The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos Part 6

It is true that the Egyptians were told all this was done in order that their own laws and customs might not be interfered with. While the Greeks and Jews were governed by Greek law, the Egyptians were governed by the old law of the land. But it was forgotten that the laws were administered by Greeks, and that the higher officials were also Greeks, who, as against an Egyptian, possessed arbitrary power. It was only amongst themselves, as between Egyptian and Egyptian, that the natives of the country enjoyed any benefit from the laws under which they lived; wherever the government and the Greeks were concerned, they were like outcasts, who could be punished, but not tried.

Nevertheless the country for many years remained tranquil. Unlike the Persians, the Greeks respected the religion of the people. Ptolemy did his utmost to conciliate the priesthood; their temples were restored and decorated, their festivals were treated with honour; above all, their endowments were untouched. And with the priesthood disposed to be friendly towards him, Ptolemy had no reason to be afraid. The priests were the national leaders; they it was who had stirred up the revolts against the Persian, and the temples in which they served had been the fortresses and rallying-points of the rebel armies. The Egyptians have always been an intensely religious people; whatever may have been their form of creed, whether pagan, Christian, or Moslem, they have clung to it with tenacity and battled for it, sometimes with fanatical zeal. Religion will arouse them when nothing else can do so; by the side of it even the love of gain has but little influence.

Besides conciliating the priesthood, Ptolemy planted garrisons of Greeks in several parts of the country. Bodies of veterans colonised the Fayyum, and Ptolemais, now Mens.h.i.+yeh, in Upper Egypt, was a Greek city modelled in all respects upon Alexandria. The public accounts were kept in Greek, and though the clerks and tax-gatherers were usually natives who had received a Greek education, many of them were Greeks by birth and even Jews.

"Ostraka," or inscribed potsherds, have been found at Thebes, which show that in the days of Ptolemy Physkon, a Jew, Simon, the son of Eleazar, farmed the taxes there for the temple of Amon. As he did not himself know Greek, his receipts were written for him by one of his sons. After his death he was succeeded in his office by his son Philokles. The name is noticeable, as it shows how rapidly the Jews of Egypt could become wholly Greek. The religion of his forefathers was not likely to sit heavily on the shoulders of the tax-gatherer of a heathen temple, and we need not wonder at the h.e.l.lenisation of his family. Simon was a sample of many of his brethren: in adopting Greek culture the Jews of Egypt began to forget that they were Jews. It required the shock of persecution at Jerusalem, and the Maccabean war of independence to recall them to a recollection of their past history and a sense of the mission of their race.

With the rise of the Greek kingdom in Egypt, the canonical books of the Old Testament come to an end. Jaddua, the last high-priest recorded in the Book of Nehemiah (xii. 7, 22), met Alexander the Great at Mizpeh, and if Josephus is to be trusted, obtained from him a recognition of the ancient privileges of the Jews and their exemption from taxation every Sabbatical year. The First Book of Chronicles (iii. 23) seems to bring the genealogy of the descendants of Zorobabel down to an even later date. But where the canonical books break off, the books of the Apocrypha begin. Jesus the son of Sirach, in his prologue to the Book of Ecclesiasticus, tells us that he had translated it in Egypt from Hebrew into Greek, when Euergetes, the third Ptolemy, was king, and thirty-eight years after its compilation by his grandfather Jesus. Like most of the apocryphal books, it thus had a Palestinian origin, but its translation into Greek indicates the intercourse that was going on between the Jews of Palestine and those of Egypt, as well as the general adoption of the Greek language by the Egyptian Jews.

The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about the same period is a yet more striking ill.u.s.tration of the same fact. The name of "Septuagint," which the translation still retains, perpetuates the legend, derived from the false Aristaeas, of its having been made all at one time by seventy (or seventy-two) translators. But internal evidence shows that such could not have been the case. The various books of the Canon were translated at different times, and the translators exhibit very different degrees of ability and acquaintance with the Hebrew language. The Pentateuch was the first to be rendered into Greek; the other books followed afterwards, and it would appear that the Book of Ecclesiastes never found a place in the translation at all. The Greek translation of the book which is now found in the Septuagint was probably made by Aquila.

