyptians. There is no river, says he, equal to the Nile for carrying
fertility and adding to the happiness of the land. It divides Asia from
Libya, falling between rocks at Syene, and then passing by the old and
famous city of Thebes, where Memnon every morning salutes his beloved
Aurora as she rises. On its banks dwells a rich and glorious race of
men, who were the first to cultivate the arts of life; the first to make
trial of the plough and sow their seed in a straight furrow; and the
first to map the heavens and trace the sloping path of the sun.

According to the traditions of the church, it was in this reign that
Christianity was first brought into Egypt by the Evangelist Mark, the
disciple of the Apostle Peter. Many were already craving for religious
food more real than the old superstitions. The Egyptian had been shaken
in his attachment to the sacred animals by Greek ridicule. The Greek had
been weakened in his belief of old Homer's gods by living with men
who had never heard of them. Both were dissatisfied with the scheme of
explaining the actions of their gods by means of allegory. The crumbling
away of the old opinions left men more fitted to receive the new
religion from Galilee. Mark's preaching converted crowds in Alexandria;
but, after a short stay, he returned to Rome, in about the eleventh
year 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 his
successors in an unbroken chain. If we would inquire whether the early
converts 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 very
likely a Jew; indeed, the Evangelist Mark would begin by addressing
himself to the Jews, and would leave the care of the infant church to
one of his own nation. In the platonic Jews, Christianity found soil
so exactly suited to its reception that it is only by he dates that the
Therapeute of Alexandria and their historian Philo are proved not to be
Christian; and, again, it was in the close union between the platonic
Jews and the platonists that Christianity found its easiest path to the
ears and hearts of the pagans. The bishops that followed seem to have
been Greek converts. Before the death of Annaniah, Jerusalem had been
destroyed by the Roman armies, and the Jews sunk in their own eyes
and in those of their fellow-citizens throughout the empire; hence the
second bishop of Alexandria was less likely to be of Hebrew blood; and
it was long before any Egyptians aimed at rank in the church. But though
the spread of Christianity was rapid, both among the Greeks and the
Egyptians, we must not hope to find any early traces of it in the
historians. It was at first embraced by the unlearned and the poor,
whose deeds and opinions are seldom mentioned in history; and we may
readily believe the scornful reproach of the unbelievers, that it was
chiefly received by the unfortunate, the unhappy, the despised, and the
sinful. When the white-robed priestesses of Ceres carried the sacred
basket through the streets of Alexandria, they cried out, "Sinners away,
or keep your eyes to the ground; keep your eyes to the ground!" When
the crier, standing on the steps of the portico in front of the great
temple, called upon the pagans to come near and join in the celebration
of their mysteries, he cried out, "All ye who are clean of hands and
pure of heart, come to the sacrifice; all ye who are guiltless in
thought and deed, come to the sacrifice."

But many a repentant sinner and humble spirit must have drawn back in
distrust from a summons which to him was so forbidding, and been glad
to hear the good tidings of mercy offered by Christianity to those who
labour and are heavy laden, and to the broken-hearted who would turn
away from their wickedness. While such were the chief followers of the
gospel, it was not likely to be much noticed by the historians; and we
must wait till it forced its way into the schools and the palace before
we 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 warfare
against the southern frontier. The tribe most dreaded were the Blemmyes,
an uncivilised people, described by the affrighted neighbours as having
no heads, but with eyes and mouth on the breast; and it was under that
name that the Arabs spread during each century farther and farther into
Egypt, separating the province from the more cultivated tribes of Upper
Ethiopia or Meroe. The cities along the banks of the Nile in Lower
Ethiopia, between Nubia and Meroe, were ruined by being in the debatable
land between the two nations. The early Greek travellers had counted
about twenty cities on each side of the Nile between Syene and Meroe;
but when, in a moment of leisure, the Roman government proposed to
punish and stop the inroads of these troublesome neighbours, and sent
forward a tribune with a guard of soldiers, he reported on his return
that the whole country was a desert, and that there was scarcely a
city inhabited on either side of the Nile beyond Nubia. But he had not
marched very far. The interior of Africa was little known; and to seek
for the fountain of the Nile was another name for an impossible or
chimerical undertaking.

