Listed 100 (total found 154) sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "EGYPT Country MIDDLE EAST" .
NAFKRATIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
ALEXANDRIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Alexandreia -ia or -ea (e Alexandreia: Eth. Alexandreus, more rarely Alexandrites,
Alexandriotes, Alexandrianos, Alexandrinos, Alexandrines, Alexandrinus; fem. Alexandris:
the modern El-Skanderish), the Hellenic capital of Egypt, was founded by Alexander
the Great in B.C. 332. It stood in lat. 31° N.; long. 47° E. (Arrian, iii. 1,
p. 156; Q. Curt. iv. 8. § 2.) On his voyage from Memphis to Canobus he was struck
by the natural advantages of the little town of Rhacotis, on the north-eastern
angle of the Lake Mareotis. The harbour of Rhacotis, with the adjacent island
of Pharos, had been from very remote ages (Hom. Od. iv. 355) the resort of Greek
and Phoenician sea-rovers, and in the former place the Pharaohs kept a permanent
garrison, to prevent foreigners entering their dominions by any other approach
than the city of Naucratis and the Canobic branch of the Nile. At Rhacotis Alexander
determined to construct the future capital of his western conquests. His architect
Deinocrates was instructed to surveythe harbour, and to draw out a plan of a military
and commercial metropolis of the first rank. (Vitruv. ii. prooem.; Solin. c.32;
Amm. Marc. xxii. 40; Val. Max. i. 4. § 1.) The ground-plan was traced by Alexander
himself; the building was commenced immediately, but the city was not completed
until the reign of the second monarch of the Lagid line, Ptolemy Philadelphus.
It continued to receive embellishment and extension from nearly every monarch
of that dynasty. The plan of Deinocrates was carried out by another architect,
named Cleomenes, of Naucratis. (Justin. xiii. 4. § 1.) Ancient writers (Strab.
p. 791, seq.; Plut. Alex. 26; Plin. v. 10. s. 11) compare the general form of
Alexandreia to the cloak (chlamys) worn by the Macedonian cavalry. It was of an
oblong figure, rounded at the SE. and SW. extremities. Its length from E. to W.
was nearly 4 miles; its breadth from S. to N. nearly a mile, and its circumference,
according to Pliny was about 15 miles. The interior was laid out in parallelograms:
the streets crossed one another at right angles, and were all wide enough to admit
of both wheel carriages and foot-passengers. Two grand thoroughfares nearly bisected
the city. They ran in straight lines to its four principal gates, and each was
a plethrum, or about 200 feet wide. The longest, 40 stadia in length, ran from
the Canobic gate to that of the Necropolis (E.--W.): the shorter, 7-8 stadia in
length, extended from the Gate of the Sun to the Gate of the Moon (S.--N.). On
its northern side Alexandreia was bounded by the sea, sometimes denominated the
Egyptian Sea: on the south by the Lake of Marea or Mareotis; to the west were
the Necropolis and its numerous gardens; to the east the Eleusinian road and the
Great Hippodrome. The tongue of land upon which Alexandreia stood was singularly
adapted to a commercial city. The island of Pharos broke the force of the north
wind, and of the occasional high floods of the Mediterranean. The headland of
Lochias sheltered its harbours to the east; the Lake Mareotis was both a wet-dock
and the general haven of the inland navigation of the Nile valley, whether direct
from Syene, or by the royal canal from Arsinoe on the Red Sea, while various other
canals connected the lake with the Deltaic branches of the river. The springs
of Rhacotis were few and brackish; but an aqueduct conveyed the Nile water into
the southern section of the city, and tanks, many of which are still in use, distributed
fresh water to both public and private edifices. (Hirtius, B. Alex. c. 5.) The
soil, partly sandy and partly calcareous, rendered drainage nearly superfluous.
The fogs which periodically linger on the shores of Cyrene and Egypt were dispersed
by the north winds which, in the summer season, ventilate the Delta; while the
salubrious [p. 96] atmosphere for which Alexandreia was celebrated was directly
favoured by the Lake Mareotis, whose bed was annually filled from the Nile, and
the miasma incident to lagoons scattered by the regular influx of its purifying
floods. The inclination of the streets from east to west concurred with these
causes to render Alexandreia healthy; since it broke the force of the Etesian
or northern breezes, and diffused an equable temperature over the city. Nor were
its military less striking than its commercial advantages. Its harbours were sufficiently
capacious to admit of large fleets, and sufficiently contracted at their entrance
to be defended by booms and chains. A number of small islands around the Pharos
and the harbours were occupied with forts, and the approach from the north was
further secured by the difficulty of navigating among the limestone reefs and
mudbanks which front the debouchure of the Nile.
The harbour-line commenced from the east with the peninsular
strip Lochias, which terminated seaward in a fort called Acro-Lochias, the modern
Pharillon. The ruins of a pier on the eastern side of it mark an ancient landing-place,
probably belonging to the Palace which, with its groves and gardens, occupied
this Peninsula. Like all the principal buildings of Alexandreia, it commanded
a view of the bay and the Pharos. The Lochias formed, with the islet of Antirhodus,
the Closed or Royal Port, which was kept exclusively for the king's gallies, and
around the head of which were the Royal Dockyards. West of the Closed Port was
the Poseideion or Temple of Neptune, where embarking and returning mariners registered
their vows. The northern point of this temple was called the Timonium, whither
the defeated triumvir M. Antonius retired after his flight from Actium in B.C.
31. (Plat. Anton. 69.) Between Lochias and the Great Mole (Heptastadium) was the
Greater Harbour, and on the western side of the Mole was the Haven of Happy Return
(eunostos), connected by the basin (kibotos, chest) with the canal that led, by
one arm, to the Lake Mareotis, and by the other to the Canobic arm of the Nile.
The haven of Happy Return fronted the quarter of the city called Rhacotis. It
was less difficult of access than the Greater Harbour. as the reefs and shoals
lie principally NE. of the Pharos. Its modern name is the Old Port. From the Poseideion
to the Mole the shore was lined with dockyards and warehouses, upon whose broad
granite quays ships discharged their lading without the intervention of boats.
On the western horn of the Eunostus were public granaries.
Fronting the city, and sheltering both its harbours, lay the long
narrow island of Pharos. It was a dazzling white calcareous rock, about a mile
from Alexandreia, and, according to Strabo, 150 stadia from the Canobic mouth
of the Nile. At its eastern point stood the far-famed lighthouse, the work of
Sostrates of Cnidus, and, nearer the Heptastadium, was a temple of Phtah or Hephaestus.
The Pharos was begun by Ptolemy Soter, but completed by his successor, and dedicated
by him to .the gods Soteres, or Soter and Berenice, his parents. It consisted
of several stories, and is said to have been four hundred feet in height. The
old light-house of Alexandreia still occupies the site of its ancient predecessor.
A deep bay on the northern side of the island was called the, Pirates' Haven,
from its having been an early place of refuge for Carian and Samian mariners.
The islets which stud the northern coast of Pharos became, in the 4th and 5th
centuries A. D., the resort of Christian anchorites. The island is said by Strabo
to have been nearly desolated by Julius Caesar when he was besieged by the Alexandrians
in B.C. 46. (Hirt. B. Alex. 17.)
The Pharos was connected with the mainland by an artificial mound
or causeway, called, from its length (7 stadia, 4270 English feet, or 3/4 of a
mile), the Heptastadium. There were two breaks in the Mole to let the water flow
through, and prevent the accumulation of silth; over these passages bridges were
laid, which could be raised up at need. The temple of Hephaestus on Pharos stood
at one extremity of the Mole, and the Gate of the Moon on the mainland at the
other. The form of the Heptastadium can no longer be distinguished, since modern
Alexandreia is principally erected upon it, and upon the earth which has accumulated
about its piers. It probably lay in a direct line between fort Caffarelli and
the island.
Interior of the City. Alexandreia was divided into three regions.
(1) The Regio Judaeorum. (2) The Brucheium or Pyrucheium, the Royal or Greek Quarter.
(3) The Rhacotis or Egyptian Quarter. This division corresponded to the three
original constituents of the Alexandrian population (tria gene, Polyb. xxxiv.
14; Strab.) After B.C. 31 the Romans added a fourth element, but this was principally
military and financial (the garrison, the government, and its official staff,
and the negotiatores), and confined to the Region Brucheium.
1. Regio Judaeorum, or Jews' Quarter, occupied the NE. angle of the city, and was encompassed by the sea, the city walls, and the Brucheium. Like the Jewry of modern European cities, it had walls and gates of its own, which were at times highly necessary for its security, since between the Alexandrian Greeks and Jews frequent hostilities raged, inflamed both by political jealousy and religious hatred. The Jews were governed by their own Ethnarch, or Arabarches (Joseph. Antiq. xiv. 7. § 2, 10. § 1, xviii. 6. § 3, xix. 5. § 2, B. J. ii. 18. § 7), by a sanhedrim or senate, and their own national a laws. Augustus Caesar, in B.C. 31, granted to the Alexandrian Jews equal privileges with their Greek fellow citizens, and recorded his grant by a public inscription. (Id. Antiq. xii. 3, c. Apion. 2.) Philo Judaeus (Legat. in Caium) gives a full account of the immunities of the Regio Judaeorum. They were frequently confirmed or annulled by successive Roman emperors. (Sharpe, Hist. of Egypt, p. 347, seq. 2nd edit.)
2. Brucheium, or Pyrucheium (Brucheion, Eurocheion, Salmasius, ad Spartian. Hadrian.
c. 20), the Royal or Greek Quarter, was bounded to the S. and E. by the city walls,
N. by the Greater Harbour, and W. by the region Rhacotis and the main street which
connected the Gate of the Sun with that of the Moon and the Heptastadium. It was
also surrounded by its own walls, and was the quarter in which Caesar defended
himself against the Alexandrians. (Hirtius, B. Alex. 1.) The Brucheium was bisected
by the High Street, which ran from the Canobic Gate to the Necropolis, and was
supplied with water from the Nile by a tunnel or aqueduct, which entered the city
on the south, and passed a little to the west of the Gymnasium. This was the quarter
of the Alexandrians proper, or Hellenic citizens, the Royal Residence, and the
district in which were contained the most conspicuous of the public buildings.
It was so much adorned and extended by the later Ptolemies that it eventually
occupied one-fifth of the entire city. (Plin. v. 10. s. 11.) It contained the
following remarkable edifices: On the Lochias, the Palace of the Ptolemies, with
the smaller palaces appropriated to their children and the adjacent gardens and
groves. The far-famed Library and Museum, with its Theatre for lectures and public
assemblies, connected with one another and with the palaces by long colonnades
of the most costly marble from the Egyptian quarries, and adorned with obelisks
and sphinxes taken from the Pharaonic cities. The Library contained, according
to one account, 700,000 volumes, according to another 400,000 (Joseph. Antiq.
xii. 2; Athen. i. p. 3); part, however, of this unrivalled collection was lodged
in the temple of Serapis, in the quarter Rhacotis. Here were deposited the 200,000
volumes collected by the kings of Pergamus, and presented by M. Antonius to Cleopatra.
The library of the Museum was destroyed during the blockade of Julius Caesar in
the Brucheium; that of the Serapeion was frequently injured by the civil broils
of Alexandreia, and especially when that temple was destroyed by the Christian
fanatics in the 4th century A.D. It was finally destroyed by the orders of the
khalif Omar, A.D. 640. The collection was begun by Ptolemy Soter, augmented by
his successors, for the worst of the Lagidae were patrons of literature,--and
respected, if not increased, by the Caesars, who, like their predecessors, appointed
and salaried the librarians and the professors of the Museum. The Macedonian kings
replenished the shelves of the Library zealously but unscrupulously, since they
laid an embargo on all books, whether public or private property, which were brought
to Alexandreia, retained the originals, and gave copies of them to their proper
owners. In this way Ptolemy Euergetes (B.C. 246--221) is said to have got possession
of authentic copies of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and to
have returned transcripts of them to the Athenians, with an accompanying compensation
of fifteen talents. The Museum succeeded the once renowned college of Heliopolis
as the University of Egypt. It contained a great hall or banqueting room (oikos
melas), where the professors dined in common; an exterior peristyle, or corridor
(peripatoi), for exercise and ambulatory lectures; a theatre where public disputations
and scholastic festivals were held; chambers for the different professors; and
possessed a botanical garden which Ptolemy Philadelphus enriched with tropical
flora (Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. vi. 24), and a menagerie (Athen. xiv. p. 654).
It was divided into four principal sections,--poetry, mathematics, astronomy,
and medicine, and enrolled among its professors or pupils the illustrious names
of Euclid, Ctesibius, Callimachus, Aratus, [p. 98] Aristophanes and Aristarchus,
the critics and grammarians, the two Heros, Ammonius Saccas, Polemo, Clemens,
Origen, Athanasius, Theon and his celebrated daughter Hypatia, with many others.
Amid the turbulent factions and frequent calamities of Alexandreia, the Museum
maintained its reputation, until the Saracen invasion in A.D. 640. The emperors,
like their predecessors the Ptolemies, kept in their own hands the nomination
of the President of the Museum, who was considered one of the four chief magistrates
of the city. For the Alexandrian Library and Museum the following works may be
consulted:--Strab.; Vitruv. vii. prooem.; Joseph. Antiq. xii. 2, c. Apion. ii.
7; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 22; Cyrill. Hieros. Catechet. iv. 34; Epiphan. Mens.
et Pond. c. 9; Augustin. Civ. D. xviii. 42; Lipsius, de Biblioth. § ii.; Bonamy,
Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscr. ix. 10; Matter, l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. i. p. 47;
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iii. p. 500.
In the Brucheium also stood the Caesarium, or Temple of the Caesars, where divine
honours were paid to the emperors, deceased or living. Its site is still marked
by the two granite obelisks called Cleopatra's Needles, near which is a tower
perhaps not inappropriately named the Tower of the Romans. Proceeding westward,
we come to the public granaries (Caesar, B. Civ. iii. 112) and the Mausoleum of
the Ptolemies, which, from its containing the body of Alexander the Great, was
denominated Soma (Soma, or Sema, Strab.). The remains of the Macedonian hero were
originally inclosed in a coffin of gold, which, about B.C. 118, was stolen by
Ptolemy Soter II., and replaced by one of glass, in which the corpse was viewed
by Augustus in B.C. 30. (Sueton. Octav. 18.) A building to which tradition assigns
the name of the Tomb of Alexander is found among the ruins of the old city, but
its site does not correspond with that of the Soma. It is much reverenced by the
Moslems. In form it resembles an ordinary sheikh's tomb, and it stands to the
west of the road leading from the Frank Quarter to the Pompey's--Pillar Gate.
In the Soma were also deposited the remains of M. Antonius, the only alien admitted
into the Mausoleum (Plut. Ant. 82). In this quarter also were the High Court of
Justice (Dicasterium), in which, under the Ptolemies, the senate assembled and
discharged such magisterial duties as a nearly despotic government allowed to
them, and where afterwards the Roman Juridicus held his court. A stadium, a gymnasium,
a palestra, and an amphitheatre, provided exercise and amusement for the spectacle-loving
Alexandrians. The Arsinoeum, on the western side of the Brucheium, was a monument
raised by Ptolemy Philadelphus to the memory of his favourite sister Arsinoe;
and the Panium was a stone mound, or cone, with a spiral ascent on the outside,
from whose summit was visible every quarter of the city. The purpose of this structure
is, however, not ascertained. The edifices of the Brucheium had been so arranged
by Deinocrates as to command a prospect of the Great Harbour and the Pharos. In
its centre was a spacious square, surrounded by cloisters and flanked to the north
by the quays--the Emporium, or Alexandrian Exchange. Hither, for nearly eight
centuries, every nation of the civilized world sent its representatives. Alexandreia
had inherited the commerce of both Tyre and Carthage, and collected in this area
the traffic and speculation of three continents. The Romans admitted Alexandreia
to be the second city of the world; but the quays of the Tiber presented no such
spectacle as the Emporium. In the seventh century, when the Arabs entered Alexandreia,
the Brucheium was in ruins and almost deserted.
3. The Rhacotis, or Egyptian Quarter, occupied the site of the ancient Rhacotis. Its principal buildings were granaries along the western arm of the cibotus or basin, a stadium, and the Temple of Serapis. The Serapeion was erected by the first or second of the Ptolemies. The image of the god, which was of wood, was according to Clemens (Clemens Alex. Protrept. c. 4. § 48), inclosed or plated over with layers of every kind of metal and precious stones: it seems also, either from the smoke of incense or from varnish, to have been of a black colour. Its origin and import are doubtful. Serapis is sometimes defined to be Osiri-Apis; and sometimes the Sinopite Zeus, which may imply either that he was brought from the hill Sinopeion near Memphis, or from Sinope in Pontus, whence Ptolemy Soter or Philadelphus is said to have imported it to adorn his new capital. That the idol was a pantheistic emblem may be inferred, both from the materials of which it was composed, and from its being adopted by a dynasty of sovereigns who sought to blend in one mass the creeds of Hellas and Egypt. The Serapeion was destroyed in A.D. 390 by Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandreia, in obedience to the rescript of the emperor Theodosius, which abolished paganism (Codex Theodos. xvi. 1, 2).1 The Coptic population of this quarter were not properly Alexandrian citizens, but enjoyed a franchise inferior to that of the Greeks. (Plin. Epist. x. 5. 22, 23; Joseph. c. Apion. c. 2. § 6.) The Alexandreia which the Arabs besieged was nearly identical with the Rhacotis. It had suffered many calamities both from civil feud and from foreign war. Its Serapeion was twice consumed by fire, once in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and again in that of Commodus. But this district survived both the Regio Judaeorum and the Brucheium.
Of the remarkable beauty of Alexandreia (he kale Alexandreia, Athen.
i. p. 3), we have the testimony of numerous writers who saw it in its prime. Ammianus
(xxii. 16) calls it vertex omnium civitatum; Strabo (xvii. p. 832) describes it
as megiston emporeion tes oikoumenes; Theocritus (Idyll. xvii.), Philo (ad Flacc.
ii. p. 541), Eustathius (II. B.), Gregory of Nyssa (Vit. Gregor. Thaumaturg.),
and many others, write in the same strain. (Comp. Diodor. xvii. 52; Pausan. viii.
33.) .Perhaps, however, one of the most striking descriptions of its effect upon
a stranger is that of Achilles Tatius in his romance of Cleitophon and Leucippe
(v. 1). Its dilapidation was not the effect of time, but of the hand of man. Its
dry atmosphere preserved, for centuries after their erection, the sharp outline
and gay colours of its buildings; and when in A.D. 120 the emperor Hadrian surveyed
Alexandreia, he beheld almost the virgin city of the Ptolemies. (Spartian. [p.
99] Hadrian. c. 12.) It suffered much from the intestine feuds of the Jews and
Greeks, and the Brucheium was nearly rebuilt by the emperor Gallienus, A.D. 260-8.
But the zeal of its Christian population was more destructive; and the Saracens
only completed their previous work of demolition.
Population of Alexandreia. Diodorus Siculus, who visited Alexandreia
about B.C. 58, estimates (xvii. 52) its free citizens at 300,000, to which sum
at least an equal number must be added for slaves and casual residents. Besides
Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians, the population consisted, according to Dion Chrysostom,
who saw the city in A.D. 69 (Orat. xxxii.), of Italians, Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians,
Aethiopians, Arabians, Bactrians, Persians, Scythians, and Indians ; and Polybius
(xxxix. 14) and Strabo confirm his statement. Ancient writers generally give the
Alexandrians an ill name, as a double-tongued (Hirtius, B. Alex. 24), factious
(Trebell. Poll. Trig. Tyran. c. 22), irascible (Phil. adv. Flacc. ii.), blood-thirsty,
yet cowardly set (Dion Cass. i. p. 621). Athenaeus speaks of them as a jovial,
boisterous race (x. p. 420), and mentions their passion for music and the number
and strange appellations of their musical instruments (id. iv. 176, xiv. p. 654).
