, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal
form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel
tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of
policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience. Here, and afterwards in
a few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole in
Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or troubling the Egyptians,
and by their numbers held the country like so many troops in garrison.
It was a wise policy to make no greater change than necessary in
the kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws and
magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet it was
necessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence in
the old cities could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians. This
was done by means of these new Greek cities, where the power by which
Egypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less hateful by
being out of sight. Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded with
so little force and so little crime.

Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two
races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to
the same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of
the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very
much laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after
a generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the
children of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not
Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the
worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the
more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods
were worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of their
skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies
covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes,
about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombs
near Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Koptic
peculiarities. It is easy to foresee that an important change would
have been wrought in the character of the people and in their political
institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grant
to the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and
thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is not
too