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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[Illustration: 130.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION]

But the priests were no longer the earnest, sincere teachers as of
old; they had invented a system of secondary meanings, by which they
explained away the coarse religion of their statues and sacred animals.

They had two religions, one for the many and one for the few; one,
material and visible, for the crowds in the outer courtyards, in which
the hero was made a god and every attribute of deity was made a person;
and another, spiritual and intellectual, for the learned in the schools
and sacred colleges. Even if we were not told, we could have no doubt
but the main point of secret knowledge among the learned was a disbelief
in those very doctrines which they were teaching to the vulgar, and
which they now explained among themselves by saying that they had a
second meaning. This, perhaps, was part of the great secret of the
goddess Isis, the secret of Abydos, the betrayer of which was more
guilty than he who should try to stop the _baris_ or sacred barge in the
procession on the Nile. The worship of gods, before whose statues the
nation had bowed with unchanging devotion for at least two thousand
years was now drawing to a close. Hitherto the priests had been able to
resist all new opinions.

[Illustration: 131.jpg SHRINE]

The name of Amon-Ra had at one time been cut out from the Theban
monuments to make way for a god from Lower Egypt; but it had been cut in
again when the storm passed by. The Jewish monotheism had left the
crowd of gods unlessened. The Persian efforts had overthrown statues and
broken open temples, but had not been able to introduce their worship of
the sun. The Greek conquerors had yielded to the Egyptian mind without
a struggle; and Alexander had humbly begged at the door of the temple
to be acknowledged as a son of Amon. But in the fulness of time
these opinions, which seemed as firmly based as the monuments which
represented them, sunk before a religion which set up no new statues,
and could command no force to break open temples.

The Egyptian priests, who had been proud of the superiority of their own
doctrines over the paganism of their neighbours, mourned the overthrow
of their national religion. "Our land," says the author of Hermes
Trismegistus, "is the temple of the world; but, as wise men should
foresee all things, you should know that a time is coming when it will
seem that the Egyptians have by an unfailing piety served God in
vain. For when strangers shall possess this kingdom religion will
be neglected, and laws made against piety and divine worship, with
punishment on those who favour it. Then this holy seat will be full of
idolatry, idols' temples, and dead men's tombs. O Egypt, Egypt, there
shall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity will
refuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety. The
Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell in
Egypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven; and Egypt shall be a
desert, widowed of men and gods."

The spread of Christianity among the Egyptians was such that their
teachers found it necessary to supply them with a life of Jesus, written
in their own language, that they might the more readily explain to
them his claim to be obeyed, and the nature of his commands. The Gospel
according to the Egyptians, for such was the name this work bore, has
long since been lost, and was little quoted by the Alexandrians. It was
most likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it had
some different readings suited to its own church, and contained some
praise of celibacy not found in the New Testament; but it was not valued
by the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Koptic translation of
the whole New Testament.

The grave, serious Christians of Upper Egypt were very unlike the lively
Alexandrians. But though the difference arose from peculiarities of
national character, it was only spoken of as a difference of opinion.
The Egyptians formed an ascetic sect in the church, who were called
heretics by the Alexandrians, and named Docetas, because they taught
that the Saviour was a god, and did not really suffer on the cross, but
was crucified only _in appearance_. They of necessity used the Gospel
according to the Egyptians, which is quoted by Cassianus, one of their
writers; many of them renounced marriage with, the other pleasures
and duties of social life, and placed their chief virtue in painful
self-denial; and out of them sprang that remarkable class of hermits,
monks, and fathers of the desert who in a few centuries covered Europe
with monasteries.

It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Koptic introduced
a Greek alphabet into the Koptic language. Though for all religious
purposes the scribes continued to use the ancient hieroglyphics, in
which we trace the first steps by which pictures are made to represent
words and syllables rather than letters, yet for the common purposes of
writing they had long since made use of the _enchorial_ or common hand,
in which the earlier system of writing is improved by the characters
representing only letters, though sadly too numerous for each to have a
fixed and well-known force. But, as the hieroglyphics were also always
used for carved writing on all subjects, and the common hand only used
on papyrus with a reed pen, the latter became wholly an indistinct
running hand; it lost that beauty and regularity which the
hieroglyphics, like the Greek and Roman characters, kept by being carved
on stone, and hence it would seem arose the want of a new alphabet for
the New Testament. This was made by merely adding to the Greek alphabet
six new letters borrowed from the hieroglyphics for those sounds which
the Greeks did not use; and the writing was then written from left to
right like a European language instead of in either direction according
to the skill or fancy of the scribe.

