We know more about the religion of the early Egyptians than about any other
ancient religion. Its development can be traced back three or four thousand
years; we can read its sacred texts, mythical narratives, hymns, rituals,
and the Book of the Dead in the original, and we can ascertain its various
ideas as to the nature of the divine powers and of future life. A great
number of monuments have preserved for our inspection the pictures of
divinities and representations of liturgic scenes, while numerous
inscriptions and papyri enlighten us in regard to the sacerdotal
organization of the principal temples. It would seem that the enormous
quantity of documents of all kinds that have been deciphered in the course
of nearly an entire century should have dispelled every uncertainty about
the creed of ancient Egypt, and should have furnished exact information
with regard to the sources and original character of the worship which the
Greeks and the Romans borrowed from the subjects of the Ptolemies.
And yet, this is not the case. While of the four great Oriental religions
which were transplanted into the Occident, the religion of Isis and Serapis
is the one whose relation to the ancient belief of the mother country we
can establish with greatest accuracy, we {74} know very little of its first
form and of its nature before the imperial period, when it was held in high
esteem.
One fact, however, appears to be certain. The Egyptian worship that spread
over the Greco-Roman world came from the Serapeum founded at Alexandria by
Ptolemy Soter, somewhat in the manner of Judaism that emanated from the
temple of Jerusalem. But the earliest history of that famous sanctuary is
surrounded by such a thick growth of pious legends, that the most sagacious
investigators have lost their way in it. Was Serapis of native origin, or
was he imported from Sinope or Seleucia, or even from Babylon? Each of
these opinions has found supporters very recently. Is his name derived from
that of the Egyptian god Osiris-Apis, or from that of the Chaldean deity
Sar-Apsi? _Grammatici certant_.[1]
Whichever solution we may adopt, one fact remains, namely, that Serapis and
Osiris were either immediately identified or else were identical from the
beginning. The divinity whose worship was started at Alexandria by Ptolemy
was the god that ruled the dead and shared his immortality with them. He
was fundamentally an Egyptian god, and the most popular of the deities of
the Nile. Herodotus says that Isis and Osiris were revered by every
inhabitant of the country, and their traditional holidays involved secret
ceremonies whose sacred meaning the Greek writer dared not reveal.[2]
Recognizing their Osiris in Serapis, the Egyptians readily accepted the new
cult. There was a tradition that a new dynasty should introduce a new god
or give a sort of preeminence to the god of its own district. From time
immemorial politics had changed the {75} government of heaven when changing
that of earth. Under the Ptolemies the Serapis of Alexandria naturally
became one of the principal divinities of the country, just as the Ammon of
Thebes had been the chief of the celestial hierarchy under the Pharaohs of
that city, or as, under the sovereigns from Sais, the local Neith had the
primacy. At the time of the Antonines there were forty-two Serapeums in
Egypt.[3]
But the purpose of the Ptolemies was not to add one more Egyptian god to
the countless number already worshiped by their subjects. They wanted this
god to unite in one common worship the two races inhabiting the kingdom,
and thus to further a complete fusion. The Greeks were obliged to worship
him side by side with the natives. It was a clever political idea to
institute a Hellenized Egyptian religion at Alexandria. A tradition
mentioned by Plutarch[4] has it that Manetho, a priest from Heliopolis, a
man of advanced ideas, together with Timotheus, a Eumolpid from Eleusis,
thought out the character that would best suit the newcomer. The result was
that the composite religion founded by the Lagides became a combination of
the old creed of the Pharaohs and the Greek mysteries.
First of all, the liturgic language was no longer the native idiom but
Greek. This was a radical change. The philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum,
who had been cured of blindness by Serapis, composed poems in honor of the
god that were still sung under the Cæsars several centuries later.[5] We
can easily imagine that the poets, who lived on the bounty of the
Ptolemies, vied with each other in their efforts to celebrate their
benefactors' god, and the old rituals that were translated from the
Egyptian were also enriched with {76} edifying bits of original
inspiration. A hymn to Isis, found on a marble monument in the island of
Andros,[6] gives us some idea of these sacred compositions, although it is
of more recent date.
In the second place, the artists replaced the old hieratic idols by more
attractive images and gave them the beauty of the immortals. It is not
known who created the figure of Isis draped in a linen gown with a fringed
cloak fastened over the breast, whose sweet meditative, graciously maternal
face is a combination of the ideals imagined for Hera and Aphrodite. But we
know the sculptor of the first statue of Serapis that stood in the great
sanctuary of Alexandria until the end of paganism. This statue, the
prototype of all the copies that have been preserved, is a colossal work of
art made of precious materials by a famous Athenian sculptor named Bryaxis,
a contemporary of Scopas. It was one of the last divine creations of
Hellenic genius. The majestic head, with its somber and yet benevolent
expression, with its abundance of hair, and with a crown in the shape of a
bushel, bespoke the double character of a god ruling at the same time both
the fertile earth and the dismal realm of the dead.[7]
As we see, the Ptolemies had given their new religion a literary and
artistic shape that was capable of attracting the most refined and cultured
minds. But the adaptation to the Hellenic feeling and thinking was not
exclusively external. Osiris, the god whose worship was thus renewed, was
more adapted than any other to lend his authority to the formation of a
syncretic faith. At a very early period, in fact before the time of
Herodotus, Osiris had been identified with Dionysus, and Isis with Demeter.