It was under Ptolemy II., who justified his t.i.tle of Philadelphus, or "Brother-loving," by the murder of his two brothers, that the work of translation was begun. Ptolemy Soter, his father, had resigned his crown two years before his death, and the event proved that his confidence in his son's filial piety was not misplaced. The coronation of Philadelphus at Alexandria was celebrated with one of the most gorgeous pageants the world has ever seen, the details of which are preserved by Athenaeus. Under the new king the internal development of the monarchy went on apace. The ca.n.a.l was opened which connected the Nile with the Red Sea, and at its outlet near Suez a town was built called Arsinoe, after the king's sister.

The ports of Berenike and Philotera (now Qoseir) were constructed and fortified on the coast of the Red Sea, and roads made to them from Koptos and Syene on the Nile. In this way the ivory and gems of the Sudan could be brought to Egypt without pa.s.sing through the hostile territories of the Ethiopians in Upper Nubia. In the eastern desert itself the mines of emerald and gold were worked until the royal revenue was increased to more than three millions sterling a year.

Though Ptolemy Philadelphus was fond of show, he was not extravagant, and his income was sufficient not only to maintain a large army and navy and protect efficiently the frontier of his kingdom, but also to leave a large reserve fund in the treasury. It was said to amount to as much as a hundred millions sterling. It was no wonder, therefore, that Alexandria became filled with sumptuous buildings. The Pharos or lighthouse was finished by Sostratos, as well as the tomb of Alexander, whose body was moved from Memphis to the golden sarcophagus which had been prepared for it. The library of the Museum was stocked with books until 400,000 rolls of papyrus were collected together, and men of science and learning from all parts of the world were attracted to it by the munificence of the king. The princ.i.p.al librarians.h.i.+p, however, changed hands on the accession of the new king. Demetrius Phalereus, the ex-tyrant of Athens, who had been the first librarian, had offended Philadelphus by advising that the crown should descend to his elder brother instead of to himself, and he had accordingly to make way for Zenodotos of Ephesus, famous as a critic of Homer.

Among the books which found a place in the great library of Alexandria was doubtless the Greek translation of the Pentateuch. Philadelphus showed remarkable favour to the Jews. The Jewish captives of his soldiers were ransomed by him and given homes in various parts of Egypt. One hundred and twenty thousand slaves were thus freed, the king paying for each 120 drachmas, or 30 shekels, the price of a slave according to the Mosaic Law.

It is quite possible that there may be some truth in the legend that the Greek translation of the Old Testament was made at his desire. Whether or not we believe that he sent two Greek Jews, Aristaeus and Andraeus, with costly gifts to Eleazar the high-priest at Jerusalem, asking him to select fit men for the purpose, he was probably not unwilling that a copy of the sacred books of his Jewish subjects, in a form intelligible to the Greeks, should be added to the library. We must not forget that it was he who employed Manetho, the priest of Sebennytos, to write in Greek the history of his country, which he compiled from the hieroglyphic monuments and hieratic papyri of the native temples.

Ptolemy III., Euergetes, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father in B.C. 246. A war with Syria broke out at the beginning of his reign, and the march of the Egyptian army as far as Seleucia, the capital of the Syrian kingdom on the Euphrates, was one uninterrupted triumph. On his return, Ptolemy laid his offerings on the altar at Jerusalem, and thanked the G.o.d of the Jews for his success. The Jewish community might well be pardoned for believing that in the conqueror of Syria they had a new proselyte to their faith.

The Egyptians had equal reason to be satisfied with their king. Among the spoils of his Syrian campaign were 2500 vases and statues of the Egyptian deities which Kambyses had carried to Persia nearly three centuries before. They were restored to the temples of Upper Egypt, from which they had been taken, with stately ceremonies and amid the rejoicing of the people, and Ptolemy was henceforth known among his subjects as Euergetes, their "Benefactor."

