Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

188 CITIES OF EGYPT.

to be embodied in Apis, the living sacred bull of Mem-
phis. Thus the worship of Osiris, the most human phase
of the native religion, became the popular faith of the
capital. The animal worship was suppressed at Alex-
andria, but its relation to the Alexandrian divinity readily
introduced the new ideas at Memphis, where the Egyp-
tian Sarapis was already reverenced. This new belief,
touching as it did the hopes and fears of mankind,
speedily gained a wide popularity. It spread through-
out Egypt, and thence to the dominions of the Ptolemies
on the southern shore of Asia Minor. It crossed the
yEgean to Greece, and the Adriatic to Rome. Yet it
was but a popular creed. The learned men of Alex-'
andria treated it with indifference, if not with contempt,
until at length they sought its aid in the final conflict
with Christianity.

The Alexandrian schools of philosophy grew in and •
around the Museum and the Library; of these we mustlearn
something if we would understand what they produced.

The first two Ptolemies, who for nearly eighty years
ruled the richest and most tranquil part of the Empire of
Alexander, had nothing more at heart than the welfare
of their capital. Their policy was so completely one