M. Foucart has {77} endeavored to prove in an ingenious essay that this
assimilation was not arbitrary, that Osiris and Isis came into Crete and
Attica during the prehistoric period, and that they were mistaken for
Dionysus and Demeter[8] by the people of those regions. Without going back
to those remote ages, we shall merely say with him that the mysteries of
Dionysus were connected with those of Osiris by far-reaching affinities,
not simply by superficial and fortuitous resemblances. Each commemorated
the history of a god governing both vegetation and the underworld at the
same time, who was put to death and torn to pieces by an enemy, and whose
scattered limbs were collected by a goddess, after which he was
miraculously revived. The Greeks must have been very willing to adopt a
worship in which they found their own divinities and their own myths again
with something more poignant and more magnificent added. It is a very
remarkable fact that of all the many deities worshiped by the Egyptian
districts those of the immediate neighborhood, or if you like, the cycle of
Osiris, his wife Isis, their son Harpocrates and their faithful servant
Anubis, were the only ones that were adopted by the Hellenic populations.
All other heavenly or infernal spirits worshiped by the Egyptians remained
strangers to Greece.[9]
In the Greco-Latin literature we notice two opposing attitudes toward the
Egyptian religion. It was regarded as the highest and the lowest of
religions at the same time, and as a matter of fact there was an abyss
between the always ardent popular beliefs and the enlightened faith of the
official priests. The Greeks and Romans gazed with admiration upon the
splendor of the temples and ceremonial, upon the fabulous {78} antiquity of
the sacred traditions and upon the erudition of a clergy possessed of a
wisdom that had been revealed by divinity. In becoming the disciples of
that clergy, they imagined they were drinking from the pure fountain whence
their own myths had sprung. They were overawed by the pretensions of a
clergy that prided itself on a past in which it kept on living, and they
strongly felt the attraction of a marvelous country where everything was
mysterious, from the Nile that had created it to the hieroglyphs engraved
upon the walls of its gigantic edifices.[10] At the same time they were
shocked by the coarseness of its fetichism and by the absurdity of its
superstitions. Above all they felt an unconquerable repulsion at the
worship of animals and plants, which had always been the most striking
feature of the vulgar Egyptian religion and which, like all other archaic
devotions, seems to have been practised with renewed fervor after the
accession of the Saite dynasty. The comic writers and the satirists never
tired of scoffing at the adorers of the cat, the crocodile, the leek and
the onion. Juvenal says ironically: "O holy people, whose very
kitchen-gardens produce gods."[11] In a general way, this strange people,
entirely separated from the remainder of the world, were regarded with
about the same kind of feeling that Europeans entertained toward the
Chinese for a long time.
A purely Egyptian worship would not have been acceptable to the Greco-Latin
world. The main merit of the mixed creation of the political genius of the
Ptolemies consisted in the rejection or modification of everything
repugnant or monstrous like the phallophories of Abydos, and in the
retention of none but {79} stirring or attractive elements. It was the most
civilized of all barbarian religions; it retained enough of the exotic
element to arouse the curiosity of the Greeks, but not enough to offend
their delicate sense of proportion, and its success was remarkable.
It was adopted wherever the authority or the prestige of the Lagides was
felt, and wherever the relations of Alexandria, the great commercial
metropolis, extended. The Lagides induced the rulers and the nations with
whom they concluded alliances to accept it. King Nicocreon introduced it
into Cyprus after having consulted the oracle of the Serapeum,[12] and
Agathocles introduced it into Sicily, at the time of his marriage with the
daughter-in-law of Ptolemy I (298).[13] At Antioch, Seleucus Callinicus
built a sanctuary for the statue of Isis sent to him from Memphis by
Ptolemy Euergetes.[14] In token of his friendship Ptolemy Soter introduced
his god Serapis into Athens, where the latter had a temple at the foot of
the Acropolis[15] ever after, and Arsinoë, his mother or wife, founded
another at Halicarnassus, about the year 307.[16] In this manner the
political activity of the Egyptian dynasty was directed toward having the
divinities, whose glory was in a certain measure connected with that of
their house, recognized everywhere. Through Apuleius we know that under the
empire the priests of Isis mentioned the ruling sovereign first of all in
their prayers.[17] And this was simply an imitation of the grateful
devotion which their predecessors had felt toward the Ptolemies.
