Judah had profited by the revolution which had been so disastrous to the
monarchy of the Nile. The overthrow of the Babylonian empire and the rise
of Cyrus had brought deliverance from exile and the restoration of the
temple and its services. In the Jewish colony at Jerusalem, Cyrus and his
successors had, as it were, a bridle upon Egypt; gratitude to their
deliverer and freedom to enjoy the theocracy which had taken the place of
the Davidic monarchy made the Jewish people an outpost and garrison upon
whose loyalty the Persian king could rely.
The yoke of the Zoroastrian Darius and his descendants pressed heavily, on
the other hand, upon the priests and people of Egypt. Time after time they
attempted to revolt. Their first rebellion, under Khabbash, saved Greece
from the legions of Darius and postponed the day of Persian invasion to a
time when the incapable Xerxes sat upon the throne of his energetic
father. A second time they rose in insurrection in the reign of Artaxerxes
I., the successor of Xerxes. But under Artaxerxes II. came a more
formidable outbreak, which ended in the recovery of Egyptian independence
and the establishment of the last three dynasties of native kings.
For sixty-five years (from B.C. 414 to 349) Egypt preserved its
independence. More than once the Persians sought to recover it, but they
were foiled by the Spartan allies of the Pharaoh or by the good fortune of
the Egyptians. But civil feuds and cowardice sapped the strength of the
Egyptian resistance. Greek mercenaries and sailors now fought in the ranks
of the Persians as well as in those of the Egyptians, and the result of
the struggle between Persia and Egypt was in great measure dependent on
the amount of pay the two sides could afford to give them. The army was
insubordinate, and between the Greek and Egyptian soldiers there was
jealousy and feud. Nektanebo II. (B.C. 367-49), the last of the Pharaohs,
had dethroned his own father, and though he had once driven the Persian
king Artaxerxes Ochus back from the coasts of Egypt, he failed to do so a
second time. The Greeks were left to defend themselves as best they could
at Pelusium, while Nektanebo retired to Memphis with 60,000 worthless
native troops. From thence he fled to Ethiopia with his treasures, leaving
his country in the hands of the Persian. Ochus wreaked his vengeance on
the Egyptian priests, destroying the temples, demanding a heavy ransom for
the sacred records he had robbed, setting up an ass—a symbol in Egyptian
eyes of all that was evil and unclean—as the patron-god of the conquered
land, and slaying the sacred bull Apis in sacrifice to the new divinity.
The murder of Ochus by his Egyptian eunuch Bagoas was the penalty he paid
for these outrages on the national faith.
Egypt never again was free. Its rulers have been of manifold races and
forms of faith, but they have never again been Egyptians. Persians, Greeks
and Romans, Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, Mameluk slaves and Turks, Frenchmen
and Englishmen, have all governed or misgoverned it, but throughout this
long page of its history there is no sign of native political life.
Religion or taxation has alone seemed able to stir the people into
movement or revolt. For aspirations after national freedom we look in
vain.
The Persian was not left long in the possession of his rebellious
province. Egypt opened her gates to Alexander of Macedon, as in later ages
she opened her gates to the Arab ’Amru. The Greeks had long been
associated in the Egyptian mind with opposition to the hated Persian, and
it was as a Greek that Alexander entered the country. Memphis and Thebes
welcomed him, and he did his best to prove to his subjects that he had
indeed come among them as one of their ancient kings. Hardly had he
reached Memphis before he went in state to the temple of Apis and offered
sacrifice to the sacred bull. Then, after founding Alexandria at the spot
where the native village of Rakoti stood, he made his way to the Oasis of
Ammon, the modern Siwah, among the sands of the distant desert, and there
was greeted by the high-priest of the temple as the son of the god. Like
the Pharaohs of old, the Macedonian conqueror became the son of Amon-Ra,
and in Egypt at least claimed divine honours.
Before leaving Egypt Alexander appointed the nomarchs who were to govern
it, and ordered that justice should be administered according to the
ancient law of the land. He also sent 7000 Samaritans into the Thebaid;
some of them were settled in the Fayyûm, and in the papyri discovered by
Professor Petrie at Hawâra mention is made of a village which they had
named Samaria. Appointing Kleomenês prefect of Egypt and collector of the
taxes, Alexander now hurried away to the Euphrates, there to overthrow the
shattered relics of the Persian Empire.
It was while he was at Ekbatana that his friend Hêphæstiôn died, and
Alexander wrote to Egypt to inquire of the oracle of Ammon what honours it
was lawful for him to pay to the dead man. In reply Hêphæstiôn was
pronounced to be a god, and a temple was accordingly erected to him at
Alexandria, and the new lighthouse on the island of Pharos was called
after his name.