It was only upon the ancient hieroglyphics thus falling into disuse that
the Greeks of Alexandria, almost for the first time, had the
curiosity to study the principles on which they were written. Clemens
Alexandrinus, who thought no branch of knowledge unworthy of his
attention, gives a slight account of them, nearly agreeing with the
results of our modern discoveries. He mentions the three kinds of
writing; first, the _hieroglyphic_; secondly, the _hieratic_, which is
nearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental than
the carved figures; and thirdly, the _demotic_, or common alphabetic
writing. He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic and
the symbolic; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into the
imitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instances
of these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines which
by simple imitation mean "water;" for the second, the oval which mean
"a name," because kings' names were written within ovals; and for the
third, a cup with three anvils, which mean "Lord of Battles," because
"cup" and "lord" have nearly the same sound _neb_, and "anvils" and
"battles" have nearly the same sound _meshe_.

In this reign Pantonus of Athens, a Stoic philosopher, held the first
place among the Christians of Alexandria. He is celebrated for uniting
the study of heathen learning with a religious zeal which led him to
preach Christianity in Abyssinia.

[Illustration: 135.jpg HIEROGLYPHIC, HIERATIC, AND DEMOTIC WRITING]

He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians; and, though
Athenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder
of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned
Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. To
have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning
among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great
praise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over
the world? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introduced
without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden,
together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the
same schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans
and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians,
learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion;
and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded
a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly
two centuries. Pantaenus has left no writings of his own, and is best
known through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens. He is said to have
brought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met
with on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel in the original
Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, would
settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that
now bears that Apostle's name in the Greek translation.

The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him
from Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded
Pantaenus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a
voluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a platonist, though
sometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to the
Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight
books of Stromata, or _collections_, which he wrote to describe the
perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for
his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of
Gnostics "falsely so called." By his advice, and by the imitation of
Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to
knowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and
then a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh.

Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark
of the Gnostic sect. He thought much of the sacred power of numbers.
Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot,
which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred sign
for the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the
commandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and there
are seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and the
two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were
miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egypt
under Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh
day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but here
there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of
some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in
the pagan poets.

During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months (194 A.D.),
we find no trace of his power in Egypt, except the money which the
Alexandrians coined in his name. It seems to have been the duty of the
prefect of the mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor's death, to lose
no time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of the
means to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the new
emperor.

During the reign of Commodus, Pescennius Niger had been at the head of
the legion that was employed in Upper Egypt in stopping the inroads of
their troublesome neighbours, who already sometimes bore the name of
Saracens. He was a hardy soldier, and strict in his discipline, while he
shared the labours of the field and of the camp with the men under him.
He would not allow them the use of wine; and once, when the troops that
guarded the frontier at Syene (Aswan) sent to ask for it, he bluntly
answered, "You have got the Nile to drink, and cannot possibly want
more." Once, when a cohort had been routed by the Saracens, the men
complained that they could not fight without wine; but he would not
relax in his discipline. "Those who have just now beaten you," said
Niger, "drink nothing but water." He gained the love and thanks of the
people of Upper Egypt by thus bridling the lawlessness of the troops;
and they gave him his statue cut in black basalt, in allusion to his
name Niger. This statue was placed in his Roman villa.

[Illustration: 138b.jpg A NATIVE OF ASWAN]

But on the death of Pertinax, when Septimus Severus declared himself
emperor in Pannonia, Niger, who was then in the province of Syria, did
the same. Egypt and the Egyptian legions readily and heartily joined
his party, which made it unnecessary for him to stay in that part of
the empire; so he marched upon Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia. But there,
after a few months, he was met by the army of his rival, who also sent
a second army into Egypt; and he was defeated and slain at Cyzicus in
Mysia, after having been acknowledged as emperor in Egypt and Syria for
perhaps a year and a few months.

[Illustration: 139b.jpg PAINTING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTH TOMB]

We find no Alexandrian coins of Niger, although we cannot allow a
shorter space of time to his reign than one whole year, together with
a few months of the preceding and following years. Within that time
Severus had to march upon Rome against his first rival, Julian, to
punish the praetorian guards, and afterwards to conquer Niger.

