Note 241 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

The often-quoted anonymous author of a description of the empire from the time of Constantius, a good heathen, praises Egypt particularly on account of its exemplary piety: “Nowhere are the mysteries of the gods so well celebrated as there from of old and still at present." Indeed, he adds, some were of opinion that the Chaldaeans—he means the Syrian cultus—worshipped the gods better; but he held to what he had seen with his own eyes—"Here there are shrines of all sorts and magnificently adorned temples, and there are found numbers of sacristans and priests and prophets and believers and excellent theologians, and all goes on in its order; you find the altars everywhere blazing with flame and the priests with their fillets and the incense-vessels with deliciously fragrant spices.” Nearly from the same time (not from Hadrian), and evidently also from a well-informed hand, proceeds another more malicious description (vita Saturnini, 8): “He who in Egypt worships Sarapis is also a Christian, and those who call themselves Christian bishops likewise adore Sarapis; every grand Rabbi of the Jews, every Samaritan, every Christian clergyman is there at the same time a sorcerer, a prophet, a quack (aliptes). Even when the patriarch comes to Egypt some demand that he pray to Sarapis, others that he pray to Christ.” This diatribe is certainly connected with the circumstance that the Christians declared the Egyptian god to be the Joseph of the Bible, the son of Sara, and rightfully carrying the bushel. The position of the Egyptian orthodox party is apprehended in a more earnest spirit by the author, belonging presumably to the third century, of the Dialogue of the Gods, preserved in a Latin translation among the writings attributed to Appuleius, in which the thrice-greatest Hermes announces things future to Asklepios: "Thou knowest withal, Asklepios, that Egypt is a counterpart of heaven, or, to speak more correctly, a transmigration and descent of the whole heavenly administration and activity; indeed, to speak still more correctly, our fatherland is the temple of the whole universe. And yet a time will set in, when it would appear as if Egypt had vainly with pious mind in diligent service cherished the divine, when all sacred worship of the gods will be without result and a failure. For the deity will betake itself back into heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, and the land, which was the seat of religious worships, will be deprived of the presence of divine power and left to its own resources. Then will this consecrated land, the abode of shrines and temples, be densely filled with graves and corpses. O Egypt, Egypt, of thy worships only rumours will be preserved, and even these will seem incredible to thy coming generations, only words will be preserved on the stones to tell of thy pious deeds, and Egypt will be inhabited by the Scythian or Indian or other such from the neighbouring barbarian land. New rights will be introduced, a new law, nothing holy, nothing religious, nothing worthy of heaven and of the celestials will be heard or in spirit believed. A painful separation of the gods from men sets in; only the bad angels remain there, to mingle among mankind" (according to Bernays’s translation, Ges. Abh. i. 330).