Dion Chrysostom (Orat. xxxii.) upbraids them with their levity, their insane love
of spectacles, horse races, gambling, and dissipation. They were, however, singularly
industrious. Besides their export trade, the city was full of manufactories of
paper, linen, glass, and muslin (Vopisc. Saturn. 8). Even the lame and blind had
their occupations. For their rulers, Greek or Roman, they invented nicknames.
The better Ptolemies and Caesars smiled at these affronts, while Physcon and Caracalla
repaid them by a general massacre. For more particular information respecting
Alexandreia we refer to Matter, l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, 2 vols.; the article Alexandrinische
Schule in Pauly's Real Encyclopaedie; and to Mr. Sharpe's History of Egypt, 2nd
ed.
The Government of Alexandreia. Under the Ptolemies the Alexandrians
possessed at least the semblance of a constitution. Its Greek inhabitants enjoyed
the privileges of bearing arms, of meeting in the Gymnasium to discuss their general
interests, and to petition for redress of grievances; and they were addressed
in royal proclamations as Men of Macedon. But they had no political constitution
able to resist the grasp of despotism; and, after the reigns of the first three
kings of the Lagid house, were deprived of even the shadow of freedom. To this
end the division of the city into three nations directly contributed; for the
Greeks were ever ready to take up arms against the Jews, and the Egyptians feared
and contemned them both. A connubium, indeed, existed between the latter and the
Greeks. (Letronne, Inscr. i. p. 99.) Of the government of the Jews by an Ethnarch
and a Sanhedrim we have already spoken: how the quarter Rhacotis was administered
we do not know; it was probably under a priesthood of its own: but we find in
inscriptions and in other scattered notices that the Greek population was divided
into tribes (phulai) and into wards (demoi). The tribes were nine in number (Althais,
Ariadnis, Deianeiris, Dionusis, Euneis, Thestis, Thoantis, Maronis, Ttaphulis).
(Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina, p. 346, seq. Berl. 1843.) There was, indeed, some
variation in the appellations of the tribes, since Apollonius of Rhodes, the author
of the Argonautica, belonged to a tribe called Ptolemais. (Vit. Apoll. Rhod. ed.
Brunk.) The senate was elected from the principal members of the wards (Demotai).
Its functions were chiefly judicial. In inscriptions we meet with the titles gumnasiarches,
dikaiodotes, npomnematographos, archidikastes, agoranomos, &c. (Letronne, Recueil
des Inscr. Gr. et Lat. de l'Egypte, vol. i. 1842, Paris; id. Recherches pour servir
a l'Histoire de l'Egypte, &c. Paris, 1823-8.) From the reign of Augustus, B.C.
31, to that of Septimius Severus, A.D. 194, the functions of the senate were suspended,
and their place supplied by the Roman Juridicus, or Chief Justice, whose authority
was inferior only to that of the Praefectus Augustalis. (Winkler, de Jurid. Alex.
Lips. 1827-8.) The latter emperor restored the jus buleutarum. (Spartian. Severus,
c. 17.)
The Roman government of Alexandreia was altogether peculiar. The country
was assigned neither to the senatorian nor the imperial provinces, but was made
dependent on the Caesar alone. For this regulation there were valid reasons. The
Nilevalley was not easy of access; might be easily defended by an ambitious prefect;
was opulent and populous; and was one of the principal granaries of Rome. Hence
Augustus interdicted the senatorian order, and even the more illustrious equites
(Tac. Ann. ii. 59) from visiting Egypt without special licence. The prefect he
selected, and his successors observed the rule, either from his personal adherents,
or from equites who looked to him alone for promotion. Under the prefect, but
nominated by the emperor, was the Juridicus (archidikastes), who presided over
a numerous staff of inferior magistrates, and whose decisions could be annulled
by the prefect, or perhaps the emperor alone. The Caesar appointed also the keeper
of the public records (hupomnematolraphos), the chief of the police (nukterinos
stratelos), the Interpreter of Egyptian law (exeletes patrion noeon), the praefectus
annonae or warden of the markets (epimeletes ton te polei chresimon), and the
President of the Museum. All these officers, as Caesarian nominees, wore a scarlet-bordered
robe. (Strab. p. 797, seq.) In other respects the domination of Rome was highly
conducive to the welfare of Alexandreia. Trade, which had declined under the later
Ptolemies, revived and attained a prosperity hitherto unexampled: the army, instead
of being a horde of lawless and oppressive mercenaries, was restrained under strict
discipline: the privileges and national customs of the three constituents of its
population were respected: the luxury of Rome gave new vigour to commerce with
the East; the corn-supply to Italy promoted the cultivation of the Delta and the
business of the Emporium; and the frequent inscription of the imperial names upon
the temples attested that Alexandreia at least had benefited by exchanging the
Ptolemies for the Caesars.
The History of Alexandreia may be divided into three periods.
(1) The Hellenic. (2) The Roman. (3) The Christian. The details of the first of
these may be read in the History of the Ptolemies (Dictionary of Biography, pp.
565-599). Here it will suffice to remark, that the city prospered under the wisdom
of Soter and the genius of Philadelphus; lost somewhat of its Hellenic character
under Euergetes, and began to decline under Philopator, who was a mere Eastern
despot, surrounded and governed by women, eunuchs, and favourites. From Epiphanes
downwards these evils [p. 100] were aggravated. The army was disorganised; trade
and agriculture declined; the Alexandrian people grew more servile and vicious:
even the Museum exhibited symptoms of decrepitude. Its professors continued, indeed,
to cultivate science and criticism, but invention and taste had expired. It depended
upon Rome whether Alexandreia should become tributary to Antioch, or receive a
proconsul from the senate. The wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedon, and Syria
alone deferred the deposition of the Lagidae. The influence of Rome in the Ptolemaic
kingdom commenced properly in B.C. 204, when the guardians of Epiphanes placed
their infant ward under the protection of the senate, as his only refuge against
the designs of the Macedonian and Syrian monarchs. (Justin. xxx. 2.) M. Aemilius
Lepidus was appointed guardian to the young Ptolemy, and the legend Tutor Regis
upon the Aemilian coins commemorates this trust. (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 123.) In
B.C. 163 the Romans adjudicated between the brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Euergetes.
The latter received Cyrene; the former retained Alexandreia and Egypt. In B.C.
145, Scipio Africanus the younger was appointed to settle the distractions which
ensued upon the murder of Eupator. (Justin. xxxviii. 8; Cic. Acad. Q. iv. 2, Off.
iii. 2; Diod. Legat. 32; Gell. N. A. xviii. 9.) An inscription, of about this
date, recorded at Delos the existence of amity between Alexandreia and Rome. (Letronne,
Inscr. vol. i. p. 102.) In B.C. 97, Ptolemy Apion devised by will the province
of Cyrene to the Roman senate (Liv. lxx. Epit.), and his example was followed,
in B.C. 80, by Ptolemy Alexander, who bequeathed to them Alexandreia and his kingdom.
The bequest, however, was not immediately enforced, as the republic was occupied
with civil convulsions at home. Twenty years later Ptolemy Auletes mortgaged his
revenues to a wealthy Roman senator, Rabirius Postumus (Cic. Fragm. xvii. Orelli,
p. 458), and in B.C. 55 Alexandreia was drawn into the immediate vortex of the
Roman revolution, and from this period, until its submission to Augustus in B.C.
30, it followed the fortunes alternately of Pompey, Gabinius, Caesar, Cassius
the liberator, and M. Antonius.
The wealth of Alexandreia in the last century B.C. may be inferred
from the fact, that, in 63, 6250 talents, or a million sterling, were paid to
the treasury as port dues alone. (Diod. xvii. 52; Strab. p. 832.) Under the emperors,
the history of Alexandreia exhibits little variety. It was, upon the whole, leniently
governed, for it was the interest of the Caesars to be generally popular in a
city which commanded one of the granaries of Rome. Augustus, indeed, marked his
displeasure at the support given to M. Antonius, by building Nicopolis about three
miles to the east of the Canobic gate as its rival, and by depriving the Greeks
of Alexandreia of the only political distinction which the Ptolemies had left
them--the judicial functions of the senate. The city, however, shared in the general
prosperity of Egypt under Roman rule. The portion of its population that came
most frequently in collision with the executive was that of the Jewish Quarter.
Sometimes emperors, like Caligula, demanded that the imperial effigies or military
standards should be set up in their temple, at others the Greeks ridiculed or
outraged the Hebrew ceremonies. Both these causes were attended with sanguinary
results, and even with general pillage and burning of the city. Alexandreia was
favoured by Claudius, who added a wing to the Museum; was threatened with a visit
from Nero, who coveted the skilful applause of its claqueurs in the theatre (Sueton.
Ner. 20); was the head-quarter, for some months, of Vespasian (Tac. Hist. iii.
48, iv. 82) during the civil wars which preceded his accession; was subjected
to military lawlessness under Domitian (Juv. Sat. xvi.); was governed mildly by
Trajan, who even supplied the city, during a dearth, with corn (Plin. Panegyr.
31. § 23); and was visited by Hadrian in A.D. 122, who has left a graphic picture
of the population. (Vopisc. Saturn. 8.) The first important change in their polity
was that introduced by the emperor Severus in A.D. 196. The Alexandrian Greeks
were no longer formidable, and Severus accordingly restored their senate and municipal
government. He also ornamented the city with a temple of Rhea, and with a public
bath--Thermae Septimianae.
Alexandreia, however, suffered more from a single visit of Caracalla
than from the tyranny or caprice of any of his predecessors. That emperor had
been ridiculed by its satirical populace for affecting to be the Achilles and
Alexander of his time. The rumours or caricatures which reached him in Italy were
not forgotten on his tour through the provinces; and although he was greeted with
hecatombs on his arrival at Alexandreia in A.D. 211 (Herodian. iv. 9), he did
not omit to repay the insult by a general massacre of the youth of military age.
(Dion Cass. lxxvii. 22; Spartian. Caracall. 6.) Caracalla also introduced some
important changes in the civil relations of the Alexandrians. To mark his displeasure
with the Greeks, he admitted the chief men of the quarter Rhacotis--i. e. native
Egyptians--into the Roman senate. (Dion Cass. li. 17; Spartian. Caracall. 9);
he patronised a temple of Isis at Rome; and he punished the citizens of the Brucheium
by retrenching their public games and their allowance of corn. The Greek quarter
was charged with the maintenance of an additional Roman garrison, and its inner
walls were repaired and lined with forts.
From the works of Aretaeus (de Morb. Acut. i.) we learn that Alexandreia
was visited by a pestilence in the reign of Gallus, A.D. 253. In 265, the prefect
Aemilianus was proclaimed Caesar by his soldiers. (Trebell. Pol. Trig. Tyrann.
22, Gallien. 4.) In 270, the name of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, appears on the
Alexandrian coinage; and the city had its full share of the evils consequent upon
the frequent revolutions of the Roman empire. (Vopisc. Aurelian. 32.) After this
period, A.D. 271, Alexandreia lost much of its predominance in Egypt, since the
native population, hardened by repeated wars, and reinforced by Arabian immigrants,
had become a martial and turbulent race. In A.D. 297 (Eutrop. ix. 22), Diocletian
besieged and regained Alexandreia, which had declared itself in favour of the
usurper Achilleus. The emperor, however, made a lenient use of his victory, and
purchased the favour of the populace by an increased largess of corn. The column,
now well known as Pompey's Pillar, once supported a statue of this emperor, and
still bears on its base the inscription, To the most honoured emperor, the deliverer
of Alexandreia, the invincible Diocletian.
Alexandreia had its full share of the persecutions of this reign. The Jewish rabbinism
and Greek philosophy of the city had paved the way for Christianity, and the serious
temper of the Egyptian population sympathised with the earnestness of the new
faith. The Christian population of Alexandreia was accordingly numerous when the
imperial edicts were put in force. Nor were martyrs wanting. The city was already
an episcopal see; and its bishop Peter, with the presbyters Faustus, Dius, and
Ammonius, were among the first victims of Diocletian's rescript. The Christian
annals of Alexandreia have so little that is peculiar to the city, that it will
suffice to refer the reader to the general history of the Church.
It is more interesting to turn from the Arian and Athanasian feuds,
which sometimes deluged the streets of the city with blood, and sometimes made
necessary the intervention of the Prefect, to the aspect which Alexandreia presented
to the Arabs, in A.D. 640, after so many revolutions, civil and religious. The
Pharos and Heptastadium were still uninjured: the Sebaste or Caesarium, the Soma,
and the Quarter Rhacotis, retained almost their original grandeur. But the Hippodrome
at the Canobic Gate was a ruin, and a new Museum had replaced in the Egyptian
Region the more ample structure of the Ptolemies in the Brucheium. The Greek quarter
was indeed nearly deserted: the Regio Judaeorum was occupied by a few miserable
tenants, who purchased from the Alexandrian patriarch the right to follow their
national law. The Serapeion had been converted into a Cathedral; and some of the
more conspicuous buildings of the Hellenic city had become the Christian Churches
of St. Mark, St. John, St. Mary, &c. Yet Amrou reported to his master the Khalif
Omar that Alexandreia was a city containing four thousand palaces, four thousand
public baths, four hundred theatres, forty thousand Jews who paid tribute, and
twelve thousand persons who sold herbs. (Eutych. Annal. A.D. 640.) The result
of Arabian desolation was, that the city, which had dwindled into the Egyptian
Quarter, shrunk into the limits of the Heptastadium, and, after the year 1497,
when the Portuguese, by discovering the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, changed
the whole current of Indian trade, it degenerated still further into an obscure
town, with a population of about 6000, inferior probably to that of the original
Rhacotis.
Ruins of Alexandreia. These may be divided into two classes:
(1) indistinguishable mounds of masonry; and (2) fragments of buildings which
may, in some degree, be identified with ancient sites or structures.
The Old Town is surrounded by a double wall, with lofty towers, and
five gates. The Rosetta Gate is the eastern entrance into this circuit; but it
does not correspond with the old Canobic Gate, which was half a mile further to
the east. The space inclosed is about 10,000 feet in length, and in its breadth
varies from 3200 to 1600 feet. It contains generally shapeless masses of ruins,
consisting of shattered columns and capitals, cisterns choked with rubbish, and
fragments of pottery and glass. Some of the mounds are covered by the villas and
gardens of the wealthier inhabitants of Alexandreia. Nearly in the centre of the
inclosure, and probably in the High Street between the Canobic and Necropolitan
Gates, stood a few years since three granite columns. They were nearly opposite
the Mosque of St. Athanasius, and were perhaps the last remnants of the colonnade
which lined the High Street. (From this mosque was taken, in 1801, the sarcophagus
of green breccia which is now in the British Museum.) Until December, 1841, there
was also on the road leading to the Rosetta Gate the base of another similar column.
But these, as well as other remnants of the capital of the Ptolemies, have disappeared;
although, twenty years ago, the intersection of its two main streets was distinctly
visible, at a point near the Frank Square, and not very far from the Catholic
convent. Excavations in the Old Town occasionally, indeed, bring to light parts
of statues, large columns, and fragments of masonry: but the ground-plan of Alexandreia
is now probably lost irretrievably, as the ruins have been converted into building
materials, without note being taken at the time of the site or character of the
remnants removed. Vestiges of baths and other buildings may be traced along the
inner and outer bay; and numerous tanks are still in use which formed part of
the cisterns that supplied the city with Nile-water. They were often of considerable
size; were built under the houses; and, being arched and coated with a thick red
plaster, have in many cases remained perfect to this day. One set of these reservoirs
runs parallel to the eastern issue of the Mahmoodeh Canal, which nearly represents
the old Canobic Canal; others are found in the convents which occupy part of the
site of the Old Town; and others again are met with below the mound of Pompey's
Pillar. The descent into these chambers is either by steps in the side or by an
opening in the roof, through which the water is drawn up by ropes and buckets.
The most striking remains of ancient Alexandreia are the Obelisks
and Pompey's Pillar. The former are universally known by the inappropriate name
of Cleopatra's Needles. The fame of Cleopatra has preserved her memory among the
illiterate Arabs, who regard her as a kind of enchantress, and ascribe to her
many of the great works of her capital, the Pharos and Heptastadium included.
Meselleh is, moreover, the Arabic word for a packing Needle, and is given generally
to obelisks. The. two columns, however, which bear this appellation, are red granite
obelisks which were brought by one of the Caesars from Heliopolis, and, according
to Pliny (xxxvi. 9), were set up in front of the Sebaste or Caesarium. They are
about 57 paces apart from each other: one is still vertical, the other has been
thrown down. They stood each on two steps of white limestone. The vertical obelisk
is 73 feet high, the diameter at its base is 7 feet and 7 inches; the fallen obelisk
has been mutilated, and, with the same diameter, is shorter. The latter was presented
by Mohammed Ali to the English government: and the propriety of its removal to
England has been discussed during the present year. Pliny (l. c.) ascribes them
to an Egyptian king named Mesphres: nor is he altogether wrong. The Pharaoh whose
oval they exhibit was the. third Thothmes, and in Manetho?s list the first and
second Thothmes (18th Dynasty: Kenrick, vol. ii. p. 199) are written as Mesphra-Thothmosis.
Rameses III. and Osirei II., his third successor, have also their ovals upon these
obelisks.
Pompey's Pillar, as it is erroneously termed, is denominated by the
Arabs Amood e sowari; sari or sowari being applied by them to any lofty monument
which suggests the image of a mast. It might more properly be termed Diocletian's
Pillar, since a statue of that emperor once occupied its summit, commemorating
the capture of Alexandreia in A.D. 297, after an obstinate siege of eight months.
The total height of this column is 98 feet 9 inches, the shaft is 73 feet, the
circumference 29 feet 8 inches, and the diameter at the top of the capital is
16 feet 6 [p. 102] inches. The shaft, capital, and pedestal are apparently of
different ages; the latter are of very inferior workmanship to the shaft. The
substructions of the column are fragments of older monuments, and the name of
Psammetichus with a few hieroglyphics is inscribed upon them.
The origin of the name Pompey's Pillar is very doubtful. It has been
derived from Pompaios, conducting, since the column served for a land-mark. In
the inscription copied by Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr. Salt, it is stated that
Publius, the Eparch of Egypt, erected it in honour of Diocletian. For Publius
it has been proposed to read Pompeius. The Pillar originally stood in the centre
of a paved area beneath the level of the ground, like so many of the later Roman
memorial columns. The pavement, however, has long been broken up and carried away.
If Arabian traditions may be trusted, this now solitary Pillar once stood in a
Stoa with 400 others, and formed part of the peristyle of the ancient Serapeion.
Next in interest are the Catacombs or remains of the ancient Necropolis
beyond the Western Gate. The approach to this cemetery was through vineyards and
gardens, which both Athenaeus and Strabo celebrate. The extent of the Catacombs
is remarkable: they are cut partly in a ridge of sandy calcareous stone, and partly
in the calcareous rock that faces the sea. They all communicate with the sea by
narrow vaults, and the most spacious of them is about 3830 yds. SW. of Pompey's
Pillar. Their style of decoration is purely Greek, and in one of the chambers
are a Doric entablature and mouldings, which evince no decline in art at the period
of their erection. Several tombs in that direction, at the water's edge, and some
even below its level, are entitled Bagni di Cleopatra.
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ANTHYLLA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Anthylla (Anthulla, Herod. ii. 97; Antulla, Athen. i. p. 33; Steph.