Euergetes, in fact, seems to have been the most Egyptian and least Greek of all the Ptolemies. Alone among them he visited Thebes and paid homage to the G.o.ds of Egypt. Their temples were rebuilt and crowded with offerings, and the priesthood naturally regarded him as a king after their own heart. He, too, like the Pharaohs of old, turned his attention to the conquest of Ethiopia, which his predecessors had been content to neglect.(9) It was under Euergetes, moreover, that the so-called Decree of Canopus was drawn up in hieroglyphics and demotic Egyptian as well as in Greek. Its occasion was the death of Berenike, the king's daughter, to whom the Egyptian priests determined to grant divine honours. It is the first time that we find the old script and language of Egypt taking its place by the side of that of the Macedonian conqueror, and it is significant that the Greek transcript occupies the third place.

Judah had hitherto remained tranquil and at peace under the government of the Ptolemies. The high-priests had taken the place of the kings, and their authority was undisputed. At times, indeed, the coveted dignity was the cause of family feuds. Jonathan, the father of Jaddua (Neh. xii. 11, 22), had murdered his brother Joshua, whom he suspected of trying to supplant him, and the example he set was destined to have followers. But outside his own family the high-priest ruled with almost despotic power.

Simon the Just (B.C. 300), with whom ends the list of "famous men" given by Jesus the son of Sirach (iv. 1-21), repaired and fortified the temple as well as the fortress which guarded it. Jewish tradition ascribed to him the completion of the Canon of the Old Testament which had been begun by Ezra, and it was through him that the oral Mosaic tradition of Pharisaism made its way to Antigonus Socho, the first writer of the Mishna or text of the Talmud, and the teacher of the founder of Sadduceism. The grandson of Simon, Onias II., imperilled the authority his predecessors had enjoyed.

His covetousness led him to withhold the tribute of 3000, due each year from the Temple to the Jewish king, and in spite of an envoy from Ptolemy and the remonstrances of his countrymen, he refused to give it up.

Jerusalem was saved by the address and readiness of Joseph, the brother of Onias. He hastened to Egypt, ingratiated himself with Ptolemy, and succeeded in being appointed farmer of the taxes for Syria and Palestine.

The Jews were saved, but a rival power to that of the high-priest was established, which led eventually to civil war. The greed of Onias was the first scene in the drama which is unfolded in the Books of the Maccabees.

Euergetes was the last of the "good" Ptolemies. His son and successor, Ptolemy IV., was the incarnation of weakness, cruelty and vice. He began his reign with the murder of his mother and only brother, taking the t.i.tle of Philopator-"Lover of his Father"-by way of compensation. Syria was reconquered by Antiochus the Great, but his Greek phalanxes were beaten at Raphia by the Egyptians, now armed and trained in the Macedonian fas.h.i.+on, and the grat.i.tude of Philopator showed itself in a visit to the temple at Jerusalem, where he sacrificed to the G.o.d of the Jews and attempted to penetrate into the Holy of Holies. A tumult was the consequence, and the exasperated king on his return to Egypt deprived the Jews of their Greek citizens.h.i.+p, and ordered them to be tattooed with the figure of an ivy-leaf in honour of Bacchus, and to sacrifice on the altars of the Greek G.o.ds.

The Jews had hitherto been the staunch supporters of the royal house of Egypt, and had held the fortress of Jerusalem for it against the power of Syria. But Philopator had now alienated them for ever. Nor was he more successful with the native Egyptians. First the Egyptian troops mutinied; then came revolt in Upper Egypt. The Ethiopian princes, whose memorials are found in the Nubian temples of Debod and Dakkeh, were invited to Thebes, and an Ethiopian dynasty again ruled in Upper Egypt. The names of the kings who composed it have recently been found in deeds written in demotic characters.

Philopator died of his debaucheries after a reign of seventeen years (B.C.