Protected by the Egyptian squadrons, sailors and merchants propagated the
worship of Isis, the goddess of navigators, simultaneously on the coasts of
Syria, {80} Asia Minor and Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago,[18]
and as far as the Hellespont and Thrace.[19] At Delos, where the
inscriptions enable us to study this worship somewhat in detail, it was not
merely practised by strangers, but the very sacerdotal functions were
performed by members of the Athenian aristocracy. A number of funereal
bas-reliefs, in which the deified dead wears the _calathos_ of Serapis on
his head, prove the popularity of the belief in future life propagated by
these mysteries. According to the Egyptian faith he was identified with the
god of the dead.[20]
Even after the splendor of the court of Alexandria had faded and vanished;
even after the wars against Mithridates and the growth of piracy had ruined
the traffic of the Ægean Sea, the Alexandrian worship was too deeply rooted
in the soil of Greece to perish, although it became endangered in certain
seaports like Delos. Of all the gods of the Orient, Isis and Serapis were
the only ones that retained a place among the great divinities of the
Hellenic world until the end of paganism.[21]
* * * * *
It was this syncretic religion that came to Rome after having enjoyed
popularity in the eastern Mediterranean. Sicily and the south of Italy were
more than half Hellenized, and the Ptolemies had diplomatic relations with
these countries, just as the merchants of Alexandria had commercial
relations with them. For this reason the worship of Isis spread as rapidly
in those regions as on the coasts of Ionia or in the Cyclades.[22] It was
introduced into Syracuse and Catana during the earliest years of the third
century by {81} Agathocles. The Serapeum of Pozzuoli, at that time the
busiest seaport of Campania, was mentioned in a city ordinance of the year
105 B. C.[23] About the same time an Iseum was founded at Pompeii, where
the decorative frescos attest to this day the power of expansion possessed
by the Alexandrian culture.
After its adoption by the southern part of the Italian peninsula, this
religion was bound to penetrate rapidly to Rome. Ever since the second
century before our era, it could not help but find adepts in the chequered
multitude of slaves and freedmen. Under the Antonines the college of the
_pastophori_ recalled that it had been founded in the time of Sulla.[24] In
vain did the authorities try to check the invasion of the Alexandrian gods.
Five different times, in 59, 58, 53, and 48 B. C., the senate ordered their
altars and statues torn down,[25] but these violent measures did not stop
the diffusion of the new beliefs. The Egyptian mysteries were the first
example at Rome of an essentially popular religious movement that was
triumphant over the continued resistance of the public authorities and the
official clergy.
Why was this Egyptian worship the only one of all Oriental religions to
suffer repeated persecutions? There were two motives, one religious and one
political.
In the first place, this cult was said to exercise a corrupting influence
perversive of piety. Its morals were loose, and the mystery surrounding it
excited the worst suspicions. Moreover, it appealed violently to the
emotions and senses. All these factors offended the grave decency that a
Roman was wont to {82} maintain in the presence of the gods. The innovators
had every defender of the _mos maiorum_ for an adversary.
In the second place, this religion had been founded, supported and
propagated by the Ptolemies; it came from a country that was almost hostile
to Italy during the last period of the republic;[26] it issued from
Alexandria, whose superiority Rome felt and feared. Its secret societies,
made up chiefly of people of the lower classes, might easily become clubs
of agitators and haunts of spies. All these motives for suspicion and
hatred were undoubtedly more potent in exciting persecution than the purely
theological reasons, and persecution was stopped or renewed according to
the vicissitudes of general politics.
As we have stated, the chapels consecrated to Isis were demolished in the
year 48 B. C. After Cæsar's death, the triumvirs decided in 43 B. C. to
erect a temple in her honor out of the public funds, undoubtedly to gain
the favor of the masses. This action would have implied official
recognition, but the project appears never to have been executed. If Antony
had succeeded at Actium, Isis and Serapis would have entered Rome in
triumph, but they were vanquished with Cleopatra; and when Augustus had
become the master of the empire, he professed a deep aversion for the gods
of his former enemies. Moreover, he could not have suffered the intrusion
of the Egyptian clergy into the Roman sacerdotal class, whose guardian,
restorer and chief he was. In 28 B. C. an ordinance was issued forbidding
the erecting of altars to the Alexandrian divinities inside the sacred
enclosure of the _pomerium_, and seven years later Agrippa extended this
prohibitive regulation to a radius of a thousand paces around the {83}
city. Tiberius acted on the same principle and in 19 A. D. instituted the
bloodiest persecution against the priests of Isis that they ever suffered,
in consequence of a scandalous affair in which a matron, a noble and some
priests of Isis were implicated.
All these police measures, however, were strangely ineffectual. The
Egyptian worship was excluded from Rome and her immediate neighborhood in
theory if not in fact, but the rest of the world remained open to its
propaganda.[27]
With the beginning of the empire it slowly invaded the center and the north
of Italy and spread into the provinces. Merchants, sailors, slaves,
artisans, Egyptian men of letters, even the discharged soldiers of the
three legions cantoned in the valley of the Nile contributed to its
diffusion. It entered Africa by way of Carthage, and the Danubian countries
through the great emporium of Aquileia. The new province of Gaul was
invaded through the valley of the Rhone. At that period many Oriental
emigrants went to seek their fortunes in these new countries. Intimate
relations existed between the cities of Arles and Alexandria, and we know
that a colony of Egyptian Greeks, established at Nimes by Augustus, took
the gods of their native country thither.[28] At the beginning of our era
there set in that great movement of conversion that soon established the
worship of Isis and Serapis from the outskirts of the Sahara to the vallum
of Britain, and from the mountains of Asturias to the mouths of the Danube.
