A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

These are the only signs of ruin—signs traced not by the finger of time, but by the hand of the spoiler. So fresh, so fair is all the rest, that we are fain to cheat ourselves for a moment into the belief that what we see is work not marred, but arrested. Those columns, depend on it, are yet unfinished. That pavement is about to be relaid. It would not surprise us to find the masons here to-morrow morning, or the sculptor, with mallet and chisel, carrying on that band of lotus buds and bees. Far more difficult is it to believe that they all struck work forever some two-and-twenty centuries ago.

Here and there, where the foundations have been disturbed, one sees that the columns are constructed of sculptured blocks, the fragments of some earlier temple; while, at a height of about six feet from the ground, a Greek cross cut deep into the side of the shaft stamps upon each pillar the seal of Christian worship.

For the Copts who choked the colonnades and court-yards with their hovels seized also on the temples. Some they pulled down for building material; others they appropriated. We can never know how much they destroyed; but two large convents on the eastern bank a little higher up the river, and a small basilica at the north end of the island, would seem to have been built with the magnificent masonry of the southern quay, as well as with blocks taken from a structure which once occupied the south-eastern corner of the great colonnade. As for this beautiful painted portico, they turned it into a chapel. A little rough-hewn niche in the east wall, and an overturned credence-table fashioned from a single block of limestone, mark the site of the chancel. The Arabs, taking this last for a gravestone, have pulled it up, according to their usual practice, in search of treasure buried with the dead. On the front of the credence-table,[58] and over the niche which some unskilled but pious hand has decorated with rude Byzantine carvings, the Greek cross is again conspicuous.

The religious history of Philæ is so curious that it is a pity it should not find an historian. It shared with Abydos and some other places the reputation of being the burial-place of Osiris. It was called the “Holy Island.” Its very soil was sacred. None might land upon its shores, or even approach them too nearly, without permission. To obtain that permission and perform the pilgrimage to the tomb of the god, was to the pious Egyptian what the Mecca pilgrimage is to the pious Mussulman of to-day. The most solemn oath to which he could give utterance was “By him who sleeps in Philæ.”

When and how the island first came to be regarded as the resting-place of the most beloved of the gods does not appear; but its reputation for sanctity seems to have been of comparatively modern date. It probably rose into importance as Abydos declined. Herodotus, who is supposed to have gone as far as Elephantine, made minute inquiry concerning the river above that point; and he relates that the cataract was in the occupation of “Ethiopian nomads.” He, however, makes no mention of Philæ or its temples. This omission on the part of one who, wherever he went, sought the society of the priests and paid particular attention to the religions observances of the country, shows that either Herodotus never got so far, or that the island had not yet become the home of the Osirian mysteries. Four hundred years later, Diodorus Siculus describes it as the holiest of holy places; while Strabo, writing about the same time, relates that Abydos had then dwindled to a mere village. It seems, possible, therefore, that at some period subsequent to the time of Herodotus and prior to that of Diodorus or Strabo, the priests of Isis may have migrated from Abydos to Philæ; in which case there would have been a formal transfer not only of the relics of Osiris, but of the sanctity which had attached for ages to their original resting-place. Nor is the motive for such an exodus wanting. The ashes of the god were no longer safe at Abydos. Situated in the midst of a rich corn country on the high road to Thebes, no city south of Memphis lay more exposed to the hazards of war. Cambyses had already passed that way. Other invaders might follow. To seek beyond the frontier that security which might no longer be found in Egypt, would seem therefore to be the obvious course of a priestly guild devoted to its trust. This, of course, is mere conjecture, to be taken for what it may be worth. The decadence of Abydos coincides, at all events, with the growth of Philæ; and it is only by help of some such assumption that one can understand how a new site should have suddenly arisen to such a height of holiness.

The earliest temple here, of which only a small propylon remains, would seem to have been built by the last of the native Pharaohs (Nectanebo II, B.C. 361); but the high and palmy days of Philæ belong to the period of Greek and Roman rule. It was in the time of the Ptolemies that the holy island became the seat of the sacred college and the stronghold of a powerful hierarchy. Visitors from all parts of Egypt, travelers from distant lands, court functionaries from Alexandria charged with royal gifts, came annually in crowds to offer their vows at the tomb of the god. They have cut their names by hundreds all over the principal temple, just like tourists of to-day. Some of these antique autographs are written upon and across those of preceding visitors; while others—palimpsests upon stone, so to say—having been scratched on the yet unsculptured surface of doorway and pylon, are seen to be older than the hieroglyphic texts which were afterward carved over them. These inscriptions cover a period of several centuries, during which time successive Ptolemies and Cæsars continued to endow the island. Rich in lands, in temples, in the localization of a great national myth, the sacred college was yet strong enough in A.D. 379 to oppose a practical insistence to the edict of Theodosius. At a word from Constantinople the whole land of Egypt was forcibly Christianized. Priests were forbidden under pain of death to perform the sacred rites. Hundreds of temples were plundered. Forty thousand statues of divinities were destroyed at one fell swoop. Meanwhile, the brotherhood of Philæ, intrenched behind the cataract and the desert, survived the degradation of their order and the ruin of their immemorial faith. It is not known with certainty for how long they continued to transmit their hereditary privileges; but two of the above-mentioned votive inscriptions show that so late as A.D. 453 the priestly families were still in occupation of the island and still celebrating the mysteries of Osiris and Isis. There even seems reason for believing that the ancient worship continued to hold its own till the end of the sixth century, at which time, according to an inscription at Kalabsheh, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, Silco, “King of all the Ethiopians,” himself apparently a Christian, twice invaded Lower Nubia, where God, he says, gave him the victory, and the vanquished swore to him “by their idols” to observe the terms of peace.[59]

There is nothing in this record to show that the invaders went beyond Tafa, the ancient Taphis, which is twenty-seven miles above Philæ; but it seems reasonable to conclude that so long as the old gods yet reigned in any part of Nubia, the island sacred to Osiris would maintain its traditional sanctity.

At length, however, there must have come a day when for the last time the tomb of the god was crowned with flowers and the “Lamentations of Isis” were recited on the threshold of the sanctuary. And there must have come another day when the cross was carried in triumph up those painted colonnades and the first Christian mass was chanted in the precincts of the heathen. One would like to know how these changes were brought about; whether the old faith died out for want of worshipers, or was expelled with clamor and violence. But upon this point history is vague[60] and the graffiti of the time are silent. We only know for certain that the old went out and the new came in; and that where the resurrected Osiris was wont to be worshiped according to the most sacred mysteries of the Egyptian ritual, the resurrected Christ was now adored after the simple fashion of the primitive Coptic church.

And now the holy island, near which it was believed no fish had power to swim or bird to fly and upon whose soil no pilgrim might set foot without permission, became all at once the common property of a populous community. Courts, colonnades, even terraced roofs, were overrun with little crude brick dwellings. A small basilica was built at the lower end of the island. The portico of the great temple was converted into a chapel and dedicated to St. Stephen. “This good work,” says a Greek inscription traced there by some monkish hand of the period, “was done by the well-beloved of God, the Abbot-Bishop Theodore.” Of this same Theodore, whom another inscription styles “the very holy father,” we know nothing but his name.

The walls hereabout are full of these fugitive records. “The cross has conquered and will ever conquer,” writes one anonymous scribe. Others have left simple signatures; as, for instance: “I, Joseph,” in one place and “I, Theodosius of Nubia,” in another. Here and there an added word or two give a more human interest to the autograph. So, in the pathetic scrawl of one who writes himself “Johannes, a slave,” we seem to read the story of a life in a single line. These Coptic signatures are all followed by the sign of the cross.