204), leaving a child of five years of age-the future Ptolemy Epiphanes-to succeed him. The Alexandrine mob was in a state of riot, the army was untrustworthy, and Antiochus was again on the march against Syria. The Egyptian forces were defeated at Banias (Caesarea Philippi), the Jews having gone over to the invader, in return for which Antiochus remitted the taxes due from Jerusalem, and not only released all the ministers of the temple from future taxation, but sent a large sum of money for its support. By a treaty with Rome the possession of the country was a.s.sured to him (B.C. 188), and colonies of Mesopotamian Jews were settled in Lydia and Phrygia.

Meanwhile Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, was growing up, and in B.C. 196 accordingly it was determined that he should be crowned. The coronation took place at Memphis, and a decree was made lightening the burdens of the country, relieving the _fellahin_ from being impressed for the navy, and granting further endowments to the priests. It is this decree which is engraved on the famous Rosetta Stone.

But the revolt of the Egyptians still continued, and had already spread northward. Reference is made in the decree to rebellion in the Busirite nome of the Delta, and to a siege of the city of Lykopolis, in which the insurgents had fortified themselves. It was at this time, too, that the city of Abydos was taken by storm and its temples finally ruined, as we gather from a Greek scrawl on the walls of the temple of Seti. But in B.C.

185 a decisive victory was gained by the Greek mercenaries over the revolted Egyptians. Their four leaders surrendered on the king's promise of a free pardon, and were brought before him at Sais. There, however, he tied them to his chariot-wheels in imitation of Achilles, and dragged them still living round the city walls, after which he returned to Alexandria and entered his capital in triumph.

The crimes of Epiphanes led to his murder in B.C. 180, and his seven-year-old son, Ptolemy VI., Philometor, was proclaimed king under the regency of his mother. While she lived there was peace, but after her death the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes, threw himself upon Egypt, captured his nephew Philometor, and held his court in Memphis. Thereupon Philometor's younger brother, whose corpulency had given him the nickname of Physkon, "the Bloated," proclaimed himself king at Alexandria, and called upon Rome for help. Antiochus withdrew, leaving Philometor king of the Egyptians, and Physkon, who had taken the t.i.tle of Euergetes II., king of the Greeks at Alexandria. Thanks to the brotherly forbearance of Philometor, the two reigned together in harmony for several years.

Antiochus Epiphanes, however, had again invaded Egypt, but had been warned off its soil by the Roman amba.s.sadors. Rome now affected to regard the kingdom of the Ptolemies as a protected state, and the successors of Alexander were in no condition to resist the orders of the haughty republic. Things had indeed changed since the days when Philadelphus in the plenitude of his glory deigned to congratulate the Italian state on its defeat of the Epirots, and the Roman senate regarded his emba.s.sy as the highest of possible honours.

The command of the Romans to leave Egypt alone was sullenly obeyed by Antiochus Epiphanes. But he had no choice in the matter. He had more than enough on his hands at home without risking a quarrel with Rome. The Jews were in full rebellion. The h.e.l.lenising party among them-"the unG.o.dly" of the Books of Maccabees-had grown numerous and strong, and had united themselves with the civil rivals of the high-priests. Between the party of progress and the orthodox supporters of the Law there was soon open war, and in B.C. 175, Antiochus Epiphanes, tempted by the higher bribe, was induced to join in the fray, and throw the whole weight of his power on the side of innovation. Onias III. was deposed from the high-priesthood, and his brother Joshua, the leader of "the unG.o.dly," was appointed in his place, with leave to change the name of the Jews to that of Antiochians.

Joshua forthwith took the Greek name of Jason, established a gymnasium at Jerusalem, sent offerings to the festival of Herakles at Tyre, and discouraged the rite of circ.u.mcision. But Jason's rule was short-lived. A Benjamite, Menelaus, succeeded in driving him out of the country and usurping the office of high-priest, while Onias was put to death.

