DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0219
PHILjE. 201
monks installed themselves in that row of cells on the east
side of the great colonnade, where the priests of Isis dwelled
before them. As for the village, it must have been just like
Luxor—swarming with dusky life; noisy with the babble
of children, the cackling of poultry and the barking of
dogs; sending up thin pillars of blue smoke at noon; echo-
ing to the measured chimes of the prayer-bell at morn and
even; and sleeping at night as soundly as if no ghostlike,
mutilated gods were looking on mournfully in the moon-
light.
The gods are avenged now. The creed which dethroned
them is dethroned. Abbot Theodore and his successors,
and the religion they taught, and the simple folk that lis-
tened to their teaching, are gone and forgotten. For the
Church of Christ, which still languishes in Egypt, is ex-
tinct in Nubia. It lingered long; though doubtless in
some such degraded and barbaric form as it wears in Abys-
sinia to this day. But it was absorbed by Islaniism at last;
and only a ruined convent perched here and there upon
some solitary height, or a few crosses rudely carved on the
walls of a Ptolemaic temple, remain to show that Christian-
ity once passed that way.
The mediaeval history of Phila3 is almost a blank. The
Arabs, having invaded Egypt toward the middle of the
seventh century, were long in the land before they beiran
to cultivate literature; and for more than three hundred
years history is silent. It is not till the tenth century that we
once again catch a fleeting glimpse of Philaj. The frontier
is now removed to the head of the cataract. The Holy
Island has ceased to be Christian; ceased to be Nubian;
contains a mosque and garrison, and is the last fortified
outpost of the Moslems. It still retains, and apparently
will continue to retain for some centuries longer, its ancient
Egyptian name. That is to say (P bejng as usual con-
verted into 13) the Pilak of the hieroglyphic inscriptions
becomes in Arabic Belak;* which is much more like the
original than the Phila? of the Greeks.
* These and the following particulars about the Christians of
Nubia are found in the famous work of Makrizi, an Arab historian
of the fifteenth century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See
Burckhardt's "Travels in Nubia," 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although
Belak is distinctly described as an island in the neighborhood of the
cataract, distant four miles from Assuan, Burckhardt persisted in
monks installed themselves in that row of cells on the east
side of the great colonnade, where the priests of Isis dwelled
before them. As for the village, it must have been just like
Luxor—swarming with dusky life; noisy with the babble
of children, the cackling of poultry and the barking of
dogs; sending up thin pillars of blue smoke at noon; echo-
ing to the measured chimes of the prayer-bell at morn and
even; and sleeping at night as soundly as if no ghostlike,
mutilated gods were looking on mournfully in the moon-
light.
The gods are avenged now. The creed which dethroned
them is dethroned. Abbot Theodore and his successors,
and the religion they taught, and the simple folk that lis-
tened to their teaching, are gone and forgotten. For the
Church of Christ, which still languishes in Egypt, is ex-
tinct in Nubia. It lingered long; though doubtless in
some such degraded and barbaric form as it wears in Abys-
sinia to this day. But it was absorbed by Islaniism at last;
and only a ruined convent perched here and there upon
some solitary height, or a few crosses rudely carved on the
walls of a Ptolemaic temple, remain to show that Christian-
ity once passed that way.
The mediaeval history of Phila3 is almost a blank. The
Arabs, having invaded Egypt toward the middle of the
seventh century, were long in the land before they beiran
to cultivate literature; and for more than three hundred
years history is silent. It is not till the tenth century that we
once again catch a fleeting glimpse of Philaj. The frontier
is now removed to the head of the cataract. The Holy
Island has ceased to be Christian; ceased to be Nubian;
contains a mosque and garrison, and is the last fortified
outpost of the Moslems. It still retains, and apparently
will continue to retain for some centuries longer, its ancient
Egyptian name. That is to say (P bejng as usual con-
verted into 13) the Pilak of the hieroglyphic inscriptions
becomes in Arabic Belak;* which is much more like the
original than the Phila? of the Greeks.
* These and the following particulars about the Christians of
Nubia are found in the famous work of Makrizi, an Arab historian
of the fifteenth century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See
Burckhardt's "Travels in Nubia," 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although
Belak is distinctly described as an island in the neighborhood of the
cataract, distant four miles from Assuan, Burckhardt persisted in