Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/62

 Alexander reached PeloBiiim, tbit city opened its gates to him, and his march to Mflmphis resembled the peaoefid progress of a native king.

The regalations which Alexander mads for the goyemment of his new oonqnest were equally wise and popular: and as they were generally adopted by his snocessors the Lagidae, tb^ may be mentianed in this place. The Egyptians were gorenied by their own laws. The privileges of the priests and their exemption firom land-<t8z were second to them, and they were enoooraged, if not assisted, to repair the temples, and to restore the ancient ritnal Ahraady in the reign of Ptolemy Soter the inner-chamber of ^ the TemjSe of Kamak was rebuilt, and the name of Philip Arrhidaeus, the son of Alexander, inscribed upon it. Alexander himself ofiiared sacrifice to Apis at Memphis, and assumed the titles of ■* Son of Amroon " and " Bebved of Ammon "^ and when the sacred Boll died of old age Ptolemy L bestowed fifty talents npon his funeral. Euergetes, the third mo^ narch of the Lagii boose, enlaxged the temple of Kamak, added to that of Ammon in the Qreat Ouds, and erected smaller shrines to Onris at Canobos, and to Leto, at Erne or Latopolis, The structores of the Ptolemies will be noticed under the names of the varioos places which they restored or adorned. It would have been impolitic to reinstate the andent miUtiaof Egypt, which indeed hadloiigbeensoperseded by a standing army or Greek meroeoaries. Under the most despotic of the Ptolemies, however, we meet with few instances of military oppression, and these rarely extended beyond the suburbs of Alexandria or the fnmtiers of the Delta. Alexander established two principal garrisons, one at Pelusium, as the key of Egypt, and another at Memphis, as the capital of the Lower Country. Subsequently Parembole in Nubia, Elephantine, and the Greek city of Ptolemab in the Thebaid were occupied by Maw^onian troops. The civil jurisdiction he divided between two nom- archies or judgeships, and he appointed as nomardis two native Egyptians, Poloaspis and Petisis. (Arrian, Anab, iiL 5. § 2.)

Like their predecessors the Pharaohs, the Ptoleiiues aspired to extend their power over Palestine and Syria, and protracted wars were the results of their contests with the Seleucid longs. But evoi these campaigns tended to the augmentation of the Egyptian navy; and, in consequence of the foundation ^Alex- andria the country possessed one of the strongest and most capacious havens in the Mediterranean. Be- coming a maritime, the Egyptians became also an actively commercial nation, a^ exported com, pa- pyrus, linen, and the articles of their Libyan and Indian traffic to western Asia and Europe. Ptolemy Philadelphus gave a new impulse to the intenud trade of the Nile-valley, in the first place, by es- tablishing a systfflu of police from Cercasorum to Syene, and, in the next, by completing the canal which Nedio and Darius Hystaspis had b^gun, from the Pelusiac arm of the Nile to ArsinoS at the head of the Bed Sea. (Plin. vi. 3d; Herod, ii. 158) [Bob Asms; Absinob]. He also rebuilt the old port of Aennum or Cosseir [Philotera], and improved the caravan route from the interior by erecting iims and dstwns in the desert between Cqitos and Berenice. The monuments of Lower Nubia attest the wealth and enterprise of the Lagid monarchs. Egypt indeed did not regain under this family the sploodour which it had enjoyed under Thoutmosis and Barneses IIL, but it was perhaps more imifonnly prosperous, and less exposed to in-vision from Cyrene and Arabia than it had ever been since the 18th dynasty occupied the throne oif Metkes.

In one respect the amalgamation of the Egyptians with their oonquerars was incomplete. The Gre^s were always the dominant dsss. The children of mixed marriages were declared by the Macedonian laws to be Egyjrtian not Greek. They were incapable of the highest offices in the state or the army, and worshipped Osiris and Isis, rather than Zeiia or Hera. Thos, according to Hellenic prejudices, they were regarded as barbuian or at most as Perioed, and not as fbll citisens or freemen. To this distinc- tion may in part be ascribed the fiudlily with which both races sabsequentiy submitted to the aohority of the Boman emperors.

The ancient divi^ons of the Upper and Lofwer kingdoms were under the Macedonian dynasty re- vived but inverted. Power, population, wealth and enterprise were drawn down to the Delta and to the space between its chief dties Memphis and Alexandria. The Thebaid gradually declined. Its temples wer« indeed restored: and its pompous hionurchy recovered much of their influenoe. But the rites of religioii could not compete with tiie activity of oommercek The Greek and Hebrew colonists of the Delta ahsorWd the vitality of the land: and Ic^ befbre tiie Bamans eooverted Egypt into a province of the empire, the Nubians and Arabs had encroached upon the upper country, and the andent Diospolite region partly re- turned to the waste, and partiy displayed a saper- aimuated grandeur, in striking emtrsst with thm busy and productive energy of the Lower Conntir. This phenomenon is illustrated by the mammies which are fband in the tombs of Memphis and thm catacombs of Thebes respectively. Of one hundred mummies taken from the latter, about twenty show an European origin, while of eveiy hundred derived from the necropolite reoeptadee of tiie former, seventy have lost thdr Coptic peculiarities (Sharps, Bittory ofBgypt^ p. 133, 2nd ed.). The Delta had, in fkct, become a cosmopolite region, reploushed from Syria and Greeoe, and brought into contact with general dvilisation. The Thebaid remained stationary, and reverted to its ancient Aethiopan type, neglecting or incapable of fordgn admixture.

For more than a century previous to b. a 30 the fiunily and government of the Lagid house had been on the declme. It vras rather the jealousy of the Boman senate which dreaded to see one of its own members an Egyptian proconsul, than its own int^^td strength, whioh delayed the conversion of the Nile- valley into a Boman province; When however the Boman commonwealth had passed into a monardiyy and the final struggle between Antonius and Aqgustiui had been dedded by the surrender of Alexandria, Egypt ceased to be an independent kingdom. The regulations which Augustus made fer his new ac- quintion manifested at once his sease of its value, and his vigilance against intrusion. Egypt became properly a province ndther of the senate nor the em- peror. It was thencefinth governed bya prefect, called Ptaefechti Aegypti, aftemrds ProefiGtUB A^tgu^" to/is, immediately appointed by the Caesar and re- sponsible to him alone. The prefect was taken from the equestrian order: and no senator was permitted to set foot in Egypt without special imperial license. (Tac.ulfm.iL59,^w«.ii.74;DionCa88.U. 17; Ar- rian, Anab. iiL 5.) Even after Diocletian had re-