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

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

The mystic emblems on the coins are only what we might look for from the
spread of the Gnostic opinions, and the eagerness with which the Greeks
were copying the superstitions of the Egyptians; and, while astrology
was thus countenanced by the state, of course it was not less followed
by the people. The poor Jews took to it as a trade. In Alexandria the
Jewess, half beggar, half fortune-teller, would stop people in the
streets and interpret dreams by the help of the Bible, or sit under a
sacred tree like a sibyl, and promise wealth to those who consulted her,
duly proportioned to the size of the coin by which she was paid. We find
among the Theban ruins pieces of papyrus with inscriptions, describing
the positions of the heavens at particular hours in this reign, for the
astrologers therewith to calculate the nativities of the persons then
born. On one is a complete horoscope, containing the places of the sun,
moon, and every planet, noted down on the zodiac in degrees and minutes
of a degree; and with these particulars the mathematician undertook to
foretell the marriage, fortune, and death of the person who had been
born at the instant when the heavenly bodies were so situated; and, as
the horoscope was buried in the tomb with the mummy, we must suppose
that it was thought that the prognostication would hold good even in the
next world.

But astrology was not the only end to which mathematics were then
turned. Claudius Ptolemy, the astronomer and geographer, was at that
time the ornament of the mathematical school of Alexandria. In his
writings he treats of the earth as the centre of the heavens, and the
sun, moon, and planets as moving in circles and epicycles round it. This
had been the opinion of some of the early astronomers; but since this
theory of the heavens received the stamp of his authority, it is now
always called the Ptolemaic system.

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

To this survey we must add the valuable geographical knowledge given
by Arrian in his voyage round the shores of the Red Sea, which has come
down to us in an interesting document, wherein he mentions the several
seaports and their distances, with the tribes and cities near the
coast. The trade of Egypt to India, Ethiopia, and Arabia was then most
valuable, and carried on with great activity; but, as the merchandise
was in each case carried only for short distances from city to city, the
traveller could gain but little knowledge of where it came from, or even
sometimes of where it was going.

[Illustration: 115.jpg STATUE OF THE NILE]

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

At this time also the travellers continued to carve their names and
their feelings of wonder on the foot of the musical statue at Thebes and
in the deep empty tombs of the Theban kings. These inscriptions are full
of curious information. For example, it has been doubted whether the
Roman army was provided with medical officers. Their writers have not
mentioned them. But part of the Second Legion was at this time stationed
at Thebes; and one Asclepiades, while cutting his name in a tomb which
once held some old Theban, has cleared up the doubt for us, by saying
that he was physician to the Second Legion.

Antoninus made a hippodrome, or race-course, for the amusement of the
citizens of Alexandria, and built two gates to the city, called the gate
of the sun and the gate of the moon, the former fronting the harbour and
the latter fronting the lake Mareotis, and joined by the great street
which ran across the whole width of the city. But this reign was not
wholly without trouble; there was a rebellion in which the prefect
Dinarchus lost his life, and for which the Alexandrians were severely
punished by the emperor.

[Illustration: 117.jpg COINS OF MARCUS AURELIUS]

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

We find no coins in the eleventh or fourteenth years of this reign,
which makes it probable that it was in the eleventh year (A.D. 172) that
the rebellion of the native soldiers took place. These were very likely
Arabs who had been admitted into the ranks of the legions, but having
withdrawn to the desert they now harassed the towns with their marauding
inroads, and a considerable time elapsed before they were wholly put
down by Avidius Cassius at the head of the legions. But Cassius himself
was unable to resist the temptations which always beset a successful
general, and after this victory he allowed himself to be declared
emperor by the legions of Egypt; and this seems to have been the cause
of no coins being struck in Alexandria in the fourteenth year of the
reign. Cassius left his son Moecianus in Alexandria with the title of
Pretorian Prefect, while he himself marched into Syria to secure that
province. There the legions followed the example of their brethren in
Egypt, and the Syrians were glad to acknowledge a general of the Eastern
armies as their sovereign. But on Marcus leading an army into Syria he
was met with the news that the rebels had repented, and had put Cassius
to death, and he then moved his forces towards Egypt; but before his
arrival the Egyptian legions had in the same manner put Moecianus to
death, and all had returned to their allegiance.

When Marcus arrived in Alexandria the citizens were agreeably surprised
by the mildness of his conduct. He at once forgave his enemies; and
no offenders were put to death for having joined in the rebellion. The
severest punishment, even to the children of Cassius, was banishment
from the province, but without restraint, and with the forfeiture of
less than half their patrimony. In Alexandria the emperor laid aside the
severity of the soldier, and mingled with the people as a fellow-citizen
in the temples and public places; while with the professors in the
museum he was a philosopher, joining them in their studies in the
schools.

