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the Sûdân. In 304 he issued a savage edict against the Christians in Egypt, and the persecution which followed it was marked with ferocious cruelty. Many thousands of Egyptians fled to the desert monasteries to avoid conscription, and embraced Christianity. From one of his buildings on the Island of Philae comes the stone bearing the names of Diocletian and Constantine (A.D. 324) (No. 1059, Bay 26).

In 378 Theodosius the Great proclaimed Christianity the religion of his Empire, and many temples in Lower Egypt were turned at once into churches; but the ancient Egyptian gods were worshipped as usual in Upper Egypt. Marcianus (A.D. 450-457) invaded Nubia and punished the Blemmyes and Nobadae for raiding Roman territory ; they paid a huge fine, gave hostages for their future good behaviour, and made an agreement to keep the peace for one hundred years. In return they stipulated that they should be allowed to make pilgrimages annually to Philae, and to borrow the statue of Isis from time to time, so that they might take it about the country, and give the people the opportunity of invoking the protection and blessing of the goddess. In the first half of the sixth century the Nubians embraced Christianity, and Silko, king of the Nobadae, founded a kingdom having its capital at Dongola. During the reign of Justinian (A.D. 527-565) the hundred years' truce came to an end, and the Blemmyes and Nobadae again began to give trouble. Justinian, believing that the cause of the revolt was the annual pilgrimage to Philae, sent his officer Narses thither, with strict orders to close the temples of Isis. Narses threw the priests of Isis into prison, confiscated the revenues of the goddess, and carried off the statues of the gods of Philae to Constantinople.

In the reign of Heraclius the Persians, under Chosroës, invaded Egypt (A.D. 619), which they held for ten years. Owing to the desertion from the Persians of the Arab tribes, who had now attached themselves to the victorious troops of Muhammad the Prophet (born at Mekkah, Aug. 20, A.D. 570, died in June, 632), Heraclius was able to attack the Persians, in Syria, and defeating them became master of Egypt once more. In 640 'Amr Ibn al-Asi, the general of the Khalifa Omar, conquered Egypt, and thus the country became a province of the newly-founded Arab Empire.

During the rule of the Romans, which lasted from B.C. 30 to A.D. 640, the Greek language entirely superseded Egyptian for official purposes, and it was also usually employed in the funerary inscriptions. Interesting examples are the stele of

Politta, inscribed with a metrical text (Bay 26, No. 1083), and the stele of Artemidorus (Bay 26, No. 1084). On the pillar altar (Bay 31, No. 1086) is a dedication in Greek to the god Serapis of the city of Canopus; and on the square sandstone slab (Bay 26, No. 1087) is a very interesting but difficult text recording the cleansing and restoration of some public building near the town of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt, whilst Gabriel was Duke of the Thebaid. Other interesting inscriptions in Greek are found in ostraka, or potsherds, many of which are dated in the reigns of Claudius,

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Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Antoninus, Sabinus, Pertinax, etc., will be found exhibited in Table-case C in the Third Egyptian Room. During the early centuries of Roman rule the Egyptians continued to mummify their dead, and to bury them with the ancient rites and ceremonies. The use of the funerary stele or tablet continued down to the fourth century A.D.; but the gods represented on them appeared in different forms, and Greek or demotic took the place of hieroglyphics. In the region about Thebes and to the south of that city the cult of Osiris and Isis continued until about. A.D. 560, and a simple system of mummification was practised in connexion with the worship of the dead.

The most important event during the rule of the Romans was the introduction of Christianity by St. Mark the Apostle, who, according to tradition, preached the Gospel

in Alexandria about A.D. 69. The knowledge of the new religion spread rapidly, and converts multiplied and, though no direct proof is forthcoming at present, there is reason to think that before the middle of the second century an account of the life of Christ and His words and works existed in the Egyptian tongue. Men who had embraced Christianity retired into the desert to lead a life of austerity and contemplation, among whom may be mentioned Frontonius, who collected seventy disciples, and withdrew to the Nitrian Desert between A.D. 138 and 161, and Paul the Anchorite, who died about A.D. 250, aged 113 years. The life and teaching of Anthony, born 250, died 355, induced thousands to become monks. Pachomius, in 320, systematized monasticism, but he required the recluses to work for their living whilst they cultivated spiritual excellences. Women as well as men flocked to the desert, and nunneries existed in many places in Egypt. The number of such recluses was great; at Nitria alone there were 5,000 monks, and, in addition, 600 lived solitary lives in the neighbouring desert. At Oxyrhynchus there were 10,000 monks, and the bishop had charge of 20,000 nuns. In the monasteries of Nitria