B. s. v.: Eth. Anthullaios), was a considerable town upon the Canobic branch of
the Nile, a few miles SE. of Alexandreia. Its revenues were assigned by the Persian
kings of Egypt to their queens, to provide them, Herodotus says, with sandals;
Athenaeus says, with girdles. From this usage, Anthylla is believed by some geographers
to be the same city as Gynaecopolis, which, however, was further to the south
than Anthylla. (Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und Rom. vol. x. p. 596.) Athenaeus commends
the wine of Anthylla as the best produced by Egyptian vineyards.
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ANTINOUPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Antinoopolis, Antinoe (Antinoou polis, Ptol. iv. 5. § 61; Paus. viii.
9; Dion Cass. lxix. 11; Amm. Marc. xix. 12, xxii. 16; Aur. Vict. Caesar, 14; Spartian.
Hadrian. 14; Chron. Pasch. p. 254, Paris edit.; It. Anton. p. 167; Hierocl. p.
730; Antinoeia, Steph. B. s. v. Hadpianoupolis: Eth. Antinoeus), was built by
the emperor Hadrian in A.D. 122, in memory of his favourite Antinous. (Dictionary
of Biography, s. v.) It stood upon the eastern bank of the Nile, lat. 26 1/2 N.,
nearly opposite Hermopolis. It occupied the site of the village of Besa (Bessa),
named after the goddess and oracle of Besa, which was consulted occasionally even
as late as the age of Constantine. Antinoopolis was a little to the south of Besa,
and at the foot of the hill upon which that village was seated. A grotto, once
inhabited by Christian anchorites, probably marks the seat of the shrine and oracle,
and Grecian tombs with inscriptions point to the necropolis of Antinoopolis. The
new city at first belonged to the Heptanomis, but was afterwards annexed to the
Thebaid. The district around became the Antinoite nome. The city itself was governed
by its own senate and Prytaneus or President. The senate was chosen from the members
of the wards (phulai), of which we learn the name of one - Athenais - from inscriptions
(Orelli, No. 4705); and its decrees, as well as those of the Prytaneus, were not,
as usual, subject to the revision of the nomarch, but to that of the prefect (epistrategos)
of the Thebaid. Divine honours were paid in the Antinoeion to Antinous as a local
deity, and games and chariot-races were annually exhibited in commemoration of
his death and of Hadrian's sorrow. (Dictionary of Anliquities, s. v. Antinoeia.)
The city of Antinoopolis exhibited the Graeco-Roman architecture of Trajan's age
in immediate contrast with the Egyptian style. Its ruins, which the Copts call
Enseneh, at the village of Sheik-Abadeh, attest, by the area which they fill,
the ancient grandeur of the city. The direction of the principal streets may still
be traced. One at least of them, which ran from north to south, had on either
side of it a corridor supported by columns for the convenience of foot-passengers.
The walls of the theatre near the southern gate, and those of the hippodrome without
the walls to the east, are still extant. At the north-western extremity of the
city was a portico, of which four columns remain, inscribed to Good Fortune, and
bearing the date of the 14th and last year of the reign of Alexander Severus,
A.D. 235. As far as can be ascertained from the space covered with mounds of masonry,
Antinoopolis was about a mile and a half in length, and nearly half a mile broad.
Near the Hippodrome are a well and tanks appertaining to an ancient road, which
leads from the eastern gate to a valley behind the town, ascends the mountains,
and, passing through the desert by the Wadee Tarfa, joins the roads to the quarries
of the Mons Porphyrites. (Wilkinson, Topography of Thebes, p. 382.)
The Antinoite nome was frequently exposed to the ravage of invading
armies; but they have inflicted less havoc upon its capital and the neigbouring
Hermopolis than the Turkish and Egyptian governments, which have converted the
materials of these cities into a lime-quarry. A little to the south of Antinoopolis
is a grotto, the tomb of Thoth-otp, of the age of Sesortasen, containing a representation
of a colossus fastened on a sledge; which a number of men drag by ropes, according
to the usual mode adopted by the Egyptian masons. This tomb was discovered by
Irby and Mangles. There are only three silver coins of Antinous extant (Akerman,
Roman Coins, i. p. 253); but the number of temples, busts, statues, &c. dedicated
to his memory by Hadrian form an epoch in the declining art of antiquity. (Origen,
in Celsum, iii.; Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv. 8.)
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APHRODITOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Aphroditopolis, Aphrodito, Veneris Oppidum (Aphrodites polis, Aphroditopolis,
Aphrodito: Eth. Aphroditopolites), the name of several cities in Egypt:
I. In Lower Egypt.: A town of the Nomos Leontopolites. (Strab. xvii.
p. 802.)
II. In the Heptanomis, or Middle Egypt.: Afrodito (Itin. Ant. p. 168:
Aphrodito, Hieroc. p. 730, Atfyeh, mounds, but no Ru.), a considerable city on
the E. side of the Nile; capital of the Nomos Aphroditopoltes. (Strab. xvii. p.
809; Ptol.) It was an episcopal see, down to the Arab conquest. Its coins are
extant, of the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, with the epigraph Aphpodeitopoli.
(Rasche, s. v.)
III. In Upper Egypt, or the Thebais: (Tachta) on the W. side of the
Nile, but at some distance from the river, below Ptolemais and Panopolis; capital
of the Nomos Aphroditopolites (Plin. v. 9, 10. s. 11, Veneris iterum, to distinguish
it from No. 5; Strab. xvii. p. 813; Agatharch. de Rub. Mar. p. 22; Prokesch, Erinnerungen,
vol. i. p. 152.). (Deir, Ru.), on the W. side of the Nile, much higher up than
the former, and, like it, a little distance from the river; in the Nomos Hermonthites,
between Thebes and Apollonopolis Magna; and a little NW. of Latopolis. (Plin.
v. 10. s. 11.)
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APOLINOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Apollinopolis Magna (polis megale Apollonos, Strab. xvii. p. 817;
Agartharch. p. 22; Plin. v. 9. s. 11; Plut. Is. et Osir. 50; Aelian. Hist. An.
x. 2; Ptol. iv. 5. § 70; Apollonia, Steph. Byzant. s. v.; Apollonias, Hierocl.
p. 732; It. Ant. p. 160, 174; Not. Imp. Orient. c. 143. Apollonos Superioris),
the modern Edfoo, was a city of the Thebaid, on the western bank of the Nile,
in Lat. 25° N., and about thirteen miles below the lesser Cataract. Ptolemy assigns
Apollinopolis to the Hermonthite nome, but it was more commonly regarded as the
capital town of the nome Apollopolites. Under the Roman emperors it was the seat
of a Bishop's see, and the head-quarters of the Legio II. Trajana. Its inhabitants
were enemies of the crocodile and its worshippers.
Both the ancient city and the modern hamlet, however, derived their
principal reputation from two temples, which are considered second only to the
Temple of Denderah as specimens of the sacred structures of Egypt. The modem Edfoo
is contained within the courts, or built upon the platform of the principal of
the two temples at Apollinopolis. The larger temple is in good preservation, but
is partially buried by the sand, by heaps of rubbish, and by the modern town.
The smaller temple, sometimes, but improperly, called a Typhonium, is apparently
an appendage of the latter, and its sculptures represent the birth and education
of the youthful deity, Horus, whose parents Noum, or Kneph and Athor, were worshipped
in the larger edifice. The principal temple is dedicated to Noum, whose symbol
is the disc of the sun, supported by two asps and the extended wings of a vulture.
Its sculptures represent (Rosellini, Monum. del Culto, p. 240, tav. xxxviii.)
the progress of the Sun, Phre-Hor-Hat, Lord of Heaven, moving in his bark (Bari)
through the circle of the Hours. The local name of the district round Apollinopolis
was Hat, and Noum was styled Hor-hat-kah, or Horus, the tutelary genius of the
land of Hat. This deity forms also at Apollinopolis a triad with the goddess Athor
and Hor-Senet. The members of the triad are youthful gods, pointing their finger
towards their mouths, and before the discovery of the hieroglyphic character were
regarded as figures of Harpocrates.
The entrance into the larger temple of Apollinopolis is a gateway
(pulon) 50 feet high, flanked by two converging wings (ptera) in the form of truncated
pyramids, rising to 107 feet. The wings contain ten stories, are pierced by round
loop-holes for the admission of light, and probably served as chambers or dormitories
for the priests and servitors of the temple. From the jambs of the door project
two blocks of stone, which were intended, as Ddnon supposes, to support the heads
of two colossal figures. This propylaeon leads into a large square, surrounded
by a colonnade roofed with squared granite, and on the opposite side is a pronaos
or portico, 53 feet in height, and having a triple row of columns, six in each
row, with variously and gracefully foliaged capitals. The temple is 145 feet wide,
and 424 feet long from the entrance to the opposite end. Every part of the walls
is covered with hieroglyphics, and the main court ascends gradually to the pronaos
by broad steps. The whole area of the building was surrounded by a wall 20 feet
high, of great thickness. Like so many of the Egyptian temples, that of Apollinopolis
was capable of being employed as a fortress. It stood about a third of a mile
from the river. The sculptures, although carefully and indeed beautifully executed,
are of the Ptolemaic era, the earliest portion [p. 160] of the temple having been
erected by Ptolemy Philometor B.C. 181.
The temple of Apollinopolis, as a sample of Egyptian sacred architecture,
is minutely described in the Penny Cyclopedia, art. Edfu, and in the 1st volume
of British Museum, Egyptian Antiquities, where also will be found a ground plan
of it.
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ARSINOI (Ancient city) EGYPT
Arsinoe. A city at the northern extremity of the Heroopolite gulf,
in the Red Sea. It was the capital of the Heroopolite nome, and one of the principal
harbours belonging to Egypt. It appears to have been also denominated Cleopatris
(Strab. p. 780) and Arsinoites (Plin. v. 9. § 9; Orelli, Inscr. 516). It is also
conjectured to have stood on the site of the ancient Pihachiroth (Exod. xii. 2,
9; Numb. xxxiii. 7; Winer, Biblioth. Realworterb. ii. p. 309). The modern Ardscherud,
a village near Suez, corresponds to this Arsinoe. It was seated near the eastern
termination of the Royal canal which communicated with the Pelusiac branch of
the Nile, and which Ptolemy Philadelphus carried on from the Bitter Lakes to the
head of the Heroopolite bay. Arsinoe (Plin. v. 12) was 125 miles from Pelusium.
The revenues of the Arsinoite nome were presented by that monarch to his sister,
and remained the property of successive queens or princesses of the Lagid family.
The shortness of the road across the eastern desert and its position near the
canal were the principal advantages of Arsinoe as a staple of trade. But although
it possessed a capacious bay, it was exposed to the south wind, and the difficulties
which ships encountered from reefs in working up the gulf were considerable. Arsinoe,
accordingly, was less eligibly situated for the Indian traffic than either Myos
Hormos or Berenice. In common, however, with other ports on the Red Sea Arsinoe
improved in its commerce after the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. One hundred
and twenty vessels annually sailed from Egyptian havens to bring from western
India silk, precious stones, and aromatics (Gibbon, D. and F. ch. vi).
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CANOPUS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Canobus or Canopus (Quint. Inst. Or. i. 5. § 13; Kanopos, Steph. B.
p. 355 s. v.; Herod. ii. 15, 97, 113; Strab. xvi. p. 666, xvii. p. 800 seq.; Scylax,
pp. 44, 51; Mel. ii. 7. § 6; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. v. 13; Aeschyl. Supp.
312; Caes. B. Alex. 25; Virg. Georg. iv. 287; Juv. Sat. vi. 84, xv. 46; Senec.
Epist. 51; Tac. Ann. ii. 60; Amm. Marc. xxii. 41, &c.: Eth. Kanobites; Adj. Kanobikos,
fem. Kanobis), a town of Egypt, situated in lat. 31° N. upon the same tongue of
land with Alexandreia, and about 15 miles (120 stadia) from that city. It stood
upon the mouth of the Canobic branch of the Nile, and adjacent to the Canobic
canal (Kanobike diorux Strab. xvii. p. 800). In the Pharaonic times it was the
capital of the nome Menelaites, and, previous to the foundation of Alexandreia,
was the principal harbour of the Delta. At Canobus the ancient geographers (Scylax;
Conon. Narrat. 8; Plin. v. 34; Schol. in Diet. Cretens. vi. 4) placed the true
boundary between the continents of Africa and Asia. According to Greek legends,
the city of Canobus derived its name from the pilot of Menelaus, who died and
was buried there on the return of the Achaeans from Troy. But it more probably
owed its appellation to the god Canobus - a pitcher with a human head - who was
worshipped there with peculiar pomp. (Comp. Nicand. Theriac. 312.) At Canobus
was a temple of Zeus-Canobus, whom Greeks and Egyptians held in equal reverence,
and a much frequented shrine and oracle of Serapis. (Plut. Is. et Osir. 27.) As
the resort of mariners and foreigners, and as the seat of a hybrid Copto-Hellenic
population, Canobus was notorious for the number of its religious festivals and
the general dissoluteness of its morals. Here was prepared the scarlet dye - the
Hennah, with which, in all ages, the women of the East have been wont to colour
the nails of their feet and fingers. (Herod. ii. 113; Plin. xii. 51.) The decline
of Canopus began with the rise of Alexandreia, and was completed by the introduction
of Christianity into Egypt. Traces of its ruins are found about 3 miles from Aboukir.
(Denon, Voyage en Egypte, p. 42; Champollion, l' Egypte, vol. ii. p. 258.)
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COPTOS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Coptos (Koptos or Koptis, Ptol. iv. 5. § 73; Kopto, Plut. de Is. et
Osir. c. 14), in hieroglyphics Kobto, the modern Kouft or Keft, was the principal
city of the nome Coptites in the Upper Thebaid, the Thebais Secunda of the Itineraries.
It was situated in lat. 26° N., on the right bank of the Nile, and about a mile
in distance from the river. In the immediate neighbourhood of Coptos a valley
opened to the south-east leading to the porphyry-quarries in the Arabian desert,
and to Berenice (Cosseir) on the Red Sea. When in B.C. 266, Ptolemy Philadelphus
constructed the town and harbour of Berenice, he erected also four public inns
or watering places between his new city and Coptos, in order that the caravans
might have convenient halting-places during their twelve days' journey through
the eastern desert. From this epoch Coptos was enriched by the active commerce
between Libya and Egypt, on the one part, and Arabia and India on the other, and
the city continued to flourish, until it was nearly destroyed by the emperor Diocletian
in A.D. 292. It survived however this calamity; and remained a considerable place
down to the latest period of the Roman empire. In the reign of Justinian, in the
first half of the 7th century A. D., Coptos for a brief interval bore the name
of Justinianopolis. (Notit. Eccles.) Coptos being comparatively a modern town
of the Thebaid possesses no monuments of the Pharaonic era. In the church, however,
which the Christian population of the present Kouft have built, are imbedded stones
inscribed with the ovals of Thothmes III. and Nectanebus. (Wilkinson. Mod. Egypt
and Thebes, ii. p. 123.) Neither, as might have been expected from its origin,
does it exhibit any remarkable Hellenic remains. The principal objects of interest
there are the ruins of Roman buildings. The neighbouring hills contained emeralds
and a few other precious stones: and the vineyards produced a thin and not much
esteemed wine, which, however, from its lightness of body was administered in
febrile disorders. (Aelian, H. An. vii. 18; Athen. i. p. 33; Plin. N. H. xxxvii.
17, 18, 55, 56.)
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EGYPT (Country) MIDDLE EAST
ERMONTHIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Hermonthis (Hermonthis, Steph. B. s. v.; Strab. xvii.; Aristid. Aegyptiae; Hermunthis, It.
Anton.; Plin. v. 9. § 11; Macrob. Saturn. i. 21), the modern Erment, was the chief
town of the Hermonthite nome in the Thebaid -Thebais Superior of the Itineraries.
It stood about eight miles SW. of Thebes, and 24 NE. of Latopolis. A little above
Hermonthis the sandstone rocks which had confined the Nile like a wall disappear,
and limestone hills succeed, leaving, especially on the western bank of the river,
wider margins of cultivable land. In a plain of this expanding character, and
on the left side of the Nile, stood Hermonthis. In the Pharaonic times it was
celebrated for the worship of Isis, Osiris, and their son Horus. Its ruins still
attest the magnificence of its buildings; but the Iseion, of which the remains
are extant, was built in the reign of the last Cleopatra (B.C. 51-29), and the
sculptures appear to allude to the birth of Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar,
symbolised as that of the god Harphre, the son of Mandou and Ritho. Its astronomical
ceiling is probably genethliacal, referring to the aspect of the heavens at the
time of Caesarion's na. tivity. Adjacent to the temple are the vestiges of a tank,
which probably served as a Nilometer, since its sides exhibit the grooves usual
in such basins. Under the later Caesars, Hermonthis was the headquarters of the
Legio IIda Valentiniana.
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FAROS (Island) EGYPT
Pharos (Pharos, Strab. xvii. p. 791, seq.; Steph. B. s. v.: Eth. Pharios),
a long narrow strip of rock lying off the northern coast of Aegypt, having the
New Port of Alexandreia E. and the Old Harbour SW. Its name is said to have been
derived from a certain pilot of Menelaus, who, on his return from the Trojan War,
dial there from a serpent's bite. Pharos is mentioned in the Odyssey (iv. 355),
and is described as one day's sail from Aegypt. This account has caused considerable
perplexity, since Pharos is actually rather less than a mile from the seaboard
of the Delta; and it is not probable that the land, in the course of centuries,
has advanced or the sea receded materially. It is perfectly intelligible, however,
if we suppose the author of the Odyssey to mean by Aegyptus, not the country itself
but its river, since the Pharos is even now nearly a day's sail from the Canopic
arm of the Nile. Any other theory is untenable; for this portion of the coast
of the Delta consists of rocky bars and shelves, which remain unchanged, and,
though its surface has been heightened, its superficial area has not been materially
enlarged since the country was peopled. Pharos was inhabited by fishermen under
the Pharaohs of Aegypt; but it first became a place of importance under the Macedonian
kings. During his survey of the coast, B.C. 332, Alexander the Great perceived
that the island would form, with the help of art, an excellent breakwater to the
harbour of his projected capital. He accordingly caused its southern extremity
to be connected with the mainland by a stone mole seven stadia, or about an English
mile, in length, which from this circumstance was called the Heptastadium or Sevenfurlong
Bridge. At either end the mole was left open for the passage of ships, and the
apertures were covered by suspension bridges. In later times a street of houses,
erected on the mole itself, converted the island of Pharos into a suburb of Alexandreia,
and a considerable portion of the modern city stands on the foundations of the
old Heptastadium.
Yet, long after its junction with the Delta, Pharos was spoken of
as an island (he palai nesos, Aelian, H. An. ix. 21; toproteron nedos, Zonar.
iv. 10). The southern portion of this rocky ledge (choiras) was the more densely
populated; but the celebrated lighthouse, or the Tower of the Pharos, stood at
the NE. point, directly in a line with point Pharillon, on the eastern horn of
the New Port. The lighthouse was erected, at a cost of 800 talents, in the reign
of Ptolemy I., but was not completed until that of his successor Philadelphus.
Its architect was Sostratus of Cnidus, who, according to Pliny (xxxvi. 12. s.
18), was permitted by his royal patron to inscribe his own name upon its base.
There is indeed another story, in which it is related that Sostratus, being forbidden
to engrave his name on his work, secretly cut it in deep letters on a stone of
the building, which he then adroitly covered with some softer and perishable material,
on which were inscribed the style and titles of Ptolemy. Thus a few generations
would read the name of the king, but posterity would behold the authentic impress
of the architect. (Strab. xvii. p. 791; Suidas, s. v. Ladpos; Steph. B. s. v.;
Lucian, de Conscrib. Hist. c. 62.) Pharos was the seat of several temples, the
most conspicuous of which was one dedicated to Hephaestos, standing near the northern
extremity of the Heptastadium.