The resistance still offered by the central power could not last much
longer. It was impossible to dam in this overflowing stream whose
thundering waves struck the {84} shaking walls of the _pomerium_ from every
side. The prestige of Alexandria seemed invincible. At that period the city
was more beautiful, more learned, and better policed than Rome. She was the
model capital, a standard to which the Latins strove to rise. They
translated the works of the scholars of Alexandria, imitated her authors,
invited her artists and copied her institutions. It is plain that they had
also to undergo the ascendancy of her religion. As a matter of fact, her
fervent believers maintained her sanctuaries, despite the law, on the very
Capitol. Under Cæsar, Alexandrian astronomers had reformed the calendar of
the pontiffs, and Alexandrian priests soon marked the dates of Isis
holidays upon it.
The decisive step was taken soon after the death of Tiberius. Caligula
erected the great temple of Isis Campensis on the Campus Martius probably
in the year 38.[29] In order to spare the sacerdotal susceptibilities, he
founded it outside of the sacred enclosure of the city of Servius. Later
Domitian made one of Rome's most splendid monuments of that temple. From
that time Isis and Serapis enjoyed the favor of every imperial dynasty, the
Flavians as well as the Antonines and the Severi. About the year 215
Caracalla built an Isis temple, even more magnificent than that of
Domitian, on the Quirinal, in the heart of the city, and perhaps another
one on the Coelian. As the apologist Minucius Felix states, the Egyptian
gods had become entirely Roman.[30]
The climax of their power seems to have been reached at the beginning of
the third century; later on the popular vogue and official support went to
other divinities, like the Syrian Baals and the Persian {85} Mithras. The
progress of Christianity also deprived them of their power, which was,
however, still considerable until the end of the ancient world. The Isis
processions that marched the streets of Rome were described by an eye
witness as late as the year 394,[31] but in 391 the patriarch Theophilus
had consigned the Serapeum of Alexandria to the flames, having himself
struck the first blow with an ax against the colossal statue of the god
that had so long been the object of a superstitious veneration. Thus the
prelate destroyed the "very head of idolatry," as Rufinus put it.[32]
As a matter of fact, idolatry received its death blow. The worship of the
gods of the Ptolemies died out completely between the reigns of Theodosius
and Justinian,[33] and in accordance with the sad prophecy of Hermes
Trismegistus[34] Egypt, Egypt herself, lost her divinities and became a
land of the dead. Of her religions nothing remained but fables that were no
longer believed, and the only thing that reminded the barbarians who came
to inhabit the country of its former piety, were words engraved on stone.
* * * * *
This rapid sketch of the history of Isis and Serapis shows that these
divinities were worshiped in the Latin world for more than five centuries.
The task of pointing out the transformations of the cult during that long
period, and the local differences there may have been in the various
provinces, is reserved for future researches. These will undoubtedly find
that the Alexandrian worship did not become Latinized under the empire, but
that its Oriental character became more and more pronounced. When Domitian
restored the Iseum of the Campus Martius and that of Beneventum, he {86}
transferred from the valley of the Nile sphinxes, cynocephali and obelisks
of black or pink granite bearing borders of hieroglyphics of Amasis,
Nectanebos or even Rameses II. On other obelisks that were erected in the
propyleums even the inscriptions of the emperors were written in
hieroglyphics.[35] Half a century later that true dilettante, Hadrian,
caused the luxuries of Canopus to be reproduced, along with the vale of
Tempe, in his immense villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his
voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the
merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient
language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black
basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to
prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom
of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to
religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always endeavored to imitate
the art of temples in the Nile valley more closely than did the Greek. This
evolution was in conformity with all the tendencies of the imperial period.
By what secret virtue did the Egyptian religion exercise this irresistible
influence over the Roman world? What new elements did those priests, who
made proselytes in every province, give the Roman world? Did the success of
their preaching mean progress or retrogression from the standard of the
ancient Roman faith? These are complex and delicate questions that would
require minute analysis and cautious treatment with a constant and exact
observation of shades. I am compelled to limit myself to a rapid sketch,
which, I {87} fear, will appear rather dry and arbitrary, like every
generalization.
The particular doctrines of the mysteries of Isis and Serapis in regard to
the nature and power of the gods were not, or were but incidentally, the
reasons for the triumph of these mysteries. It has been said that the
Egyptian theology always remained in a "fluid state,"[37] or better in a
state of chaos. It consisted of an amalgamation of disparate legends, of an
aggregate of particular cults, as Egypt herself was an aggregate of a
number of districts. This religion never formulated a coherent system of
generally accepted dogmas. It permitted the coexistence of conflicting
conceptions and traditions, and all the subtlety of its clergy never
accomplished, or rather never began, the task of fusing those
irreconcilable elements into one harmonious synthesis.[38] For the
Egyptians there was no principle of contradiction. All the heterogeneous
beliefs that ever obtained in the various districts during the different
periods of a very long history, were maintained concurrently and formed an
inextricable confusion in the sacred books.
