[Illustration:  131.jpg SHRINE]

The name of Amon-Ra had at one time been cut out from the Theban monuments to make way for a god from Lower Egypt; but it had been cut in again when the storm passed by.  The Jewish monotheism had left the crowd of gods unlessened.  The Persian efforts had overthrown statues and broken open temples, but had not been able to introduce their worship of the sun.  The Greek conquerors had yielded to the Egyptian mind without a struggle; and Alexander had humbly begged at the door of the temple to be acknowledged as a son of Amon.  But in the fulness of time these opinions, which seemed as firmly based as the monuments which represented them, sunk before a religion which set up no new statues, and could command no force to break open temples.

The Egyptian priests, who had been proud of the superiority of their own doctrines over the paganism of their neighbours, mourned the overthrow of their national religion.  “Our land,” says the author of Hermes Trismegistus, “is the temple of the world; but, as wise men should foresee all things, you should know that a time is coming when it will seem that the Egyptians have by an unfailing piety served God in vain.  For when strangers shall possess this kingdom religion will be neglected, and laws made against piety and divine worship, with punishment on those who favour it.  Then this holy seat will be full of idolatry, idols’ temples, and dead men’s tombs.  O Egypt, Egypt, there shall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity will refuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety.  The Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell in Egypt.  The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven; and Egypt shall be a desert, widowed of men and gods.”

The spread of Christianity among the Egyptians was such that their teachers found it necessary to supply them with a life of Jesus, written in their own language, that they might the more readily explain to them his claim to be obeyed, and the nature of his commands.  The Gospel according to the Egyptians, for such was the name this work bore, has long since been lost, and was little quoted by the Alexandrians.  It was most likely a translation from one of the four gospels, though it had some different readings suited to its own church, and contained some praise of celibacy not found in the New Testament; but it was not valued by the Greeks, and was lost on the spread of the Koptic translation of the whole New Testament.

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.