That Pharos, in common with many of the Deltaic cities, contained
a considerable population of Jews, is rendered probable by the fact that here
the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures resided during the progress of their
work. (Joseph. Antiq. xii. 2. § 13.) Julius Caesar established a colony at Pharos,
less perhaps to recruit a declining population than with a view to garrison a
post so important as regarded the turbulent Alexandrians. (Caesar, B. Civ. iii.
112.) Subsequently the island seems to have been comparatively deserted, and inhabited
by fishermen alone. (Montfaucon, Supr le Phare d'Alexandrie, Mem. de l' Acad.
des Inscript. ix. p. 285.)
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HERMOPOLIS MAGNA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Hermopolis Magna (Hermou polis megale, Steph. B. s. v.; Ptol. iv. 5.60; Hermopolis,
Ammian, ii. 16; Hermupolis, It. Anton.; Mercurii Oppidum, Plin. v. 9.11: Eth.
Hermeopolites or Hermopolites), the modern Eshmoon, was situated on the left bank
of the Nile, about lat. 27° 4? N., and was the capital of the Hermopolite nome
in the Heptanomis. It is sometimes, indeed, as by Pliny, reckoned among the cities
of Upper and not of Middle Egypt. Hermopolis stood on the borders of these divisions
of Egypt, and, for many ages, the Thebaid or upper country extended much further
to the N. than in more recent periods. As the border town, Hermopolis was a place
of great resort and opulence, ranking second to Thebes alone. A little to S. of
the city was the castle of Hermopolis, at which point the river craft from the
upper country paid toll (Hermopolitane phulake, Strab. xvii.; Ptol. l. c.; the
Bahr Jusuf of the Arabians). The grottos of Beni-hassan, near Antinoopolis, upon
the opposite bank of the Nile, were the common cemetery of the Hermopolitans,
for, although the river divided the city from its necropolis, yet, from the wide
curve of the western hills at this point, it was easier to ferry the dead over
the water than to transport them by land to the hills. The principal deities worshipped
at Hermopolis were Typhon and Thoth. The former was represented by an hippopotamus,
on which sat a hawk fighting with a serpent (Plut. Is. et Osir). Thoth or Tauth,
the Greek Hermes, the inventor of the pen and of letters, the Ibisheaded god,
was, with his accompanying emblems, the Ibis and the Cynocephalus or ape, the
most conspicuous among the sculptures upon the great portico of the temple of
Hermopolis. His designation in inscriptions was The Lord of Eshmoon. This portico
was a work of the Pharaonic era; but the erections of the Ptolemies at Hermopolis
were upon a scale of great extent and magnificence, and, although raised by Grecian
monarchs, are essentially Egyptian in their conception and execution. The portico,
the only remnant of the temple, consists of a double row of pillars, six in each
row. The architraves are formed of five stones; each passes from tile centre of
one pillar to that of the next, according to a well-known usage with Aegyptian
builders. The intercolumnation of the centre pillars is wider than that of the
others; and the stone over the centre is twenty-five feet and six inches long.
These columns were painted yellow, red, and blue in alternate bands, and the brilliancy
of the colours is well represented in Minutoi's 14th plate. There is also a peculiarity
in the pillars of the Hermopolitan portico peculiar to themselves, or, at least,
discovered only again in the temple of Gournou. Instead of being formed of large
masses placed horizontally above each other, they are composed of irregular pieces,
so artfully adjusted that it is difficult to detect the lines of junction. The
bases of these columns represent the lower leaves of the lotus; next come a number
of concentric rings, like the hoops of a cask; and above these the pillars appear
like bunches of reeds held together by horizontal bonds. Including the capital,
each column is about 40 feet in height; the greatest circumference is about 28
1/2 feet, about five feet from the ground, for they diminish in thickness both
towards the base and towards the capital. The widest part of the intercolumnation
is 17 feet; the other pillars are 13 feet apart. Hermopolis comparatively escaped
the frequent wars which, in the decline both of the Pharaonic and Roman eras,
devastated the Heptanomis; but, on the other hand, its structures have suffered
severely from the ignorance and cupidity of its Mohammedan rulers, who have burned
its stones for lime or carried them away for building materials.
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ILIOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Heliopolis Aegypti (Helioupolis, Steph. B. s. v.; Ptol. iv. 5. § 54;
Herod. ii. 3, 7, 59; Strab. xvii. p. 805; Diod. i. 84, v. 57; Arrian, Exp. Alex.
iii. 1; Aelian, H. A. vi. 58, xii. 7; Plut. Solon. 26, Is. et Osir. 33; Diog.
Laert. xviii. 8. § 6; Joseph. Ant. Jud. xiii. 3, C. Apion. i. 26; Cic. Nat. Deor.
iii. 21; Plin. v. 9. § 11; Tac. Ann. vi. 28; Mela, iii. 8: Eth. Helionpolires:
the Semitic names Beth-Schemisch and On Gen. xli. 45, Ezech. xxx. 17., as well
as the Arabic Ainshems or Fountain of Light, corresponded with the Greek appellation
in signifying the City of the Sun). Heliopolis was a city of Lower Egypt, 12 miles
from the Egyptian Babylon (It. Anton. p. 169), on the verge of the eastern desert,
and at the SE. point of the Delta, a little NE. of its apex at Cercasorum, lat.
30° N. It stood on the eastern side of the Pelusiac, arm of the Nile, and near
the right bank of the Great Canal, which, passing through the Bitter Lakes, connected
the river with the Red Sea. In Roman times it belonged to the Regio Augustamnica.
Its population probably contained a considerable Arabian element. (Plin. vi. 34.)
Heliopolis, however, the On, Rameses, or Beth-Schemesch of the Hebrew Scriptures,
- for it has claims to be regarded as any one of the three, - was long anterior
even to the Pharaonic portion of this canal, and was, indeed, one of the most
ancient of Egyptian cities. Its obelisks were probably seen by Abraham when he
first migrated from Syria to the Delta, 1600 years B.C.; and here the father-in-law
of Joseph filled the office of high priest. It may be regarded as the University
of the land of Misraim: its priests, from the most remote epochs, were the great
depositaries of theological and historical learning; and it was of sufficient
political importance to furnish ten deputies, or one-third of the whole number,
to the great council which assisted the Pharaohs in the administration of justice.
At Heliopolis Moses probably acquired the learning of the Egyptians, and the prophet
Jeremiah wrote his Lamentations over the decline of the Hebrew people. From Ichonuphys,
who was lecturing there in B.C. 308, and who numbered Enudoxus among his pupils,
the Greek mathematician learned the true length of the year and month, upon which
lie formed his octaeterid, or period of eight years or ninety-nine months. Solon,
Thales, and Plato, were reputed each to have visited its schools, - the halls,
indeed. in which the latter studied were pointed out to Strabo: while in the reign
of the second Ptolemy, Manethon, the chief priest of Heliopolis, collected from
its archives his history of the ancient kings of Egypt. Alexander the Great, on
his march from Pelusium to Memphis, halted at this city (Arrian, iii. 1); and,
according to Macrobius (Saturn. i. 23), Baalbek, or the Syrian City of the Sun,
was a priest-colony from its Egyptian namesake.
The Heliopolite none, of which this city was the capital, contained,
after the decline and dispersion of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, a Hebrew
population almost equal in numbers to that of the native Egyptians. (Joseph. Antiq.
Jud. xiii. 3.) But, even so early as the invasion of Cambyses, B.C. 525, Heliopolis
had much declined; and in the time of Strabo, who visited it during the prefecture
of Aelius Gallus, B.C. 24, its ruins had nearly vanished.
The sun, as the name of the city proves, was the principal object
of worship at Heliopolis; and the legends of the Phoenix, the emblem of the solar
year, centred around its temples. It was also the seat of the worship of the bull
Mnevis, the rival of Apis in this region of Aegypt. In all respects, indeed, it
merited the distinction ascribed to it by Diodorus of Sicily, who calls Heliopolis
polis epiphanestate.
The ruins of Heliopolis occupy a quadrangular area of nearly 3 miles
in extent, and were described by Abd-Allatif, an Arabian physician, who wrote
his account of Egypt about the close of the 12th century A.D. He speaks of its
surprising colossal figures cut in stone more than 30 cubits high, of which some
were standing on pedestals and others were in sitting postures. He saw the two
famous obelisks called Pharaoh's Needles, one standing and the other fallen and
broken in two by its own enormous weight. The name of Osirtesen I., king of Thebes,
of the xiith dynasty, who was lord of both the Upper and Lower country, was inscribed
on them. The standng obelisk is still erect, and is even now studied as the earliest
known specimen of Egyptian architecture. (Plin. xxxvi. 9.) Zoega (de Obeliscis,
p. 642) supposes that the obelisk which was transported. to Rome and set up in
the Campus Martins, by order of Augustus, came also from Heliopolis. (Comp. Ammian,
xvii. 4.) The obelisks of Osirtesen were each 60 feet high, and consisted of a.quadrangular
column or cone, rising out of a square base 10 feet high. The pointed top of the
column was once covered with a copper cap, shaped like a funnel, and 3 cubits
in length. These structures formed the most conspicuous figures in the centre
of converging avenues of smaller obelisks.
The hamlet of Matarieh, about 6 miles NE. of Cairo, covers a portion
of the ancient site of Heliopolis, and is still distinguished by its solitary
obelisk of red granite, and contains - no common privilege in Egypt - a spring
of sweet and fresh water. Some remains of sphinxes, with fragments of a colossal
statue, indicate the ancient approaches to the Temple of the Sun. Heliopolis,
from its position on the verge: of the desert, must have been contiguous to, and
may have overlooked, the pastures of Goshen, where the Children of Israel were
allowed to settle by the priest-kings of Memphis; and earlier still, the city,
if not indeed Abaris itself, was probably one of the last fortresses held by the
Shepherd Kings before their final evacuation of Egypt.
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LATON (Ancient city) EGYPT
Latopolis or Lato (Latopolis, Strab. xvii. pp. 812, 817; polis Laton,
Ptol. iv. 5. § 71; Latton, Hierocl. p. 732; Itin. Antonin. p. 160), the modern
Esneh, was a city of Upper Egypt, seated upon the western bank of the Nile, in
lat. 25° 30' N. It derived its name from the fish Lato, the largest of the fifty-two
species which inhabit the Nile (Russegger, Reisen, vol. i. p. 300), and which
appears in sculptures, among the symbols of the goddess Neith, Pallas-Athene,
surrounded by the oval shield or ring indicative of royalty or divinity (Wilkinson,
M. and C. vol. v. p. 253). The tutelary deities of Latopolis seem to have been
the triad, - Kneph or Chnuphis, Neith or Sate, and Hak, their offspring. The temple
was remarkable for the beauty of its site and the magnificence of its architecture.
It was built of red sandstone; and its portico consisted of six rows of four columns
each, with lotus-leaf capitals, all of which however differ from each other. (Denon,
Voyage, vol. i. p. 148.) But with the exception of the jamb of a gateway - now
converted into a door - sill- of the reign of Thothmes IId. (xviiith dynasty),
the remains of Latopolis belong to the Macedonian or Roman eras. Ptolemy Evergetes,
the restorer of so many temples in Upper Egypt, was a benefactor to Latopolis,
and he is painted upon the walls of its temple followed by a tame lion, and in
the act of striking down the chiefs of his enemies. The name of Ptolemy Epiphanes
is found also inscribed upon a doorway. Yet, although from their scale these ruins
are imposing, their sculptures and hieroglyphics attest the decline of Aegyptian
art. The pronaos, which alone exists, resembles in style that of Apollinopolis
Magna (Edfoo), and was begun not earlier than the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54),
and completed in that of Vespasian, whose name and titles are carved on the dedicatory
inscription over the ent ance. On the ceiling of the pronaos is the larger Latopolitan
Zodiac. The name of the emperor Geta, the last that is read in hieroglyphics,
although partially erased by his brother and murderer Caracalla (A.D. 212), is
still legible on the walls of Latopolis. Before raising their own edifice, the
Romans seem to have destroyed even the basements of the earlier Aegyptian temple.
There was a smaller temple, dedicated to the same deities, about two miles and
a half N. of Latopolis, at a village now called E/Dayr. Here, too, is a small
Zodiac of the age of Ptolemy Evergetes (B.C. 246 - 221). This latter building
has been destroyed within a few years, as it stood in the way of a new canal.
The temple of Elsneh has been cleared of the soil and rubbish which filled its
area when Denon visited it, and now serves for a cotton warehouse. (Lepsius, Einleitung,
p. 63.)
The modern town of Esneh is the emporium of the Abyssinian trade.
Its camel-market is much resorted to, and it contains manufactories of cottons,
shawls, and pottery. Its population is about 4000.
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LYKOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Lycopolis (he Lukon polis, Ptol. iv. 5. § 63; Steph. B. s. v.; Strab.
xvii. p. 813 Lycon. Plin. v. 9. s. 11; Lyco, Itin. Anton. p. 157: Eth. Lukopolites),
the name of two cities in Aegypt.
1. In the Thebaid, the capital of the nome Lycopolites, SE. of Hermopolis, in
lat. 27° 10' 14” N.: the modern El Syout. It was seated on the western bank of
the Nile. The shield of a king named Recamai, who reigned in Upper Egypt, probably
during the shepherd dynasty in the Lower Country, has been discovered here. (Rosellini,
Mon. Civ. i. 81.) Lycopolis has no remarkable ruins, but in the excavated chambers
of the adjacent rocks are found mummies of wolves, confirming the origin of its
name, as well as a tradition preserved by Diodorus (ii. 88; comp. Aelian. Hist.
An. x. 28), to the effect that an Aethiopian army, invading Aegypt, was repelled
beyond the city of Elephantine. by herds of wolves. Osiris was worshipped under
the symbol of a wolf at Lycopolis: he having, according to a myth, come from the
shades under that form, to aid Isis and Horus in their combat with Typhon. (Champollion,
Descript. de l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 276; Jollois, Egypte, vol. ii. ch. 13.)
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MAREIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Mareia or Marea (Marea, Herod. ii. 18, 30; Mareia, Thucyd. i. 104;
Mareia, Steph. Byz. s. v.; Maria, Diod. ii. 68 ; Palai Mareia kome, Ptol. iv.
5. § 34), the modern Mariouth, and the chief town of the Mareotic Nome, stood
on a peninsula in the south of the lake Mareotis, nearly due south of Alexandreia,
and adjacent to the mouth of the canal which connected the lake with the Canopic
arm of the Nile. Under the Pharaohs Mareia was one of the principal frontier garrisons
of Aegypt on the side of Libya; but from the silence of Herodotus (ii. 30) we
may infer that the Persians did not station troops there. In all ages, however,
until it was eclipsed by the neighbouring greatness of Alexandreia, Mareia, as
the nearest place of strength to the Libyan desert, must have been a town of great
importance to the Delta. At Maria, according to Diodorus (ii. 681), Amasis defeated
the Pharaoh-Apries, Hofra, or Psammetichus; although Herodotus (ii. 161) places
this defeat at Momemphis. (Herod. ii. 169.) At Mareia, also, according to Thucydides
(i. 104; comp. Herod. iii. 12), Inarus, the son of Psammetichus, reigned, and
organised the revolt of Lower Aegypt against the Persians. Under the Ptolemies,
Mareia continued to flourish as a harbour; but it declined under the Romans, and
in the age of the Antonines--the second century A.D.- it had dwindled into a village.
(Comp. Athen. i. 25, p. 33, with Eustath. ad Homer. Odyss. ix. 197.)
Mareia was the principal depot of the trade of the Mareotic Lake and
Nome. The vineyards in its vicinity produced a celebrated wine, which Athenaeus
(l. c.) describes as remarkable for its sweetness, white in colour, in quality
excellent, light, with a fragrant bouquet: it was by no means astringent, and
did not affect the head. (Comp. Plin. xiv. 3; Strab. xvii. p. 796.) Some, however,
deemed the Mareotic wine inferior to that of Anthylla and Tenia; and Columella
(R. R. iii. 2) says that it was too thin for Italian palates, accustomed to the
fuller-bodied Falernian. Virgil (Georg. ii. 91) describes the Mareotic grape as
white, and growing in a rich soil; yet the soil of the vineyards around the Mareotic
Lake was principally composed of gravel, and lay beyond the reach of the alluvial
deposit of the Nile, which is ill suited to viticulture. Strabo (xvii. p. 799)
ascribes to the wine of Mareia the additional merit of keeping well to a great
age; and Horace ( Od. i. 37) mentions it as a favourite beverage of Cleopatra.
Mareia, from its neighbourhood to Alexandreia, was so generally known
to Roman travellers, that among the Latin poets, the words Mareia and Mareotic
became synonymous with Aegypt and Aegyptian. Thus Martial (Ep. xiv. 209) calls
the papyrus, cortex Mareotica (comp. id; Ep. iv. 42) : and Gratius (Cynegetic.
v. 313) designates Aegyptian luxury as Mareotic : and Ovid (Met. ix. v. 73) employs
arva Mareotica for Lower Aegypt.
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MEMPHIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Memphis (Memphis, Herod.ii. 99,114,136, 154; Polyb. v. 61; Diod. i.
50, seq.; Steph. B. s. v.: Eth. Memphites), the Noph of the Old Testament (Isaiah,
xix. 13; Jerem. ii. 16, xliv. 1), was the first capital of the entire kingdom
of Aegypt, after the Deltaic monarchy at Heliopolis was united to the Thebaid
capital at This or Abydos. It stood on the western bank of the Nile, 15 miles
S. of Cercasorus, in lat. 30° 6' N.
The foundation of Memphis belongs to the very earliest age of Aegyptian
history. It is ascribed (1) to Menes, the first mortal king; (2) to Uchoreus,
a monarch of a later dynasty; and (3) to Apis or Epaphus. (Hygin. Fab. 149.) But
the two latter may be dismissed as resting on very doubtful authority. (Diod.i.
51.) The only certainty is that Memphis was of remote antiquity, as indeed is
implied in the ascription of its origin to Menes, and that it was the first capital
of the united kingdom of Upper and Lower Aegypt. The motives which induced its
founder to select such a site for his capital are obvious. Not far removed from
the bifurcation of the Nile at Cercasorus, it commanded the S. entrance to the
Delta, while it was nearer to the Thebaid than any of the Deltaic provincial cities
of importance, Heliopolis, Bubastis, and Sais. It is also clear why he placed
it on the western bank of the Nile. His kingdom had little to apprehend from the
tribes of the Libyan desert; whereas the eastern frontier of Aegypt was always
exposed to attack from Arabia, Assyria, and Persia, nor indeed was it beyond the
reach of the Scythians. (Herod, i. 105.) It was important, therefore, to make
the Nile a barrier of the city; and this was effected by placing Memphis W. of
it. Before, however, Menes could lay the foundations of his capital, an artificial
area was to be provided for them. The Nile, at that remote period, seems to have
had a double bifurcation; one at the head of the Delta, the other above the site
of Memphis, and parallel with the Arsinoite Nome. Of the branches of its southern
fork, the western and the wider of the two ran at the foot of the Libyan hills;
the eastern and lower was the present main stream. Between them the plain, though
resting on a limestone basis, was covered with marshes, caused by their periodical
overflow. This plain Menes chose for the area of Memphis. He began by constructing
an embankment about 100 stadia S. of its site, that diverted the main body of
the water into the eastern arm; and the marshes he drained off into two principal
lakes, one to N., the other to W. of Memphis, which thus, on every side but S.,
was defended by water.
The area of Memphis, according to Diodorus (i. 50), occupied a circuit
of 150 stadia, or at least 15 miles. This space, doubtless, included much open
ground, laid out in gardens, as well as the courts required for the barracks of
the garrison, in the quarter denominated the White Castle, and which was successively
occupied, under the Pharaohs, by the native militia; in the reign of Psammetichus
(B.C. 658-614), by Phoenician and Greek mercenaries; by the Persians, after the
invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524); and finally by the Macedonian and Roman troops.