The second Syrian invasion of Egypt took place two years later. The story of the check received by Antiochus Epiphanes came to Judaea with all the exaggerations usual in the East; Antiochus was reported to be dead, and Jason accordingly marched upon Jerusalem, ma.s.sacred his opponents, and blockaded Menelaus in the citadel. But Antiochus had been wounded only in his pride, and he turned back from the Nile burning with mortification and anxious to vent his anger upon the first who came in his way. The outrage committed by Jason was a welcome pretext. The defenceless population of Jerusalem was partly ma.s.sacred, partly sold into slavery, and under the guidance of Menelaus he entered the Temple and carried away the sacred vessels, as well as its other treasure. Philip the Phrygian was appointed governor of the city, while Menelaus remained high-priest.

Severer measures were to follow. In B.C. 168 there had been a rising in Jerusalem, which was thereupon captured on a Sabbath-day by the Syrian general, the greater part of it being sacked and burned, and a portion of the city wall thrown down. A garrison was established on Mount Zion, which at that time overlooked the Temple-hill, and a fierce persecution of the Jews commenced. Every effort was made to compel them to forsake their religion, to eat swine's flesh, and to wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds of the Greeks. It was then that "the abomination of desolation" was seen in the Holy of Holies, the temples of Samaria and Jerusalem being re-dedicated to Zeus Xenios and Zeus Olympios, and that at Jerusalem befouled with the rites of the Syrian Ashtoreth.

Thousands of the orthodox Jews fled to Egypt, where they found shelter and welcome. Among them was Onias, the eldest son of Onias III. Philometor granted him land in the nome of Heliopolis, and allowed him to build there a temple in which the wors.h.i.+p of the Hebrew G.o.d should be carried on as it had been at Jerusalem. Excavation goes to show that the temple was erected at the spot now called Tel el-Yehudiyeh, "the Mound of the Jewess," not far from s.h.i.+bin el-Kanatir. Here was an old deserted palace and temple of Ramses III., and here the Jews were permitted to establish themselves and found a city, which they called Onion.

According to Josephus, its older name had been Leontopolis. The temple, which was destroyed by Vespasian after the Jewish war, was fortified like that at Jerusalem, and the porcelain plaques enamelled with rosettes and lotus-buds, which had been made for Ramses III., were employed once more to ornament it. Long ago the _fellahin_ discovered among its ruins, and then broke up, a marble bath, such as is used to-day by the Jewish women for the purpose of purification, and in the adjoining necropolis Dr.

Naville found the tombs of persons who bore Jewish names. Onias was not allowed to build his new temple without a protest from the stricter adherents of the Law that it was forbidden to raise one elsewhere than in the sacred city of David. But he was a man of ready resource, and all opposition was overcome when he pointed to the prophecy of Isaiah (xix.

19): "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt." The Egyptian Jews had already secured their own version of the Scriptures; they now had their own temple, their own priesthood, and their own high-priest. True, their co-religionists in Judaea never ceased to protest against this rival centre of their religious faith, and to denounce Onias as the first schismatic; but their brethren in Egypt paid no attention to their words, and the temple of Onion continued to exist as long as that of Jerusalem.

Onias exercised an influence not only over his own countrymen, but over the mind of the king as well. Philometor, like Euergetes, had Jewish leanings, and the high-priest of Onion was admitted to high offices of state. So also was Dositheus, "the priest and Levite," who, in "The Rest of the Chapters of the Book of Esther" (x. 1), tells us that in the fourth year of Philometor, he and his son Ptolemy had brought to Egypt "this epistle of Phurim," which had been translated into Greek at Jerusalem by Lysimachus, the son of Ptolemy. Philometor even acted as a judge in the great religious controversy which raged between the Jews and the Samaritans. They called upon him to decide whether the temple should have been built on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, and which of them had altered the text of Deuteronomy xxvii. 12, 13. Philometor decided in favour of the Jews, as his duty towards his numerous Jewish subjects perhaps compelled him to do, and his religious zeal even carried him so far as to order the two unsuccessful advocates of the Samaritan cause to be put to death.

