Laborde's Travels hundred years that remarkable Arab city formed part of the Roman empire; and Europeans now travelling through the desert from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem are agreeably surprised at coming upon temples, carved out of the solid rock, ornamented with Corinthian columns of the age of the Antonines (see Fig. 75). Inscript. (8) In the twelfth year of this reign, when Lucius Sulpicius Simius was prefect, some additions which had been made to the temple at Panopolis in the Letronne. Thebaid, were dedicated in the name of the emperor; and in the nineteenth year, when Marcus Rutilius Lupus was prefect, a new portico in the Oasis of Thebes was A small Inscript. Boeckh. 4716. c. Hobler's Rome A.D. 111. in the same manner dedicated to Serapis and Isis. temple which had been before built at Dendera, near the great temple of Athor or Venus, was in the first year of this reign dedicated to the Empress Plotina, under the name of the great goddess the younger Venus. In the silence of the historians, the coins would lead us to think that Trajan visited Alexandria in the fourteenth year of his reign, when, after his conquest of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, they represent his approach in a chariot drawn by elephants (Fig. 76); at any rate, his departure from the city is certainly marked on the coins of his sixteenth year, when the goddess Isis holds up a sail which is filled by wind blowing away from the lighthouse on the island of Pharos (see Fig. 77). (9) The canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Bitter A.D. 113. Ptolemæl Lakes, which had been first made by Necho, had been either finished or a second time made by PhilaGeograph. delphus; and in this reign that great undertaking was again renewed. But the stream of the Nile was deserting the Bubastite branch, which was less navigable than formerly; and the engineers now changed the greater part of the canal's bed. They thought it wiser to bring the water from a higher part of the Nile, so that the current in the canal might run into the Red Sea instead of out, and its waters might still be fresh and useful to agriculture. It now began at Babylon, opposite Memphis, and, passing by Heliopolis, Scena Veteranorum, Heroopolis, and Serapion, joined the Upper Bitter Lake, and thence entered the Red Sea at a town which, taking its name from the locks, was called Clismon, about ten miles to the south of Arsinoë. This latter town was no longer a port, having been separated from the sea by the continual advance of the sands. We have no knowledge of how long the care of the imperial prefects kept this new canal open and in use. The encroachment of the sands would fill it up whenever it was neglected; it was perhaps one of the first of the Roman works that went to decay; and, when we find the Christian Mensura pilgrims sailing along it seven centuries later, in their way from England to the Holy Sepulchre, it had been again opened by the Mahomedan conquerors of Egypt. (10) As Alexandria has been the birthplace of many forgeries in religious literature, we readily give it credit for others. Here most likely were written the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the work of a Jewish convert to Christianity. It pretends to be an account of the deaths of the twelve sons of Jacob, with the prophetic speeches which they made to their children on their death-beds. Zemach Trajan, in the fourth year of his reign, about thirtyDavid. four years after the destruction of Jerusalem, had promised Joshua, the son of Annaniah, that the Jews should have leave to return to the holy city and rebuild the Temple; and this, as we shall see, fixes the time when this work was written. The patriarch Reuben foretells the coming of the high-priest Christ. Levi also, quoting from the book of Enoch, foretells the coming of a man in the power of the Most High to renew the Law; his being called an impostor, Dicuilus, Orbis, vi. D. Ganz, his death, and resurrection; and he makes the seventy weeks of the book of Daniel end with the destruction of the Temple. He then continues his prophecy through the space of seven weeks or forty-nine years more, each of which weeks is to be the reign of a new high-priest. In the fifth week, under the fifth high-priest, that is, before the ninth year of Trajan's reign, the Jews are to return into the land of their desolation, and to rebuild the house of the Lord; and the failure in this prophecy fixes the date of the writing. In the seventh week there are to be wicked idolatrous priests, after which the priesthood is to be at an end, and is to be followed by the reign of God upon earth. Judah