For although Memphis was not always a royal residence, it retained always two
features of a metropolis: (1) it was the seat of the central garrison, at least
until Alexandreia was founded ; and (2) its necropolis-the pyramids-was the tomb
of the kings of every native dynasty.
The mound which curbed the inundations of the Nile was so essential
to the very existence of Memphis, that even the Persians, who ravaged or neglected
all other great works of the country, annually repaired it. (Herod. ii. 99.) The
climate was of remarkable salubrity; the soil extremely productive; and the prospect
from its walls attracted the notice of the Greeks and Romans, who seldom cared
much for the picturesque. Diodorus (i. 96) mentions its bright green meadows,
intersected by canals, paven with the lotus-flower. Pliny (xiii. 10, xvi. 21)
speaks of trees of such girth that three men with extended arms could not span
them. Martial (vi. 80) says that the navita Memphiticus brought roses in winter
to Rome (comp. Lucan, Pharsal. iv. 135); and Athenaeus (i. 20. p. 11) celebrates
its teeming soil and its wine. (Comp. Joseph. Antiq. ii. 14. § 4; Horace, Od.
iii. 26. 10.) And these natural advantages were seconded by its position in the
narrows of Aegypt, at a point where the Arabian and Libyan hills converge for
the last time as they approach the Delta, and whence Memphis commanded the whole
inland trade, whether ascending or descending the Nile. On the coins of Hadrian
the wealth and fertility of Memphis are expressed by a figure of the Nile on their
reverse, holding in his left hand a cornucopia. (Mionnet, Suppl. ix. No. 42.)
The position of Memphis, again, as regarded the civilisation which
Aegypt imparted or received, was most favourable. A capital in the Thebaid would
have been too remote for communication with the East or Greece: a capital in the
Delta would have been too remote from the Upper Kingdom, which would then have
pertained rather to Aethiopia than to Aegypt; while the Delta itself, unsupported
by the Thebaid, must in all probability have become an Assyrian province. But
the intermediate situation of Memphis connected it both with the southern portions
of the Nile valley, as far as its keys at Philae and Elephantina, and also through
the isthmus of Suez and the coast, with the most civilised races of Asia and Europe.
After the foundation of Alexandreia, indeed, Memphis sunk into a provincial city.
But the Saracen invaders in the seventh century confirmed the wisdom of Menes's
choice, for they built both Old and New Cairo in the neighbourhood of Memphis,
only changing the site from the western to the eastern bank of the river, because
their natural alliances, unlike those of the Pharaohs, were with the Arabians
and the Syrian Khalifates.
The history of Memphis is in some measure that of Aegypt also. The
great works of Menes were probably accomplished by successive monarchs, if not
indeed by several dynasties. In the 1st. period of the monarchy we find that the
3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th dynasties consisted of Memphite kings. Athotis, who
is styled a son of Menes, is said to have built the palace, and thus stamped the
new city as a royal residence. In the reign of Kaiechos, in the 2nd dynasty, the
worship of Apis was established at Memphis, which was equivalent to rendering
it a cathedral city. In the 7th dynasty we have a record of seventy Memphite kings,
each reigning for one day: this probably denotes an interregnum, and perhaps a
foregone revolution; for, as Herodotus remarks (ii. 147), the Aegyptians could
not exist without a monarchy. After the 8th dynasty no series of Memphite kings
occurs; and the royal families pass to Heracleopolis, in the first place; next,
after the expulsion of the Shepherds, to Thebes; afterwards to the Deltaic cities
of Tanis, Bubastis, and Sais.
The shepherd kings, though they formed their great camp at Abaris,
retained Memphis as the seat of civil government (Manetho, ap. Joseph. cont. Apion,
i. 14); and although, after they withdrew into Syria, Thebes became the capital,
yet we have a proof that the 18th dynasty-the house of Rameses-held their northern
metropolis in high esteem. For Sesostris, or Rameses III. (Herod. ii, 108), on
his return from his Asiatic wars, set up in front of the temple of Ptah at Memphis
a colossal statue of himself 45 feet high; and this is probably the colossal figure
still lying among the mounds of ruin at Mitranieh. Under the 25th dynasty, while
the Aethiopians occupied Aegypt, Memphis was again the seat of a native government,--apparently
the result of a revolution, which set Sethos, a priest, upon the throne. A victory
obtained by this monarch over the Assyrians was commemorated by a statue in the
temple of Ptah-Sethos holding in his hand a mouse, the symbol of destruction.
(Horapol. Hieroglyph. i. 50; comp. Aelian, H. Anim. vi. 41; Strab. xiii. p. 604;
Herod. ii. 141.) Under Psammetichus (B.C. 670) the Phoenician soldiers, who had
aided him in gaining the crown, were established by him in the Tyrian camp, -at
least this seems to be the meaning of Herodotus (ii. 112),-but were removed by
his successor Amasis into the capital itself, and into that quarter of it called
the White Castle.
Of all the Aegyptian cities, Memphis suffered the most severely from
the cruelty and fanaticism of the Persians. Its populace, excited by the defeat
of the Aegyptian army at Pelusium, put to death the Persian herald who summoned
the Memphians to surrender. The vengeance of the conqueror is related by. Herodotus.
Memphis became the head-quarters of a Persian garrison; and Cambyses, on his return
from his unfortunate expedition against Aethiopia, was more than ever incensed
against the vanquished. Psammenitus, the last of the Pharaohs, was compelled to
put himself to death (Herod. iii. 15); Cambyses slew the god Apis with his own
hand, and massacred his priests; he profaned the Temple of Ptah and burned the
images of the Cabeiri (id. ib. 32). Under Darius Aegypt was mildly governed, and
his moderation was shown by his acquiescence in the high-priest's refusal to permit
the erection of a statue to him at Memphis. (Herod. ii. 110; Diodor. i. 58.) The
next important notice of this city is in the reign of Artaxerxes I. Inaros, son
of Psammetichus, had revolted from Persia, and called in the aid of the Athenians.
(Diod. xi. 71.) The Persians were defeated at Papremis in the Delta (ib. 74; comp.
Mannert, Geogr. x. p. 591), fled to Memphis, and were besieged in the White Castle.
(Thucyd. i. 108-109.) The siege lasted for more than a year (Diodor. ii. 75),
and was at length raised (Ctesias, c. 33), and the authority of the king of Persia
restored. Under Nectanebus I., the first monarch of the Sebennytic dynasty, Memphis
expelled its Persian garrison, nor did it return to its allegiance, until Nectanebus
II., the last representative of thirty dynasties, was driven into Aethiopia. (Athenaeus,
iv. p. 150.) From this period Memphis loses its metropolitan importance, tend
sinks to the level of the chief provincial city of Aegypt.
If, as Diodorus remarks (i. 51), Thebes surpassed Memphis in the grandeur
of its temples, the latter city was more remarkable for the number of its deities
and sacred buildings, and for its secular and commercial edifices. It might, indeed,
as regards its shrines, be not improperly termed the Pantheon of the land of Misraim.
The following were its principal religious structures, and they seem to include
nearly all the capital objects of Aegyptian worship except the goat and the crocodile:
1. The temple of Isis, was commenced at a very early period, but only completed
by Amasis, B.C. 564. It is described as spacious and beautiful (Herod. ii. 176;
Heliodor. Aethiop. vii. 2, 8, 11), but inferior to the Iseium at Busiris (Herod.
ii. 59, 61).
2. The temple of Proteus, founded probably by, Phoenicians, who had a commercial
establishment at Memphis. It was of so early date as to be ascribed to the era
of the Trojan War. (Plutarch, de Gen. Socrat. c. 7.)
3. The temple of Apis, completed in the reign of Psammetichus (Herod. ii. 153;
Aelian, Hist. An. xi. 10; Clemens Alexand. Paedag. iii. 2; Strab. xvii. p. 807),
stood opposite the southern portal of the great temple of Ptah or Hephaestos,
and was celebrated for its colonnades, through which the processions of Apis were
conducted. Here was also an oracle of Apis, in connection with one of Osiris and
Isis (Plin. viii. 46; Pausan. vii. 22.) This temple was the cathedral of Aegypt,
and not only established there a numerous, opulent, and learned college of priests,
but also attracted thither innumerable worshippers, who combined commercial with
religious purposes.
4. The temple of Serapis, in the western quarter of Memphis. This Serapis was
of earlier date than the Alexandrian deity of similar name. To the Memphian Serapeium
was attached a Nilo-meter, for gauging and recording the periodical overflows
of the river. It was removed by Constantine as a relic of paganism, but replaced
by his successor Julian. (Socrat. Hist. Eccles. i. 18; Sozomen, v. 2 ; comp. Diodor.
i. 50, 57; Senec. Quaest. Nat. iv. 2 ; Plin. viii. 46.)
5. A temple of Phre, or the Sun, mentioned only in the Rosetta inscription (Letronne,
Recueil des Inscr. Grecques et Lat. de l'Egypte; Brugsch, Inscript. Rosettan.)
6. The temple of the Cabeiri (Herod. iii. 37), into which none but the high-priest
might lawfully enter. The statues of the pigmy gods were burned by Cambyses, and
the temple mutilated,
7. The temple of Ptah or Hephaestos, the elemental principle of fire, worshipped
under the form of a Pygmy. This was the most ancient shrine in Memphis, being
coeval with its foundation. (Diodor. i. 45; Herod. ii. 99, iii. 37; Strab. xvii.
807 ; Ammian. xvii. 4.) It was enlarged and beautified by several successive monarchs,
apparently through a spirit of rivalry with the great buildings at Thebes. (1.)
Moeris erected the great northern court (Herod. ii. 101 ; Diod. i. 51). (2.) Rameses
the Great raised in this court six colossal figures of stone,-portrait-statues
of himself, his queen, and their four sons. (Herod. ii. 108-110; Strab. xvii.
p. 807.) (3.) Rhampsinitus built the western court, and erected two colossal figures
of summer and winter. (Herod. ii. 121; Diodor. i. 62 ; Wilkinson, M. and C. i.
p. 121.) (4.) Asychis added the eastern court. (Herod. ii. 136.) It was, in the
opinion of Herodotus, by far the noblest and most beautiful of the four quadrangles.
(5.) Psammetichus, the Saite king, added the south court, in commemoration of
his victory over the Dodecarchy (Polyaen. Stratag. vii. 3; Herod. ii. 163; Diodor.
i. 67); and Amasis (Herod. ii. 176) erected or restored to its basis the colossal
statue of Ptah, in front of the southern portico. Prom the priests of the Memphian
temples, the Greeks derived their knowledge of Aegyptian annals, and the rudiments
also of their philosophical systems. It was at Memphis that Herodotus made his
longest sojourn, and gained most of his information respecting Lower Aegypt. Democritus
also resided five years at Memphis, and won the favour of the priests by his addiction
to astrological and hieroglyphical studies. (Diog. Laert. Democrit. ix. 34.) Memphis
reckoned among its illustrious visitors, in early times, the legislator Solon,
the historian Hecataeus, the philosophers Thales and Cleobulus of Lindus; and
in a later age, Strabo the geographer, and Diodorus the Sicilian.
The village of Mitra-nieh, half concealed in a grove of palm-trees,
about 10 miles S. of Gizeh, marks the site of the ancient Memphis. The successive
conquerors of the land, indeed, have used its ruins as a stone-quarry, so that
its exact situation has been a subject of dispute. Major Rennell (Geography of
Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 121, seq.), however, brings incontestable evidence of the
correspondence of Mitranieh with Memphis. Its remains extend over many hundred
acres of ground, which are covered with blocks of granite, broken obelisks, columns
and colossal statues. The principal mound corresponds probably with the area of
the great temple of Ptah.
There are several accounts of the appearance of Memphis at different
eras. Strabo saw the Hephaesteium entire, although much of the city was then in
ruins. In the twelfth century A.D. it was visited by the Arabian traveller Ab-dallatif,
who was deeply impressed with the spectacle of grandeur and desolation. Its ruins
offer, he says, to the spectator a union of things which confound him, and which
the most eloquent man in the world would in vain attempt to describe. He seems
to have seen at least one of the colossal statues of the group of Rameses in the
northern court of the Hephaesteium. Among innumerable idols, as he terms them,
he measured one which, without its pedestal, was more than 30 cubits long. This
statue was formed of a single piece of red granite, and was covered with a red
varnish. (Ab-dallatif, De Sacy's Translation, 4to. p. 184.) Sir William Hamilton
(Aegyptiaca, 4to. p. 303) visited the spot, and says, that high mounds enclose
a square of 1800 yards from N. to S., and 400 from E. to W. The entrance in the
centre of each side is still visible. The two principal entrances faced the desert
and the river (that is W. and E.). He entered by the latter, and found immediately
thirty or forty large blocks of very fine red granite, lying on the ground, evidently
forming parts of some colossal statues, the chief ornaments of the temple.
The district in which these remains are found is still termed Memf
by the Coptic population, and thus helps to confirm the identity of the village
of Mitranieh with the ancient capital of Aegypt.
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MENDI (Ancient city) EGYPT
Mendes (Menodes, Herod. ii. 42, 46. 166; Diod. i. 84; Strab. xvii.
p. 802; Mela, i. 9 § 9; Plin. v. 10. s. 12; Ptol. iv. 5. § 51; Steph. B. s. v.:
Eth. Mendesios), the capital of the Mendesian nome in the Delta of Egypt. It was
situated at the point where the Mendesian arm of the Nile (Mendesion stoma, Scylax,
p. 43; Ptol. iv, 5. § 10; Mendesium ostium, Pliny, Mela, ll. cc.) flows into the
lake of Tanis. Mendes was, under the Pharaonic kings, a considerable town ; the
nome was the chief seat of the worship of Mendes or Pan, the all-producing-principle
of life, and one of the eight greater deities of Aegypt, and represented under
the form: of a goat. It was also one of the nomes assigned to that division of
the native army which was called the Calasirii, and the city was celebrated for
the manufacture of a perfume designated as the Mendesium unguentum. (Plin. xiii.
1. s. 2.) Mendes, however, declined early, and disappears in the first century
A. D.; since both Ptolemy (l. c.) and Aristides (iii. p. 160) mention Thmuis as
the only town of note in the Mendesian nome. From its position at the junction
of the river and the lake, it was probably encroached upon by their waters, after
the canals fell into neglect under the Macedonian kings, and when they were repaired
by Augustus (Sueton. Aug. 18, 63) Thmuis had attracted its trade and population.
Ruins, however, supposed to be those of Mendes' have been found near the hamlet
of Achman-Tanah (Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 122.)
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NAFKRATIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Naucratis (Naukratis, Herod. ii. 179; Strab. xvii. p. 801 ; Ptol.
iv. 5. § 9; Callimach. Epigr. 41; Plin. v. 10. s. 11; Steph. B. s. v.: Eth. Naukratites
or Naukratiotes), was originally an emporium for trade, founded by colonists from
Miletus, in the Saitic nome of the Delta. It stood upon the eastern bank of the
Canopic arm of the Nile, which, from the subsequent importance of Naucratis, was
sometimes called the Ostium Naucraticum. (Plin. v. 10. s. 11.) There was, doubtless,
on the same site an older Aegyptian town, the name of which has been lost in that
of the Greek dockyard and haven. Naucratis first attained its civil and commercial
eminence in the reign of Amasis (B.C. 550) who rendered it, as regarded the Greeks,
the Canton of Aegypt. From the date of his reign until the Persian invasion, or
perhaps even the founding of Alexandreia, Naucratis possessed a monopoly of the
Mediterranean commerce, for it was the only Deltaic harbour into which foreign
vessels were permitted to enter; and if accident or stress of weather had driven
them into any other port or mouth of the Nile, they were compelled either to sail
round to Naucratis, or to transmit their cargoes thither in the country boats.
Besides these commercial privileges, the Greeks of Naucratis received from Amasis
many civil and religious immunities. They appointed their own magistrates and
officers for the regulation of their trade, customs, and harbour dues, and were
permitted the free exercise of their religious worship. Besides its docks, wharves,
and other features of an Hellenic city, Naucratis, contained four celebrated temples:
- (1) That of Zeus, founded by colonists from Aegina; (2) of Hera, built by the
Samians in honour of their tutelary goddess; (3) of Apollo, erected by the Milesians;
and (4) the most ancient and sumptuous of them all, the federal temple entitled
the Hellenium, which was the common property of the Ionians of Chios, Teos, Phocaea,
and Clazomenae; of the Dorians of Rhodes, Cnidus, and Halicarnassus; and of the
Aetolians of Mytilene. They also observed the Dionysiac festivals; and were, according
to Athenaeus (xiii. p. 596, xv. p. 676), devout worshippers of Aphrodite.
The two principal manufactures of Naucratis were that of porcelain
and wreathes of flowers. The former received from the silicious matter abounding
in the earth of the neighbourhood a high glaze; and the potteries were important
enough to give names to the Potter's Gate and the Potter's Street, where such
wares were exposed for sale. (Id. xi. p. 480.)
The garlands were, according to Athenaeus (xv. p. 671, seq.), made
of myrtle, or, as was sometimes said, of flowers entwined with the filaments of
the papyrus. Either these garlands must have been artificial, or the makers of
them possessed some secret for preserving the natural flowers, since they were
exported to Italy, and held in high esteem by the Roman ladies. (Boetticher, Sabina,
vol. i. pp. 228, seq.) Athenaeus gives a particular account (iv. pp. 150, seq.)
of the Prytaneian dinners of the Naucratites, as well as of their general disposition
to luxurious living. Some of their feasts appear to have been of the kind called
sumbola, where the city provided a banqueting-room and wine, but the guests brought
their provisions. At wedding entertainments it was forbidden to introduce either
eggs or pastry sweetened with honey. Naucratis was the birthplace of Athenaeus
(iii. p. 73, vii. p. 301); of Julius Pollux, the antiquary and grammarian; and
of certain obscure historians, cited by Athenaeus, e. g. Lyceas, Phylarchus, Psycharmus,
Herostratus, &c. Heliodorus (Aethiop. vi. p. 229) absurdly says that Aristophanes,
the comic poet, was born there. Naucratis, however, was the native city of a person
much more conspicuous in his day than any of the above mentioned, viz., of Cleomenes,
commissioner-general of finances to Alexander the Great, after his conquest of
Aegypt. But neither the city nor Aegypt in general had much reason to be proud
of him; for he was equally oppressive and dishonest in his administration; and
having excited in the Delta a general feeling of discontent against the Macedonians,
he was put to death by Ptolemy Lagus. (Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 5, vii. 23; Diodor.
xviii. 14; Pseud. Aristot. Oeconom. ii. 34. s. 40.)
Herodotus probably landed at Naucratis, on his entrance into Aegypt;
but he did not remain there. It was, however, for some time the residence of the
legislator Solon, who there exchanged his Attic oil and honey for Aegyptian millet;
and is said to have taken sundry hints for his code of laws from the statutes
of the Pharaohs. (Plutarch, Solon, 26.)
Naucratis, like so many others of the Deltaic cities, began to decline
after the foundation of Alexandreia. Situated nearly 30 miles from the sea, it
could not compete with the most extensive and commodious haven then in the world;
and with the Macedonian invasion its monopoly of the Mediter-ranean traffic ceased.
Its exact site is unknown, but is supposed to correspond nearly with that of the
modern hamlet of Salhadschar, where considerable heaps of ruin are extant. (Niebuhr,
Travels in Arabia, p. 97.) The coins of Naucratis are of the age of Trajan, and
represent on their obverse a laureated head of the emperor, and on their reverse
the figure of Anubis, or a female holding a spear. (Rasche, Lexic. R. Numar. s.
v.)
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OXYRRYNCHOS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Oxyrynchus (Oxurunchos, Strab. xvii. p. 812; Ptol. iv. 5. § 59; Steph.