When Alexander died suddenly and unexpectedly, the council of his generals
which assembled at Babylon declared his half-brother, Philip Arridæus, to
be his successor. But they reserved to themselves all the real power in
Alexander’s empire. Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, chose Egypt as the seat of
his government, which was accordingly handed over to him by Kleomenês on
his arrival there, a year after the accession of the new king. His first
act was to put Kleomenês to death.
Then came the long funeral procession bearing the corpse of Alexander from
Babylon to the tomb that was to be erected for him in his new city of
Alexandria. More than a year passed while it wound its way slowly from
city to city, till at last it arrived at Memphis. Here the body of the
great conqueror rested awhile until the gorgeous sepulchre was made ready
in which it was finally to repose.
It was plain that Ptolemy was aiming at independent power. Perdikkas, the
regent, accordingly attacked him, carrying in his train the young princes,
Philip Arridæus, and Alexander Ægos, the infant son of Alexander. But the
invading army was routed below Memphis, Perdikkas was slain, and the young
princes fell into the hands of the conqueror. From this time forward,
Ptolemy, though nominally a subject, acted as if he were a king.
Nikanôr was sent into Syria to annex it to Egypt. Jerusalem alone resisted
the invaders, but it was assaulted on the Sabbath when the defenders
withdrew from the walls, and all further opposition was at end. Palestine
and Cœle-Syria were again united with the kingdom on the Nile.
The union, however, did not last long. In B.C. 315 Philip Arridæus was
murdered, and Alexander was proclaimed successor to his empty dignity. The
year following, Antigonus, the rival of Ptolemy in Asia Minor, made ready
to invade Egypt. But Ptolemy had already conquered Kyrênê and Cyprus, and
was master of the sea. Syria and Palestine, however, submitted to
Antigonus, and though Ptolemy gained a decisive victory over his enemies
at Gaza, he did not think it prudent to pursue it. He contented himself,
therefore, with razing the fortifications of Acre and Jaffa, of Samaria
and Gaza.
In B.C. 312 the generals of Alexander, who still called themselves the
lieutenants of his son, came to a general agreement, each keeping that
portion of the empire which he had made his own. The agreement was almost
immediately followed by the murder of Alexander Ægos. Cleopatra, the
sister of the great Alexander, and his niece Thessalonika alone remained
of the royal family, and Cleopatra, on her way to Egypt to marry Ptolemy,
was assassinated by Antigonus (in B.C. 308), and Alexander’s niece soon
afterwards shared the same fate. The family of “the son of Ammon,” the
annihilator of the Persian Empire, was extinct.
Two years later, in B.C. 306, an end was put to the farce so long played
by the generals of Alexander, and each of them assumed the title of king.
Ptolemy took that of “king of Egypt.” To this the Greeks afterwards added
the name of Sôtêr, “Saviour,” when his supplies of corn had saved the
Rhodians from destruction during their heroic defence of their city
against the multitudinous war-ships of Antigonus.
Throughout his rule, Ptolemy never forgot the needs and interests of the
kingdom over which he ruled. Alexandria was completed, with its unrivalled
harbours, its stately public buildings, its broad quays and its spacious
streets. From first to last it remained the Greek capital of Egypt. It was
Greek in its origin, Greek in its architecture, Greek in its population;
Greek also in its character, its manners, and its faith. Cut off from the
rest of Egypt by the Mareotic Lake, and enjoying a European climate, it
was from its foundation what it is to-day, a city of Europe rather than of
Egypt. From it, as from an impregnable watch-tower, the Ptolemies directed
the fortunes of their kingdom: it was not only the key to Egypt, it was
also a bridle upon it. The wealth of the world passed through its streets
and harbours; the religions and philosophies of East and West met within
its halls. Ptolemy had founded in it a university, a prototype of Oxford
and Cambridge in modern England, of the Azhar in modern Cairo. In the
Museum, as it was called, a vast library was gathered together, and its
well-endowed chairs were filled with learned professors from all parts of
the Greek world, who wrote books and delivered lectures and dined together
at the royal charge.
But the Greeks were not the only inhabitants of the new city. The Jews
also settled there in large numbers on the eastern side of the town,
attracted by the offers of Ptolemy and the belief that the rising centre
of trade would be better worth inhabiting than the wasted fields of
Palestine. All the rights of Greek citizenship were granted to them, and
they were placed on a footing almost of equality with Ptolemy’s own
countrymen.
The native Egyptians were far worse treated. They had become “the hewers
of wood and carriers of water” for their new Greek masters. It was they
who furnished the government with its revenue, but in return they
possessed no rights, no privileges. When land was wanted for the veterans
of the Macedonian army, as, for example, in the Fayyûm, it was taken from
them without compensation. Taxes, ever heavier and heavier, were laid upon
them; and every attempt at remonstrance or murmuring was visited with
immediate punishment. The Egyptian had no rights unless he could be
registered a citizen of Alexandria, and this it was next to impossible for
him to be.