and Nephthalim also foretell the glory of Israel; but it is not clear whether they point to Jesus, or to the re-establishment of the Jews as a nation in their own country. This great and glorious event, whether it was to be the second coming of Christ and the end of the world, as many of the Christians thought, or whether it was to be the restoration of the sceptre to Judah and the re-establishment of the Jewish kingdom, was looked forward to as an event close at hand, and it raised the minds of the Jews into a fervour of religious enthusiasm. As the wishedfor time drew near, the end of the seven great weeks from the destruction of the Temple, all the eastern provinces of the Roman empire were disturbed by the rebellious rising of the Jews. (11) Most likely at this time the poet Ezekiel wrote his Greek tragedy of the Departure from Egypt, which we seem meant to encourage his countrymen to march a time through the desert from Egypt to the promis In this poem the chief speakers are God and Mos now possess only a few dialogues of it, in one. angel boastfully describes the triumphant Israelites and the overthrow of the Egyptian (12) Moved by these writings, or rathe enthusiasm which gave birth to the wr Jews of Egypt, in the eighteenth year of were again roused into a quarrel with fellow-citizens; and in the next y the reign, they rose against their, and that on this Antinous in open rebellion, and they wwn life in the service of his the prefect Lupus had h into the Nile near the village of At first the Jews were successful, more particularly in the villages; and the Greeks fled to Alexandria, where they were the stronger, and there they slew the Jews in revenge, though not till after many obstinate and bloody battles in the streets. After this the Jews of Cyrene marched through the desert into Egypt, under the command of Lucuas, to help their brethren; and the rebellion took the regular form of a civil war, with all its usual horrors. The emperor sent against the Jews an army, followed by a fleet, which, after numerous skirmishes and battles, routed them with great slaughter, and drove numbers of them back into the desert, from whence they harassed the villages as robbers. (13) By these unsuccessful appeals to force, the Jews lost all right to those privileges of citizenship which they always claimed, and which had been granted by the emperors, though usually refused by the Alexandrians. Henceforth they were lowered to the rank of Egyptians, and nothing but the emperor's edict could raise a Jew or an Egyptian to the rank of an Alexandrian. The overthrow of Jerusalem had sealed the fate of the Jews in every country where they dwelt in their dispersion; their second temple at Onion in the Delta was also closed, and their despair and disappointment at the failure of these hopes seem in many cases to have turned their minds to the Christian lib. iii. 35. view of the Old Testament prophecies; henceforth, says Eusebius, the Jews embraced the Christian religio on more readily and in greater numbers. probably at this time that the Jews of Egypt were again made to ay the poll-tax for leave to worship the God of their fathers, from which they had been relieved by Nerva. Eccl. Hist. A.D. 122. It was (14) In the sixth year of the reign of HADRIAN (see Fig. 78), Egypt was honoured by a visit from the emperor, who, with a restless activity joined to a praiseworthy love of knowledge, had already run over a large part of his dominions. After marching on foot over the snows of Scotland, he came to expose himself bareheaded to the scorching sun of the Thebaid. He was led Vit. Hadr. to Egypt at that time by some riots of a character more serious than usttal, which had arisen between two cities, probably Memphis and Heliopolis, about a bull, Spartianus, as to whether it was to be Apis or Mnevis. Egypt had been for some years without a sacred bull; and when at length the priests found one, marked with the wished-for spots, the inhabitants of those two cities flew to arms, and the peace of the province was disturbed by their religious zeal, each claiming the bull as their own. Hadrian was accompanied by his favourite, lib. xix. the beautiful Antinous, who Fig. 78. Dion Cass. drowned himself in the Nile during their journey towards Thebes. It would seem that the emperor had been consulting with the Egyptian astrologers as to his future fate and the welfare of the empire; and that the oracle had declared that the loss of what he then held most dear was Fig. 79. necessary to his future happiness; and that on this Antinous had generously devoted his own life in the service of his master, and thrown himself into the Nile near the village of |