The Greeks had at all times been forward in owning the Egyptians as their teachers in religion; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos, the boat of Charon, and the river Styx of their mythology, we see a clear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faint glimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments; and, now that Rome was in close intercourse with Egypt, the Romans were equally ready to borrow thence their religious ceremonies. They brought to Rome the Egyptian opinions with the statues of the gods. They ran into the new superstition to avoid the painful uneasiness of believing nothing, and, though the Romans ridiculed their own gods, they believed in those of Egypt. So fashionable was the worship of Isis and Serapis becoming in Italy, that Augustus made a law that no Egyptian ceremonies should enter the city or even the suburbs of Rome. His subjects might copy the luxuries, the follies, and the vices of the Alexandrians, but not the gloomy devotion of the Egyptians. But the spread of opinions was not so checked; even Virgil taught the doctrine of the Egyptian millennium, or the resurrection from the dead when the thousand years were ended; and the cripple asking for alms in the streets of Rome would beg in the name of the holy Osiris.
Egypt felt no change on the death of Augustus. The province was well governed during the whole of the reign of Tiberius, and the Alexandrians completed the beautiful temple to his honour, named the Sebaste, or Cæsar’s Temple. It stood by the side of the harbour, and was surrounded with a sacred grove. It was ornamented with porticoes, and fitted up with libraries, paintings, and statues, and was the most lofty building in the city. In front of this temple they set up two ancient obelisks, which had been made by Thutmosis III. and carved by Ramses II., and which, like the other monuments of the Theban kings, have outlived all the temples and palaces of their Greek and Roman successors. These obelisks are now generally known as “Cleopatra’s Needles.” One of them, in 1878, was taken to London and set up on the Thames Embankment; the other was soon afterward brought to New York, and is now in Central Park in that city. It is sixty-seven feet high to its sharpened apex, and seven feet, seven inches in diameter at its base. On its face are deeply incised inscriptions in hieroglyphic character, giving the names Thutmosis III., Ramses II., and Seti II.
The harsh justice with which Tiberius began his reign was at Rome soon changed into a cruel tyranny; but in the provinces it was only felt as a check to the injustice of the prefects. On one occasion, when Æmilius Rectus sent home from Egypt a larger amount of taxes than was usual, he hoped that his zeal would be praised by Tiberius. But the emperor’s message to the prefect was as stern as it was humane: “I should wish my sheep to be sheared, but not to be flayed.” On the death of one of the prefects, there was found among his property at Rome a statue of Menelaus, carved in Ethiopian obsidian, which had been used in the religious ceremonies in the temple of Heliopolis, and Tiberius returned it to the priests of that city as its rightful owners. Another proof of the equal justice with which this province was governed was to be seen in the buildings then carried on by the priests in Upper Egypt. We find the name of Tiberius carved in hieroglyphics on additions or repairs made to the temples at Thebes, at Aphroditopolis, at Berenicê, on the Red Sea, at Philæ, and at the Greek city of Parembole, in Nubia. The great portico was at this time added to the temple at Tentyra, with an inscription dedicating it to the goddess in Greek and in hieroglyphics. As a building is often the work of years, while sculpture is only the work of weeks, so the fashion of the former is always far less changing than that of the latter. The sculptures on the walls of this beautiful portico are crowded and graceless; while, on the other hand, the building itself has the same grand simplicity and massive strength that we find in the older temples of Upper Egypt.
We cannot but admire the zeal of the Egyptians by whom this work was then finished. They were treated as slaves by their Greek fellow-countrymen; their houses were ransacked every third year by military authority in search of arms; they could have had no help from their Roman masters, who only drained the province of its wealth; and the temple had perhaps never been heard of by the emperor, who could have been little aware that the most lasting monument of his reign was being raised in the distant province of Egypt.
The priests of the other parts of the country sent gifts out of their poverty in aid of this pious work; and among the figures on the walls we see those of forty cities, from Semneh, at the second cataract, to Memphis and Saïs, in the Delta, each presenting an offering to the god of the temple.
In the third year of this reign Germanicus Cæsar, who, much against his will, had been sent into the East as governor, found time to leave his own province, and to snatch a hasty view of the time-honoured buildings of Egypt. Descending the river to Thebes, and, while gazing on the huge remains of the temples, he asked the priests to read to him the hieroglyphical writing on the walls. He was told that it recounted the greatness of the country in the time of King Ramses, when there were seven hundred thousand Egyptians of an age to bear arms; and that with these troops Ramses had conquered the Libyans, Ethiopians, Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, Syrians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Bithynians, and Lycians. He was also told the tributes laid upon each of those nations; the weight of gold and silver, the number of chariots and horses, the gifts of ivory and scents for the temples, and the quantity of grain which the conquered provinces sent to feed the population of Thebes. After listening to the musical statue of Amenhothes, Germanicus went on to Elephantine and Syênê; and, on his return, he turned aside to the pyramids and the Lake of Mceris, which regulated the overflow of the Nile on the neighbouring fields. At Memphis, Germanicus consulted the sacred bull Apis as to his future fortune, and met with an unfavourable answer. The manner of consulting Apis was for the visitor to hold out some food in his hand, and the answer was understood to be favourable if the bull turned his head to eat, but unfavourable if he looked another way. When Germanicus accordingly held out a handful of grain, the well-fed animal turned his head sullenly towards the other side of his stall; and on the death of this young prince, which shortly followed, the Egyptians did not forget to praise the bull’s foresight. This blameless and seemingly praiseworthy visit of Germanicus did not, however, escape the notice of the jealous Tiberius. He had been guilty of gaining the love of the people by walking about without guards, in a plain Greek dress, and of lowering the price of grain in a famine by opening the public granaries; and Tiberius sternly reproached him with breaking the known law of Augustus, by which no Roman citizen of consular or even of equestrian rank might enter Alexandria without leave from the emperor.