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

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

Hitherto the Roman empire had descended for just one hundred years
through five emperors like a family inheritance; but, on the death of
Nero, the Julian and Claudian families were at an end, and Galba, who
was raised to the purple by the choice of the soldiers, endeavoured to
persuade the Romans and their dependent provinces that they had regained
their liberties. The Egyptians may have been puzzled by the word
_freedom_, then struck upon the coins by their foreign masters, but must
have been pleased to find it accompanied with a redress of grievances.

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

The prefect acknowledges that the loud complaints with which he was met
on entering upon his government were well founded, and he promises that
the unjust taxes shall cease; that nobody shall be forced to act as a
provincial tax-gatherer; that no debts shall be cancelled or sales made
void under the plea of money owing to the revenue; that no freeman shall
be thrown into prison for debt, unless it be a debt due to the
royal revenue, and that no private debt shall be made over to the
tax-gatherer, to be by him collected as a public debt; that no property
settled on the wife at marriage shall be seized for taxes due from the
husband; and that all new charges and claims which had grown up within
the last five years shall be repealed. In order to discourage informers,
whom the prefects had much employed, and by whom the families in
Alexandria were much harassed, and to whom he laid the great falling off
in the population of that city, he orders, that if anybody should
make three charges and fail in proving them, he shall forfeit half his
property and lose the right of bringing an action at law. The land had
always paid a tax in proportion to the number of acres overflowed and
manured by the waters of the Nile; and the husbandmen had latterly been
frightened by the double threat of a new measurement of the land, and of
making it at the same time pay according to the ancient registers of the
overflow when the canals had been more open and more acres flooded; but
the prefect promises that there shall be no new measurements, and that
they 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 the
Alexandrian custom of counting the years. They called the 29th of
August, 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 the
hardy legions of Germany thought themselves entitled to choose for
themselves. They set up their own general, Vitellius. The two legions in
Egypt sided with the four legions in Syria under Mucianus, and the
three legions which, under Vespasian, were carrying on the memorable
war against the Jews; and all took the oaths to Otho. We find no
hieroglyphical inscriptions during this short reign of a few weeks, but
there 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's
death and of Vespasian being raised to the purple in Syria, Vitellius
was acknowledged in Egypt; and the Alexandrian mint struck a few coins
in his name with the figure of Victory. But as soon as the legions of
Egypt heard that the Syrian army had made choice of another emperor,
they withdrew their allegiance from Vitellius, and promised it to his
Syrian rival.

Vespasian was at Caesarea, in command of the army employed in the Jewish
war, when the news reached him that Otho was dead, and that Vitellius
had been raised to the purple by the German legions, and acknowledged
at Rome; and, without wasting more time in refusing the honour than was
necessary to prove that his soldiers were in earnest in offering it, he
allowed himself to be proclaimed emperor, as the successor of Otho.
He would not, however, then risk a march upon Rome, but he sent to
Alexandria to tell Tiberius Alexander, the governor of Egypt, what he
had done; he ordered him to claim in his name the allegiance of that
great province, and added that he should soon be there himself. The two
Roman legions in Egypt much preferred the choice of the Eastern to
that of the Western army, and the Alexandrians, who had only just
acknowledged Vitellius, readily took the oath to be faithful to
Vespasian. This made it less necessary for him to hasten thither, and he
only reached Alexandria in time to hear that Vitellius had been murdered
after a reign of eight months, and that he himself had been acknowledged
as emperor by Rome and the Western legions. His Egyptian coins in the
first year of his reign, by the word _peace_, point to the end of the
civil war.