About the same state of affairs prevailed in the Occidental worship of the
Alexandrian divinities. In the Occident, just as in Egypt, there were
"prophets" in the first rank of the clergy, who learnedly discussed
religion, but never taught a theological system that found universal
acceptance. The sacred scribe Cheremon, who became Nero's tutor, recognized
the stoical theories in the sacerdotal traditions of his country.[39] When
the eclectic Plutarch speaks of the character of the Egyptian gods, he
finds it agrees surprisingly with his own philosophy,[40] and when the
neo-Platonist {88} Iamblichus examines them, their character seems to agree
with his doctrines. The hazy ideas of the Oriental priests enabled every
one to see in them the phantoms he was pursuing. The individual imagination
was given ample scope, and the dilettantic men of letters rejoiced in
molding these malleable doctrines at will. They were not outlined sharply
enough, nor were they formulated with sufficient precision to appeal to the
multitude. The gods were everything and nothing; they got lost in a
_sfumato_. A disconcerting anarchy and confusion prevailed among them. By
means of a scientific mixture of Greek, Egyptian and Semitic elements
"Hermetism"[41] endeavored to create a theological system that would be
acceptable to all minds, but it seems never to have imposed itself
generally on the Alexandrian mysteries which were older than itself, and
furthermore it could not escape the contradictions of Egyptian thought. The
religion of Isis did not gain a hold on the soul by its dogmatism.
It must be admitted, however, that, owing to its extreme flexibility, this
religion was easily adapted to the various centers to which it was
transferred, and that it enjoyed the valuable advantage of being always in
perfect harmony with the prevailing philosophy. Moreover, the syncretic
tendencies of Egypt responded admirably to those that began to obtain at
Rome. At a very early period henotheistic theories had been favorably
received in sacerdotal circles, and while crediting the god of their own
temple with supremacy, the priests admitted that he might have a number of
different personalities, under which he was worshiped simultaneously. In
this way the unity of the supreme being was affirmed for the thinkers, and
polytheism with its {89} intangible traditions maintained for the masses.
In the same manner Isis and Osiris had absorbed several local divinities
under the Pharaohs, and had assumed a complex character that was capable of
indefinite extension. The same process continued under the Ptolemies when
the religion of Egypt came into contact with Greece. Isis was identified
simultaneously with Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, Semele, Io, Tyche, and
others. She was considered the queen of heaven and hell, of earth and sea.
She was "the past, the present and the future,"[42] "nature the mother of
things, the mistress of the elements, born at the beginning of the
centuries."[43] She had numberless names, an infinity of different aspects
and an inexhaustible treasure of virtues. In short, she became a
pantheistic power that was everything in one, _una quae est omnia_.[44]
The authority of Serapis was no less exalted, and his field no less
extensive. He also was regarded as a universal god of whom men liked to say
that he was "unique." ([Greek: Heis Zeus Sarapis]) In him all energies were
centered, although the functions of Zeus, of Pluto or of Helios were
especially ascribed to him. For many centuries Osiris had been worshiped at
Abydos both as author of fecundity and lord of the underworld,[45] and this
double character early caused him to be identified with the sun, which
fertilizes the earth during its diurnal course and travels through the
subterranean realms at night. Thus the conception of this nature divinity,
that had already prevailed along the Nile, accorded without difficulty with
the solar pantheism that was the last form of Roman paganism. This
theological system, which did not gain the upper hand in the Occident until
the {90} second century of our era, was not brought in by Egypt. It did not
have the exclusive predominance there that it had held under the empire,
and even in Plutarch's time it was only one creed among many.[46] The
deciding influence in this matter was exercised by the Syrian Baals and the
Chaldean astrology.
The theology of the Egyptian mysteries, then, followed rather than led the
general influx of ideas. The same may be said of their ethics. It did not
force itself upon the world by lofty moral precepts, nor by a sublime ideal
of holiness. Many have admired the edifying list in the Book of the Dead,
that rightfully or otherwise sets forth the virtues which the deceased
claims to have practised in order to obtain a favorable judgment from
Osiris. If one considers the period in which it appears, this ethics is
undoubtedly very elevated, but it seems rudimentary and even childish if
one compares it with the principles formulated by the Roman jurists, to say
nothing of the minute psychological analyses of the Stoic casuists. In this
range of ideas also, the maintenance of the most striking contrasts
characterizes Egyptian mentality, which was never shocked by the cruelties
and obscenities that sullied the mythology and the ritual. Like Epicurus at
Athens, some of the sacred texts actually invited the believers to enjoy
life before the sadness of death.[47]
Isis was not a very austere goddess at the time she entered Italy.
Identified with Venus, as Harpocrates was with Eros, she was honored
especially by the women with whom love was a profession. In Alexandria, the
city of pleasure, she had lost all severity, and at Rome this good goddess
remained very indulgent to human weaknesses. Juvenal harshly refers to {91}
her as a procuress,[48] and her temples had a more than doubtful
reputation, for they were frequented by young men in quest of gallant
adventures. Apuleius himself chose a lewd tale in which to display his
fervor as an initiate.
But we have said that Egypt was full of contradictions, and when a more
exacting morality demanded that the gods should make man virtuous, the
Alexandrian mysteries offered to satisfy that demand.
