The grave, serious Christians of Upper Egypt were very unlike the lively Alexandrians. But though the difference arose from peculiarities of national character, it was only spoken of as a difference of opinion. The Egyptians formed an ascetic sect in the church, who were called heretics by the Alexandrians, and named Docetas, because they taught that the Saviour was a god, and did not really suffer on the cross, but was crucified only in appearance. They of necessity used the Gospel according to the Egyptians, which is quoted by Cassianus, one of their writers; many of them renounced marriage with, the other pleasures and duties of social life, and placed their chief virtue in painful self-denial; and out of them sprang that remarkable class of hermits, monks, and fathers of the desert who in a few centuries covered Europe with monasteries.
It is remarkable that the translation of a gospel into Koptic introduced a Greek alphabet into the Koptic language. Though for all religious purposes the scribes continued to use the ancient hieroglyphics, in which we trace the first steps by which pictures are made to represent words and syllables rather than letters, yet for the common purposes of writing they had long since made use of the enchorial or common hand, in which the earlier system of writing is improved by the characters representing only letters, though sadly too numerous for each to have a fixed and well-known force. But, as the hieroglyphics were also always used for carved writing on all subjects, and the common hand only used on papyrus with a reed pen, the latter became wholly an indistinct running hand; it lost that beauty and regularity which the hieroglyphics, like the Greek and Roman characters, kept by being carved on stone, and hence it would seem arose the want of a new alphabet for the New Testament. This was made by merely adding to the Greek alphabet six new letters borrowed from the hieroglyphics for those sounds which the Greeks did not use; and the writing was then written from left to right like a European language instead of in either direction according to the skill or fancy of the scribe.
It was only upon the ancient hieroglyphics thus falling into disuse that the Greeks of Alexandria, almost for the first time, had the curiosity to study the principles on which they were written. Clemens Alexandrinus, who thought no branch of knowledge unworthy of his attention, gives a slight account of them, nearly agreeing with the results of our modern discoveries. He mentions the three kinds of writing; first, the hieroglyphic; secondly, the hieratic, which is nearly the same, but written with a pen, and less ornamental than the carved figures; and thirdly, the demotic, or common alphabetic writing. He then divides the hieroglyphic into the alphabetic and the symbolic; and lastly, he divides the symbolic characters into the imitative, the figurative, and those formed like riddles. As instances of these last we may quote, for the first, the three zigzag lines which by simple imitation mean “water;” for the second, the oval which mean “a name,” because kings’ names were written within ovals; and for the third, a cup with three anvils, which mean “Lord of Battles,” because “cup” and “lord” have nearly the same sound neb, and “anvils” and “battles” have nearly the same sound meshe.
In this reign Pantonus of Athens, a Stoic philosopher, held the first place among the Christians of Alexandria. He is celebrated for uniting the study of heathen learning with a religious zeal which led him to preach Christianity in Abyssinia.
He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians; and, though Athenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. To have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great praise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over the world? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introduced without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden, together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the same schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians, learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion; and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly two centuries. Pantænus has left no writings of his own, and is best known through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens. He is said to have brought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met with on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in the original Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, would settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that now bears that Apostle’s name in the Greek translation.
The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him from Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded Pantænus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a voluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a platonist, though sometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to the Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight books of Stromata, or collections, which he wrote to describe the perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of Gnostics “falsely so called.” By his advice, and by the imitation of Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to knowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and then a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh.
Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark of the Gnostic sect. He thought much of the sacred power of numbers. Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot, which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred sign for the name of Jesus. Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the commandments given to Moses. Seven was a glorious number, and there are seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and the two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egypt under Joseph. Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but here there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in the pagan poets.
During the reign of Pertinax, which lasted only three months (194 A.D.), we find no trace of his power in Egypt, except the money which the Alexandrians coined in his name. It seems to have been the duty of the prefect of the mint, as soon as he heard of an emperor’s death, to lose no time in issuing coins in the name of his successor. It was one of the means to proclaim and secure the allegiance of the province for the new emperor.