What further discoveries of the lost documents of early Christianity still await us in Egypt it is impossible to say. It is only during the last few years that attention has been turned towards monuments which, to the students of Egyptian antiquity, seemed of too recent a date. Countless manuscripts of priceless value have already perished through the ignorance of the fellahin and the neglect of the tourist and savan, to whom the term “Coptic” has been synonymous with “worthless.” But the soil of Egypt is archæologically almost inexhaustible, and the land of the Septuagint, of the Christian school of Alexandria, and of the passionate theology of a later epoch, cannot fail to yield up other documents that will throw a flood of light on the early history of our faith. It is only the other day that, among the Fayyûm papyri now in the British Museum, there was found a fragment of the Septuagint version of [pg 173] the Psalms older than the oldest ms. of the Bible hitherto known. And the traveller who still wishes to see the Nile at leisure and in his own way will find in the old Egyptian quarries behind Dêr Abu Hannes, but a little to the south of the city which Hadrian raised to the memory of Antinous, abundant illustrations of the doctrine and worship of the primitive Coptic Church. He can there study all the details of its ancient ecclesiastical architecture cut out of the living rock, and can trace how the home of a hermit became first a place of pilgrimage and then a chapel with its altar to the saints. The tombs themselves, inscribed with the Greek epitaphs of the sainted fugitives from persecution, still exist outside the caves in which they had dwelt. We can even see the change taking place which transformed the Greek Church of Alexandria into the Coptic Church of Egypt. On either side of a richly-carved cross is the record of “Papias, son of Melito the Isaurian,” buried in the spot made holy by the body of St. Macarius, which is written on the one side in Greek, on the other side in Coptic. Henceforward Greek is superseded by Coptic, and the numerous pilgrims who ask St. Victor or St. Phœbammon to pray for them write their names and prayers in the native language and the native alphabet. With the betrayal of Egypt to the Mohammedans by George the Makaukas the doom [pg 174] of the Greek language and Bible was sealed. Coptic had already become the language of the Egyptian Church, and though we still find quotations from the Greek New Testament painted here and there on the walls of rock-cut shrines they are little more than ornamental designs. Christian Egypt is native, not Greek.
Chapter VI. Herodotos In Egypt.
From Coptic Christianity, just preparing to confront twelve centuries of Mohammedan persecution, we must now turn back to Pagan Greece. The Persian wars have breathed a new life into Greece and its colonies, and given them a feeling of unity such as they never possessed before. Athens has taken its place as leader not only in art and literature, but also in war, and under the shelter of her name the Ionians of Asia Minor have ventured to defy their Persian lord, and the Ionic dialect has ceased to be an object of contempt. The Greek, always restless and curious to see and hear “some new thing,” is now beginning to indulge his tastes at leisure, and to visit as a tourist the foreign shores of the Mediterranean. Art has leaped at a single bound to its perfection in the sculptures of Pheidias; poetry has become divine in the tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles, and history is preparing to take part in the general development. The modern world of Europe is already born.
The founder of literary history—of history, that is to say, which aims at literary form and interest—was Herodotos of Halikarnassos. If Greek tradition may be trusted, his uncle had been put to death by Lygdamis, the despot of the city, and the subsequent expulsion of the tyrant was in some measure due to the political zeal of the future historian. Herodotos was wealthy and well educated, as fond of travel as the majority of his countrymen, and not behind them in curiosity and vanity. He had cultivated the literary dialect of Ionia, perhaps during his stay in Samos, and had made good use there of the library of Polykratês, the friend and correspondent of Amasis. What other libraries he may have consulted we do not know, but his history shows that he had a considerable acquaintance with the works of his predecessors, whom he desired to eclipse and supersede. Hekatæus of Miletus, who had travelled in Egypt as far south as Thebes, if not Assuan, and had written a full account of the country, its people and its history, Xanthus, the Lydian, who had compiled the annals of his native land, beside numberless other authors, historians and geographers, poets and dramatists, philosophers and physicists, had been made to contribute to his work. Now and again he refers to the older historians when he wishes to correct or contradict them; more frequently he [pg 177] silently incorporates their statements and words without mentioning them by name. It was thus, we are told by Porphyry, that he “stole” the accounts given by Hekatæus of the crocodile, the hippopotamus and the phœnix, and the incorrectness of his description of that marvellous bird, which, like Hekatæus, he likens to an eagle, proves that the charge is correct. Reviewers did not exist in his days, nor were marks of quotation or even footnotes as yet invented, and Herodotos might therefore plead that, although he quoted freely without acknowledgment, he was not in any real sense a plagiarist. He only acted like other Greek writers of his time, and if his plagiarisms exceeded theirs it was only because he had read more and made a more diligent use of his note-book.
It is we, and not the Greek world for which he wrote, who are the sufferers. It is frequently difficult, if not impossible, for us to tell whether Herodotos is speaking from his own experience or quoting from others, whose trustworthiness is doubtful or whose statements may have been misunderstood. From time to time internal evidence assures us that we are dealing, not with Herodotos himself, but with some other writer whose remarks he has embodied. His commentators have continually argued on the supposition that, wherever the first person is used, it is [pg 178] Herodotos himself who is speaking. Statements of his accordingly have been declared to be true, in spite of the contrary evidence of oriental research, because, it is urged, he is a trustworthy witness and has reported honestly what he heard and saw. But if he did not hear and see the supposed facts, the case is altered and the argument falls to the ground.
Herodotos took part in the foundation of the colony of Thurii in southern Italy in b.c. 445, and there, rather than at the Olympic festival, as later legend believed, he read to the assembled Greeks the whole or a part of his history. His travels in Egypt, therefore, must have already taken place. Their approximate date, indeed, is fixed by what he tells us about the battlefield of Paprêmis (iii. 12).
At Paprêmis, for the first time, an Egyptian army defeated the Persian forces. Its leader was Inarôs the Libyan, and doubtless a large body of Libyans was enrolled in it. Along with Amyrtæos he had led the Egyptians to revolt in the fifth year of the reign of Artaxerxes i. (b.c. 460). Akhæmenes, the satrap of Egypt, was routed and slain, and for six years Egypt maintained a precarious freedom. The fortresses at Memphis and Pelusium, however, remained in the hands of the Persians, and in spite of all the efforts of the Egyptians, they could not be dislodged. Greek aid accordingly was sought, and [pg 179] the Athenians, still at war with Persia, sent two hundred ships from Cyprus to the help of the insurgents. The ships sailed up the Nile as far as Memphis, where the Persian garrison still held out.
All attempts to oust it proved unavailing, and the approach of a great Persian army under Megabyzos obliged the Greeks to retreat to the island of Prosopites. Here they were blockaded for a year and a half; then the besiegers turned the river aside and marched over its dry bed against the camp of the allies, which they took by storm. The Greek expedition was annihilated, and Inarôs fell into the hands of his enemies, who sent him to Persia and there impaled him. Amyrtæos, however, still maintained himself in the marshes of the Delta, and in b.c. 449 Kimon sent sixty ships of the Athenian fleet to assist him in the struggle. But before they could reach the coast of Egypt news arrived of the death of Kimon, and the ships returned home. Four years later, if we may trust Philokhorus, another Egyptian prince, Psammetikhos, who seems to have succeeded Amyrtæos, sent 72,000 bushels of wheat to Athens in the hope of buying therewith Athenian help. But it does not appear to have been given, and Egypt once more sullenly obeyed the Persian rule. We learn from Herodotos (iii. 15) that “the great king” even allowed Thannyras and Pausiris, [pg 180] the sons of his inveterate enemies Inarôs and Amyrtæos, to succeed to the principalities of their fathers.