turned in him to the earth. It was
not the first time that the Egyptian and the Greek had stood side by
side against the common Persian foe. Greek troops had disputed the
passage of Kambyses into Egypt. The first revolt of Egypt had saved
Greece from the impending invasion of Darius, and postponed it to the
reign of his feebler son, and during its second revolt Athenian ships
had sailed up the Nile and assisted the Egyptians in the contest with
the Persians. If Egypt could not be free, it was better that its master
should be a Greek.

Alexander was followed by the Ptolemies. They were the ablest of his
successors, the earlier of them being equally great in war and in peace.
Alexandria, founded by Alexander on the site of the village of Rakotis,
became the commercial and literary centre of the world; thousands of
books were collected in its Library, and learned professors lectured in
the halls of its Museum. An elaborate fiscal system was devised and
carefully superintended, and enormous revenues poured into the treasury
of the king. As time passed on, the Ptolemies identified themselves more
and more with their subjects; the temples were rebuilt or restored, and
the Greek king assumed the attributes of a Pharaoh. The Jews flocked
into the country, where special privileges were granted to them, and
where many of them were raised to offices of state. A rival temple to
that of Jerusalem was built at Onion near Heliopolis, the modern Tel
el-Yahudiya, or "Mound of the Jews," and the books of the Hebrew
Scriptures were translated into Greek. A copy of the Septuagint, as the
Greek translation was called, was needed for the Alexandrine Library.

Egypt, once the house of bondage, thus became a second house of Israel.
It gave the world a new version of the Hebrew Bible which largely
influenced the writers of the New Testament; it gave it also a new Canon
which was adopted by the early Christian Church. The prophecy of Isaiah
was fulfilled: "The Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians
shall know the Lord."

In the course of centuries, however, the monotheistic element in
Egyptian religion had grown clearer and more pronounced in the minds of
the educated classes. The gods of the official cult ceased to be
regarded as different forms of the same deity; they became mere
manifestations of a single all-pervading power. As M. Grebaut puts it:
they were "the names received by a single Being in his various
attributes and worki