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 Fayyûm,
and Ptolemais, now Menshîyeh, 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 Physkôn, 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 Philoklês. 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 Hellenisation 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 Euergetês, 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 illustration of the same fact. The name of
“Septuagint,” which the translation still retains, perpetuates the legend,
derived from the false Aristæas, 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 title of Philadelphus, or
“Brother-loving,” by the murder of his two brothers, that the work of
translation was begun. Ptolemy Sôtêr, 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 Athenæus. Under
the new king the internal development of the monarchy went on apace. The
canal was opened which connected the Nile with the Red Sea, and at its
outlet near Suez a town was built called Arsinoê, after the king’s sister.
The ports of Berenikê and Philotera (now Qoseir) were constructed and
fortified on the coast of the Red Sea, and roads made to them from Koptos
and Syênê on the Nile. In this way the ivory and gems of the Sudân could
be brought to Egypt without passing 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 Sôstratos, 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 principal librarianship, 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 Zênodotos 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, Aristæus and Andræus, 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., Euergetês, 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 God 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 Euergetês,
their “Benefactor.”
Euergetês, 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 gods 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 Euergetês, moreover, that the so-called Decree of
Canôpus was drawn up in hieroglyphics and demotic Egyptian as well as in
Greek. Its occasion was the death of Berenikê, 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.
Euergetês 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 title
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 fashion,
and the gratitude of Philopator showed itself in a visit to the temple at
Jerusalem, where he sacrificed to the God 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
citizenship, 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
gods.
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 Epiphanês—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 (Cæsarea 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 assured
to him (B.C. 188), and colonies of Mesopotamian Jews were settled in Lydia
and Phrygia.
Meanwhile Ptolemy V., Epiphanês, 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 Epiphanês led to his murder in B.C. 180, and his
seven-year-old son, Ptolemy VI., Philomêtor, was proclaimed king under the
regency of his mother. While she lived there was peace, but after her
death the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanês, threw himself upon Egypt,
captured his nephew Philomêtor, and held his court in Memphis. Thereupon
Philomêtor’s younger brother, whose corpulency had given him the nickname
of Physkôn, “the Bloated,” proclaimed himself king at Alexandria, and
called upon Rome for help. Antiochus withdrew, leaving Philomêtor king of
the Egyptians, and Physkôn, who had taken the title of Euergetês II., king
of the Greeks at Alexandria. Thanks to the brotherly forbearance of
Philomêtor, the two reigned together in harmony for several years.
Antiochus Epiphanês, however, had again invaded Egypt, but had been warned
off its soil by the Roman ambassadors. 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 embassy as
the highest of possible honours.
The command of the Romans to leave Egypt alone was sullenly obeyed by
Antiochus Epiphanês. 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 Hellenising party among them—“the ungodly” 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 Epiphanês, 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 ungodly,” 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 Heraklês at Tyre, and
discouraged the rite of circumcision. 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 Epiphanês came to Judæa with all the
exaggerations usual in the East; Antiochus was reported to be dead, and
Jason accordingly marched upon Jerusalem, massacred 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 massacred, 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 worship the gods 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. Philomêtor
granted him land in the nome of Heliopolis, and allowed him to build there
a temple in which the worship of the Hebrew God 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-Yehudîyeh, “the Mound of the Jewess,” not
far from Shibîn el-Kanâtir. 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 Judæa 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. Philomêtor, like Euergetês, 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 Philomêtor, 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. Philomêtor 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. Philomêtor 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 Maccabæus, 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 Epiphanês died while on the march against
Judæa, 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 assassinations and religious
quarrels, of Edomite hostility and the efforts of the Hellenising party
among the Jews themselves, the power of the Maccabees went on increasing.
The high-priesthood passed 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 Hyrcanus 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 title of king, and added Ituræa to his kingdom,
while his brother Alexander Jannæus attacked Egypt and annexed the cities
of the Phœnician 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 passing over into
the camp of the foe.
Long before all this happened, many changes had fallen upon Egypt.
Philomêtor 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 Physkôn 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 Physkôn of
Philomêtor’s young son Ptolemy Philopator II. immediately after his death.
Onias, the Jewish high-priest, held Alexandria for Philopator, but his
uncle Physkôn was favoured by the Romans, whose word was now law. Physkôn
accordingly began his long reign of vice and cruelty, interrupted only by
temporary banishment to Cyprus. Then followed his widow, Cleopatra Kokkê,
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 title of Sôtêr 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 clustered round the
ruins of its ancient shrines. Karnak and Luxor, Medinêt 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 Assyrian 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 Asmonæans 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
massacred, 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 citizenship 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 ignobly. 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 coarser Mark Antony but even the master mind of
Julius Cæsar. 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, Cæsar’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 shipping, 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). Cæsarion, the son of
Cleopatra and Julius Cæsar, 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 citizenship 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 canals choked up, the fields untilled and
overrun by the barbarians from the Sûdan 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 Assuan.