Borne and Athens at this time alike looked upon Alexandria as the centre
of the world's learning. The library was then in its greatest glory;
the readers were numerous, and Christianity had as yet raised no doubts
about the value of its pagan treasures. All the wisdom of Greece,
written on rolls of brittle papyrus or tough parchment, was ranged in
boxes on the shelves. Of these writings the few that have been saved
from the wreck of time are no doubt some of the best, and they are
perhaps enough to guide our less simple taste towards the unornamented
grace of the Greek model. But we often fancy those treasures most
valuable that are beyond our reach, and hence when we run over the names
of the authors in this library we think perhaps too much of those which
are now missing. The student in the museum could have read the lyric
poems of Alcaeus and Stersichorus, which in matter and style were
excellent enough to be judged not quite so good as Homer; the tender
lamentations of Simonides; the warm breathings of Sappho, the tenth
muse; the pithy iambics of Archilochus, full of noble flights and
brave irregularities; the comedies of Menander, containing every kind
of excellence; those of Eupolis and Cratinus, which were equal to
Aristophanes; the histories of Theopompus, which in the speeches were
as good as Thucydides; the lively, agreeable orations of Hyperides, the
accuser of Demosthenes; with the books of travels, chronologies, and
countless others of less merit for style and genius, but which, if they
had been saved, would not have left Egypt wholly without a history.

[Illustration: 120.jpg ALEXANDRIAN FORMS OF WRITING]

The trade of writing and making copies of the old authors employed
a great many hands in the neighbourhood of the museum. Two kinds of
handwriting were in use. One was a running hand, with the letters joined
together in rather a slovenly manner; and the other a neat, regular
hand, with the letters square and larger, written more slowly but read
more easily. Those that wrote the first were called _quick-writers_,
those that wrote the second were called _book-writers_. If an author was
not skilled in the use of the pen, he employed a _quickwriter_ to write
down his words as he delivered them. But in order that his work might be
published it was handed over to the _book-writers_ to be copied out more
neatly; and numbers of young women, skilled in penmanship, were employed
in the trade of copying books for sale. For this purpose parchment
was coming into use, though the old papyrus was still used, as an
inexpensive though less lasting writing material.

Athenaeus, if we may judge from Iris writings, was then the brightest of
the Alexandrian wits and men of learning. We learn from his own pages
that he was born at Naucratis, and was the friend of Pancrates, who
lived under Hadrian, and also of Oppian, who died in the reign of
Caracalla. His _Deipnosophist_, or table-talk of the philosophers, is a
large work full of pleasing anecdotes and curious information, gathered
from comic writers and authors without number that have long since been
lost. But it is put together with very little skill. His industry and
memory are more remarkable than his judgment or good taste; and the
table-talk is too often turned towards eating and drinking. His amusing
work is a picture of society in Alexandria, where everything frivolous
was treated as grave, and everything serious was laughed at. The wit
sinks into scandal, the humour is at the cost of morality, and the
numerous quotations are chosen for their point, not for any lofty
thoughts or noble feeling. Alexandria was then as much the seat of
literary wit as it was of dry criticism; and Martial, the lively author
of the _Epigrams_, had fifty years before remarked that there were few
places in the world where he would more wish his verses to be repeated
than on the banks of the Nile.

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

Lucian, the author of the _Dialogues_, was at that time secretary to the
prefect of Egypt, and this philosopher found a broad mark for his
humour in the religion of the Egyptians, their worship of animals and
water-jars, their love of magic, the general mourning through the land
on the death of the bull Apis, their funeral ceremonies, their placing
of their mummies round the dinner-table as so many guests, and pawning a
father or a brother when in want of money.

[Illustration: 122.jpg A SNAKE-CHARMER]

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

[Illustration: 123.jpg THE SIGN OF NOBILITY]

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

Another proof of the number of Egyptian Christians is seen in the
literary frauds of which their writers were guilty, most likely to
satisfy the minds of those pagan converts that they had already made
rather than from a wish to make new believers. About this time was
written by an unknown Christian author a poem in eight books, named the
_Sibylline Verses_ which must not be mistaken for the pagan fragments
of the same name. It is written in the form of a prophecy, in the style
used by the Gnostics, and is full of dark sentences and half-expressed
hints.

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

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

[Illustration: 125.jpg CARTOUCHE OF COMMODUS]

Commodus was very partial to the Egyptian superstitions, and he adopted
the tonsure, and had his head shaven like a priest of Isis, that he
might more properly carry an Anubis staff in sacred processions, which
continued to be a feature of the religious activities of the age. Upper
Egypt had latterly been falling off in population. It had been drained
of all its hoarded wealth. Its carrying trade through Koptos to the Red
Sea was much lessened. Any tribute that its temples received from the
piety of the neighbourhood was small. Nubia was a desert; and a few
soldiers at Syene were enough to guard the poverty of the Thebaid
from the inroads of the Blemmyes. It was no longer necessary to
send criminals to the Oasis; it was enough to banish them to the
neighbourhood of Thebes. Hence we learn but little of the state of
the country. Now and then a traveller, after measuring the pyramids of
Memphis and the underground tombs of Thebes, might venture as far as the
cataracts, and watch the sun at noon on the longest day shining to the
bottom of the sacred well at Syene, like the orator Aristides and his
friend Dion. But such travellers were few; the majority of those who
made this journey have left the fact on record.