After the death of his rival, when Severus was the undisputed master of
the empire, and was no longer wanted in the other provinces, he found
leisure, in A.D. 196, to visit Egypt; and, like other active-minded
travellers, he examined the pyramids of Memphis and the temples at
Thebes, and laughed at the worship of Serapis and the Egyptian animals.
His visit to Alexandria wras marked by many new laws. Now that the
Greeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had
lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by
their Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus. He
gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that
had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely
granted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded. He also
ornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which
was named after himself the Bath of Severus.

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, under
a severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian. But he who gives
the blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts under
it; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenth
year of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from their
governors and their fellow-citizens. Among others who then lost their
lives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen. He left
seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebrated
writer, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read in
the Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece. As the property of
Leonides was forfeited, his children were left in poverty; but the young
Origen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion,
by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens. In
order to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master
of Hebrew, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whether
Jews or Christians.

In this persecution of the Church all public worship was forbidden to
the Christians; and Tertullian of Carthage eloquently complains that,
while the emperor allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, or
crocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those that
bowed down before the Creator and Governor of the world. Of course,
at this time of trouble the catechetical school was broken up and
scattered, so that there was no public teaching of Christianity in
Alexandria. But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbidden
to be done openly; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, the
bishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which he
had already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger. Origen
could boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list of
martyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best known
was Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas. Origen afterwards removed for a
time to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop for
being there ordained a presbyter.

In Egypt Severus seems to have dated the years of his reign from the
death of Niger, though he had reigned in Rome since the deaths of
Pertinax and Julian. His Egyptian coins are either copper, or brass
plated with a little silver; and after a few reigns even those last
traces of a silver coinage are lost in this falling country. In tracing
the history of a word's meaning we often throw a light upon the customs
of a nation. Thus, in Rome, gold was so far common that avarice was
called the love of gold; while in Greece, where silver was the metal
most in use, money was called _argurion_. In the same way it is
curiously shown that silver was no longer used in Egypt by our finding
that the brass coin of one hundred and ten grains weight, as being the
only piece of money seen in circulation, was named an _argurion_.

The latter years of the reign of Caracalla were spent in visiting the
provinces of his wide empire; and, after he had passed through Thrace
and Asia Minor, Egypt had the misfortune to be honoured by a visit from
its emperor. The satirical Alexandrians, who in the midst of their own
follies and vices were always clever in lashing those of their rulers,
had latterly been turning their unseemly jokes against Caracalla. They
had laughed at his dressing like Achilles and Alexander the Great, while
in his person he was below the usual height; and they had not forgotten
his murder of his brother, and his talking of marrying his own mother.
Some of these dangerous witticisms had reached his ears at Rome, and
they were not forgotten. But Caracalla never showed his displeasure;
and, as he passed through Antioch, he gave out that he was going to
visit the city founded by Alexander the Great, and to consult the oracle
in the temple of Serapis.

The Alexandrians in their joy got ready the hecatombs for his
sacrifices; and the emperor entered their city through rows of torches
to the sound of soft music, while the air was sweetened with costly
scents, and the road scattered with flowers. After a few days he
sacrificed in the temple of Serapis, and then visited the tomb of
Alexander, where he took off his scarlet cloak, his rings, and his
girdle covered with precious stones, and dutifully laid them on the
sarcophagus of the hero. The Alexandrians were delighted with their
visitor; and crowds flocked into the city to witness the daily and
nightly shows, little aware of the unforgiving malice that was lurking
in his mind.

The emperor then issued a decree that all the youths of Alexandria of an
age to enter the army should meet him in a plain on the outside of the
city; they had already a Macedonian and a Spartan phalanx, and he was
going to make an Alexandrian phalanx. Accordingly the plain was filled
with thousands of young men, who were ranged in bodies according to
their height, their age, and their fitness for bearing arms, while their
friends and relations came in equal numbers to be witnesses of their
honour.

The emperor moved through their ranks, and was loudly greeted with their
cheers, while the army which encircled the whole plain was gradually
closing round the crowd and lessening the circle. When the ring was
formed, Caracalla withdrew with his guards and gave the looked-for
signal. The soldiers then lowered their spears and charged on the
unarmed crowd, of whom a part were butchered and part driven headlong
into the ditches and canals; and such was the slaughter that the waters
of the Nile, which at midsummer are always red with the mud from the
upper country, were said to have flowed coloured to the sea with
the blood of the sufferers. Caracalla then returned to Antioch,
congratulating himself on the revenge that he had taken on the
Alexandrians for their jokes; not however till he had consecrated in the
temple of Serapis the sword with which he boasted that he had slain his
brother Geta.