While the king of Egypt was thus acting like a Jew, the king of Syria was engaged in a fierce struggle with the Jewish people. The national party had risen under Mattathias, the priest of Modin, and his five sons, of whom the third, Judas Maccabaeus, was the ablest and best-known. One after another the Syrian armies were overthrown, and in B.C. 165 the Temple was purified and repaired, and a new altar dedicated in it to the Lord of Hosts. Two years later Antiochus Epiphanes died while on the march against Judaea, and with him died also the power of Syria. Rival claimants for the throne, internal and external discord, treachery and murder, sapped the foundations of its strength, and in spite of a.s.sa.s.sinations and religious quarrels, of Edomite hostility and the efforts of the h.e.l.lenising party among the Jews themselves, the power of the Maccabees went on increasing.

The high-priesthood pa.s.sed to them from the last of the sympathisers with the Greeks, and Jonathan, the brother and successor of Judas, was treated by the king of Syria with royal honours. Treaties were made with Sparta and Rome, and his successor, Simon, struck coins of his own. After his murder his son John Hyrca.n.u.s extended the Jewish dominion as far north as Damascus, annihilating Samaria and its temples and conquering the Edomites, whom he compelled to accept the Jewish faith. Aristobulus, who followed him, took the t.i.tle of king, and added Ituraea to his kingdom, while his brother Alexander Jannaeus attacked Egypt and annexed the cities of the Phnician coast. But with royal dignity had come royal crimes. Both Aristobulus and Alexander had murdered their brothers, and their Greek names show how the champions of Jewish orthodoxy were pa.s.sing over into the camp of the foe.

Long before all this happened, many changes had fallen upon Egypt.

Philometor died in B.C. 145. He had been weak enough to forgive his rebellious and ungrateful brother twice when he had had him in his power.

Once he had been compelled to go to Rome to plead his cause before the senate, and there be indebted to an Alexandrine painter for food and lodging; on the second occasion Physkon had endeavoured to rob him of Cyprus by a combination of mean treachery and intrigue.

The reward of his brotherly forbearance was the murder by Physkon of Philometor's young son Ptolemy Philopator II. immediately after his death.

Onias, the Jewish high-priest, held Alexandria for Philopator, but his uncle Physkon was favoured by the Romans, whose word was now law. Physkon accordingly began his long reign of vice and cruelty, interrupted only by temporary banishment to Cyprus. Then followed his widow, Cleopatra Kokke, a woman stained with every possible and impossible crime. She held her own, however, against all opponents, including her own son Ptolemy Lathyrus, thanks to her two Jewish generals, Khelkias and Ananias, the sons of the high-priest Onias. Palestine and Syria again became a battle-field where the fate of Egypt was decided, and while Cleopatra was aided by the Jews, Lathyrus found his allies among the Samaritans.

It was in the midst of these wars and rumours of wars, when men had lost faith in one another and themselves, and when the Jews after struggling for bare existence were beginning to treat on equal terms with the great monarchies of the world, that that curious Apocalypse, the Book of Enoch, seems to have been composed, at all events in its original form. It is a vision of the end of all things and the judgment of mankind, and it embodies the fully developed doctrine of the angelic hierarchy to which reference is made in the Book of Daniel.

Cleopatra was murdered by her younger and favourite son, and Lathyrus succeeded after all in obtaining the throne of Egypt, which he ascended under the t.i.tle of Soter II. (B.C. 87). His short reign of six years was signalised by the destruction of Thebes. Upper Egypt was still in a state of effervescing discontent, and the crimes of the last reign caused it to break into open rebellion. The government was weak and wicked; the Greeks had lost their vigour and power to rule, and their armies were now mere bodies of unruly mercenaries. But the Thebans were not wealthy or strong enough to withstand Alexandria when helped by the resources of the Mediterranean. The revolt was at last suppressed, Thebes taken by storm, and its temples, which had been used as fortresses, battered and destroyed. The population was put to the sword or carried into slavery, and the capital of the conquering Pharaohs of the past ceased to exist.