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 passed
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 associated 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. Shnûdi, or the gifted Hypatia,
whose flesh was torn from her bones with oyster-shells by the monks of St.
Cyril.
The literature of Coptic Christianity was almost wholly religious. Little
else had an interest for the devoted adherents of the new faith. The
romances which had delighted their forefathers were replaced by legends of
the saints and martyrs, and Christian hymns succeeded to the poems of the
past. We owe to this passion for theology the preservation of productions
of the Jewish and Christian Churches which would otherwise have been lost.
The Book of Enoch, quoted though it is by St. Jude, would have perished
irrevocably had it not been for Coptic Christianity. The Church of
Abyssinia, a daughter of that of Egypt, has preserved it in an Ethiopic
translation, and portions of the Greek original from which the translation
was made have been found in a tomb at Ekhmîm, which was excavated in 1886.
It has long been known that the text used by the Abyssinian translator
must have differed considerably from that of which extracts have been
preserved for us in the Epistle of St. Jude and the writings of the
Byzantine historians Kedrenos and George the Syncellus; the
newly-discovered fragments now enable us to see what this text actually
was like. If the original book was written in Aramaic it would seem that
at least two authorised Greek versions of it existed, one of which was
used in Europe and Syria, the other in Egypt. Which was the older and more
faithful we have yet to learn.
The excavations at Ekhmîm have brought to light fragments of two other
works, both belonging to the early days of Christianity and long since
lost. One of these is supposed by its first editor, M. Bouriant, to be the
Apocalypse of St. Peter; it opens with an account of the Transfiguration,
which is followed by a vision of heaven and hell. The book appears to have
been composed or interpolated by a Gnostic, as there is a reference in it
to “the Æon” in which Moses and Elias dwelt in glory. The other work is of
more importance. It is the Gospel known to the early Church as that of St.
Peter, and the portion which is preserved contains the narrative of the
Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Throughout the narrative the
responsibility for the death of our Lord is transferred from Pilate to the
Jews; when the guard who watched the tomb under the centurion Petronius
ran to tell Pilate of the resurrection they had witnessed, “grieving
greatly and saying: Truly he was the son of God”: he answered: “I am clean
of the blood of the son of God: I too thought he was so.” Docetic
tendencies, however, are observable in the Gospel: at all events the cry
of Christ on the cross is rendered, “My power, (my) power, thou hast
forsaken me!”
What further discoveries of the lost documents of early Christianity still
await us in Egypt it is impossible to say. It is only during the last few
years that attention has been turned towards monuments which, to the
students of Egyptian antiquity, seemed of too recent a date. Countless
manuscripts of priceless value have already perished through the ignorance
of the _fellahin_ and the neglect of the tourist and _savan_, to whom the
term “Coptic” has been synonymous with “worthless.” But the soil of Egypt
is archæologically almost inexhaustible, and the land of the Septuagint,
of the Christian school of Alexandria, and of the passionate theology of a
later epoch, cannot fail to yield up other documents that will throw a
flood of light on the early history of our faith. It is only the other day
that, among the Fayyûm papyri now in the British Museum, there was found a
fragment of the Septuagint version of the Psalms older than the oldest MS.
of the Bible hitherto known. And the traveller who still wishes to see the
Nile at leisure and in his own way will find in the old Egyptian quarries
behind Dêr Abu Hannes, but a little to the south of the city which Hadrian
raised to the memory of Antinous, abundant illustrations of the doctrine
and worship of the primitive Coptic Church. He can there study all the
details of its ancient ecclesiastical architecture cut out of the living
rock, and can trace how the home of a hermit became first a place of
pilgrimage and then a chapel with its altar to the saints. The tombs
themselves, inscribed with the Greek epitaphs of the sainted fugitives
from persecution, still exist outside the caves in which they had dwelt.
We can even see the change taking place which transformed the Greek Church
of Alexandria into the Coptic Church of Egypt. On either side of a
richly-carved cross is the record of “Papias, son of Melito the Isaurian,”
buried in the spot made holy by the body of St. Macarius, which is written
on the one side in Greek, on the other side in Coptic. Henceforward Greek
is superseded by Coptic, and the numerous pilgrims who ask St. Victor or
St. Phœbammon to pray for them write their names and prayers in the native
language and the native alphabet. With the betrayal of Egypt to the
Mohammedans by George the Makaukas the doom of the Greek language and
Bible was sealed. Coptic had already become the language of the Egyptian
Church, and though we still find quotations from the Greek New Testament
painted here and there on the walls of rock-cut shrines they are little
more than ornamental designs. Christian Egypt is native, not Greek.