DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14564#0178
PI-BESETH.
161
been a college of learned men at the place, and the very
potsherds would give us the exercises of the pupils, for
such we remember wefe the slates on which they wrote
their copies of classical models of style.
Herodotus speaks of the annual festival of the goddess
as the greatest in Egypt, bringing vast numbers of people
here to a scene of wild revelry. Though the hamlet that
recalls the name of the old town has ceased to be a place
of resort, we may almost say that the festival survives,
and has been transferred to Tanta, in the centre
of the Delta, and is held in honour of a Muslim saint,
Seyyid Ahmad El-Bedawee. No one could have been
more averse than Mohammad to heathen customs,
most of all to those which were associated with religion,
yet he has been everywhere defeated by the human ten-
dency to cling to ancient superstitions and time-honoured
usages. So in Christian countries pagan customs have
survived. Thus a new saint, Muslim or Christian,
becomes the centre of the old reverence; the name is
changed, but the surroundings are the same. At an Arab
saint's tomb in Upper Egypt a sacred snake is still, or
lately was, revered ; the predecessors of the reptile were
no doubt put under the protection of a Coptic saint, to
M
161
been a college of learned men at the place, and the very
potsherds would give us the exercises of the pupils, for
such we remember wefe the slates on which they wrote
their copies of classical models of style.
Herodotus speaks of the annual festival of the goddess
as the greatest in Egypt, bringing vast numbers of people
here to a scene of wild revelry. Though the hamlet that
recalls the name of the old town has ceased to be a place
of resort, we may almost say that the festival survives,
and has been transferred to Tanta, in the centre
of the Delta, and is held in honour of a Muslim saint,
Seyyid Ahmad El-Bedawee. No one could have been
more averse than Mohammad to heathen customs,
most of all to those which were associated with religion,
yet he has been everywhere defeated by the human ten-
dency to cling to ancient superstitions and time-honoured
usages. So in Christian countries pagan customs have
survived. Thus a new saint, Muslim or Christian,
becomes the centre of the old reverence; the name is
changed, but the surroundings are the same. At an Arab
saint's tomb in Upper Egypt a sacred snake is still, or
lately was, revered ; the predecessors of the reptile were
no doubt put under the protection of a Coptic saint, to
M