have introduced many important innovations on the ancient system. It is probably that some former rites were discontinued during this period, the priests finding them no longer practicable, or the people being deterred from the performance of them.
After the Macedonian conquest, the state of things was again altered. The Greeks bore no enmity to the superstitions of Egypt: they were aware that this country had been the cradle of their own mythology. The Ptolemies were desirous of gaining the affections of the native people, and they patronised the priesthood. The idolatrous worship of Egypt recovered a portion of its former splendour; but its features now bore an impression in many respects different from that of antiquity. The rites and the fictions of the followers of Hermes were blended with the exotic customs and philosophy of their European conquerors. The aspect of the national manners and religion was less genuine and less peculiar.
From the time of the first Ptolemies, the mythological learning and superstition of Egypt underwent a gradual decline, but sustained no great catastrophe, until the period when they were doomed finally to vanish, together with all other forms of idolatry, before the increasing light of Christianity. The conquest of Egypt by the Romans introduced no sudden change, and the old religion only suffered by the decay of opulence, and the failure of local patronage, which naturally ensued, in consequence of the reduction of the country to the condition of a province. As late as the time of Strabo, there were persons who assumed the character and pretensions of the order of Sacred Scribes, the depositaries of the Hermetic learning.