B. s. v.; Amm. Marc. xxii. 16; Oxyrinchum, It. Anton. p. 157. ed. Parthey: Eth.
Oxurunchites), was the chief town of the Nomos Oxyrynchites, in Lower Aegypt.
The appellation of the nome and its capital was derived from a fish of the sturgeon
species (Accipenser Sturio, Linnaeus; Athen. vii. p. 312), which was an object
of religious worship, and had a temple dedicated to it. (Aelian, Hist. An. x.
46; Plut. Is. et Osir. c. 7.) The town stood nearly opposite Cynopolis, between
the western bank of the Nile and the Joseph-canal, lat. 28° 6' N. At the village
of Bekneseh, which stands on part of the site of Oxyrynchus, there are some remains--broken
columns and cornices--of the ancient city (Jomard, Descript. de l'Egypte, vol.
ii. ch. 16. p. 55 ; Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 303, seq.); and a single
Corinthian column (Denon, l'Egypte, pl. 31), without leaves or volutes, partly
buried in the sand, indicates a structure of a later period, probably of the age
of Diocletian. Oxyrynchus became the site of an episcopal see, and Apollonius
dated from thence an epistle to the Council of Seleuceia (Epiphan. Haeres. lxxiii.)
Roman coins were minted at Oxyrynchus in the age of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.
(1.) Hadrian, with the reverse of Pallas, holding in her right hand a statuette
of Victory, in her left a spear; or, (2.) Serapis holding a stag in his right
hand. (3.) Antoninus, with a reverse, Pallas holding in her right hand an axe,
in her left a statuette of Victory. (Eckhel, vol. iv. p. 112.)
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PANOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Panopolis (Panupolis, Diodor. i. 18; Ptol. iv. 5. § 72; Panon tolis,
Strab. xvii. p. 813; Panos polis,, Steph. B. s. v.; sometimes simply Panos, Hierocl.
p. 731; It. Anton. p. 166: Eth. Panopolites), the Greek equivalent of the Aegyptian
appellative Chemmis or Chemmo (Herod. ii. 91, 145, seq.; Diodor. l. c.), was a
very ancient city of the Thebaid, lat. 26° 40' N. Panopolis was dedicated to Chem
or Pan, one of the first Octad of the Aegyptian divinities, or, according to a
later theory, to the Panes and Satyri generally of Upper Aegypt. (Plut. Is. et
Osir. c. 14.) Stephanus of Byzantium describes the Chem or Pan of this city as
an Ithyphallic god, the same whose representation occurs so frequently among the
sculptures of Thebes. His face was human, like that of Ammon; his head-dress,
like that of Ammon, consisted of lone straight feathers, and over the fingers
of his right hand, which is lifted up, is suspended a scourge; the body, like
that of Ammon also, including the left arm, is swathed in bandages. An inscription
on the Kosseir road is the ground for supposing that Chem and Pan were the same
deity; and that Chemmis and Panopolis were respectively the Aegyptian and Greek
names for the same city is inferrd from Diodorus (l. c.) Panopolis stood on the
right bank of the Nile, and was the capital of the Nomos Panopolites. According
to Strabo (l. c.) it was inhabited principally by stonemasons and linen-weavers;
and Agathias (iv. p. 133) says that it was the birthplace of the poet Nonnus A.D.
410. Although a principal site of Panic worship, Panopolis was celebrated for
its temple of Perseus. From Herodotus (vi. 53) we know that the Dorian chieftains
deduced their origin from Perseus through Aegypt. It is difficult to say which
of the native Aegyptian gods was represented by Perseus. From the root of the
word - Pertho, to burn - it is probable, however, that he is the same with the
fire-god Hephaistos or Phtah. The Panopolite temple of Perseus was rectangular,
and surrounded by a wall around which was a plantation of palm-trees. At the entrance
of the enclosure were two lofty gateways of stone, and upon these were placed
colossal statues in human form. Within the adytum was a statue of Perseus, and
there also was laid up his sandal, two cubits long. The priests of Panopolis asserted
that Perseus occasionally visited his temple, and that his epiphanies were always
the omens of an abundant harvest to Aegypt. The sandals of Perseus are described
by Hesiod (Sent. Here. 220), and their deposition in the shrine implied that,
having left his abode for a season, he was traversing the land to bless it with
especial fertility. The modern name of Panopolis is Akhmim, an evident corruption
of Chemmis. The ruins, in respect of its ancient splendour, are inconsiderable.
It is probable, indeed, that Panopolis, like Abydos and other of the older cities
of Upper Aegypt, declined in prosperity as Thebes rose to metropolitan importance.
(Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 267; Pococke, Travels, p. 115; Minutoli, p.
243.)
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PELUSIUM (Ancient city) EGYPT
Pelusium (Pelousion, Ptol. iv. 5. § 11, viii. 15. § 11; Steph. B.
s. v.; Strab. xvii. p. 802, seq.: Eth. Pelousiotes, Pelousios), was a city of
Lower Aegypt, situated upon the easternmost bank of the Nile, the Ostium Pelusiacum,
to which it gave its name. It was the SIN of the Hebrew Scriptures (Ezek. xxx.
15); and this word, as well as its Aegyptian appellation, Peremoun or Peromi,
and its Greek (pelos) import the city of the ooze or mud (omi, Coptic, mud), Pelusium
lying between the seaboard and the Deltaic marshes, about two and a half miles
from the sea. The Ostium Pelusiacum was choaked by sand as early as the first
century B.C., and the coast-line has now advanced far beyond its ancient limits,
so that the city, even in the third century A. D., was at least four miles from
the: Mediterranean. The principal produce of the neighbouring lands was flax,
and the linum Pelusiacum (Plin. xix. 1. s. 3) was both abundant and of a very
fine quality. It was, however, as a border-fortress on the frontier, as the key
of Aegypt as regarded Syria and the sea, and as a place of great strength, that
Pelusium was most remarkable. From its position it was directly exposed to attack
by the invaders of Aegypt; several important battles were fought under its walls,
and it was often besieged and taken. The following are the most memorable events
in the history of Pelusium:
1. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, B.C. 720-715, in the reign of Sethos the Aethiopian
(25th dynasty) advanced from Palestine by the way of Libna and Lachish upon Pelusium,
but retired without fighting from before its walls (Isaiah, xxxi. 8; Herod. ii.
141 ; Strab. xiii. p. 604). His retreat was ascribed to the favour of Hephaestos
towards Sethos, his priest. In the night, while the Assyrians slept, a host of
field-mice gnawed the bow-strings and shield-straps of the Assyrians, who fled,
and many of them were slain in their flight by the Aegyptians. Herodotus saw in
the temple of Hephaestos at Memphis, a record of this victory of the Aegyptians,
viz. a statue of Sethos holding a mouse in his hand. The story probably rests
on the fact that in the symbolism of Aegypt the mouse implied destruction. (Comp.
Horapoll. Hieroglyph. i. 50; Aelian, H. An. vi. 41.)
2. The decisive battle which transferred the throne of the Pharaohs to Cambyses,
king of the Medo-Persians, was fought near Pelusium in B.C. 525. The fields around
were strewed with the bones of the combatants when Herodotus visited Lower Aegypt;
and the skulls of the Aegyptians were distinguishable from those of the Persians
by their superior hardness, a fact confirmed by the mummies, and which the historian
ascribes to the Aegyptians shaving their heads from infancy, and to the Persians
covering them up with folds of cloth or linen. (Herod. ii. 10, seq.) As Cambyses
advanced at once to Memphis, Pelusium probably surrendered itself immediately
after the battle. (Polyaen. Stratag. vii. 9.)
3. In B.C. 373, Pharnabazus, satrap of Phrygia, and Iphicrates, the commander
of the Athenian armament, appeared before Pelusium, but retired without attacking
it, Nectanebus, king of Aegypt, having added to its former defences by laying
the neighboring lands under water, and blocking up the navigable channels of the
Nile by embankments. (Diodor. xv. 42; Nepos, Iphicr. c. 5.)
4. Pelusium was attacked and taken by the Persians, B.C. 309. The city contained
at the time a garrison of 5000 Greek mercenaries under the command of Philophron.
At first, owing to the rashness of the Thebans in the Persian service, the defendants
had the advantage. But the Aegyptian king Nectanebus hastily venturing on a pitched
battle, his troops were cut to pieces, and Pelusium surrendered to the Theban
general Lacrates on honourable conditions. (Diodor. xvi. 43.)
5. In B.C. 333, Pelusium opened its gates to Alexander the Great, who placed a
garrison in it under the command of one of those officers entitled Companions
of the King. (Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 1, seq.; Quint. Curt. iv. 33.)
6. In B.C. 173, Antiochus Epiphanes utterly defeated the troops of Ptolemy Philometor
under the walls of Pelusium, which he took and retained after he had retired from
the rest of Aegypt. (Polyb. Legat. § 82; Hieronym. in Daniel. xi.) On the fall
of the Syrian kingdom, however, if not earlier, Pelusium had been restored to
its rightful owners, since
7. In B.C. 55, it belonged to Aegypt, and Marcus Antonius, as general of the horse
to the Roman proconsul Gabinius, defeated the Aegyptian army, and made himself
master of the city. Ptolemy Auletes, in whose behalf the Romans invaded Aegypt
at this time, wished to put the Pelusians to the sword; but his intention was
thwarted by Antonius. (Plut. Anton. c. 3; Val. Max. ix. 1.)
8. In B.C. 31, immediately after his victory at Actium, Augustus appeared before
Pelusium, and was admitted by its governor Seleucus within its walls.
Of the six military roads formed or adopted by the Romans in Aegypt,
the following are mentioned in the Itinerarium of Antoninus as connected with
Pelusium:
1. From Memphis to Pelusium. This road joined the great road from Pselcis in Nubia
at Babylon, nearly opposite Memphis, and coincided with it as far as Scenae Veteranorum.
The two roads, viz. that from Pselcis to Scenae Veteranorum, which turned off
to the east at Heliopolis, and that from Memphis to Pelusium, connected the latter
city with the capital of Lower Aegypt, Trajan's canal, and Arsinoe, or Suez, on
the Sinus Heroopolites.
2. From Acca to Alexandreia, ran along the Mediterranean sea from Raphia to Pelusium.
Pelusium suffered greatly from the Persian invasion of Aegypt in A.D.
501 (Eutychii, Annal.), but it offered a protracted, though, in the end, an ineffectual
resistance to the arms of Amrou, the son of Asi, in A.D. 618. As on former occasions,
the surrender of the key of the Delta, was nearly equivalent to the subjugation
of Aegypt itself. The khalifs, however, neglected the harbours of their new conquest
generally, and from this epoch Pelusium, which had been long on the decline, now
almost disappears from history. Its ruins, which have no particular interest,
are found at Tineh, near Damietta. (Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 82; Denon,
Descript. de l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 208, iii. p. 306.)
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PTOLEMAIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Ptolemais (Ptolemais he Hermeiou Ptol. i. 15. § 11, iv. 5. § 56; Ptolemaike
polis, Strab. xvii. p. 813), a city of Upper Aegypt, NW. of Abydus, and situated
on the western side of the Nile. It can hardly be regarded, however, as an Aegyptian
city, its population and civil institutions being almost exclusively Greek, and
its importance derived entirely from the favour of the Ptolemies. The ruins of
Ptolemais Hermii are supposed to be at the modern hamlet of Mensieh. (Champollion,
l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 253, seq.)
RINOKOLOURA (Ancient city) EGYPT
or Rhinocolura (Rhinokoroura, Polyb. Ptol. Joseph.; Rhinokoloura,
Strab.: Eth. Pinokourairos, Rhinokourourites), a maritime city on the confines
of Egypt and Palestine, and consequently reckoned sometimes to one country, sometimes
to the other. Strabo, going south, reckons Gaza, Raphia, Rhinocolura (xvi. p.
759); Polybius, going north, reckons it to Egypt, calling Raphia the first city
of Coelesyria (v. 80). Ptolemy also reckons it to Egypt, and places it in the
district of Cassiotis (iv. 5. § 12), between Ostracine and Anthedon. The Itinerarium
Antonini (p. 151) places it xxii. M.P. south of Rafia, and the same distance north
of Ostracena. The following curious account of its origin and name is given by
Diodorus Siculus. Actisanes, king of Aethiopia, having conquered Egypt, with a
view to the suppression of crime in his newly-acquired dominion, collected together
all the suspected thieves in the country, and, after judicial conviction, cut
off their noses and sent them to colonise a city which he had built for them on
the extremity of the desert, called, from their mishap, Rhinocolura (quasi pinos
kolouroi==curti, al. p. keirasthai), situated on the confines of Egypt and Syria,
near the shore; and from its situation destitute of nearly all the necessaries
of life. The soil around it was salt, and the small supply of well water within
the walls was bitter. Necessity, the mother of invention, led the inhabitants
to adopt the following novel expedient for their sustenance. They collected a
quantity of reeds, and, splitting them very fine, they wove them into nets, which
they stretched for many stadia along the sea-shore, and so snared large quantities
of quails as they came in vast flights from the sea (i. 60). Strabo copies this
account of its origin (l. c.); Seneca ascribes the act to a Persian king, and
assigns the city to Syria (de Ira, iii. 20). Strabo (xvi. p. 781) mentions it
as having been the great emporium of Indian and Arabian merchandise, which was
discharged at Leuce Come, on the eastern coast of the Red Sea, whence it was conveyed,
via Petra, to Rhinocolura, and thence dispersed to all quarters. In his day, however,
the tide of commerce flowed chiefly down the Nile to Alexandria. The name occurs
in Josephus, but unconnected with any important event. It is known to the ancient
ecclesiastical writers as the division between the possessions of the sons of
Noah. S. Jerome states that the River of Egypt flowed between this city and Pelusium
(Reland, Palaest. pp. 285, 286, 969--972); and in one passage the LXX. translate
the River of Egypt by Rhinocorura. (Isaiah, xxvii. 12.) It is remarkable that
this penal colony, founded for mutilated convicts, should have become fruitful
in saints; and its worthy and exemplary bishop Melas, in the time of the Arian
persecution, who was succeeded by his brother Solon, became the founder of a succession
of religious men, which, according to the testimony of Sozomen, continued to his
time. (Hist. Eccles. vii. 31.) Rhinocorura is now El-Arish, as the River of Egypt
is Wady-el-Arish. The village is situated on an eminence about half a mile from
the sea, and is for the most part enclosed within a wall of considerable thickness.
There are some Roman ruins, such as marble columns, &c., and a very fine well
of good water. (Irby and Mangles, Travels, p. 174, October 7.)
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SYINI (Ancient city) EGYPT
Syene (Suene, Herod. ii. 30; Strab. ii. p. 133, xvii. p. 797, seq.;
Steph. B. s. v.; Ptol. vii. 5. § 15, viii. 15. § 15; Plin. ii. 73. s. 75, v. 10.
s. 11, vi. 29. s. 34; It. Ant. p. 164), the modern Assouan, was the frontier town
of Aegypt to the S. Syene stood upon a peninsula on the right bank of the Nile,
immediately below the Great Falls, which extend to it from Philae. It is supposed
to have derived its name from Suan, an Aegyptian goddess, the Ilithya of the Greeks,
and of which the import is the opener; and at Syene Upper Aegypt was in all ages,
conceived to open or begin. The quarries of Syene were celebrated for their stone,
and especially for the marble called Syenite. They furnished the colossal statues,
obelisks, and monolithal shrines which are found throughout Aegypt; and the traces
of the quarrymen who wrought in these 3000 years ago are still visible in the
native rock. They lie on either bank of the Nile, and a road, 4 miles in length,
was cut beside them from Syene to Philae. Syene was equally important as a military
station and as a place of traffic. Under every dynasty it was a garrison town;
and here were levied toll and custom on all boats passing southward and northward.
The latitude of Syene-24° 5' 23'-was an object of great interest to the ancient
geographers. They believed that it was seated immediately under the tropic, and
that on the day of the summer solstice a vertical staff cast no shadow, and the
sun's disc was reflected in a well at noonday. This statement is indeed incorrect;
the ancients were not acquainted with the true tropic: yet at the summer-solstice
the length of the shadow, or 1/400th of the staff, could scarcely be discerned,
and the northern limb of the sun's disc would be nearly vertical. The Nile is
nearly 3000 yards wide above Syene. From this frontier town to the northern extremity
of Aegypt it flows for more than 750 miles without bar or cataract. The voyage
from Syene to Alexandreia usually occupied between 21 and 28 days in favourable
weather.
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VERENIKI (Ancient city) EGYPT
Berenice (Berenike, Strab. xvi. p. 770, xvii. p. 815; Plin. vi. 23,
26, 29, 33; Steph. B. s. v.; Arrian. Peripl. M. Rub.; Itin. Antonin. p. 173, f.;
Epiphan. Haeres. lxvi. 1: Eth. Berenikeus and Berenikiades, fem. Berenikeia),
a city upon the Red Sea, was founded, or certainly converted from a village into
a city, by Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, and named in honour of his mother, the daughter
of Ptolemy Lagus and Antigone. It stood about lat. 23° 56? N., and about long.
35° 34? E., and being in the same parallel with Syene, was accordingly on the
equinoctial line. Berenice, as modern surveys (Moresby and Carless, 1830-3) have
ascertained, stood nearly at the bottom of the Sinus Immundus, or Foul Bay. A
lofty range of mountains runs along this side of the African coast, and separates
Berenice from Egypt. The emerald mines are in its neighbourhood. The harbour is
indifferent, but was improved by art. Berenice stood upon a narrow rim of shore
between the hills and the Red Sea. Its prosperity after the third century B.C.
was owing in great measure to three causes: the favour of the Macedonian kings,
its safe anchorage, and its being a terminus of the great road from Coptos, which
rendered Berenice and Myos Hormos the two principal emporia of the trade between
Aethiopia and Egypt on the one hand, and Syria and India on the other. The distance
between Coptos and Berenice was 258 Roman miles, or eleven days' journey. The
wells and halting places of the caravans are enumerated by Pliny (vi. 23. s. 26),
and in the Itineraries (Antonin. p. 172, f.). Belzoni (Travels, vol. ii. p. 35)
found traces of several of these stations. Under the empire Berenice formed a
district in itself, with its peculiar prefect, who was entitled Praefectus Berenicidis,
or P. montis Berenicidis. (Orelli, Inscr. Lat. no. 3880, f.) The harbour of Berenice
was sheltered from the NE. wind by the island Ophiodes (Ophiodes nedos, Strab.
xvi. p. 770; Diod. iii. 39), which was rich in topazes. A small temple of sandstone
and soft calcareous stone, in the Egyptian style, has been discovered at Berenice.
It is 102 feet long, and 43 wide. A portion of its walls is sculptured with well-executed
basso relieves, of Greek workmanship, and hieroglyphics also occasionally occur
on the walls. Belzoni confirmed D'Anville's original opinion of the true site
of Berenice (Memoires sur l'Egypte Ancienne), and says that the city measured
1,600 feet from N. to S., and 2,000 from E. to W. He estimates the ancient population
at 10,000. (Researches, vol. ii. p. 73.)
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ABYDOS (Ancient city) EGYPT
A city of Upper Egypt, near the west bank of the Nile; once second only to Thebes, but in Strabo's time (A.D. 14) a small village. It had a temple of Osiris and a Memnonium, both still standing, and an oracle.
ARSINOI (Ancient city) EGYPT
In the Nomos Heroopolites in Lower Egypt, near or upon the head of the Sinus Heroopolites, or west branch of the Red Sea (Gulf of Suez). It was afterwards called Cleopatra.
ARSINOI (Ancient city) EGYPT
The chief city of the Nomos Arsinoites in Middle Egypt; formerly called Crocodilopolis, from its being the chief seat of the Egyptian worship of the crocodile.