Its place was taken by a few squalid villages which cl.u.s.tered round the ruins of its ancient shrines. Karnak and Luxor, Medinet Habu and Qurnah, were all that remained of the former city. Under the earlier Ptolemies it had been known as Diospolis, "the city of Zeus" Amon, the metropolis of Upper Egypt; from this time forward, in the receipts of the tax-gatherers, it is nothing more than a collection of "villages." Its priests were scattered, its ruined temples left to decay. What the a.s.syrian had failed to destroy and the Persian had spared was overthrown by a Ptolemy who called himself a king of Egypt.

After the death of Lathyrus the internal decay of the monarchy went on rapidly. A prey to civil war and usurpation, it was allowed to exist a little longer by the contemptuous forbearance of the Romans, who waited to put an end to it until they had drained it of its treasures. The kingdom of the Asmonaeans at Jerusalem also had tottered to its fall. Family murders and civil feuds had become almost as common among them as among the Ptolemies, and as in Egypt, so too in Palestine, Rome was called in to mediate between the rival claimants for the crown. In B.C. 63 Jerusalem was captured by Pompey after a three months' siege, its defenders ma.s.sacred, its fortifications destroyed, and its royal house abolished.

The Roman victor entered the Holy of Holies, and Palestine was annexed to the Roman empire.

Among the remnant which still retained the faith of their forefathers the Roman conquest and the profanation of the temple gave new strength to the conviction that the Messiah and saviour of Israel must surely soon appear.

The conviction finds expression in the so-called Psalms of Solomon, of which only a Greek copy survives. The high hopes raised by the successes of the Maccabean family were dashed for ever, and the temporal power of Judah had vanished away. Henceforth it existed as a nation only on sufferance.

In Egypt it was not long before the Jews discovered how grievous had been the change in their fortunes. They ceased to be feared, and therefore respected: the mob and rulers of Alexandria had for them now only hatred and contempt. Their citizens.h.i.+p was taken away, with its right to the enjoyment of their own magistrates and courts of justice, and they were degraded to the rank of the native Egyptians, whom the lowest Greek vagabond in the streets of Alexandria could maltreat with impunity. They did not recover their old privileges until Augustus had reorganised his Egyptian province, and though they were again deprived of them by Caligula, when Philo went in vain to plead for his countrymen before the emperor, they were restored by Claudius, and even Vespasian after the Jewish war did not interfere with them.

The house of Ptolemy fell ign.o.bly. But it fell amid the convulsions of a civil war which rent the empire of its conquerors to the foundation, and among the ruins of the Roman republic. Cleopatra, its last representative, bewitched not only the coa.r.s.er Mark Antony but even the master mind of Julius Caesar. Her charms were fatal to the life and reputation of the one; they nearly proved equally fatal to the life of the other. Besieged with her in the palace of the Ptolemies by the Alexandrine mob, Caesar's life trembled for a while in the balance. But the Library of Alexandria was given in its stead; he saved himself by firing the docks and s.h.i.+pping, and the flames spread from the harbour to the halls of the Museum. The precious papyri perished in the flames, and the rooms in which the learning and talent of the Greek world had been gathered together were a heap of blackened ruins. It is true that Cleopatra subsequently obtained from Mark Antony the library of Pergamos, with its 200,000 volumes, which she placed in the temple of Serapis, but the new library never equalled the old, either in its extent or in the value of its books.

