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The Egyptian Religion and the Plastic Arts.

55

bringing it into cultivation, imagination deified these animals, some for the services which they rendered, others for the terror which they inspired; and it was the same with certain vegetables.

We find traces of this phenomenon, which at first seems so inexplicable, among the other races of antiquity, but it is nowhere else so marked as it is in Egypt. When Egypt, after being for three centuries subject to the influence and supremacy of the Greek genius, had lost all but the shadow of its former independence and national life; when all the energy and intellectual activity which remained to it was concentrated at the Greco-Syrian rather than Egyptian Alexandria, the ancient religion of the race lost all its highest branches.^[1] The aspirations towards monotheism took a form that was either philosophical and Platonic or Christian; and as for the cultivated spirits who wished to continue

↑ We do not mean to say that the higher qualities of the Egyptian religion were then altogether lost. In Roman Egypt the fetish superstitions were no doubt predominant, but still it had not lost all that theological erudition which it had accumulated by its own intellectual energy. In an inscription cut in the time of Philip the Arab, we find an antique hymn transcribed in hieroglyphs upon the wall of a temple. We find abstract and speculative ideas in all those Egyptian books which have come down to us, in a form which betrays the last two centuries of the Empire. Alexandria had its Egyptian Serapeum by the side of its Greek one. Monuments are to be found there which are Egyptian in every particular. Gnosticism was particularly successful in Egypt, which was predestined to accept it by the whole of its past. Certain doctrines of Plotinus are thus best explained. More than one purely Egyptian notion may be found interpreted in the works of Alexandrian philosophers and in the phraseology of Greek philosophy. The principal sanctuaries did not allow their rites and ceremonies to fall into disuse. Although Thebes was nothing but a heap of ruins, a dead city visited for its relics of the past, the worship of Vulcan, that is of Ptah, at Memphis, was carried on up to the establishment of Christianity. That of Isis, at Philæ, lasted until the time of Justinian. Diocletian negotiated a treaty with the Blemmyes, those people of Nubia who were at one time such redoubtable soldiers, which guaranteed to them the free use of that temple. It was not converted into a church until after the destruction of the Blemmyes by Silco and the Christian kings of Ethiopia.
The old religion and theology of the Egyptians did not expire in a single day. It was no more killed by the Roman conquest than it was by that of the Ptolemies. But although its rites did not cease, and some of its elaborate doctrines still continued to be transmitted, its vitality had come to an end. It exercised some remains of influence only on condition of being melted down and re-modelled in the crucible of Greek philosophy. A little coterie of thinkers set themselves to complete this transfusion, but the great mass of the people returned to simple practices which had been sanctified by thousands of years, and formed nearly the whole of their religion.

[1] We do not mean to say that the higher qualities of the Egyptian religion were then altogether lost. In Roman Egypt the fetish superstitions were no doubt predominant, but still it had not lost all that theological erudition which it had accumulated by its own intellectual energy. In an inscription cut in the time of Philip the Arab, we find an antique hymn transcribed in hieroglyphs upon the wall of a temple. We find abstract and speculative ideas in all those Egyptian books which have come down to us, in a form which betrays the last two centuries of the Empire. Alexandria had its Egyptian Serapeum by the side of its Greek one. Monuments are to be found there which are Egyptian in every particular. Gnosticism was particularly successful in Egypt, which was predestined to accept it by the whole of its past. Certain doctrines of Plotinus are thus best explained. More than one purely Egyptian notion may be found interpreted in the works of Alexandrian philosophers and in the phraseology of Greek philosophy. The principal sanctuaries did not allow their rites and ceremonies to fall into disuse. Although Thebes was nothing but a heap of ruins, a dead city visited for its relics of the past, the worship of Vulcan, that is of Ptah, at Memphis, was carried on up to the establishment of Christianity. That of Isis, at Philæ, lasted until the time of Justinian. Diocletian negotiated a treaty with the Blemmyes, those people of Nubia who were at one time such redoubtable soldiers, which guaranteed to them the free use of that temple. It was not converted into a church until after the destruction of the Blemmyes by Silco and the Christian kings of Ethiopia.
The old religion and theology of the Egyptians did not expire in a single day. It was no more killed by the Roman conquest than it was by that of the Ptolemies. But although its rites did not cease, and some of its elaborate doctrines still continued to be transmitted, its vitality had come to an end. It exercised some remains of influence only on condition of being melted down and re-modelled in the crucible of Greek philosophy. A little coterie of thinkers set themselves to complete this transfusion, but the great mass of the people returned to simple practices which had been sanctified by thousands of years, and formed nearly the whole of their religion.

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