At all times the Egyptian ritual attributed considerable importance to
purity, or, to use a more adequate term, to cleanliness. Before every
ceremony the officiating priest had to submit to ablutions, sometimes to
fumigations or anointing, and to abstain from certain foods and from
incontinence for a certain time. Originally no moral idea was connected
with this purification. It was considered a means of exorcising malevolent
demons or of putting the priest into a state in which the sacrifice
performed by him could have the expected effect. It was similar to the
diet, shower-baths and massage prescribed by physicians for physical
health. The internal status of the officiating person was a matter of as
much indifference to the celestial spirits as the actual worth of the
deceased was to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. All that was necessary
to have him open the fields of Aalu to the soul was to pronounce the
liturgic formulas, and if the soul declared its innocence in the prescribed
terms its word was readily accepted.
But in the Egyptian religion, as in all the religions of antiquity,[49] the
original conception was gradually transformed and a new idea slowly took
its place. The sacramental acts of purification were now {92} expected to
wipe out moral stains, and people became convinced that they made man
better. The devout female votaries of Isis, whom Juvenal[50] pictures as
breaking the ice to bathe in the Tiber, and crawling around the temple on
their bleeding knees, hoped to atone for their sins and to make up for
their shortcomings by means of these sufferings.
When a new ideal grew up in the popular conscience during the second
century, when the magicians themselves became pious and serious people,
free from passions and appetites, and were honored because of the dignity
of their lives more than for their white linen robes,[51] then the virtues
of which the Egyptian priests enjoined the practice also became less
external. Purity of the heart rather than cleanliness of the body was
demanded. Renunciation of sensual pleasures was the indispensable condition
for the knowledge of divinity, which was the supreme good.[52] No longer
did Isis favor illicit love. In the novel by Xenophon of Ephesus (about 280
A. D.) she protects the heroine's chastity against all pitfalls and assures
its triumph. According to the ancient belief man's entire existence was a
preparation for the formidable judgment held by Serapis after death, but to
have him decide in favor of the mystic, it was not enough to know the rites
of the sect; the individual life had to be free from crime; and the master
of the infernal regions assigned everybody a place according to his
deserts.[53] The doctrine of future retribution was beginning to develop.
However, in this regard, as in their conception of the divinity, the
Egyptian mysteries followed the general progress of ideas more than they
directed it. {93} Philosophy transformed them, but found in them little
inspiration.
* * * * *
How could a religion, of which neither the theology nor the ethics was
really new, stir up at the same time so much hostility and fervor among the
Romans? To many minds of to-day theology and ethics constitute religion,
but during the classical period it was different, and the priests of Isis
and Serapis conquered souls mainly by other means. They seduced them by the
powerful attraction of the ritual and retained them by the marvelous
promises of their doctrine of immortality.
To the Egyptians ritual had a value far superior to that we ascribe to it
to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent of the
intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer depended not
on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the correctness of the
words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not clearly differentiated
from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms,
especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name, it was compelled to
act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an
incantation that compelled the superior powers to obey the officiating
person, no matter what purpose he had in view. With the knowledge of the
liturgy men acquired an immense power over the world of spirits. Porphyry
was surprised and indignant because the Egyptians sometimes dared to
threaten the gods in their orations.[54] In the consecrations the priest's
summons compelled the gods to come and animate their {94} statues, and thus
his voice created divinities,[55] as originally the almighty voice of Thoth
had created the world.[56]
The ritual that conferred such superhuman power[57] developed in Egypt into
a state of perfection, completeness and splendor unknown in the Occident.
It possessed a unity, a precision and a permanency that stood in striking
contrast to the variety of the myths, the uncertainty of the dogmas and the
arbitrariness of the interpretations. The sacred books of the Greco-Roman
period are a faithful reproduction of the texts that were engraved upon the
walls of the pyramids at the dawn of history, notwithstanding the centuries
that had passed. Even under the Cæsars the ancient ceremonies dating back
to the first ages of Egypt, were scrupulously performed because the
smallest word and the least gesture had their importance.
This ritual and the attitude toward it found their way for the most part
into the Latin temples of Isis and Serapis. This fact has long been
ignored, but there can be no doubt about it. A first proof is that the
clergy of those temples were organized just like those of Egypt during the
period of the Ptolemies.[58] There was a hierarchy presided over by a high
priest, which consisted of _prophetes_ skilled in the sacred science,
_stolistes_, or _ornatrices_,[59] whose office it was to dress the statues
of the gods, _pastophori_ who carried the sacred temple plates in the
processions, and so on, just as in Egypt. As in their native country, the
priests were distinguished from common mortals by a tonsure, by a linen
tunic, and by their habits as well as by their garb. They devoted
themselves entirely to their ministry and had no other profession. This
{95} sacerdotal body always remained Egyptian in character, if not in
nationality, because the liturgy it had to perform remained so. In a
similar manner the priests of the Baals were Syrians,[60] because they were
the only ones that knew how to honor the gods of Syria.