CANOPUS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Canopus (Kanopos) or Canobus. An important city on the coast of Lower Egypt, twelve geographical
miles east of Alexandria. It was near the westernmost mouth of the Nile, which
was hence called the Canopic mouth. It was celebrated for a great temple of Serapis,
for its commerce, its luxury, and its debauchery. Here was prepared the dye known
as henna, which the women of the East have always used to stain their finger-tips.
Before the founding of Alexandria it was a most important place, but after B.C.
300, its greatness declined.
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COPTOS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Koptos. A city of the Thebais or Upper Egypt, lying a little
to the east of the Nile, some distance below Thebes. Under the Ptolemies it occupied
an important commercial position. In 1894 excavations conducted on its site by
Mr. Petrie brought to light many valuable remains of the earliest Egyptian art.
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EGYPT (Country) MIDDLE EAST
A country in the northeastern part of Africa; the modern
Egypt. The name, in Greek Aiguptos, is perhaps a corruption of Hakeptah (City
of Ptah), i. e. Memphis. Others explain it with less probability as formed from
the Sanskrit gup, "to guard"=agupta, "guarded about." In
Coptic, as in hieroglyphs, it is called Kemi (Black Land) from the colour of
the soil. The Jews styled it Mazor, "fortified," or in the dual, to
denote both Upper and Lower Egypt, Mizraim. This name is preserved in the modern
Arabic Misr--a word applied by the Arabs both to the country and to its capital,
Cairo.
Aegyptus was bounded on the north by the Mediterranean; on
the east by Palestine, Arabia Petraea, and the Red Sea; on the south by Aethiopia,
the division between the two countries being at the First or Little Cataract
of the Nile, close to Syene; and on the west by the Great Libyan Desert. From
Syene the Nile flows due north for about 500 miles, through a valley whose average
breadth is about seven miles, to a point some few miles below Memphis. Here
the river divides into branches (seven in ancient times, but now only two),
which flow through a low alluvial land, called, from its shape, the Delta, into
the Mediterranean. The whole district thus described is periodically laid under
water by the overflowing of the Nile from April to October. The river, in subsiding,
leaves behind a rich deposit of fine mud, which forms the soil of Egypt. All
beyond the reach of the alluvial is rock or sand. Hence Egypt was called the
"Gift of the Nile." The outlying portions of ancient Egypt consisted
of three cultivable valleys (called oases), in the midst of the Western or Libyan
Desert.
Ethnology and Civilization.--At the earliest period of which
any record has been preserved, Egypt possessed a very high degree of civilization,
and one which presupposes many centuries of development. It was the home, too,
of a very large population, since during the Fourth Dynasty (about 3600 B.C.)
some 100,000 men were employed in constructing the Great Pyramid. At the time
of Nero (A.D. 54) the Egyptians numbered 7,800,000; and the population is estimated
to have been not much less under the Pharaohs, at which time the towns numbered
1800 as against 3000 under the Ptolemies. The population of modern Egypt Proper
in 1882 was 6,806,000. The ancient Egyptians appear to have been of mixed origin,
partly Asiatic and partly Nigritic, superimposed upon an aboriginal type, copper-coloured,
with high cheek-bones, large lips, thin legs, and large feet. Both these types
appear upon the monuments. It is not true, as stated by the Greek writers, that
a caste system prevailed.
As to the knowledge and culture of the ancient Egyptians,
it is sufficient to mention certain interesting and significant facts. As early
as 4000 B.C., the pyramid-builders possessed a definite system of chronology,
a decimal system of numbers, a knowledge of geographical science, of geometry,
of astronomy, and probably of chemistry, anatomy, and medicine. Literature dates
equally far back, since of this period fragments of the so-called Hermetic Books
have come down to us; while Cheops himself was numbered among the authors of
Egypt. Architecture and sculpture had attained an extraordinary development,
as shown by the remarkably fine specimens of masonry still existing, by the
admirably scientific construction of the temples, the elegance of the columns,
the chiselled statues of Chephren, and the sculptures found at Meydoun. Egyptian
art was rigidly conventional, yet its remains show unusual plas tic skill; and
in the later centuries, when a freer treatment obtained, the lions and sphinxes
evince much spirit and vigour of execution. The architectural details of the
temples were always coloured. In architecture the vault or arch was known at
least 800 years before it can be shown to have been used by the Romans. To transport
the huge blocks of stone found in Egyptian structures involved an advanced knowledge
of engineering. The mechanical arts also flourished, and many inventions, often
regarded as modern, had been made as early as the Fifth Dynasty. The blow-pipe,
bellows, and siphons, the saw, chisel, press, balance, harpoon, lever, plough,
and adze, were all employed. Razors appear during the Twelfth Dynasty. An opaque
kind of glass was made about 3500 B.C., and dated specimens of the reign of
Thothmes III. exist. At the same period the potter's wheel and the kiln were
known, as well as applications of metallurgy and the use of tin.
Music was cultivated, for the harp and flute were known in
the Fourth Dynasty; and later are found the heptachord, pentachord, lyres, drums,
trumpets, guitars, and the national instrument, the sistrum. Many of these instruments
were of considerable size.
Painting was almost as conventional as architecture and sculpture,
the colours generally being the primary ones on a white background. The papyri
containing rituals often exhibit illuminations like those of the mediaeval missals.
Frescoes were not unknown; encaustic is found to date back to only a comparatively
late period. In warfare, the Egyptians used shields, cuirasses
of leather, helmets, bows, spears, clubs, swords, and axes. In conducting sieges,
they employed the testudo and scaling-ladders, and appear to have had a knowledge
of the principles of mining and counter-mining. Under the Eighteenth Dynasty,
war-chariots were introduced, prior to which time the army was composed entirely
of infantry. Sea-going vessels were not earlier than B.C. 2500, though galleys
and small sailing craft plied on the Nile at a very early period.
Coined money was first introduced by the Persians, previous
to which time it is possible that gold circulated in rings or in portions of
definite weight. Popular amusements were fencing, juggling, dancing, dice, and
bull-fighting.
Religion.--The religion of the ancient Egyptians was a pantheistic
system, each god, as with the Romans, standing for some special attribute. Each
principal divinity is accompanied by a put, or retinue of associated gods. As
with the Assyrians, the pantheon is grouped in triads, or family groups, each
consisting of the parent deity, his wife and sister, and a son. Thus the god
Ptah forms a triad with Sekhet or Bast and Imhotep. These triads are often associated
with inferior deities to complete the put. The worship of many triads was restricted
to particular localities; but other triads, such as those of Osiris, Isis, and
Horus (all of which see), were adored all over Egypt. The dual conception that
embodies the antagonism of good and evil is seen in the opposition of the sun
gods to the Great Serpent, Apap, the type of darkness; while Osiris is pitted
against Set. On the monuments the gods are generally represented with human
bodies but the heads of animals, animals being their living emblems. At the
close of the eighteenth dynasty, some foreign deities were admitted into the
religious system of Egypt. Among these were Bar (Baal), Ashtarata (Ashtaroth),
Ken (Kuin), and Reshpu (Reseph). As with the Greeks and Romans, so with the
Egyptians, the gods were conceived as possessed of all the human passions and
emotions. The chief of the Egyptian deities is Ptah, the Opener, the creator
of all things, the same as the Phoenician Pataikos. To him belong Sekhet, the
Lioness, Bast, Bubastis, the goddess of fire, identified with Artemis. Ptah
is depicted as a bowlegged dwarf. His son, Nefer-Tum, wears the lotus on his
head. Other gods are Khnum, the ramheaded god of water; Heka, the Frog; Sati,
the Sunbeam; Nit, the Shuttle; Khons (Force), the Heracles of Egyptian mythology;
Ra, the Sun; Amenra, the hidden power of the Sun; Seb, Time; and Nut, the Firmament.
Seb and Nut (Cronos and Rhea) gave birth to Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, and
the elder Horus. The myth of Osiris was the Egyptian type of the judgment and
future destiny of man; and all the dead are called by his name. Each deity had
its sacred animal, which was regarded as the second life of the deity whom it
represented. The most famous of these animals was the Apis, or sacred bull,
at Memphis, whose worship was national.
Another point of the Egyptian religion was a belief in the
transmigration of souls. All who were too impure to be admitted to the Courts
of the Sun, or whose bodies when embalmed perished before the end of 3000 years,
passed from body to body, having first descended to the lower world. The Sacred
Bark in which the mummy was carried over the Nile to its tomb was a type of
the Sunboat which would at last bear the purified spirit to Paradise.
The chief remains of Egyptian architecture are religious--tombs,
temples, and pyramids--the last-named being royal tombs reared to mark the burial-places
of the kings. They are the most ancient of the Egyptian monuments, the next
in point of antiquity being the rock-tombs of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties,
with their mummy-pits. Later still come the hill-tombs, with a temple before
them.
Government.--Ecclesiastical government was in the hands of
the high-priests, in conjunction with an inferior hierarchy, overseers, and
superintendents of revenues, domains, and gifts. The civil government was carried
on by the royal secretaries of justice, finance, foreign affairs, and internal
administration. The army--at one time numbering some 400,000 men--was officered
by nomarchs, colonels, and captains. In the time of Rameses II. there were territorial
regiments. Circuit judges administered law.
History.--In the third century B.C., Manetho , a priest of
Heliopolis, prepared, at the request of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, a history
of Egypt from Menes (B.C. 4455) to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, B.C.
332, a period which he divided into thirty dynasties. The work of Manetho is
preserved in the form of epitomes by Iulius Africanus (A.D. 300), Ensebius,
and Georgius Syncellus (A.D. 800). Much weight is now given to the statements
of Manetho, since he undoubtedly had access to the most authentic records of
Egypt; and the study of the monumental inscriptions in modern times has served
to justify this confidence.
Myth declares Egypt to have been originally governed by a dynasty of divinities--Ptah,
Ra, Shu, Seb, Hesiri (Osiris), Set, and Har (Horus)-- reigning 13,900 years,
and succeeded by demigods who ruled for a further period of 4000 years. The
first purely human monarch of Egypt is said to have been Menes, whose epoch
is variously dated by different Egyptologists. Brugsch fixes it at B.C. 4455,
and Lepsius at B.C. 3892. No monuments of Menes exist. The seat of his power
is said to have been This, near Abydos, and he is believed to have founded Memphis.
His dynasty reigned some 250 years, being succeeded by the Second Dynasty, which
held sway for 300 years. Under it the worship of sacred animals is asserted
to have begun. With the succeeding dynasty (B.C. 3966 according to Brugsch)
the monumental history of Egypt commences. The king Senoferu conquered the Sinaitic
peninsula and opened the copper-mines of Wady-Maghara, where his name and portrait
may still be seen. The seated figures of Rahotep and his wife Nefert, the oldest
statues in the world, date from this reign.
The Fourth Dynasty lasted 167 years (B.C. 3733-3566). Under
it Khufu (Cheops) built the Great Pyramid at Gizeh; his successor Khafra (Chephrenes)
built the second pyramid; and Menkaura (Mycerinus) the third. From this period
dates also the famous ritual known as the Book of the Dead, and various works
of art.
The Fifth Dynasty comprised nine kings, and lasted some 200
years. The last of the line, Unas, built the truncated pyramid near Sakkara,
now called Pharaoh's Seat.
The Sixth Dynasty contains the name of King Pepi, whose general,
Una, undertook various wars and expeditions, among them one to Palestine, in
which he used negro troops from Nubia. A number of texts belonging to this reign
were found in pyramids opened in 1880. It is doubtful whether Queen Nitocris,
whom Manetho assigns to this dynasty, is an historical personage. Of her,Herodotus
relates various interesting stories, and the Arabs believe that she still haunts
the third pyramid of Gizeh, where she is said to have been buried.
From the Seventh to the Twelfth Dynasty, Egyptian history
is obscure. One reason, perhaps, is to be found in the fact that the nomarchs
or local governors became more and more independent, to the detriment of the
importance of the kings. The inscriptions at Siat, recently published by Griffith,
show that in the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, the kings of Egypt waged war against
these rebellious nomarchs, especially those of Thebes. These last, under the
Tenth Dynasty, began to claim the title of royalty, and did in fact succeed
in establishing their claim. More than that, they overran and conquered the
whole country after a protracted struggle, so that the Eleventh Dynasty is Theban.
Thebes, from being an insignificant provincial town, became the royal capital;
and from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty (about B.C. 2500) begins a new period
of political unity and intellectual achievement, so that in later times it was
regarded as Egypt's Golden Age. Literature flourished, and great material prosperity
prevailed. Nubia was conquered as far as the Second Cataract. Besides Thebes,
other cities, such as On (Heliopolis), Tanis, and Bubastis, were embellished
and enlarged; while the province of Fayum was gained for agriculture. The excavations
of Petrie prove that Amenemhat III. was the Moiris of Herodotus who constructed
a great basin for a branch of the Nile flowing into that oasis and losing itself
in swamps. In the middle of the basin were found two pyramids with colossal
statues surmounting them; and near by, the largest of all the temples of Egypt,
the so-called Labyrinth, of which, however, only the foundation stones have
been preserved.
Between the Thirteenth and the Eighteenth Dynasties there
exists a blank. About B.C. 2000, the progress of the kings of Chaldea in Asia,
or some other disturbance, sent the Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings" into
Lower Egypt. These invaders appear to have been of Tartar race. They carried
Memphis by storm, expelled the Theban dynasty, and made the city of Avaris (the
later Tanis) their seat. Of these kings, Joseph was probably prime-minister
to Apepi at Tanis. His granaries are still visible at Pithom. The Hyksos made
some religious changes and tried to replace the worship of Ra by that of Set.
They were finally overthrown by the Egyptians of Upper Egypt under Aahmes I.
(Amosis), who took Avaris by assault and restored the old religion. The succeeding
kings, Amenhotep I., Thothmes I., Thothmes II., and Thothmes III., carried the
arms of Egypt far into Ethiopia, Nubia, and Asia, subduing the whole of Syria
and part of Mesopotamia. The reign of Thothmes III. is the most brilliant period
of Egyp [p. 29] tian history. To him, Kush and the southern tribes of Ethiopia,
the islands, as well as Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, and a good part of Central
Asia, paid tribute. Under Amenhotep IV., the capital was removed to Alabastron
(Tel-el-Amarina), and the monotheistic worship of the sun was allowed to diminish
the regard paid to the other deities. The true religion was restored by Haremhebi
(Horus) after a period of some thirty-five years. He was succeeded by Rameses
I., who heads a long dynasty. His successor, Seti I. (Sethos), by his victories
in Asia, introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth into Egypt. His troops
garrisoned Tyre, and Aradus, and Bethanath in Canaan. Rameses II., son of Seti,
defeated the Hittites and took Shaluma, the ancient site of Jerusalem, in a
war which lasted four years. A tablet of this monarch has been found near Beyrut
in Syria. Rameses II. also reconquered Ethiopia, which had revolted, and established
a fleet on the Mediterranean. He it is whose exploits form a basis for the myths
woven around the legendary Sesostris. His date is about B.C. 1322. His son Meneptah
transferred the seat of government to Memphis, and is probably the Pharaoh of
the Jewish Exodus.
Rameses III., of the Twentieth Dynasty, waged war with the
Philistines, and with some of the maritime tribes of Greece, gaining naval victories
in the Mediterranean. His favourite temple and palace were at Medinet Habu.
The Ramessids who followed were ended by the high-priests of Thebes, who deposed
the last king. A new dynasty from Tanis succeeded, and reigned with little power.
Under them, the police ceased trying to protect the tombs of the kings from
plunderers, who, in consequence, stole many of the mummies and hid them in an
excavation, where they were found in 1881. King Amenemhat I., of the Twelfth
Dynasty. The Twenty-second Dynasty (B.C. 950) was of Libyan origin, probably
established by the powerful Libyan body-guard which had become extremely influential.
Shoshank I. (the Biblical Shishak) plundered cities in India, and made war upon
the Jewish kings Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Under the Twenty-third Dynasty (of Tanis),
the unity of the Empire was lost. The different provinces fell away from the
central power, and in the Twenty-fourth Dynasty King Bocchoris ruled over Sais
and Memphis alone. Under the Twentyfifth Dynasty (B.C. 728), the whole of Egypt
became an Ethiopian province, and its viceking suffered defeat at the hands
of the Assyrians, who, in B.C. 671, under Assar-haddon, conquered Egypt and
divided it among tributary princes. Many of the Assyrian garrisons were driven
out in B.C. 668, and when the Assyrian empire began to decline, Psametik (Psammetichus)
of Sais, descended from the kings of the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, founded a new
line with the aid of Greek mercenaries from Ionia and Caria. Under him and his
successors, art and learning revived. His successor, Nekao II., began a canal
to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but desisted at the warning of
an oracle, having also lost a large number of workmen in the attempt. He it
was who defeated Josiah, king of Judah, and conquered Palestine, but was himself
defeated by Nebuchadnezzar. In the time of his reign, navigators from Phoenicia
first sailed south of the equator. Psammetichus II. warred with the Ethiopians,
and was followed by Apries, who was deposed and strangled by Amasis, who reigned
after him and fostered intercourse with Greece, marrying a Greek wife. He conquered
Cyprus, but incurred the enmity of Cambyses, second king of the Medes and Persians,
who invaded Egypt, and overthrew the son of Amasis at the battle of Pelusium
(B.C. 527), thus insuring the conquest of Egypt, which now became a Persian
province. Becoming insane, Cambyses committed many barbarous acts, stabbed the
sacred bull Apis, and gave himself up to gross debauchery. He was succeeded
by Darius I., Xerxes I., and Artaxerxes I., who governed with comparative mildness,
but against whom the Egyptians rose in unsuccessful revolt, being aided by the
Athenians. The Twenty-eighth (Saite) Dynasty struggled with varying success
against the Persians; the Twenty-ninth maintained a Greek alliance with the
same object; but with the Thirtieth, the Persians finally prevailed, and Egypt
remained subject to them until the time of Alexander the Great (B.C. 332), who
in that year founded Alexandria, after having conquered Persia. In B.C. 306,
Alexander's general, Ptolemaeus, assumed the title of King of Egypt. His successors
transformed Egypt into a Greek kingdom, both the language of the government
and of scholarship being Greek. The court of the Ptolemies became a centre of
learning; and Ptolemy Philadelphus built the famous Museum, founded the great
Library, and procured the Septuagint translations of the Hebrew Scriptures.
From this time the list of his successors is as follows: Euergetes (246-221
B.C.); Philopator (221-204 B.C.), who persecuted the Jews and warred with Antiochus;
Epiphanes (204-180 B.C.); Philometor (180-145 B.C.); Euergetes II. (145-116
B.C.); Ptolemy Soter II. and his mother Cleopatra (116- 81 B.C.); Alexander
II., Cleopatra Berenice (81-80 B.C.); Neos Dionysus (80-51 B.C.). Last came
the famous Cleopatra, the mistress of Antony. After her defeat at the battle
of Actium (31 B.C.), Egypt was made a Roman province by Augustus Caesar, under
a governor of equestrian rank.
Egypt remained peaceful under Roman rule, except for the
conquest of Zenobia (270 A.D.) and the revolt of Firmus (272 A.D.). The most
interesting events of this period are, besides the two just mentioned, the visits
of Vespasian, Hadrian, and Caracalla to Alexandria; the persecutions of Diocletian;
the rise of the Gnostics, Manichaeans, and Arians; and the final supremacy of
the Christian faith in 379 A.D.
When the Roman Empire was divided in 395 A.D., Egypt went
with the Eastern division, and later became one of the great patriarchates of
the Church. In 616 A.D., owing to bitter religious feuds, it became a Persian
province for twelve years. In the year 639, when the Arabs invaded the country,
a native (Coptic) governor was over Egypt, administering it in the name of the
Emperor Heraclius. Seeing in the invasion a means for throwing off the rule
of the Greeks, he made only a pretended resistance to the Arab chief, 'Amr Ibn
el-Asi, who in the year 641 took Alexandria, and made the whole of Egypt a province
of the calif Omar.