When Vespasian entered Alexandria, he was met by the philosophers and
magistrates 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 been
useful in securing for Vespasian the allegiance of the Alexandrians.
Dion was an orator, who had been professor of rhetoric, but he had given
up that study for philosophy. His orations, or declamations, gained for
him the name of Chrysostom, or _golden-mouthed_. Euphrates, his friend,
was a platonist, who afterwards married the daughter of the prefect of
Syria, and removed to Rome. Apollonius of Tyana, the most celebrated of
these philosophers, was one of the first who gained his eminence from
the study of Eastern philosophy, which was then rising in the opinions
of the Greeks as highly worth their notice. He had been travelling in
the East; and, boasting that he was already master of all the fabled
wisdom of the Magi of Babylon and of the Gymnosophists of India, he was
come to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermits
of Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to the
priests, he willingly yielded his belief to their mystic claims; and,
whether from being deceived or as a deceiver, whether as an enthusiast
or as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernatural
knowledge which they pretended to teach. By the Egyptians he was
looked upon as the favourite of Heaven; he claimed the power of working
miracles by his magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge
of astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the bidding
of the priests one of the sacred trees spoke to him, as had been their
custom from of old with favourites, and in a clear and rather womanly
voice addressed him as a teacher from heaven.

It was to witness such practices as these, and to learn the art of
deceiving their followers, that the Egyptian priests were now consulted
by the Greeks. The oracle at Delphi was silent, but the oracle of Ammon
continued to return an answer. The mystic philosophy of the East had
come into fashion in Alexandria, and the priests were more celebrated as
magicians than as philosophers. They would tell a man's fortune and the
year that he was to die by examining the lines of his forehead. Some of
them 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 make
them answer any questions that might be put to them. Ventriloquism was
an art often practised in Egypt, and perhaps invented there. By this the
priests gained a power over the minds of the listeners, and could make
them believe that a tree, a statue, or a dead body, was speaking to
them.

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

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

From Alexandria Vespasian sent back Titus to finish the siege of
Jerusalem. The Jewish writer Joseph, the son of Matthias, or Flavius
Josephus, as he called himself when he entered the service of the
emperor, was then in Alexandria. He had been taken prisoner by
Vespasian, but had gained his freedom by the betrayal of his country's
cause. He joined the army of Titus and marched to the overthrow of
Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the obstinate and heroic struggles of the
Jews, Judaea was wholly conquered by the Romans, and Jerusalem and its
other fortresses either received Roman garrisons or were dismantled.
The Temple was overthrown in the month of September, A.D. 70. Titus made
slaves of ninety-seven thousand men, many of whom he led with him into
Egypt, and then sent them to work in the mines. These were soon followed
by a crowd of other brave Jews, who chose rather to quit their homes
and live as wanderers in Egypt than to own Vespasian as their king. They
knew no lord but Jahveh; to take the oaths or to pay tribute to Caesar
was to renounce the faith of their fathers. But they found no safety in
Egypt. Their Greek brethren turned against them, and handed six hundred
of them up to Lupus, the governor of Egypt, to be punished; and their
countryman Josephus brands them all with the name of Sicarii. They tried
to hide themselves in Thebes and other cities less under the eyes of the
Roman governor. They were, however, followed and taken, and the courage
with which the boys and mere children bore their sufferings, sooner than
acknowledge Vespasian for their king, drew forth the praise of even the
time-serving Josephus.

The Greek Jews of Egypt gained nothing by this treachery towards
their Hebrew brethren; they were themselves looked down upon by the
Alexandrians, and distrusted by the Romans. The emperor ordered Lupus to
shut up the temple at Onion, near Heliopolis, in which, during the last
three hundred years, they had been allowed to have an altar, in rivalry
to the Temple of Jerusalem. Even Josephus, whose betrayal of his
countrymen might have saved him from their enemies, was sent with many
others in chains to Rome, and was only set free on his making himself
known to Titus. Indeed, when the Hebrew Jews lost their capital and
their rank as a nation, their brethren felt lowered in the eyes of their
fellow-citizens, in whatever city they dwelt, and in Alexandria they
lost all hope of keeping their privileges; although the emperor refused
to repeal the edict which granted them their citizenship, an edict to
which they always appealed for protection, but often with very little
success.

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