In the first place a daily service had to be held just as in the Nile
valley. The Egyptian gods enjoyed a precarious immortality, for they were
liable to destruction and dependent on necessities. According to a very
primitive conception that always remained alive, they had to be fed,
clothed and refreshed every day or else perish. From this fact arose the
necessity of a liturgy that was practically the same in every district. It
was practised for thousands of years and opposed its unaltering form to the
multiplicity of legends and local beliefs.[61]
This daily liturgy was translated into Greek, perhaps later into Latin
also; it was adapted to the new requirements by the founders of the
Serapeum, and faithfully observed in the Roman temples of the Alexandrian
gods. The essential ceremony always was the opening (_apertio_)[62] of the
sanctuary. At dawn the statue of the divinity was uncovered and shown to
the community in the _naos_, that had been closed and sealed during the
night.[63] Then, again as in Egypt, the priest lit the sacred fire and
offered libations of water supposed to be from the deified Nile,[64] while
he chanted the usual hymns to the sound of flutes. Finally, "erect upon the
threshold"--I translate literally from Porphyry--"he awakens the god by
calling to him in the Egyptian language."[65] As we see, the god was
revived by the sacrifice and, as under the Pharaohs, awoke from his slumber
at the calling of {96} his name. As a matter of fact the name was
indissolubly connected with the personality; he who could pronounce the
exact name of an individual or of a divinity was obeyed as a master by his
slave.[66] This fact made it necessary to maintain the original form of
that mysterious word. There was no other motive for the introduction of a
number of barbarian appellatives into the magical incantations.
It is also probable that the toilet of the statue was made every day, that
its body and head were dressed,[67] as in the Egyptian ritual. We have seen
that the _ornatrices_ or _stolistes_ were especially entrusted with these
duties. The idol was covered with sumptuous raiment and ornamented with
jewels and gems. An inscription furnishes us with an inventory of the
jewels worn by an Isis of ancient Cadiz;[68] her ornaments were more
brilliant than those of a Spanish madonna.
During the entire forenoon, from the moment that a noisy acclamation had
greeted the rising of the sun, the images of the gods were exposed to the
silent adoration of the initiates.[69] Egypt is the country whence
contemplative devotion penetrated into Europe. Then, in the afternoon, a
second service was held to close the sanctuary.[70]
The daily liturgy must have been very absorbing. This innovation in the
Roman paganism was full of consequences. No longer were sacrifices offered
to the god on certain occasions only, but twice a day elaborate services
were held. As with the Egyptians, whom Herodotus had termed the most
religious of all peoples,[71] devotion assumed a tendency to fill out the
whole existence and to dominate private and public interests. The constant
repetition of the same prayers {97} kept up and renewed faith, and, we
might say, people lived continually under the eyes of the gods.
Besides the daily rites of the Abydos liturgy the holidays marking the
beginning of the different seasons were celebrated at the same date every
year.[72] It was the same in Italy. The calendars have preserved the names
of several of them, and of one, the _Navigium Isidis_, the rhetorician
Apuleius[73] has left us a brilliant description on which, to speak with
the ancients, he emptied all his color tubes. On March 5th, when navigation
reopened after the winter months, a gorgeous procession[74] marched to the
coast, and a ship consecrated to Isis, the protectress of sailors, was
launched. A burlesque group of masked persons opened the procession, then
came the women in white gowns strewing flowers, the _stolistes_ waving the
garments of the goddess and the _dadophori_ with lighted torches. After
these came the _hymnodes_, whose songs mingled in turn with the sharp sound
of the cross-flutes and the ringing of the brass timbrels; then the throngs
of the initiates, and finally the priests, with shaven heads and clad in
linen robes of a dazzling white, bearing the images of animal-faced gods
and strange symbols, as for instance a golden urn containing the sacred
water of the Nile. The procession stopped in front of altars[75] erected
along the road, and on these altars the sacred objects were uncovered for
the veneration of the faithful. The strange and sumptuous magnificence of
these celebrations made a deep impression on the common people who loved
public entertainments.
But of all the celebrations connected with the worship of Isis the most
stirring and the most suggestive {98} was the commemoration of the "Finding
of Osiris" (_Inventio_, [Greek: Heuresis]). Its antecedents date back to
remote antiquity. Since the time of the twelfth dynasty, and probably much
earlier, there had been held at Abydos and elsewhere a sacred performance
similar to the mysteries of our Middle Ages, in which the events of
Osiris's passion and resurrection were reproduced. We are in possession of
the ritual of those performances.[76] Issuing from the temple, the god fell
under Set's blows; around his body funeral lamentations were simulated, and
he was buried according to the rites; then Set was vanquished by Horus, and
Osiris, restored to life, reentered his temple triumphant over death.
The same myth was represented in almost the same manner at Rome at the
beginning of each November.[77] While the priests and the believers moaned
and lamented, Isis in great distress sought the divine body of Osiris,
whose limbs had been scattered by Typhon. Then, after the corpse had been
found, rehabilitated and revived, there was a long outburst of joy, an
exuberant jubilation that rang through the temples and the streets so
loudly that it annoyed the passers-by.