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FAROS (Island) EGYPT
(Pharos). A small island off the coast of Egypt. When Alexander
the Great planned the city of Alexandria, on the coast opposite to Pharus, he
caused the island to be united to the coast by a mole seven stadia in length,
thus forming the two harbours of the city. The island was chiefly famous for the
lofty tower built upon it by Ptolemy II. for a light-house, whence the name of
pharus was applied to all similar structures.
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ILIOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Helioupolis). A famous city of Egypt, situated a little to
the east of the apex of the Delta, not far from modern Cairo. In Hebrew it is
styled On or Aun. In the Septuagint it is called Heliopolis, or City of the Sun;
in Jeremiah, Beth Shemim--i. e. domus solis. Herodotus also mentions it by this
name, and speaks of its inhabitants as being the wisest and most ingenious of
all the Egyptians. According to Berosus, this was the city of Moses. It was also
a place of resort for all the Greeks who visited Egypt for instruction. Hither
came Herodotus, Plato, Eudoxus, and others, and secured much of the learning which
they afterwards disseminated among their own countrymen. Plato, in particular,
resided here three years. Manetho, the historian, was also here as a priest. The
city was built, according to Strabo, on a long, artificial mound of earth, so
as to be out of reach of the inundations of the Nile. It had an oracle of Apollo
and a famous Temple of the Sun. In this temple was fed and adored the sacred ox
Mnevis, as Apis was at Memphis. This city was laid waste with fire and sword by
Cambyses, and its chapter of priests all slaughtered. Strabo saw it in a deserted
state and shorn of all its splendour. Heliopolis was famed also for its fountain
of excellent water, which still remains, and gave rise to the subsequent Arabic
name of the place, Ain Shems, or the Fountain of the Sun. The modern name is Matareieh,
or cool water. A solitary obelisk of red granite is all that remains at the present
day of this once celebrated place; and the two obelisks known as "Cleopatra's
Needles" were originally brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria.
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LATON (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Latopolis). A city of Egypt in the Thebaid, between Thebes
and Apollinopolis Magna. It derived its Greek name from the fish latos worshipped
there, which was regarded as the largest of all the fishes of the Nile. The later
writers drop the term polis, and call the place merely Laton (Laton, Hierocles);
and therefore, in the Itin. Anton. and Notitia Imperii, the ablative form Lato
occurs.
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LEONTOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Leontopolis, Leonton polis). A city in the Delta of Egypt, the capital of the Nomos Leontopolites.
LUXOR (Ancient city) EGYPT
Thebai, in the poets sometimes Thebe (Thebe; Dor. Theba), later
Diospolis Magna (Diospolis Megale, i. e. "Great City of Zeus"), in Egyptian
Tuabu, in Scripture No or No Ammon. The capital of Thebais, or Upper Egypt, and,
for a long time, of the whole country. It was reputed the oldest city of the world.
It stood in about the centre of the Thebaid, on both banks of the Nile, above
Coptos, and in the Nomos Coptites. It is said to have been founded under the first
dynasty by Menes; but this is unsupported by any evidence. Others ascribed its
foundation to Osiris, who named it after his mother, and others to Busiris. It
appears to have been at the height of its splendour, as the capital of Egypt,
and as a chief seat of worship of Ammon, about B.C. 1330 under the Nineteenth
Dynasty. The fame of its grandeur had reached the Greeks as early as the time
of Homer, who describes it, with poetical exaggeration, as having a hundred gates,
from each of which it could send out 200 war chariots fully armed. Homer's epithet
of "HundredGated" (hekatompuloi) is repeatedly applied to the city by
later writers. Its real extent was calculated by the Greek writers at 140 stadia
(fourteen geographical miles) in circuit; and in Strabo's time, when the long
transference of the seat of power to Lower Egypt had caused it to decline greatly,
it still had a circuit of eighty stadia. That these computations are not exaggerated
is proved by the existing ruins, which extend from side to side of the valley
of the Nile, here about six miles wide; while the rocks which bound the valley
are perforated with tombs. These ruins, which are perhaps the most magnificent
in the world, enclose within their site the four modern villages of Karnak, Luxor
(El Uksur), Medinet Habou, and Kurna--the two former on the eastern and the two
latter on the western side of the river. They consist of temples, colossi, sphinxes,
and obelisks, and, on the western side, of tombs, many of which are cut in the
rock and adorned with paintings, which are still as fresh as if just finished.
These ruins are remarkable alike for their great antiquity and for the purity
of their style. It is most probable that the great buildings were all erected
before the Persian invasion, when Thebes was taken by Cambyses, who secured treasure
to the amount of some $10,000,000, and burned the wooden habitations, after which
time it never regained the rank of a capital city; and thus its architectural
monuments escaped that Greek influence which is so marked in the edifices of Lower
Egypt. Among its chief buildings, the ancient writers mention the Memnonium, with
the two colossi in front of it, the temple of Ammon, in which one of the three
chief colleges of priests was established, and the tombs of the kings.
To describe the ruins in detail, and to discuss their identification,
would far exceed the possible limits of this article. Suffice it to mention among
the monuments on the western (Libyan) side the three temples of Seti I., Rameses
II., and Rameses III. Near the second is the fallen colossus of Rameses II., the
largest statue in Egypt. Beyond is the terraced temple of Queen Hatasu of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, near which a remarkable series of mummies and papyri were
found by Brugsch in 1881. At Medinet Habou is a great temple of Rameses III.,
with interesting sculptures describing his victories over the Philistines, and
also a calendar. Northwest of this are the cemeteries of the sacred apes and the
Valley of the Tombs of the Queens (seventeen sepulchres). On the eastern bank
at Luxor is the beautiful temple of Amenoph III., with an obelisk whose fellow
now stands in the Place de la Concorde at Paris. At Karnak is a splendid group
of temples built under the Twelfth Dynasty. The finest portion of this maze of
architectural magnificence is the Great Hall, 170 by 329 feet, with twelve imposing
columns 62 feet in height and 12 feet in diameter, and 122 minor columns, and
two obelisks, of which one is the tallest in Egypt, being 108 feet in height.
On the walls are fine sculptures depicting the battles of Seti I. and Rameses
II. against the Hittites, Arabs, Syrians, and Armenians. In one of the porticos
is recorded the expedition of Shishak I. against Jerusalem in B.C. 971. In classical
times Thebes was a great showplace, and was visited by both Greek and Roman tourists,
among the latter being the emperor Hadrian.
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LYKOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(he Lukon polis). A city of Upper Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile, between Hermopolis and Ptolemais. Its name was said to be derived from the fact that in its vicinity an Aethiopian army was once routed by wolves, but more probably from its worship of the jackal (wolf) god Anubis.
MAREIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Marea (Mareia, Maria, Maree). A town of Lower Egypt, which gave its name to the district and lake of Mareotis. The lake was separated from the Mediterranean by the neck of land on which Alexandria stood, and supplied with water by the Canopic branch of the Nile and by canals. It served as the port of Alexandria for vessels navigating the Nile.
MEMPHIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Memphis; in the Old Testament, Moph). A great city of Egypt, second in importance only to Thebes, after the fall of which it became the capital of the whole country, a position which it had previously shared with Thebes. It is said to have been founded by Menes. It stood on the left bank of the Nile, about ten miles above the Pyramids.
MENDI (Ancient city) EGYPT
A city of the Delta of Egypt, on the bank of one of the lesser arms of the Nile, named after it the Mendesian mouth (Mendesion stoma). Here was worshipped a deity of the Egyptians, called Mendes, and identified by Herodotus with the Arcadian Pan.
NAFKRATIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Naukratis). A city in the Delta of Egypt, on the eastern bank
of the Canopic branch of the Nile. It was a colony of the Milesians, flourishing
in the reign of Amasis, about B.C. 550, and remained a purely Greek city. It was
the only place in Egypt where Greeks were permitted to settle and trade. Its importance
was lessened after Alexandria was founded. It was the birthplace of Athenaeus
and Iulius Pollux. Important excavations were made here by Mr. Flinders Petrie
in 1885 and 1886, with the result of adding greatly to our knowledge of the Graeco-Egyptian
period. Naucratis possessed a temple to Aphrodite, one to Here, and a smaller
one to Castor and Pollux, besides a very great one, the Panhellenion, the central
religious meeting-place of all the Greeks in Egypt. In the heart of the city stood
the oldest temple of all, dedicated to the Milesian Apollo.
The recent discoveries have added to our knowledge of the relations
of Greece with earlier Egypt, and the writing found here is of great value in
the study of the Greek alphabet. An ancient factory for making Greek imitations
of the Egyptian scarabs is one of the curious things revealed by Mr. Petrie's
researches.
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NILOS (River) EGYPT
(Neilos). The Nile, a great river of Egypt. The name is probably
cognate with the Semitic Nahar or Nahal, "river." Homer calls it Aiguptos;
and the name Neilos occurs first in Hesiod and Hecataeus. The Jews called it Nahal-Misraim,
"River of Egypt." The Nile takes its rise in the two lakes Victoria
Nyanza and Albert Nyanza, which are themselves fed by various streams. For three
hundred miles after leaving the former, it flows with a swift current in rapids
and cataracts and between high walls of rock. It leaves the northern end of Lake
Albert Nyanza, where it is known as the Bahr-el-Jebel, and flows in a northerly
course towards the Mediterranean Sea. The first six score miles are through a
level country, then for another equal distance is contracted into a narrow stream
(in places not more than a quarter of a mile in width), and then, being forced
over the Yarbovah Rapids, it enters the plains and flows in a sluggish stream
to Khartoum, distant some 800 miles. In 7? 30' north latitude it divides into
two streams, the so-called White Nile (Bahr-el-Abiad) and the Bahrel-Jebel. In
9? 30' north latitude the latter receives the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the west. At
Khartoum (15? 37' north latitude) the White Nile and the Blue Nile (Bahr-el-Azrak)
unite, and the great stream then flows on, taking up the Black Nile (Bahr-elAswad),
whose black sediment makes the Delta so remarkable for its fertility. The point
of junction is the apex of the island Meroe, where the river has a breadth of
two miles. Thence it flows through Nubia in a rocky valley, falling over six cataracts,
the northernmost being known as the First Cataract, and marking now, as in antiquity,
the southern boundary of Egypt.
The Nile emptied into the Mediterranean by three channels,
parted into seven, of which, according to Herodotus, two were artificial and five
natural. From these seven channels come the names applied to it by Moschus (heptaporos),
Catullus (septemgeminus), and Ovid (septemplex). Most of the seven mouths had
names derived from their cities (i. e. the Canopic, Bolbitic, Sebennytic, Pathmetic
or Bucolic, Mendesian, Tanitic or Saitic, and Pelusiac). At the present time there
are only two principal mouths, known as the Rosetta on the west and the Damiat
on the east. From the dark sediment deposited by the river came the native name
of Egypt--Chemi or Kemi, "the black land." A great artificial canal
(Bahr-Yussouf, i. e. "Joseph's Canal") runs parallel to the river, at
the distance of about six miles, from Diospolis Parva in the Thebais to a point
on the west mouth of the river about half-way between Memphis and the sea. Many
smaller canals were cut to regulate the irrigation of the country. A canal from
the east mouth of the Nile to the head of the Red Sea was commenced under the
native kings, and finished by Darius, son of Hystaspes. There were several lakes
in the country, respecting which see Buto, Mareotis, Moeris, Sirbonis, and Tanis.
The ancients knew little of the Nile beyond the First Cataract
at Meroe. It was generally believed that the great river originated in Mauretania
and flowed for a long distance underground until it came to the southern part
of Aethiopia, whence it flowed northward as the Astapas. The emperor Nero undertook
to discover its sources, and sent out two expeditions for that purpose, which
succeeded only in reaching the confluence of the Sobat and the White Nile, some
thirty miles beyond the junction of the White Nile with the Bahr-el-Zereb. Ptolemy,
however, speaks of the river as issuing from two great lakes six and seven degrees
respectively south of the equator, and fed by the melting snows of the Mountains
of the Moon, lately identified by Stanley with Gordon Bennett, Ruwenzovi, and
adjacent peaks. This is about as much as any one had learned until the present
century, when the discoveries of Speke (1858 and 1862), Baker (1864), Schweinfurth
(1868-71), and Stanley (1875 and 1889) solved bit by bit the mystery of the ages.
The Nile was deified by the Egyptians and worshipped as a god.
A famous statue in the Vatican at Rome represents the river deity as a reclining
figure pillowed on a sphinx and holding a cornucopia (typical of the fertility
caused by the river's overflow), while sixteen children, representing the affluents
of the Nile, play about. The work belongs to the Graeco-Egyptian period.
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PANOPOLIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
Chemmis; later Panopolis, Panopolis. A great city of the Thebais, or Upper Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, celebrated for its manufacture of linen, its stone quarries, and its temples of Pan and Perseus.
PELUSIUM (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Pelousion, Old Test. Sin; both names are derived from nouns
meaning "mud"). A celebrated city of Lower Egypt, standing on the east
side of the easternmost mouth of the Nile, which was called after it the Pelusiac
mouth, twenty stadia (about two miles) from the sea, in the midst of morasses,
from which it obtained its name. As the key to Egypt on the northeast, and the
frontier city towards Syria and Arabia, it was strongly fortified, and was the
scene of many battles and sieges. It was the birthplace of the geographer Ptolemaeus.
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RINOKOLOURA (Ancient city) EGYPT
(ta Rhinokoloura) or Rhinocorura (ta Rhinokoroura). Now Kasr-el-Arish.
The frontier town of Egypt and Palestine, lying in the midst of the desert, at
the mouth of the brook (ElArish) which was the boundary between the countries,
and which is called in Scripture the River of Egypt. The name of it hence signifies
"Cutoff-Noses," and is said to have been given it because it was the
place to which criminals thus mutilated were banished under the Aethiopian dynasty
of kings of Egypt.
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SYINI (Ancient city) EGYPT
Now Assouan; a city of Upper Egypt on the east bank of the Nile, just below the First Cataract. It was an important point in the astronomy and geography of the ancients, as it lay just under the tropic of Cancer, and was therefore chosen as the place through which they drew their chief parallel of latitude.
VERENIKI (Ancient city) EGYPT
A city of Egypt on the coast of the Sinus Arabicus, from which
a road was made across the intervening desert to Coptos on the Nile, by Ptolemy
Philadelphus, 258 miles in length. From this harbour the vessels of Egypt took
their departure for Arabia Felix and India. It was through the medium of Berenice
also, and the caravan route to Coptos, that the principal trade of the Romans
with India was conducted. By this line of communication it is said that a sum
not less than what would now be $2,000,000 was remitted by the Roman traders to
their correspondents in the East, in payment of merchandise which ultimately sold
for a hundred times as much. The ruins of the ancient Berenice are found at the
modern port of Habest.
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VOUSSIRIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
There were several cities named Busiris in ancient Egypt, the most celebrated being placed by Herodotus in the middle of the Delta. It possessed a noble temple of Isis.
VOUVASTIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
(Boubastis) or Bubastus (Boubastas). The capital of the Nomos
Bubastites in Lower Egypt, which stood on the eastern bank of the Pelusiac branch
of the Nile, and was the chief seat of the worship of the goddess Bubastis (Pasht),
whom the Greeks identified with Artemis, and who was regarded as the daughter
of Ra and bride of Ptah, symbolizing the sexual passion. More than 70,000 persons
sometimes took part in her festivals at this place. Here also the cats sacred
to Bubastis were buried. The modern name of the city is Tel Bast. Here in 1887
the French explorer, M. Naville, discovered the ruins of the great temple of Bubastis,
and further excavations in 1888 showed the city to have been a very important
place under the Hyksos.
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MAREIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
Marea (or Mareia) and Mareotis: Marea was a village, then a city, in Egypt, located
on the south side of Lake Mareotis, south and southwest of Alexandria. The lake,
fed by canals from the Nile, gave its name to the district. The area developed
into a major source of foodstuffs for Alexandria, producing in particular a renowned
white wine exported all over the Mediterranean and supporting a large pottery
industry to provide amphoras for the wine. The lake offered recreational opportunities
for Alexandrians. In late antiquity, the shrine of St. Menas developed in the
desert south of the lake, and the region served as a major transit corridor for
pilgrims to the sanctuary. The decline of Alexandria after the Arab conquest and
the atrophy of the Canopic branch of the Nile led to the shrinkage of the lake
and to a reduction in demand for the area’s produce. The ensuing salinization
of the area was exacerbated by deliberate breaches of the barrier between the
sea and the lake in the Napoleonic era.
Bagnall, Roger, "Marea." Electronic Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World.
EEAW, Inc., 2002. http://www.eeaw.org (Accessed Nov. 7, 2005 ).
HERMOPOLIS MAGNA (Ancient city) EGYPT
OXYRRYNCHOS (Ancient city) EGYPT
SAIS (Ancient city) EGYPT
City of Egypt
on the Nile delta.
Sais was the capital of Egypt
during the XXVIth dynasty, that is from 664 to 525 B. C., a period of Renaissance
(sometimes called the Saitic Renaissance) after the rule of Nubian Pharaohs of
the XXVth dynasty and invasions by Assyrian kings, culminating with the sack of
Thebes of Egypt
by the later in 663. The leadership of Nubian Pharaohs had indeed been loose,
leaving room for a multiplicity of local kings in various parts of the delta,
including Sais, and some of the kings of Sais had already tried to play a leading
role against the dominion of Nubia
over Egypt, leading to the
short lived XXIVth dynasty (724-712).
The first Pharaoh of the XXVIth dynasty was Psammetichus I (664-610),
who started, following in the footsteps of his father Necos I, in making alliance
with Ashurbanipal against the Nubians, but then freed Egypt
from Assyrian dominion and, with the help of Greek mercenaries from Ionia
and Caria, reunited Egypt
under his own leadership. His son, Necos II (610-595), gave Egypt
a fleet, with the help of the Greeks, commissioned a trip around Africa and started
the building of a canal between the Nile
and the Red Sea, which would be completed (or reopenend) by Darius the Great.
Necos was succeeded by Psammetichus II (595-589), who had to turn
against the Nubians trying a comeback and, with the help of Greek mercenaries,
put a definitive end to attempts by southern kings to invade Egypt.
Amasis had friendly relations with the Greeks, making alliance with those of Cyrene
and granting freedom to the colony of Naucratis.
Toward the end of his reign, Persia
became the leading power in the Middle East, taking over the role assumed earlier
by Babylonia, and, under the short reign of Amasis' successor, Psammetichus III
(526-525), Cambyses conquered Egypt
and proclaimed himself Pharaoh, starting the XXVIIth dynasty by Egyptian count.
This period of Egyptian history is important because it marks the
beginning of relations between Egypt
and Greece. Because the Saitic
pharaohs employed Greek mercenaries, they created a body of interpreters, and
this made the reciprocal knowledge of the two cultures possible. Besides, it came
at a time Egypt itself was
rediscovering its own roots, rebuilding a lost unity and studying antique traditions.
Many Greek thinkers of this time are said to have visited Egypt.
In the Vth and IVth centuries, Sais was no longer the capital of Egypt,
which had become a vassal of Persia
before being subjected by Alexander the Great (332). But the relations between
the two peoples remained good and nearby Naucratis
was a gateway for those Greeks wishing to visit the country. Sais was the center
of the cult of the Egyptian goddess Neith, who was identified by the Greeks with
Athena.
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
This extract is cited July 2003 from the Plato and his dialogues URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
ABU SIMBEL (Ancient city) EGYPT
ALEXANDRIA (Ancient city) EGYPT
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