and Panopolis, and elsewhere, the Holy Scriptures were translated from Greek into Egyptian (ie., Coptic, see pages 35-39) and Syriac, and other Oriental languages; and copies of them were carried by monks and fugitive Christians into Nubia, and even into remote Abyssinia, by way of the Blue Nile. In the Oases of the Western Desert were numbers of Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries; wherever the monk went he took Christianity with him. Still, in spite of the spread of the new religion, the beliefs which the Egyptians had received from their pagan ancestors also flourished in Egypt for centuries after the preaching of St. Mark, and people of all classes clung to their amulets, and words of power, and magical ceremonies, even after they had embraced Christianity. For a very long time the Cross was regarded as an amulet possessing the greatest magical power possible, and the Name of Christ was held to be the greatest of all words of power.

The principal doctrine of the Egyptian Christians, or Copts, is that God the Father and Christ are of one and the Same nature; Arius held that God and Christ are only similar in nature, and was declared a heretic. The Copts are called Monophysites, because they believed, and still believe, that Christ is of one nature only, and Jacobites because their views as to the nature of Christ are identical

with those of one Jacob, a famous preacher of the Monophysite doctrine. The head of the Coptic Church is the Patriarch, who is chosen from among the monks of the Monastery of St. Anthony in the Red Sea Desert. The Copts attach great importance to Baptism, they face the East when praying, and they pray seven times a day. They make use of Confession, and keep five Fasts and seven Festivals. The Copts were persecuted severely in the reigns of Hadrian, Decius, Diocletian, and Julian the Apostate (A.D. 361), but the cruellest of the persecutions of the Roman emperors was that of Diocletian

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in 304. The Copts commemorated the sufferings of their community on this occasion by making the Era of the Martyrs, by which they date their documents, begin with the day of Diocletian's accession to the throne, ie, August 29th, A.D. 284. In the reign of Justinian the Copts split up into two great parties, i.e., the Melkites, or Royalists, which included all those who were in the service of the Government, and the Jacobites, or ordinary inhabitants of the country; henceforward each party chose its own Patriarch. The

dissensions between them materially aided the Conquest of Egypt by the Arabs.

Side by side with Christianity there also sprang up in Egypt, under Roman rule, a number of sects to which the title "Gnostic" has been given. They derived many of their views and beliefs from the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and they admitted into their system many of the old gods, e.g., Khnemu, Ptaḥ. Rā, Amen, Thoth, Osiris, etc. The founders of Gnosticism, a word derived from the Greek gnosis, "knowledge," claimed to possess a superiority of knowledge in respect of things divine and celestial, and they regarded the knowledge of God as the truest perfection of knowledge. The characteristic god of the Gnostics was Abrasax, or Abraxas, and he represented the ONE who embraced ALL within himself. They attributed magical properties to stones, which, when cut into certain forms, and inscribed with legends, or mystic names, words, and letters, afforded, they thought, protection against moral and physical evil. An unusually fine collection of Gnostic Gems and Amulets is exhibited in Table-case N, in the Fourth Egyptian Room: No. I speaks of the "Father of the World, the God in Three Forms"; No. 18 shows us the lion-headed serpent Knoumis and the mystic symbol SSS; No. 25 makes the Osiris-Christ to be Jah of the Hebrews, and also Alpha and Omega; Nos. 36, 37, and 44 have figures of Abraxas cut upon them; No. 87 mentions Solomon's Seal, No. 110, the six Archangels; and of peculiar interest are No. 231, engraved with a representation of the Crucifixion, and No. 469, engraved with a representation of the Birth of Christ.

THE ARAB PERIOD.

A.D. 640-1517.

As the Arabs were materially assisted in their conquest of Egypt by the Copts, the new masters of the country treated the latter with great consideration for about 100 years; but, from A.D. 750 onwards, they persecuted their Christian subjects at intervals with great severity. The non-Christian inhabitants of the country embraced Islâm, or the doctrine of Muḥammad the Prophet, and, with the religion of the Muslims, the knowledge of the Arabic language spread throughout Egypt. It gradually superseded Egyptian, or Coptic, and about the end of the twelfth century it became

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