This mingled despair and enthusiasm acted as strongly upon the feelings of
the believers as did the spring-holiday ceremony in the Phrygian religion,
and it acted through the same means. Moreover, there was an esoteric
meaning attached to it that none but the pious elect understood. Besides
the public ceremonies there was a secret worship to which one was admitted
only after a gradual initiation. The hero of Apuleius had to submit to the
ordeal three times in order to obtain the whole revelation. In Egypt the
{99} clergy communicated certain rites and interpretations only upon a
promise not to reveal them. In fact this was the case in the worship of
Isis at Abydos and elsewhere.[78] When the Ptolemies regulated the Greek
ritual of their new religion, it assumed the form of the mysteries spread
over the Hellenic world and became very like those of Eleusis. The hand of
the Eumolpid Timotheus is noticeable in this connection.[79]
But while the ceremonial of the initiations and even the production of the
liturgic drama were thus adapted to the religious habits of the Greeks, the
doctrinal contents of the Alexandrian mysteries remained purely Egyptian.
The old belief that immortality could be secured by means of an
identification of the deceased with Osiris or Serapis never died out.
Perhaps in no other people did the epigram of Fustel de Coulanges find so
complete a verification as in the Egyptians: "Death was the first mystery;
it started man on the road to the other mysteries."[80] Nowhere else was
life so completely dominated by preoccupation with life after death;
nowhere else was such minute and complicated care taken to secure and
perpetuate another existence for the deceased. The funeral literature, of
which we have found a very great number of documents, had acquired a
development equaled by no other, and the architecture of no other nation
can exhibit tombs comparable with the pyramids or the rock-built sepulchers
of Thebes.
This constant endeavor to secure an after-existence for one's self and
relatives manifested itself in various ways, but it finally assumed a
concrete form in the worship of Osiris. The fate of Osiris, the god who
died and returned to life, became the prototype of the {100} fate of every
human being that observed the funeral rites. "As truly as Osiris lives,"
says an Egyptian text, "he also shall live; as truly as Osiris is not dead,
shall he not die; as truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall he not be
annihilated."[81]
If, then, the deceased had piously served Osiris-Serapis, he was
assimilated to that god, and shared his immortality in the underworld,
where the judge of the dead held forth. He lived not as a tenuous shade or
as a subtle spirit, but in full possession of his body as well as of his
soul. That was the Egyptian doctrine, and that certainly was also the
doctrine of the Greco-Latin mysteries.[82]
Through the initiation the mystic was born again, but to a superhuman life,
and became the equal of the immortals.[83] In his ecstasy he imagined that
he was crossing the threshold of death and contemplating the gods of heaven
and hell face to face.[84] If he had accurately followed the prescriptions
imposed upon him by Isis and Serapis through their priests, those gods
prolonged his life after his decease beyond the duration assigned to it by
destiny, and he participated eternally in their beatitude and offered them
his homage in their realm.[85] The "unspeakable pleasure" he felt when
contemplating the sacred images in the temple[86] became perpetual rapture
when he was in the divine presence instead of in the presence of the image,
and drawn close to divinity his thirsting soul enjoyed the delights of that
ineffable beauty.[87]
When the Alexandrian mysteries spread over Italy under the republic, no
religion had ever brought to mankind so formal a promise of blest
immortality as these, and this, more than anything else, lent them an {101}
irresistible power of attraction. Instead of the vague and contradictory
opinions of the philosophers in regard to the destiny of the soul, Serapis
offered certainty founded on divine revelation corroborated by the faith of
the countless generations that had adhered to it. What the votaries of
Orpheus had confusedly discovered through the veil of the legends, and
taught to Magna Grecia,[88] namely, that this earthly life was a trial, a
preparation for a higher and purer life, that the happiness of an
after-life could be secured by means of rites and observances revealed by
the gods themselves, all this was now preached with a firmness and
precision hitherto unknown. These eschatological doctrines in particular,
helped Egypt to conquer the Latin world and especially the miserable
masses, on whom the weight of all the iniquities of Roman society rested
heavily.
* * * * *
The power and popularity of that belief in future life has left traces even
in the French language, and in concluding this study, from which I have
been compelled to exclude every picturesque detail, I would like to point
out how a French word of to-day dimly perpetuates the memory of the old
Egyptian ideas.
During the cold nights of their long winters the Scandinavians dreamed of a
Walhalla where the deceased warriors sat in well-closed brilliantly
illuminated halls, warming themselves and drinking the strong liquor served
by the Valkyries; but under the burning sky of Egypt, near the arid sand
where thirst kills the traveler, people wished that their dead might find a
limpid spring in their future wanderings to assuage the heat that devoured
them, and that they might be {102} refreshed by the breezes of the north
wind.[89] Even at Rome the adherents of the Alexandrian gods frequently
inscribed the following wish on their tombs: "May Osiris give you fresh
water."[90] Soon this water became, in a figurative sense, the fountain of
life pouring out immortality to thirsting souls. The metaphor obtained such
popularity that in Latin _refrigerium_ became synonymous with comfort and
happiness. The term retained this meaning in the liturgy of the church,[91]
and for that reason people continue to pray for spiritual
_rafraîchissement_ of the dead although the Christian paradise has very
little resemblance to the fields of Aalu.
* * * * *
{103}