CHAPTER V. THE AGE OF THE PTOLEMIES.

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.