man.

The city of Canopus was still a large mart for merchandise, as the
shallow but safe entrance to its harbour made it a favourite with pilots
of the small trading vessels, who rather dreaded the rocks at the mouth
of the harbour of Alexandria. A temple of Serapis which had lately been
built at Canopus was dedicated to the god in the name of the Emperor
Commodus; and there some of the grosser superstitions of the polytheists
fled before the spread of Christianity and platonism in Alexandria. The
Canopic jars, which held those parts of the body that could not be made
solid in the mummy, and which had the heads of the four lesser gods
of the dead on their lids, received their name from this city. The
sculptures on the beautiful temples of Contra-Latopolis were also
finished in this reign, and the emperor's names and titles were carved
on the walls in hieroglyphics, with those of the Ptolemies, under whom
the temple itself had been built. Commodus may perhaps not have been
the last emperor whose name and praises were carved in hieroglyphics;
but all the great buildings in the Thebaid, which add such value to the
early history of Egypt, had ceased before his reign. Other buildings of
a less lasting form were no doubt being built, such as the Greek temples
at Antinoopolis and Ptolemais, which have long since been swept away;
but the Egyptian priests, with their gigantic undertakings, their noble
plan of working for after ages rather than for themselves, were nearly
ruined, and we find no ancient building now standing in Egypt that was
raised after the time of the dynasty of the Antonines.

[Illustration: 128.jpg CANOPIC JARS]

But the poverty of the Egyptians was not the only cause why they built
no more temples. Though the colossal statue of Amenhothes uttered
its musical notes every morning at sunrise, still tuneful amid the
desolation with which it was surrounded, and the Nile was still
worshipped at midsummer by the husbandman to secure its fertilising
overflow; nevertheless, the religion itself for which the temples had
been built was fast giving way before the silent spread of Christianity.
The religion of the Egyptians, unlike that of the Greeks, was no
longer upheld by the magistrate; it rested solely on the belief of its
followers, and it may have merged into Christianity the faster for the
greater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganism
of other nations. The scanty hieroglyphical recor