Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity: Christianity Under the Byzantine Emperors

CHRISTIANITY UNDER THE BYZANTINE EMPERORS.

When quiet was re-established in Egypt by the Roman armies, after more than sixty years of civil troubles, it was found to be no longer the same country that it had been under the Antonines. The framework of society had been broken, the Greeks had lessened in numbers and still more in weight. Greek toleration of all religions and of all modes of thought then gave way to Egyptian more bigoted earnestness. The bright days of Egypt as a Greek kingdom ended with the rebellions against Gallienus, Aurelian, and Dioclesian. The native Egyptians and the old superstitions then rise again into notice, as Greek civilization sinks around them. The building of Constantinople, and the removal of the scat of government from Rome to that new Greek city, yet further lessened the numbers, and thus the rank of the Greeks in Alexandria. Among the Christians, the more superstitious Egyptians, whose religion was still polytheism under a Christian form, as being now the more numerous, are able in their turn to call the Greek Christians heretics. Then began the celebrated Arian controversy, as to whether Jesus Christ were a God or a created being; and the same intolerance, which ten centuries earlier would not allow the Libyans to eat beef, is now uneasy at there being two opinions about the miraculous

12 and 98. It then asserts the two natures of Christ, that he is both "perfect God and perfect man." This was meant to get over the difficulty of a dying God which had been ridiculed by Xenophanes, in the case of Osiris, five centuries before the Christian era; when he told the Egyptians that if Osiris was a man they should not worship him, and if he was a god they need not lament his sufferings. But this Athanasian Creed, though setting forth the Egyptian opinions, was an offspring of the Latin church, and it is very doubtful whether it would have been wholly approved of by Athanasius. The Egyptians had raised Mary, the wife of Joseph, almost into a goddess, at least into "the mother of God," who had imparted no portion of human nature to her son; they denied the two natures of Christ, and clung faithfully to t he words of their own Nicene Creed, which declared that he was "of one substance with the Father."

It was during these years of civil trouble and political agitation that Christianity, or at least a form of religion which called itself Christian, spread over the whole of Egypt. That large class of the population which a few years before formed the priesthood of the old temples, were now Christian monks. They were all zealous supporters of Athanasius, and all earnest against the Arian opinions of the Greeks. For their use, three Egyptian translations of the Bible were made, one into the language used in the western half of the Delta, called Coptic, a second into that of the Eastern half, called Bashmuric,

101) The great court-yard of the temple of Medinet Abou, at Thebes, was is used as a

Fig. 101.

cathedral church dedicated to St. Athanasius. In some cases, they removed from before their eyes the memorials of the old superstition, by covering up the sculptures on the walls with mud from the Nile, and white plaster. In other cases, they contented themselves with making a slight change in the sculpture, as at the temple of Asseboua, in Nubia, where they painted the figure of the Apostle Peter over that of the old god of the temple, and the

102).

Fig. 102.

By the burst of enthusiasm in favour of Athanasius, the Nicene Creed became the received religion of all native Egyptians, and beyond them of those Alexandrians who aimed at rising into importance by taking the popular side in the quarrel. Arianism, on the other hand, even when supported by, the weak government of the Emperor, lost ground rapidly, and it soon took refuge in the fortified camps of the Greek soldiers. A church was dedicated to the Arian bishop George, within the walls of the strong castle of Babylon, opposite Memphis, and another at Ptolemais, where the Greek garrison collected the toll of the Thebaid, and where the modern village vet bears his name, and is called by the Arabs Geergeh, St. George became a favourite saint with the Greeks in Egypt, and in those few spots where the Greek soldiers were masters of the churches, this Arian and unpopular bishop was often painted on the walls, riding triumphantly on horseback, and slaying the great serpent or dragon of Athanasian error.

At this time a marked separation was taking place between the opinions of Constantinople, the chief seat of

103). The ball, which usually means the sun, would seem to have sometimes meant the sins of mankind; and the goddesses Isis and Nephthys are often represented as rolling the same ball before them. St. Augustin also, during the greater part of his life, was a Manichæan, and held the Gnostic opinion of a god of goodness and a god of evil; and he was so far an admirer of the Egyptians, or at least of their practice of making mummies, as to say that they were the only Christians who really and fully, believed in a future resurrection from the dead.

Fig. 103.

If St. Jerome, when noting the religious agreement between Rome and Egypt, really fancied that in anything whatever Rome had been the teacher, he had read history to very little purpose. But Rome and Egypt then held the same views of Christianity, which have since been known as the opinions of the Roman church, and which were at the time rejected as too superstitious by many of the more learned bishops of Constantinople, Asia Minor, and Syria, who for the time held back from the Athanasian opinions.

Hence arose the separate establishment of the Greek

Fig. 104.--Isis Rising Heliacally.