Cleopatra and Mark Antony died by their own hands, and Augustus was left master of Egypt and the Roman world (B.C. 30). Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, was put to death, and Egypt was annexed to the emperor's privy purse. It never, therefore, became a province of the Roman empire: unhappily for its inhabitants, it remained the emperor's private domain. Its prefect was never allowed to be of higher rank than the equestrian order, and a senator was forbidden to set foot in it. Its cities could not govern themselves, and the old Greek law, which restricted the rights of citizens.h.i.+p to the Greeks and Jews and prevented any native Egyptians from sharing them, was left in force. Egypt was the granary of Rome, and the riches of its soil and the industry of its inhabitants made it needful that no rival to the reigning sovereign should establish himself in it. History had shown with what ease the country could be invaded and occupied and with what difficulty the occupier could be driven out. And the master of Egypt commanded the trade between East and West; he commanded also the Roman mob whose mouths were filled with Egyptian corn. It was dangerous to allow a possible rival even to visit the valley of the Nile.

The history of Alexandria under the Romans is the history of Alexandria rather than of the Egyptians. The _fellahin_ laboured for others, not for themselves, and the burdens which weighed upon them became ever greater and more intolerable. Now and again there were outbreaks in Upper Egypt, which were, however, quickly repressed, and in the third century the barbarian Blemmyes made Coptos and Ptolemais their capitals. The reconquest of the Thebaid by Probus (A.D. 280) was judged worthy of a triumph. About eight years later the whole country was once more in rebellion, and proclaimed their leader Akhilleus emperor. The war lasted for nine years, and the whole force of the empire was required to finish it. The emperor Diocletian marched in person into Upper Egypt and besieged Coptos, the centre of the revolt. After a long siege the city was taken and razed to the ground. But the war had ruined the people. The embankments were broken, the ca.n.a.ls choked up, the fields untilled and overrun by the barbarians from the Sudan or the Bedouin of the eastern desert. Diocletian, when the struggle was over, found himself obliged to withdraw the Roman garrisons south of the First Cataract, and to fix the frontier of the empire at a.s.suan.

The war was followed by the great persecution of the Christians, the last expiring effort of Roman paganism against the invasion of the new faith.

Christianity had become a mighty power in the Roman world, which threatened soon to absorb all that was left of the Rome of the past, with its patriotism, its devotion to the emperor, its law and its administration. The struggle between it and the empire of Augustus could no longer be delayed. The edict of Diocletian was signed, and the empire put forth its whole strength to crush its rival and root Christianity out of its midst.

But the attempt came too late. The new power was stronger than the old one, and the persecution only proved how utterly the old Rome had pa.s.sed away. The empire bowed its head and became Christian; the bishops took the place of the prefects and senators of the past, and theological disputations raged in the halls of philosophy. Nowhere had the persecution been fiercer than in Egypt; nowhere had the martyrs and confessors of the Church been more heroic or more numerous.

The result was one which we should hardly have expected. Hitherto Christianity in Egypt had been Greek. It was a.s.sociated with Alexandria and the Greek language, not with the villages and tongue of the people.

Its bishops and theologians were Greeks, and the school of Christian Platonism which flourished in Alexandria had little in common with Egyptian ideas. With the Diocletian persecution, however, came a change.

Even while it was still at its height, martyrs and confessors come forward who bear Egyptian and not Greek names. Hardly is it over before the native population joins in one great body the new religion. Osiris and Isis make way for Christ and the Blessed Virgin, the Coptic alphabet replaces the demotic script of heathenism, and the bodies of the dead cease to be embalmed. It is difficult to account for the suddenness and completeness of the change. The decay of the Roman power, and therewith the barriers between Greek and Egyptian, may have had something to do with it. So too may the revolt in Upper Egypt, which united in one common feeling of nationality all the elements of the population. Perhaps a still more potent cause was the spectacle of the heroism and constancy of those who suffered for the Christian faith. The Egyptian has always been deeply religious, and his very enjoyment of life makes him admire and revere the ascetic. But whatever may have been the reason, the fact remains: before the persecution of Diocletian Egyptian Christianity had been Greek; when the persecution was over it had become Copt. The pagans who still survived were not Egyptians but the rich and highly-educated Greeks, like the poet Nonnus, who was tortured to death by St. Shnudi, or the gifted Hypatia, whose flesh was torn from her bones with oyster-sh.e.l.ls by the monks of St.