DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14564#0204
ALEXANDRIA.
187
The intellectual activity of Alexandria was centred in
the Museum and the Library, but we cannot understand
these institutions unless we look at the whole atmosphere
of thought in which they grew up. We have not only
to trace the origin of a great school of philosophy, the
parent of other schools, and to observe a series of mo-
mentous movements in the early Church ; we must not
neglect the history of a new belief which was destined to
take a leading part in the final conflict of paganism and
Christianity.
The mixed Greek and Egyptian population of Alex-
andria needed a religion such as a centre of learning
could not give them. The introduction of the worn-out
creed of Egypt would have been distasteful to the Greeks,
a foreign worship would have met little favour with the
Egyptians. Accordingly the astute old king who founded
the Ptolemaic dynasty solved the difficulty by the in-
genious compromise which introduced an Egyptian
* belief in a Hellenic form. On the pretext of a dream
he despatched messengers to Sinope on the Euxine, for
a sacred statue ; on its arrival he consulted the Egyptian
priests, and they pronounced it to represent Sarapis, a
form of Osiris, the ruler of the world of shades, supposed
187
The intellectual activity of Alexandria was centred in
the Museum and the Library, but we cannot understand
these institutions unless we look at the whole atmosphere
of thought in which they grew up. We have not only
to trace the origin of a great school of philosophy, the
parent of other schools, and to observe a series of mo-
mentous movements in the early Church ; we must not
neglect the history of a new belief which was destined to
take a leading part in the final conflict of paganism and
Christianity.
The mixed Greek and Egyptian population of Alex-
andria needed a religion such as a centre of learning
could not give them. The introduction of the worn-out
creed of Egypt would have been distasteful to the Greeks,
a foreign worship would have met little favour with the
Egyptians. Accordingly the astute old king who founded
the Ptolemaic dynasty solved the difficulty by the in-
genious compromise which introduced an Egyptian
* belief in a Hellenic form. On the pretext of a dream
he despatched messengers to Sinope on the Euxine, for
a sacred statue ; on its arrival he consulted the Egyptian
priests, and they pronounced it to represent Sarapis, a
form of Osiris, the ruler of the world of shades, supposed