Caracalla also punished the Alexandrians by stopping the public games
and the allowance of grain to the citizens; and, to lessen the danger of
their rebelling, he had the fortifications carried between the rest
of the city and the great palace-quarter, the Bruchium, thus dividing
Alexandria into two fortified cities, with towers on the walls
between them. Hitherto, under the Romans as under the Ptolemies, the
Alexandrians had been the trusted favourites of their rulers, who made
use of them to keep the Egyptians in bondage. But under Caracalla that
policy was changed; the Alexandrians were treated as enemies; and we see
for the first time Egyptians taking their seat in the Roman senate, and
the Egyptian religion openly cultivated by the emperor, who then built a
temple in Rome to the goddess Isis.

On the murder of Caracalla in A.D. 217, Macrinus, who was thought to be
the author of his death, was acknowledged as emperor; and though he only
reigned for about two months, yet, as the Egyptian new year's day fell
within that time, we find Alexandrian coins for the first and second
years of his reign. The Egyptians pretended that the death of Caracalla
had been foretold by signs from heaven; that a ball of fire had fallen
on the temple of Serapis, which destroyed nothing but the sword with
which Caracalla had slain his brother; and that an Egyptian named
Serapion, who had been thrown into a lion's den for naming Macrinus as
the future emperor, had escaped unhurt by the wild beasts.

Macrinus recalled from Alexandria Julian, the prefect of Egypt, and
appointed to that post his friend Basilianus, with Marius Secundus, a
senator, as second in command, who was the first senator that had ever
held command in Egypt. He was himself at Antioch when Bassianus, a
Syrian, pretending to be the son of Caracalla, offered himself to the
legions as that emperor's successor. When the news reached Alexandria
that the Syrian troops had joined the pretended Antoninus, the prefect
Basilianus at once put to death the public couriers that brought the
unwelcome tidings. But when, a few days afterwards, it was known that
Macrinus had been defeated and killed, the doubts about his successor
led to serious struggles between the troops and the Alexandrians. The
Alexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla; Basilianus
and Secundus had before declared against him; but, on the other hand,
the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria. The
citizens flew to arms, and day after day was the battle fought in the
streets of Alexandria between two parties, neither of whom was strong
enough, even if successful, to have any weight in settling the fate of
the Roman empire. Marius Secundus lost his life in the struggle. The
prefect Basilianus fled to Italy to escape from his own soldiers; and
the province of Egypt then followed the example of the rest of the East
in acknowledging the new emperor.

For four years Rome was disgraced by the sovereignty of Elagabalus,
the pretended son of Caracalla, and we find his coins each year in
Alexandria. He was succeeded by the young Alexander, whose amiable
virtues, however, could not gain for him the respect which he lost
by the weakness of his government. The Alexandrians, always ready to
lampoon their rulers, laughed at his wish to be thought a Roman; they
called him the Syrian, the high priest, and the ruler of the synagogue.
And well might they think slightly of his government, when a prefect of
Egypt owed his appointment to the emperor's want of power to punish him.
Epagathus had headed a mutiny of the praetorian guards in Rome, in which
their general Ulpian was killed; and Alexander, afraid to punish the
murderers, made the ringleader of the rebels prefect of Egypt in order
to send him out of the way; so little did it then seem necessary to
follow the cautious policy of Augustus, or to fear a rebellion in that
province. But after a short time, when Epagathus had been forgotten by
the Roman legion, he was removed to the government of Crete, and then at
last punished with death.

In this reign Ammonius Saccas became the founder of a new and most
important school of philosophy, that of the Alexandrian platonists. He
is only known to us through his pupils, in whose writings we trace the
mind and system of the teacher. The most celebrated of these pupils were
Plotinus, Herennius, and Origen, a pagan writer, together with Longinus,
the great master of the "sublime," who owns him his teacher in elegant
literature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of his
knowledge, and was by his followers called heaven-taught. He aimed at
putting an end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers by
showing that all the great truths were the same in each system, and
by pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of where
they differed; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools of
philosophy, and by gathering together the scattered limbs of Truth,
whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four winds
like the mangled body of Osiris.

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