The celebrated museum, which had held the vast library of the Ptolemies,
had been burnt by the soldiers of Julius Caesar in one of their battles
with the Egyptian army in the streets of Alexandria; but the loss had
been in part repaired by Mark Antony's gift of the library from Pergamus
to the temple of Serapis. The new library, however, would seem to have
been placed in a building somewhat separated from the temple, as when
the temple of Serapis was burnt in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and
again when it was in part destroyed by fire in the second year of this
reign we hear of no loss of books; and two hundred years later the
library of the Serapium, it is said, had risen to the number of seven
hundred thousand volumes. The temple-keeper to the great god Serapis, or
one of the temple-keepers, at this time was Asclepiades, a noted boxer
and wrestler, who had been made chief of the wrestling-ground and had
received the high rank of the emperor's freedman. He set up a statue to
his father Demetrius, an equally noted boxer and wrestler, who had been
chief priest of the wrestling-ground and of the emperor's baths in the
last reign.

[Illustration: 126.jpg THE ANUBIS STAFF]

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

The city of Canopus was still a large mart for merchandise, as the
shallow but safe entrance to its harbour made it a favourite with pilots
of the small trading vessels, who rather dreaded the rocks at the mouth
of the harbour of Alexandria. A temple of Serapis which had lately been
built at Canopus was dedicated to the god in the name of the Emperor
Commodus; and there some of the grosser superstitions of the polytheists
fled before the spread of Christianity and platonism in Alexandria. The
Canopic jars, which held those parts of the body that could not be made
solid in the mummy, and which had the heads of the four lesser gods
of the dead on their lids, received their name from this city. The
sculptures on the beautiful temples of Contra-Latopolis were also
finished in this reign, and the emperor's names and titles were carved
on the walls in hieroglyphics, with those of the Ptolemies, under whom
the temple itself had been built. Commodus may perhaps not have been
the last emperor whose name and praises were carved in hieroglyphics;
but all the great buildings in the Thebaid, which add such value to the
early history of Egypt, had ceased before his reign. Other buildings of
a less lasting form were no doubt being built, such as the Greek temples
at Antinoopolis and Ptolemais, which have long since been swept away;
but the Egyptian priests, with their gigantic undertakings, their noble
plan of working for after ages rather than for themselves, were nearly
ruined, and we find no ancient building now standing in Egypt that was
raised after the time of the dynasty of the Antonines.

[Illustration: 128.jpg CANOPIC JARS]

But the poverty of the Egyptians was not the only cause why they built
no more temples. Though the colossal statue of Amenhothes uttered
its musical notes every morning at sunrise, still tuneful amid the
desolation with which it was surrounded, and the Nile was still
worshipped at midsummer by the husbandman to secure its fertilising
overflow; nevertheless, the religion itself for which the temples had
been built was fast giving way before the silent spread of Christianity.
The religion of the Egyptians, unlike that of the Greeks, was no
longer upheld by the magistrate; it rested solely on the belief of its
followers, and it may have merged into Christianity the faster for the
greater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganism
of other nations. The scanty hieroglyphical records tell us little
of thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Indeed that cumbersome mode of
writing, which alone was used in religious matters, was little fitted
for anything beyond the most material parts of their mythology. Hence
we must not believe that the Egyptian polytheism was quite so gross as
would appear from the sculptures; and indeed we there learn that they
believed, even at the earliest times, in a resurrection from the tomb, a
day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments.

The priests made a great boast of their learning and philosophy, and
could each repeat by heart those books of Thot which belonged to his own
order. The singer, who walked first in the sacred processions, bearing
the symbols of music, could repeat the books of hymns and the rules for
the king's life. The soothsayer, who followed, carrying a clock and a
palm-branch, the emblem of the year, could repeat the four astrological
books; one on the moon's phases, one on the fixed stars, and two on
their heliacal risings. The scribe, who walked next, carrying a book
and the flat rule which held the ink and pen, was acquainted with the
geography of the world and of the Nile, and with those books which
describe the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and the furniture
of the temple and consecrated places. The master of the robes understood
the ten books relating to education, to the marks on the sacred
heifers, and to the worship of the gods, embracing the sacrifices, the
first-fruits, the hymns, the prayers, the processions, and festivals.
The prophet or preacher, who walked last, carrying in his arms the
great water-pot, was the president of the temple, and learned in the ten
books, called hieratic, relating to the laws, the gods, the management
of the temples, and the revenue. Thus, of the forty-two chief books of
Thot, thirty-six were learned by these priests, while the remaining
six on the body, its diseases, and medicines, were learned by the
Pastophori, priests who carried the image of the god in a small shrine.
These books had been written at various times: some may have been very
old, but some were undoubtedly new; they together formed the Egyptian
bible. Apollonius, or Apollonides Horapis, an Egyptian priest, had
lately published a work on these matters in his own language, named
Shomenuthi, _the book of the gods_.

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