Note 220 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

The ἐξηγητής, according to Strabo, xvii. 1, 12, p. 797, the first civic official in Alexandria under the Ptolemies as under the Romans, and entitled to wear the purple, is certainly identical with the year-priest in the testament of Alexander appearing in the Alexander-romance very well instructed in such matters (iii. 33, p. 149, Müller). As the Exegetes has, along with his title, doubtless to be taken in a religious sense, the ἐπιμέλεια τῶν τῇ πόλει χρησίμων, that priest of the romance is ἐπιμελιστὴς τῆς πόλεως. The romance-writer will not have invented the payment with a talent and the hereditary character any more than the purple and the golden chaplet; the hereditary element, in reference to which Lumbroso (l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani, p. 152) recalls the ἐξηγητὴς ἔναρχος of the Alexandrian inscriptions (C. I. Gr. 4688, 4976 c.), is presumably to be conceived to the effect that a certain circle of persons was called by hereditary right, and out of these the governor appointed the year-priest. This priest of Alexander (as well as of the following Egyptian kings, according to the stone of Canopus and that of Rosetta, C. I. Gr. 4697), was under the earlier Lagids the eponym for Alexandrian documents, while later as under the Romans the kings’ names come in for that purpose. Not different from him probably was the “chief priest of Alexandria and all Egypt,” of an inscription of the city of Rome from Hadrian’s time (C. I. Gr. 5900: ἀρχιερεῖ Ἀλεξανδρείας καὶ Αἰγύπτου πάσης Λευκίῳ Ἰουλίῳ Οὐηστίνῳ καὶ ἐπιστάτῃ τοῦ Μουσείου καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ βιβλιοθηκῶν Ῥωμαικῶν τε καὶ Ἑλληνικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς παιδείας Ἀδριανοῦ, ἐπιστολεῖ τοῦ αὐτοῦ αὐτοκράτορος); the proper title ἐξηγητής, was avoided out of Egypt, because it usually denoted the sexton. If the chief priesthood, as the tenor of the inscription suggests, is to be assumed as having been at that time permanent, the transition from the annual tenure to the at least titular, and not seldom also real, tenure for life repeats itself, as is well known, in the sacerdotia of the provinces, to which this Alexandrian one did not indeed belong, but the place of which it represented in Egypt (p. 238). That the priesthood and the presidency of the Museum are two distinct offices is shown by the inscription itself. We learn the same from the inscription of a royal chief physician of a good Lagid period, who is withal as well exegete as president of the Museum (Χρύσερμον Ἡρακλείτου Ἀλεξανδρέα τὸν συγγενῆ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ ἐξηγητὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρῶν καὶ ἐπιστάτην τοῦ Μουσείου). But the two monuments at the same time suggest that the post of first official of Alexandria and the presidency of the Museum were frequently committed to the same man, although in the Roman time the former was conferred by the prefect, the latter by the emperor.